I couldn’t hear the barrage over the ringing in my ears, couldn’t feel anything but my rifle. I held onto it as tightly as I could. Anne was in front of me, saying something, trying to make eye contact. I just looked past her. She was in the bunker with me, her ears must be ringing too. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I wasn’t thinking. If I had been able to sleep this past week I might have managed something else, to argue with the lieutenant, like our captain would have. I’m not her though, no talent for talking. Gods take the captain's soul, I am sure she was the only kind noble. It’s a shame the shells don’t care about such things. Mud from the trenches had flooded the bunker and it was swallowing the lieutenant’s body. I kept trying to look at her but Anne didn’t let me, watching my eyes and moving so I was always looking at her. The ringing in my ears started to fade and I could make out what she was trying to say to me.
“Zalgeth, you’re okay, breath.”
“They’re gonna kill me for this.” I replied. I was panicking.
“No one cares, look.”
Behind Anne a dozen or so other soldiers were looking at me. I didn’t know how many saw me shoot our lieutenant but I guess it didn’t matter. I still had my rifle in my hands, it was clear what I did.
“What now?” I asked Anne. She turned a bit, so she could reply to me and the others listening in at the same time.
“We do what the bitch wouldn’t let us, we retreat.”
I nodded in agreement, and thankfully saw a few others agreeing. There was one problem though.
“We can’t now, while the barrage is happening, we’ll be deserters.”
“After then, right when it stops.” Anne replied. She looked me in the eyes and smiled, giving my arm a little squeeze. I couldn’t believe how comforting it was, enough to lower my rifle and take some proper breaths.
“Okay” Anne yelled. “We need runners to go down the trenches, spread the word, we are going to be overrun, we retreat when the bombardment ends”.
Anne’s yell was clear, commanding. I did my best to match her tone but I sounded small and scared by comparison.
“And we need a crew for the gatling gun. I’ll stay, to buy time, it’s my treason anyway, but alone…” My voice trailed off, I didn’t need to explain, we all knew the gun needed four.
Anne raised her hand to volunteer. I didn’t want her to, but I knew she would. I of course would rather she lived, but if we were going to die it was nice to think we would die together. The wives were the other two to volunteer. Kate, Rebecca, Anne, and I were close. I was the only demon in the unit, Rebecca and Anne the only beastfolk, and Kate’s humanity didn’t matter much when she was so open about her love for Rebecca. Not that anyone gave us shit in the trenches, with the mud and my helmet I probably looked human, or close to it. The helmet covered my ears and horns, and the mud hid my dark red skin. It didn’t really matter how well the women in our unit treated us, too much bigotry from our life outside the army, and from the officers, left us preferring our own company. Kate and Rebecca didn’t just volunteer because they were close to me and Anne, there was a more important reason, one I was happy to leave unsaid. Rebecca had a different opinion however. She yelled loud enough so everyone could hear.
“Might as well be us, If we don’t do something heroic the brass will have us against a wall.”
If I wasn’t so exhausted I would have cried. I expected to fear for my life when I enlisted, I didn’t expect most of that fear coming from my own fucking officers killing me. The insult of it made it worse.
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The next few hours weren’t too bad. We cleaned the gun best we could, soaked it, and stockpiled all the ammunition and water we could find. I thanked the gods we had enough water. It is possible to cool the gun with muddy water from the trenches or piss, but mud might fuck the gun up and I did not want to find out what boiling piss smells like.
We knew the barrage would end soon, or at least that is what the lieutenant said. As it got to late afternoon we figured it would end at dawn. We tried to sleep, but none of us really managed. I spent the night holding the artillery signal flare I took from the bitch’s body before we threw her into a collapsed trench for the rats to eat. I didn’t want to talk about it, and the other three didn’t press. They probably had the same thought. A single gatling gun wouldn’t stop an advance. It was a narrow front, but not that narrow, and calling our artillery down on us would pin the Varenites in our trenches, and to our officers it would look like a heroic last stand where we held on as long as we could before running. We were going to run, thank the gods for our shit artillery that was two decades out of date. They didn’t give the women units the good stuff. It would take time for them to aim, a minute or two, hopefully long enough to get out of the worst of it. I wanted to live so badly. The bunker was small, and with the floor raised from the mud flooding in and a wall collapsed there was barely any space. It was good Kate and Rebecca were married, they had to spend the night on top of eachother, no room otherwise.
The barrage stopped at dawn as expected. The silence was overwhelming. Thankfully I didn’t have enough time to panic, the Varenites were out of their trenches quickly, the whistles of their officers carrying clear across no man’s land. I was surprised and grateful to see a few snipers on our side stayed. They picked off some of them, but not enough to make an impact on their slow march through the mud. I knew how the poor souls in no man’s land must feel, we were trained to walk too, in a line. An old way of thinking, one they quickly abandoned when I opened up with the gatling gun. Even with our ears plugged the noise was deafening. I fired a burst just long enough to let them know what we had, and once the line walking across no man’s land fell apart as they scrambled to shell holes I stopped. I hadn’t hit many, if any, but the gun would overheat or jam if I kept firing. I waited until some brave soul stood up to run to the next shell hole and opened up. I didn’t even really aim, I wasn’t trying to kill anyone, just trying to keep them lying in the mud for as long as possible so our own could run, before they realized we only had one gun working and overwhelmed us. I don’t know how long it was, I couldn't keep track of time. They did figure it out eventually, and when they did they started to slowly walk towards us again. At first I didn’t try to focus on any part of the line, just spraying back and forth across the whole thing hoping to scare them back. It didn’t work, so I focused on the area in front of us. It was only a few seconds of that before the gun jammed. Anne burned herself clearing it but the damn thing just jammed again after only a few seconds. There was no use staying at that point, so we threw some smoke grenades out of the bunker to cover us and ran. I left last, firing the signal flare. I prayed our shit artillery was extra shit that morning.
They were, and thankfully their first few rounds overshot giving us plenty of time to escape the worst of it. Some shells hit fairly close to us at first but we were still in trenches so it wasn’t too bad, that or a week under barrage had left me indifferent to the occasional shell.
We were all laughter and smiles by the time we made it out of the trenches to the camp. I was sure I was dead the moment I shot my lieutenant, well, before that. I thought I was dead when she told us to hold at all costs, like I wouldn’t take that personally, like my life wasn’t what she was gonna pay that cost with while she slipped behind the lines to safety.
No one betrayed us. General Karter was all smiles when he greeted us, handing over a bottle of vodka. He even managed to find a trumpeter for a little fanfare. I didn’t trust him, too much of a parliamentarian, too proud of minorities while he was some noble fuck, too happy to lead a women’s unit as a man. He said the right things but somehow everything he said felt like an insult. At the moment I couldn’t care. A demon, some beastfolk, and a beastfolk fucker managing a heroic last stand, and all of us women who weren’t even supposed to be on the front line, it was a parliamentarian’s wet dream. We all knew our kind were political pawns but we were alive and had a bottle of vodka so why would we bother giving a fuck.
We had enough sense to track down the snipers who stayed, giving them some shots, before drinking ourselves to sleep on the first clear patch of grass we found. You don’t realize how great plants are until you spend weeks in the trenches where nothing grows but rats and lice.