Friday Fiction: Going to Work
Going to Work
Mark H. Walker
There was blood on the deck of the
battleship. Not a lot, but enough to cover the rising sun on the turret, the
torso of the rocket ship pilot, and the laser he fired.
It might have been the
Fifty-seven’s gunner’s blood. The Tiger’s cannon had obliterated the light
anti-tank gun, and a three-finger thick shard from the gun’s shield now
protruded from the gunner’s eye, but the gunner didn’t care. He was dead.
It might have been Fatman’s; the
MG-34 had chewed his arm up good. And Fatman did care. He cared so much that
Staff Sergeant John Jay Stauffer could still hear him screaming through the din
of the firefight, and Doc had him three buildings back. Either way, it didn’t
matter.
There was blood on the deck, right
below the “Amazing Stories” logo.
Sergeant Stauffer loved the science
fiction magazine. Hell, he loved any fiction that took him away from a reality
of buzzing bullets, exploding bombs, and crushing responsibility. He scooped up
the magazine from where it had fallen, and stuffed it into his back pocket.
“What now, Sarge?” Beside him,
crouching in the rubble of the Italian building, Private Migliore screamed to
be heard. Stauffer didn’t know how he did that with a cigarette in his mouth,
but do it he did. Next door the squad’s—his
squad’s—BAR hammered, its target the German MG-34 up the street. But who
the hell cared about an MG-34? That wasn’t
the problem.
Migs banged off the last two rounds
from his Garand, and the clip popped with a loud ping. He flipped on his back to reload, and once again the MG-34
tore into their position, its 7.92mm bullets chipping stone and sparking off
the brick road in front of their position. But that wasn’t the problem.
Thunder cracked, and the BAR’s
firing position disintegrated. Stauffer raised an inch above the rubble, hoping
the smoke and dust from the explosion would hide his curiosity, hoping someone
from the BAR’s position had survived.
They hadn’t.
To his right, seventy meters
distant, a Sherman
flamed furiously. That had been the Company Commander’s solution to the
problem. To his left, no more that than the length of a soccer pitch away, sat
a German Tiger. A disabled Tiger, Fatman—before he got his arm shredded— and
Hillbilly had made sure of that, but a Tiger nonetheless. That was
the problem.
“Sarge?” It was Migs again, always
questioning.
Stauffer nodded. “Shut up and let
me think, Migs.”
There wasn’t much to think. The
Fifty-seven was kaput, the Bazooka
team down, the Sherman
in flames. Stauffer’s eyes scanned the rubbled room—two wounded at the back,
Smitty and Hollywood ,
Migs with his M-1, and Hillbilly with a bent Bazooka launcher. Not much. His
gaze swept to Migs’ feet, beside them laid the last satchel charge. Waiting.
Stauffer couldn’t risk anymore of his men. Couldn’t live with that.
He grabbed the satchel and rose to a crouch. “Cover
me,” he yelled. It was time to go to
work.Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games, the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military science fiction 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. All the books and stories are available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell? The games? Well that's Flying Pig Games. Retribution will release in the summer of 2015.
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