We Damned Fools.

As he exited the train in Dodge, the heat hit him like a wave. He could see the miles of desert spanning out in the distance, lifeless, daunting. “You from up north?” Stone turned, a gentleman in officer attire stood on the station platform. “Defiant Stone is it? Read your file, survived the beach, the city, the retreat?” Stone nodded. “Well, good. We need tough boys down here, that swamp takes the rest, if grif don’t get ‘em first.”

Stone followed the officer through the streets of Dodge Junction. The officer told him about the swamp, what grif was doing with his troops, where the Equestrians were set up. They met a column ready to march out. “Better take your spot Corporal.” They marched through the immense dry heat of the desert to the swamplands. They broke the column once they reached rear lines, a smattering of drooping tents. They heard the crying and calling, the medical tent was filled, many boys just sitting on the ground outside the tent clutching bloody nubs, coughing and wheezing, crying, holding the deceased.

Stone looked at them, the tired empty eyes looked back, he thought of the sargent on the train out of Manehattan. He went to the command tent. “Where do you want me?”

“You the sharpshooter?” He nodded. “Report along the lines, find where you think they’ll need you, go out and hunt.” Stone began toward the front.

He exited the wire in the early dawn, crawling through the mud he slid on his belly under the barbed wire, a hand caught his ankle, a weak grasp upon his boot. He turned to find a man against a rock, belly slit from chest to crotch, the flies crawled between his exposed organs, the man looked at Stone. “Kill me.” Stone simply stared. The man looked on himself, the pale blue light revealed his wounds to himself. He began to vomit, stone could see the organs tense, the vile black came from his lips, chunks of bread and meat still contained within. It slid down his shirt and rested on the entrails. “Kill me, please.”

Tears flowed from both men's eyes, Stone began to remove his bayonet from the scabbard. His shaky hands gripped the handle in a white knuckle embrace, he pushed the blade into the man, just below his breast bone, he pushed up and to his right. He hit the heart, the man jerked slightly, body too weak to respond. He gagged, he had punctured a lung as well. Stone fell back as the man slowly died, and cried.

Stone awoke in a sweat, hyperventilating. He looked around, the man was gone, he was in the shelter at the front lines. He dressed in the darkness. Slipping over the trench wall he slipped on his stomach through the swampy muck. He passed a large rock, he looked at it, nothing. He found a downed tree, the base shattered by a shell or mortar. He put a tarp over himself, covered it with tree branches. The quiet of the night was almost serene, the tweeting of a bird in the distance, crickets sounding nearby.

He watched grif, they had mostly removed the thick wool blouses of their uniforms. He saw the clips, shimmering, on the man before him suspenders. His henley was dirty, deep sweat stains below his arms. The grif grabbed a crate and began to carry it from one end of the trench to the other.

The heavy wooden box dropped and smashed against the ground, the man fell with it. Two other grifs ran to him, helping him up, they fell to. No other men came to help. Stone sat the rifle down, resting the action on his blouse. A mirage formed before him, across the top if grifs trench. It flowed with the wind from left to right, the hot wet breeze came across him as well, the sweat flowed down his forehead and into his eyes.

Night slipped over the land, he moved back to the lines. The sounding of cannons hit his ear drums, the men knew the grifs would shell them through the night. The cannons got louder, increased in depth and volume, the Equestrians looked worried. The cannonade hit them, a shell impacted before Stone’s eyes.

The world was a blur, he heard the familiar ringing of deafness. He cupped an ear, tried to decipher the images, he couldn’t get the world in focus. He knew more shells were coming from the dirt impacting his face, the earth shaking. He finally got his vision clear, he saw the men pinned against the trench walls, shaking, the acrid smell of gunpowder and fresh turned earth. He looked behind him, darkness.

When he awoke it was nightfall, he could hear the gun fodder in the distance, toward Dodge. He looked himself over, his leg was bleeding, a gash down the calf. The twilight gleamed overhead, he crawled away slowly, down the trench. His rifle was gone, the revolver was still present.

He slipped through the mud and the muck and shell craters in the moonlight, silence, his companion, hung around him. He heard the suction of the grif boots as he crawled from a crater, he stopped, sliding back down the slope into the rancid water below. He waited, the boots came closer, they spoke of home. Slowly they passed by, he felt light headed, he emerged. The griffons walked by lantern light through the shell riddled field, toward the front, chatting and laughing.

Stone crawled until the sun rose, he looked for a crevice to crawl into, out of the sunlight, away from the grifs sight. He crawled below a boulder a small ditch sat below, the smell of rich earth took his nostrils. An intermittent cycle of reality and hallucinations filed his day. He looked at the underside of the rock, the water etchings cut along the bottom, the shells imprinted into it.

He watched through a surreal filter leaving home, all the boys around him, how they chanted and sang, the spirit they maintained, the happiness. He watched the scene turn to the beach, the wet sand from the previous night's rainfall, the bodies slung around from the hurricane bombardment, the red tide of the ocean rising and falling. The griffon pilot fighting savagely, both of them savages battering and beating the other, the red paste of the man's face, the mush left where he used to have eyes.

A spider crawled into view, walking on the bottom of the rock, its clutch filled with eggs, he focused on it. It encountered an ant, the ant tried to stand before the menace, the spider reached out and touched it, the ant tried to fight, struggle, the grasp enclosed, the spider bit into the ant, its jaws closing into its exoskeleton, into the soft interior, the ant struggled still, it stopped suddenly. The spider wasn’t troubled by the death of the ant, it was merely a means to an end, to flourish the next generation.

The gleam of silver along the spiders back morphed into a cavalry saber, long and with intricate designs. The grif commander stood behind a table looking at his map, his hair combed, moustache waxed into a handlebar. His uniform was immaculate, buttons polished, jackboots remained shimmering, even around the splatters of mud along the bottom. His right hand rested upon the pommel of his sword, he fell, the black hole in his lapel appearing as the crimson one in his back did. The eyes glossed over soon after, his body hoisted into a wheelbarrow, moved into the back of the lines.

He was dragged from beneath the rock, three grifs above him. He struggled to focus on them, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. They picked him up, his vision went dark again.