The Shadow March - 07-18-2016
We'd been at it for days; the endless patrol with its thousand mile promise of victory. The trees had all started to look the same dull gray with wilted, frozen leaves clinging weakly in the frigid wind. The soil was wet, mud clung to everything, to every possible surface and every imagined patch of 'clean' that the mind could conjure - it was all a burnt black smear that painted us to our bones.
The food had run out three days ago, not that anyone could tell anymore, and the men had stumbled on, running on the fumes of month old coffee and the dreams that fought to break the overcast sky with even a single beam of sunlight. It had rained, off and on, for the past week... a bitter dampness that permeated all things and set the skin to sloughing off heat as fast as the feeble tripod fires could release it from the tinder Malone was drying in his pockets along the way.
We'd started with fifty strong; the best of the best... top of our classes and apex of whatever town could conjure up a military man. We'd been all cocky grins and withering boasts to the greenies. We'd been there... we knew the score.
Thompson had been from the Northminster backwater. He'd been the toughest guy the county had every known. Taken down a wild hog with nothing but a bad attitude and a rock that the beast broke his leg with. Ate the damn thing's heart in front of its own eyes before carving it's head off and dragging it back to town to make bangers and mash. Took him two days, what with the broken leg and all. We laid him to rest about a mile back... took a shot to the lung and walked it off for a day before coughing his last breath out all over Smitty.
Real shame that. Smitty had the last clean shirt amongst us.
Jacobs? Now he was a fighter. Pulled him out of the brig just for this mission. Word is, he got in a tiff over some cockstain taking his fruit rations. Found those under the bench after the fight - looks like the box of raisins got bumped off when he sat down. Kid won't walk again, if the rumors are true, but Jacob? That bastard killed the damn dogs that've been chasing us for the last two weeks. Put holes in them as they caught up with us and beat the rest down as they tried to get over the little yard fence he was standing behind. Shame too.... well trained dogs are hard to find. Real shame. Then again, when they're the murdering little devils of the enemy, I don't see much point in missing them.
Put Jacobs in a box of sawdust and sent him back downriver when he caught a bug and didn't wake up. Figures he'd go out like a baby when he made so many mothers cry over their sons. "Ironic," Padre would have said.
And the Padre himself? Took a turn for the sinners, he did. Caught him hoarding his rations and 'accidentally' dropping them behind us whenever we passed a crumbling church or burned out town hall. Pretty much anywhere he could expect some traitor scum to have a family. Can't be to pissed at him though.... they didn't ask for this. Still, couldn't have him feeding the enemy or giving them the tools to stab us in the back.
When Corbin found out, he just went up and stabbed Padre in the gut, spit in his face, and told him the Devil'll get his due.
Figures Corbin would do it that way. We're all proper God-fearing men... all but Corbin. They found him bunked down in some little no-name town, running a fire and brimstone type show from under a bridge. Said he spoke to spirits but didn't have no time for God. Captain didn't much care for him one way or another, but the spook was damn good at infiltrating and getting packages in and out of places we weren't supposed to be.
Mitchell? That damn soul got himself frozen. Karlisle? Took a bite of a lump of stonework when a tripline sent a wall down on us. Sampson and Miller both ended up trampled by a runaway carriage after taking out their targets. Logan got a lung infection and wasn't much better off than Jacobs... coughed up more blood though. Radson, Cambrie, Tailor, Wright, Megans... they all went out, one by one.... candles snuffed in the dark of night and each leaving the wind a bit colder for their loss.
But not Corbin. Son of a bitch's still trudging along behind me, muttering about his gehdi or whatever it is, clutching a little cloth bag and squinting into the night. Damned it I'm not starting to believe his little spiel about spirits and bargains. Caught him painting little white stripes on the inside of his coat last night... creepiest thing I've ever seen. With us all looking like the walking dead, covered head to foot in dried blood and frozen muck, looked like his ribs were on the outside and he was just taking up the space inside his jacket.
Don't know where he got it, but he pulled a dagger out of somewhere and threw it damn straight at my head... missed my ear by inches. I was about to jump on him when I heard the gurgling behind me and some dead fucker fell face first into our fire. Corbin just sneered and poked through his pockets before warming his hands over the burning body.
Scarey guy, Corbin.
But that's the walk. That's the patrol. From fifty strong we're down to two. We travel light and leave a trail that no one could miss. Burning villages. Piles of soldiers. Frozen corpses in the street with only the ravens and blood swallows to visit them. We've got a mission we need to complete, even if we don't make it back home.
A part of me knows we won't.
There's no more food, the water's bad, the world is frozen and we're stumbling along like the walking dead.
Corbin told me, last night, that if he goes before I do, that I need to cut out his eyes and burn them. Told me I had to take his little bag and keep it until I couldn't hold on to it anymore. Told me that I was just as damned as he was, but that he had a secret that no one else did... said he struck a deal with the Baron to keep him from the biters and, seeing as I was walking the same road, he'd share his prize with me if he went first.
Scary guy, Corbin. Scary, but like the Captain said before we left, "whatever gets you through it."
I reckon that Corbin's outlived the other 48 guys in our team and I don't know if it's real or not, but I don't want to die and end up in war. Give me Hell any day. I'll take my licks, just don't let me end up in war when I die. I'm sick of the war and I'm sick of the marching.
Corbin chuckled behind me as he said "I'm calling you March from now on, Marshall."
"March?"
"Yheah, March.... 'cuz that's all we do anymore."
I had chuckled, He had laughed, and we had continued on that way for some time.
The only warning I got was the wet splat on the back of my neck when Corbin bit it. A second later, a whipcrack from somewhere in the treeline told me what it was.
Sniper.
I hit the ground and looked back at Corbin, sure some fucking ghost would be pulling him along with a fiery grin, but nothing moved. He was just on the ground, face split open and steam coming out. Wasn't even a scream from him.
Least I wouldn't have to cut his eyes out.
About a foot from his hand was that damn bag of his, so I snatched it and made for cover, keeping myself low.
We played hide and seek for the next day. Skulking about, sneaking from place to place, never sure who was hunting who. I thought I saw him once, crouched in a snowdrift, but when I snuck up and yanked a twist of wire I'd scavenged from a cow fence across his throat, it turned out to just be a scarecrow that had fallen over in the storms.
Not sure what happened to him. Might have just left after he got Corbin. Not sure I care.
The mission is all I know. I got to head north and take out the supply lines.
Always north.
The days are shorter and the nights are longer. The towns are farther and farther between.
I last ate food eight days ago: some eggs I stole from a chicken coop near a farmer's house. Didn't really have to steal them, I torched the house after soaking the porch and stairs in lamp oil from the barn. Old geezer couldn't get out. I shot him when he tried to break the window.
Better than he deserved. Found his daughter in the barn with lash welts on her and bruises on her hips. Frozen.
I ate the eggs raw.
Can't tell how many we've killed now. Been at this war for over eight months. It wasn't so bad in the beginning though. We had warm nights and villages to help us. Townsfolk would put us up for the night or send us off with a warm breakfast. We'd sneak through woods or creep through fields and dissect whatever forces we'd come across. Never had a chance to bloody us.
We were too good though.
Word got out that we were coming. Some kind of special forces thing. Some kind of super soldier. Some kind of monster.
We didn't correct any of it.
Wherever we went, we left a path of blood. Took out their stores and rations. Fed on their planning. Spoiled whatever remained. We'd started taking the tags and medals after the third town. Pulled them from the bodies and taking them along with us. Don't know who started it.
Bet it was Corbin. Sick fuck probably thought he was "stealing their souls" or something... keeping them to trade when his time came.
Come to think of it, I don't think he got any from the Padre.
Hells. Maybe there's something to it after all.
But it doesn't matter. I'm almost there. I checked the maps last night and found the rail line that has been feeding those fuckers for the whole damn war. Took me a while to do it, but I rigged up some caps and ran the wires along the rails themselves.
See, problem with trains is that they're big and can only go in two directions. They're important enough to be guarded, but simple enough to be left alone. A small force can patrol a rail line and keep it pretty safe... all they have to do is kill anything suspicious. They can check it out later...... or not.
So the trick is to make the train blow itself up.
By the time they notice something is wrong, there's no way to do anything about it.
So I watched from a little bush I'd crept into at night. Stayed bone still and let the day pass until I saw it running by. I watched it go, counting the cars and looking for the soldiers that rode along on it.
I watched it pass and fade into the distance and waited until night before I crept out again, smelling of piss and sweat and other foulness that clung to me from the march. I found a place to relieve myself and ran the rest of the wires since I knew it would be a day or more before the train would come again.
I dug out a hollow under a section of the rails, hiding the charges underneath and covering them back up with the tar-stained rocks and ash. I spaced them apart, both before and after the first wire, up and down the rails about every thirty feet. I checked them as I went, touching the wires to my tongue and making sure the little lead battery I'd kept dry still burned every time.
And then I pulled out a little scrap of cloth, put a wire on both sides of it, and folded it over twice before leaving it on the rail facing the direction the train had gone.
I walked a quarter mile down the line, trailing a thing line of greased copper behind me, before I placed the last charge. Dug out under the rail tie and piled all the medals we'd taken over the course of the war on top of it. Corbin had always gone back for them, collecting them from everyone we'd lost along the way and we traded who took it when we slept at night.
I stood there for a few minutes, just staring at that pile of medals. Hundreds of marks. Dozens of nationalities. At least forty different styles and types, all of them just laying on the tracks in a pile in the far north. I thought back to my friends, to my allies, to my brothers in arms and counted off their names as I dropped the last of the medals onto the line.
I couldn't remember some of their faces anymore. They'd all gone gray and cold in my mind, even the ones that'd died in the summer months... somehow even their memories, leeched of color and life.
They deserved better than some nameless, unmarked grave or a quiet passing into the night. They'd bleed and cried, fought and fallen, dragged their worthless corpses up to follow me even here, not letting me wander off into the night.
Because we had a purpose.
We had a mission.
We had a war to win and a world to save.
So I connected the last wires and wandered off into the fields beside the tracks to wait.
I cleaned my pistol, oiled my knife, shaved with the blade Corbin had pulled out of that fucker's head when we burned him. I dug up some roots and killed a doe I came across and had the best damn meal I'd had in months. I filed off my tags and scraped off the name on my cards. I killed myself in my mind and buried my body while Corbin and the others watched in the cold rain that began to fall.
Sometime, during the night, I fell asleep.
I woke to a boot kicking me in the head and a gun barrel pushing my face into the ground. The soldier was yelling at me in some language I didn't know and didn't care to learn, but he didn't seem afraid in the least.
Why would he be? I was just a corpse at that point.
Dead man walking.
A lonely witness to the end of the world.
In short order, more men surrounded me, guns pointed and smirks and sneers aplenty. I was kicked and beaten, bloodied and bruised. My face ground into the gravel and my hands and legs bound. Someone must have thought it a funny idea because they started dragging me towards the tracks.
I stumbled along because I was already dead.
They threw me down upon them, spit upon me and backed away when they heard the whistle far down the line.
One of them, the one wearing the stupid little hat, laughed at me and said something I barely understood as "Any last words?"
I looked at him and blinked slowly, relaxed now that I was dead.
It seemed to shake him. His smirk fell, and for a moment it looked like he was going to say something else.
But the moment passed and he looked off down the line as the train started to come into view: a great billowing cloud of ash and smoke wreathing it's ravening iron maw.
The train loped along, wails of iron on iron, of steam screaming through copper vessels, of the unending hunger of the boilers as they consumed coal and oil and wood and anything else that was thrown inside. It's great iron wheels belched sparks and fire from the rails as it thundered along, eating up the distance between us.
It couldn't have been more than a mile away when he looked back on me again, a flicker of distaste washing across his face. He said something in his language, a hissy raspy thing that meant nothing to me, but I looked him in the eyes as I twisted Corbin's little cloth bag from my chest pocket and smiled at him as I bled.
His features wrinkled in curiosity, but when he took a step forwards, the soldier beside him put out an arm and pulled him back, gesturing towards the train.
For a moment longer, he looked undecided, but finally pulled his coat straight and turned with the rest of them to distance themselves from the rail.
In that moment, I opened Corbin's little bag and found a twist of some dried plant, some sand, a bird's foot, and a pair of rusty nails.
That was Corbin's secret? That was his get out of death free trick? That was what I was betting everything on?
With a spike of anger, I twisted myself around, snarling at my lot in life, and glared up at the soldiers who were waiting for me to die.
The bastard gave a smirk... apparently satisfied that I had finally given some response, and pushed down on the rifle of the soldier beside him as it leveled at me. He smirked again as he tilted his head towards the oncoming train.
I glared at the all, held my bound hands up towards them and dropped Corbin's bag to give them both the right and left finger before I died.
And the world shook.
A great flash of light and heat washed over my right side as I was knocked back across the tracks and tumbled down the slight hill behind me. A calamity of noise assaulted my senses as blast after blast of sound pounded into my flesh.
A veritable orchestra of carnage assailed me as screams erupted and a wet breeze blew across the incline while the stench of burning hair and flesh exploded from down the line.
He was on me in moments, but I didn't care. He drug me to me feet, murder in his eyes as he held me aloft by the collar of my coat, stained and filthy as it was. His snarling yells speckled my face with spittle but through it all, I smiled and glared in equal measure.
Finally, he threw me to the ground and reached for a pistol as I found myself in an uncomfortable sitting position despite how he had thrown me.
Leveling the barrel at me, he snarled something else before blinking at my silence.
A moment later, he repeated his question is barely understandable English: "Any last words?"
Before I could laugh, there was a zipping sound followed by a dull thump. He spun around, dropping into a crouch before another zip-thump happened nearby.
He spun, the pistol flying wildly as he twitched with each zip-thump, time and again, eyes wild as he searched for hidden snipers.
It wasn't until one struck near his boot that he looked down and his face showed confusion.
He reached for something, clutching it in a gloved hand before rising as he stared at what lay within.
When he looked up again, the anger was gone, replaced with a kind of awestruck dumbness. His voice fumbled for a few moments before he looked at me for the first time and asked very slowly, "Who are you?"
I was struggling to breathe, the tree branch he had thrown me down upon having broken a few ribs and punctured my lung. So when I sputtered, he stepped closer, the pistol forgotten as he knelt down and stared at my face.
"Who are you?" he asked again, his voice low as the sound of screams and tortured metal echoed in the distance.
I coughed out again, spattering his face and coat with the first real color I'd seen in weeks.
Finally, I managed a partial breath and coughed out, "The Blac- the Black-"
Coughing interrupted my speech again, but the soldier reached out and cupped my face, pulling a rag from his coat to wipe my mouth and cheek.
"Who are you?" he asked one more time, with a sense of desperation in his voice.
And I smiled as I choked out "The Bla- The Black M--- The Black March----" before I became silent for the last time.
For many moments, the soldier knelt there, cupping the face of a dead man while the screeching body of a ruined locomotive slid down the rails behind him. The flaming wreck belched smoke and fire from every twisted gash and ruined piece of the great machine, but he paid it no mind. For him, the world was silent but for the whisper of zip-thumps that seemed to be raining down around him.
Slowly, his gloved fingers slid across the mans face, leaving trails of dark, steaming, crimson in the winter air before pulling the dead mans eyelids closed.
For many more moments, he studied the soldier silently before reaching into the mans pockets and pulling out a wallet and cards. Flipping through them, he wasn't surprised to find every piece of text had been scraped off, every identifying mark destroyed. Before him sat a truly nameless soldier, a faceless, mystery creature with no history and no past. He studied the mans face one more time before slowly rising and turning back to the carnage of the wreck behind him.
As the fires raged and his soldiers scrambled to do what they could, he listened to the sound of hundreds of medals as they fell from the sky... testament to the prowess of the soldier behind him.
The final footsteps of The Black March.
