With the recent influx of people into camp and everyone taking a little bit of watch duty, most of us got a lot more sleep, which is good. After all, when you’re about to attack an enemy's strong point, getting a good meal and 8 hours of sleep can’t be underrated. While I was taking my turn on watch duty, my mind started to wander off to tomorrow’s battle and the resources we had to fight it.

While most of the room in the supplies crates where just ammo, food, and equipment for the newbies. I had snuck a small quadcopter onto the list. It was one of the more high-quality ones; at that, it had high res thermals and 4th gen night vision camera. The three batteries it came with were dead tho. But I had an idea to fix that small problem. That, however, would have to wait until everyone else got up.

So, I did my job and gazed out into the moonlit forest until I was relieved by Bunden.

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I woke up to the smell of cooking meat invading my nose, which quickly infected my stomach, causing it to growl with hunger. I patted my rumbling stomach and softly promised it food. I got up, intent on fulfilling my promise to my stomach. I grabbed my vest and rifle, then walked over to the tarp. When I pushed through the covering, the full smell of barbecuing meat assaulted my nostrils.

‘And god… it smells so damn good.’ I thought to myself as I let my nose guide me to the several small animals on a spit roasting over the fire. Xavier noticed me and, more importantly, my growling stomach. With a slight grin on his face, he handed me what looked like a rabbit kebab with several different vegetables. One thing I didn’t notice was Snow sitting off to one side, making her own kebabs.

I only found out later that Xavier and Snow had gotten into a little argument. But their argument woke Les up from his nap, so he forced them to have a cooking competition instead of just standing around arguing.

When I took a bite into Xavier’s rabbit, it was heavenly. After weeks of just eating MREs eating real food was great. The rabbit itself was gamey, and if I had to compare it to anything else, it would be the lightness of chicken with the flavor of beef. The meat had a soft but chewy texture, and the juices came out of the meat with every bite. Xavier, the glorious bastard, must have found some spices or local vegetables that tasted just like green chile because the meat had a slight bit of heat to it. I quelled the slight burning sensation in my mouth with a swig of cold water courtesy of Snow’s ice powers.

I let out a long, satisfied sigh as I sprawled out on a log after wolfing down about half of the rabbit kebab. This is when Snow made her attack. She snatched Xavier’s kebab from my hands and jabbed her own kebab into my hands. This action confused and scared me, but mostly confused me. I just stared at the cooked small animal for a second or two while I tried to find a game plan.

I looked up and saw Snow’s expectant face with Xavier’s obvious poker face behind her. When you live in the southern US, you tend to run into a lot of Mexicans and when they have their poker face on when you’re just hanging around, that usually means they're playing a prank on someone. I squinted at Xavier but stopped when I noticed he wasn’t looking at me, instead, he was watching Snow.

I moved my gaze back to Snow, whose face was getting a little bit red, but I could be imagining things. I shrugged and took a great big bite out of the cooked meat. The meat was a lot lighter and went down easy. Just like Xavier’s kebab, it still has that stringy, gamey texture. One thing this cooked rabbit had over Xavier’s was the juiciness of the meat. I managed the get a good chunk of this succulent food into my stomach before I heard a throat getting “cleared” next to me.

I slowly turned my eyes from the delectable food in front of me to the confident and expectant white-haired woman. I tried to mumble a compliment and continue, but Snow just asked me what I said with a slightly teasing tone in her voice. I sighed as I put down my meal so I could look both of them in the eyes.

“I am fine with you two having a friendly little disagreement, BUT both of you should remember whatever happens here CANNOT and WILL NOT affect your decisions on the battlefield. While we are in camp, both of you can tease and fight, but when we are on the job, all of this comes to an end. Do I make myself clear?”

Both of them nodded stiffly and began to look like they were going to walk away. Before they could do that, however, I started to speak again in a much lighter and more friendly tone.

“So, with all that said. Xavier, yours was great.”

I intentionally let a second or two pass before continuing.

“But, I liked Snows better.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Snow thrust her fist into the air in victory while Xavier and I both shared a good-natured look. He knew now that I had found out his little game and played along, so while he might not have won, he was still happy with me for playing.

Snow’s abrupt celebration had caught the attention of everyone else in the camp. Alexei and Bunden were the first out of the cave. Following their noses as I did, they walked over to the campfire and gave both Xavier and Snow puppy dog eyes. Xavier picked up two more kebabs and handed them out. Bunden immediately began to dig in, but Alexei had to get a dig in first (A ‘dig’ is slang for insult in this context). He noticed the two half-finished kebabs I was holding and made a comment.

“You know, you should finish removing those kebabs.”

This received a chuckle from Xavier, a “fucken hell” from Bunden, and an exasperated sigh from me. This didn’t seem to matter all that much to the culprit, who just had a shit-eating grin plastered across his face. He looked fucken ridiculous with his helmet off center and chin strap hanging loose with dirt and grime darkening his face by several shades. This goofy face was enough to make me laugh, along with all the others.

Over the next few minutes, everyone else was awoken by the smell of cooking meat or the chatter from the people eating it. After everyone had a good meal, we started packing up and running final gear checks. Since this was going to be a longer-ranged fight than both Xavier and Snow had prepared for, they both decided to fill more support roles. Such as Xavier carrying more ammo and spare barrels for Walter’s MG3 or Snow ‘acquiring’ some extra grenades from somewhere that happened to be attached to some vests.

I double-checked everyone, and then we began to march through the forest toward the cursed village. The journey was long and rough, the rain had picked up after about ten minutes of walking. This made the dirt game trails into slick, and muddy, slip and slides with sharp rocks lurking just below the watery surface.

By the time we had gotten to the bottom of the ridge line, all of us had at least a bruise, with both Kasamir and Alexei getting shallow cuts. The rain hadn’t stopped the whole time we were walking. Now as we were taking a small break under a small thicket of trees before we were to split up into fire teams and spread across the whole ridgeline. We all sat relatively close together and I could hear Xavier say a few words in Latin as a prayer.

Overall, the mood wasn’t great. So to give a little morale boost I started singing.

“Mother dear I’m writing you from somewhere in France. Hoping this finds you well.”

It took a second for everyone to process but Bunden and Mc’cullen joined in quickly.

“Sargent says I’m doing fine, a soldier and a half. Here's the song that we all sing it will make you laugh.

“We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line,

Have you any dirty washing, Mother-dear?”

Snow was looking at us with a confused expression, Kazamir who was starting to get accustomed to our antics at this point tried to sing along as best he could. Undeterred by Snow’s confused look, we continued.

“Whether the weather may be wet or fine,

We'll just rub along without a care.

We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line -

If the Siegfried Line's still there!”

The three of us weren’t great singers but I think that added to the charm. As we happily sang the little song I could see Les mouthing the chorus and Xavier was nodding his head slightly as a slight smile overtook a corner of his mouth. A minute or two later, the song came to an end with the last chorus of

“Whether the weather may be wet or fine,

We'll just rub along without a care.

We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line -

If the Siegfried Line's still there!”

Everyone's mood had lightened up significantly, then Alexei reached into his inner-uniform pocket and produced a small metal flask. He opened it, took a swig, and grimaced before wordlessly passing it to Bunden who did likewise. This small act was repeated until everyone have had a sip and the flask was once again retired to Alexei’s inner pocket.

“Alright, now that we’re done with our little break. Let's do a final gear check and prep, make sure you have everything ready to go at a drop of a hat. I want to minimize the amount we get fucked over by Murphy today.”

I said while I pulled back the charging handle on my rifle. As soon as the word was given a steady stream of clicks and clacks mixed in with the squelching of boots as both Les and Bunden double-checked their fireteams before checking each other. For my part, I gave a quick look over to both Alexei and Kazamir. Alexei was fine, but Kazamir had that mix of fear and anticipation that came with an oncoming battle.

Snow had given him a swig from Alexei’s flask before any of us could say anything let alone stop it. But despite the admittedly small amount of liquid courage running through his veins. He was still a bit shaky and kept a death grip on his rifle. I was a little concerned that he would do something stupid, so I asked Alexei to watch him.

The flurry of motion slowly began to settle down until we were unmoving once more. This state of affairs only lasted a second until I hefted my rifle and got to my feet with the squelch of soaked boots.

“Alright, let’s get a move on. Those zombies aren’t going to kill themselves.”