Friday Fiction: An Excerpt from World at War: Retribution

 The below is an excerpt from my latest novel, World at War: Retribution, releasing in the first quarter of 2015.

 The rifle rose slightly above the rough rock wall surrounding the church, the sodden day’s gray light glumly reflecting off the black barrel.  The air hung thickly about the small town, heavy with the expectation of rain. The cobbled streets were as quiet as a cocked gun, the narrow passages not quaint, but constricting, heavy with the stench of death.

  Corporal Mike Hudson didn’t care about the stench, the thick air, or the sodden sky, until five minutes ago he cared only for the MRE that he was destroying; the first meal that he had eaten in a very long day. His company had pulled into the nameless town, set sentries, and settled in. They had been on the march for 20 hours and could simply go no further. Hudson had been sitting with his back to his squad’s M113 armored personnel carrier, eating the MRE, when he spotted the rifle raising. There weren’t supposed to be any Russians in this town. Hudson’s company was behind his own lines, headed back for a refit, but this war no longer had front lines, and someone forgot to tell the Russians that they weren’t supposed to interrupt

Hudson’s meal.

  He dropped the MRE, the foil container clattering to the ground, and held his finger to his lips as his squadmates looked to him. Recently assigned after the debacle in Tanenhause, Hudson didn’t know all their names, didn’t care to learn them. One hand grabbed his M16, and he nodded toward the raising Russian rifle. The other three soldiers in the squad, flipped to their stomachs, each holding his weapon. Hudson pulled an M2 grenade from his web gear, jerked the pin and let it fly. The crack was flat, the flash fast and bright; the effect immediate. The rifle spun over the wall, thudding into the soft green grass on the near side. Hudson was running before it hit, yelling as he moved.

  “Brains! On me.” He knew the dude called Brains. That kind of name sort of stuck. He pointed at the other two. “You two cover us.”

  Brains ran next to Hudson, combat shotgun to shoulder, finger resting lightly on the trigger. The other two stayed back, one prone with his M249 squad automatic weapon, or SAW, aimed at the wall. Beside him knelt the other, his M16 swept the area to the front, looking for Russians.

Hudson would have preferred to let the M113 handle the Russian. Its .50 caliber machine gun and the finger-sized slugs it spewed more than a match for the rock wall, but the crew had gone looking for the coffee grounds rumored to exist in second platoon. So that just left Hudson and Brains, and two guys he didn’t know. No doubt, the gunfire had alerted the entire laager, but they were the dudes on scene. Hudson reached the wall and leaned over, ready to fire. There was no need. The Russian lay unnaturally, one leg cocked behind his body, his right side bloody beneath a tattered, smoking uniform. Beside him, Brains spoke.

  “That dude is definitely done dancing.”

  Hudson nodded, and then a stream of bullets sparked against the stones.

  Both ducked back, stone chips spraying against their helmets. Hudson glanced back at the others and gestured to the wall.

  “You two take the right side.”

  He looked at Brains, “Let’s shift,” Hudson said. “Then we’ll pop up and see if we can spot him.”

 The two crawled along the wall.

  Hudson hated crawling. It could save your ass, but it also soaked his fatigues on the rain-slicked grass, which made life miserable for the next hour or so. They reached a rose bush, the blooms bright yellow.

  Hudson spoke. “I’ll look. Get ready to lay some shit on the building.”

  Brains shrugged. “I’ll do what I can, man. This shotgun isn’t the longest ranged weapon in this war.”

  Hudson smiled grimly. “Yeah.”

  He debated removing his helmet. The Russian would be looking for the top of a helmet, and the protection was marginal. A Russian 7.62mm round would hole the helmet as well as his skull, but on the flip side of the coin the Kevlar would stop a glancing blow, flying stone chips, or a multitude of other projectiles that he would rather keep out of his skull. The helmet stayed, and he lifted his head slowly.

  The church stood twenty meters distant, thick, well-trimmed grass covered the ground between Hudson and the gray, stone sides on the building.  To his left, several marble tombstones marked a small graveyard, artificial flowers on each grave doing little to brighten the day.  A short set of steps led to a stout-looking wood door, and several, stained-glass windows, split the wall at regular intervals. One of the windows was shattered, the glass beneath it, reflecting the leaden sky like unpolished jewels. Through the window, Hudson glimpsed a shadow.

  “Geez, this guy is dumb,” muttered Hudson.

  “Got him?” replied Brains.

  Hudson nodded. “Yeah. Stupid fuck hasn’t moved.” Slowly, Hudson slid his rifle onto the wall, using the flowering branches of the rose bush to conceal the movement. In position, he lined up his sights on the window. The shadow drifted across the forward sight. Behind him, Hudson heard squealing drive sprockets; the squad’s M113 shifting position, alerted and crewed. Hudson breathed out, let the shadow drift into his sights and fired. One burst, two burst, three bursts. He ducked behind the wall, and then the M113’s .50 caliber let loose.

  With a metallic-tinged chugging, the machine gun’s slugs flew over his head. One in two were tracers, and the effect was one of continuous light; beautiful. The stream seemed to last forever, but in reality, Hudson guessed it was no more than a few, stretching seconds. The effect on the church’s stone, let alone the Russian rifleman behind it, was much less pretty. The machine gun simply gutted a man-sized chunk of the church’s wall, disintegrating it in a cloud of dust. Hudson rose; confident the Russian wouldn’t be aiming at him, or anyone else, ever again.

The SAW gunner and M16 rifleman still crouched, their weapons trained on the church. He pointed to the two of them and tapped his helmet, palm down. Cover me. Then he turned to Brains.

  “On me. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  A glance back confirmed that the M113 was still on the job, the track commander exposed, eyes on the church. Again, Hudson gave the cover signal and the commander nodded.

Hudson and Brains climbed over the chest-high stone fence, and scrambled to the church, weapons at the ready. The cloud of dust, dirt, and mortar swirled thickly. They reached the window in a couple of heartbeats. The .50 cal’s torrent of fire had ripped a door-sized gash in the wall. Hudson gestured Brains right, and he took left. His back against the outside wall, Hudson unclipped a grenade, pulled the pin and tossed it. The grenade exploded and the gash coughed dust. Hudson put his rifle to his shoulder and swung into the church, Brains immediately behind.

  Light from the numerous stained-glass windows colored the churning dust in muted shades of red, yellow, and green. Hudson swept the left side of the church; he knew Brains would handle the right. No bullets came from the colorful cloud. Nothing moved. All clear. To his left Hudson found the Russian rifleman, his chest pulped by the M113’s machine gun. The SAW gunner and accompanying rifleman stepped through the gash.

  “You guys take the right side, Brains and I will get the left,” Hudson said. “Stay sharp, but be chill. We don’t need to put a bullet into each other.”

  “Or a priest,” added Brains.

  Hudson shrugged. “Stay chill.”

  Five minutes later, they realized they didn’t need to worry about gunning down a stowaway priest. They had found the clergy, and they were dead. That didn’t concern Hudson. The previous weeks had shown him enough death to inure him to its cold touch. Two things, however, did bother him. First, the clergy themselves. Rather than overweight, unarmed men accustomed to the safe, sedate life of a priest, the men were all fit, and even more curious, they were armed, and armed well. The four squadmates found a wide variety of weapons, mostly Italian. Why the hell would priests carry weapons, Hudson mused, but that train of thought was rapidly overshadowed by a second, more pressing concern.

  “What the hell killed them?” whispered Brains. The SAW gunner knelt on the church’s marble floor and scooped up a handful of brass casings. “These guys had one hell of a fight.” He tipped his hand and let the brass tinkle to the floor. “And they lost, but not one of them has been shot.”

  Hudson understood the man’s confusion. He imagined that his squadmates expected bullet holes, administered from the rifles of looting soldiers; instead, they found huge, animal-like gashes. They had no idea what they were looking at. What troubled Hudson was that he did. 

The above is an excerpt from my novel, World at War: Retribution, releasing in the first quarter of 2015.

Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver, he is the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military scifi novel with a twist, with plenty of damn science fiction in it despite what any reviewer says, as well as World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing, Everyone Dies in the End, and numerous short stories. They are all available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell?

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