A short story I wrote a few months ago. A day in the life of a sociopath who happens to be a soldier in a future war.
[b]Nothing To It[/b]
by Ben Graves
“I know he got shot,” I keep telling the guy. He still doesn't hear me and he keeps screaming at my face that his friend's been shot and he won't be able to think or see again. The way he says it makes him sound like a child and it irritates me to no end. We carry the dead body into the back of the flatbed carrier truck that just arrived to pick my troop--or what's left of it--up. The six of us sit in the back.
“I told him not to do it!” he yells as the truck starts taking us away from the town. “I told him not to run. That idiot didn't listen!”
“I know,” I say, my blank slate of a face beginning to warp into a cold sign of annoyance. The guy starts crying as the truck hits frequent bumps on the road, causing his sobs to quiver erratically.
My gaze turns from him to the corpse lying on the green sheet between the six of us huddled in back of the small truck. I stare at the holes in his head, looking at the various sizes of them, and I count six altogether. This meatboy was shot by a single calciun-model shotgun blast. The ballistics would indicate that six shells penetrated him from the flesh to the brain. You don't need to be a doctor to see that, but the guy across from me, still crying, keeps trying stupidly to explain what happened specifically to the meatboy. As the tears run down his face, I try to wonder again what it would be like to be able to cry. The feeling of sadness seems so unnecessary to me. It always has. Then I wonder if I could get away with killing this guy.
“I loved you, man,” the guy mutters, looking down at the truck bed. Then he looks up at me and gives me this look of disgust which I assume is a sign that he thinks I'm a monster, which I am. I look back at him with a flat face and then give him a nod to get across a false message of “I understand”. I wish I could shoot him right here straight in the forehead just to keep him from sobbing once he stops, and the urge is almost unbearable when he starts up again. I toy with the holster on my right hip, rubbing my gloved index finger along the leather as I look to my left over at the other soldiers who remain silent and patient. I decide I'll do the same... wait. The soldier next to me glances at me, and I turn my head to look out the back of the truck. The fog is thick, as usual, and all I can see is a short distance of the rocky road the truck just passed over. When I turn my head back to the sobbing guy, he has his head in his hands and the soldier next to him pats him on the back sympathetically.
About a half an hour later the truck approaches another town, and I can hear the familiar mixture of explosions and screams. The once sobbing guy across from me has stopped and is now holding his assault rifle feebly. The way it shakes in his arms nervously brings back the urge to put an end to him, but I contain myself and decide it's not worth it. The truck stops at a crumbled concrete road scattered with miniature craters. The General signals us to move out and the pitiful idiot and I get out first. The General leads us to the side of a building as gunshots go off around us, not aiming for us, but rather enemies that can be seen through the fog. He pulls out his hand-map with a digital map littered with arrows, numbers and dash marks and explains to us what to do to flank the enemy. He directs me toward a row of condominiums on the map and tells me I must clear them out. I understand and comply and wait for him to transfer our personal directories to our hand-maps. He gives us the signal to move out and I travel along the walls of the brick buildings, staying low in case an enemy can see me using fog-thru goggles.
I can hardly see anything through the thick wall of gray air and I'm on my own now, but I look at the digital map in the palm of my hand and put my finger on the spot where I believe I am. The map loads up a path that is the best to use to avoid conflict and I memorize the trail. When I close the map and put it in my back pocket, I hear a bullet hit the road behind me and I turn around and back up. Unfortunately our troops weren't given fog-thru goggles and all I can do is wait for another shot to hit to determine the shooter's location. Another bullet hits the wall ten feet from my head and and the miniscule trail it leaves through the fog reveals the shot to have come from the North and I dash in that direction until I see another brick building in perfect shape. The door to it is boarded up, but I back up and shoot a propelled grenade from my rifle at it to distract and deceive the shooter and stand against the brick wall next to it on the side of the building. I pull out my map again and continue running softly along the walls as it guides me.
The row of condominiums looks innocent, but I'll have to make sure. My feet run silently to the side of the first condo and I stand between two windows of the condo. I crawl below one of them and raise my small portable mirror to the window to peer inside. I quickly note that it's too dark in the condo to see anything and duck back down. I walk low and stealthily to the front door of the condo and turn the knob. It's locked, and I look around to make sure I'm not spotted. This is useless though, seeing as the only thing visible is fog. I flick the trigger on my rifle to silent semi-automatic and put it against the doorknob and shoot. The lock pops off with barely a sound and all I can really hear is the lock hit the floor on the other side of the door. I kick the door open with my gun at the ready, greeted by a sleek linoleum floor and staircase. I aim my rifle toward the kitchen down the hallway next to the stairs and the lights are all off. Making sure not to make a sound, I creep toward the living room and look behind all of the furniture. I flick the trigger on my weapon to silent burst. By the window in the room lies the corpse of a dog, its body barely decomposed and looking as though it died recently of starvation given its thinness and its very visible rib cage.
After moving through the first floor of the condo I find nothing that would indicate anyone is occupying this condo and upon checking upstairs meticulously, I find a bedroom of a small child littered with dust-covered teddy bears and picture frames of a little girl with her mother and father. There's nothing here.
As I'm about to leave this particular condo to check the others, I remember there being a door I hadn't checked behind the stairs. Stepping with my gun to the door, it's locked and I have to use the rifle on semi-auto again. When the lock breaks I hear a child-like gasp from the other side and I open the door slowly. A man, who I recognize as the father in the picture frame, stands at the bottom of the staircase with an unidentifiable hand gun and he has it aimed straight at me, his face clenched with hatred.
“You won't kill of mine what's left. I won't let you, you--” He says this with a foolish anger that does nothing for him but waste time on his part, and before he can finish the statement four bullets travel through his head, a bloody mist spraying on the wall behind him. His body lies propped up against the wall, his mouth opening and closing slowly a couple of times and then... nothing. I move down the stairs with speed and turn to face the rest of the basement, the only light coming from the dim gray glow of daylight through the doorway.
A mother and her daughter, the ones from the picture frame, are huddled together, crying, begging for me to let them live.
“I thought you were the good guys,” the little girl(who looks to be about ten or so) says to me, whimpering, trembling.
“There are no good guys, just guys,” I tell her honestly. The mother begs for me to let them go, to not kill her daughter, but I bring up the gun, the muzzle facing them despite their desperate protest, and pull the trigger twice. Eight bullets travel through the daughter; four in her right cheek and four in her chest in the heart, and her body collapses in her mother's arms while convulsing slightly. I suppose it would make for a dramatic scene in a movie, especially with the dull light graying everything out, even the blood. I fire two more shots and eight more bullets fly through the mother's forehead and right eye as her screams turn to muffled gargles when blood trickles down her face. Both bodies twitch slightly and go limp, and when they do, I turn to go back upstairs and almost trip over the father's legs at the staircase.
I step out into the fog again, and get ready to check the second condo, but before I do I let my General know that the first house is clear for our troops. He gives me the go ahead to clean out the rest of the condos. I comply. I wonder if I'm going to get a promotion for this, but then I realize I really don't care if I do or not.
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