CHAPTER ONE

Tacky mud pulled at Sergeant Jonas Vega’s boots as he trudged through the trench.  He wove his way past the beams that reinforced the carved walls and the ladders that stretched to the lips of the ravine, often pulling his gas mask carrier closer to his hip to slide through the narrower passages.  The soldiers perched atop the ladders didn’t offer a glance in his direction, instead keeping their eyes glued to binoculars that looked out across the fields above Vega’s head.

The morning was a stagnant cold, cold enough that his breathe escaped in clouds of steam, but not cold enough to completely freeze the sticky mud.  Slipping past resting soldiers, Vega pulled his tartan scarf tighter around his neck to ward off the chill.  All the soldiers he passed wore similar scarves, emblazoned with the black, white, and gray pattern of the Fighting Fifth.

Shouldering his carbine rifle, Sergeant Vega ducked under the low doorway that led into one of the bunkers positioned along the trench line.  The interior of the room was dark, lit only by a pair of kerosene lanterns.  The room itself was busy, albeit sparse of furniture.  A cot sat against one wall, with a crate beside it acting as a nightstand.  A single table with chairs filled the center of the bunker.  The walls themselves were where the activity in the room was centralized.  Maps hung on the walls, covered by grease pencil markings of enemy positions, discovered mine fields, and small annotations of unit strengths.

The lieutenant hovered over the table, his face perched a foot above yet another map.  The dim light of the lanterns offered barely enough illumination for the lieutenant to see his work, yet he was so enthralled in his calculations that he failed to notice Sergeant Vega’s entrance.

Sergeant Vega watched the officer work for a few moments, rather than interrupt his train of thought.  The lieutenant worked like a man possessed, often mumbling to himself as he worked through troop movements or calculated projected enemy lanes of assault.  Despite only being in charge of a platoon, the man worked like a general.  Only his appearance betrayed how much time he had spent in the trenches with his soldiers.  The lieutenant’s once manicured moustache had grown wild and unkempt.  His uniform, despite being washed, carried deep muddy stains nearly up to the knees; a discolored curse that affected all the men on the front line.  The sidearm hanging in a holster from his hip was all that remained immaculately clean on the officer.

Clearing his throat, Sergeant Vega broke the lieutenant’s attention away from his work.  The officer looked up, surprised to see someone standing so close.

“Sir,” Vega reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope. “I made contact with 2nd Platoon and got the status update from down the line.”

Lieutenant Belafont reached out and took the envelope from his hands.

“And?” the lieutenant asked.  Despite his fatigue, his voice was firm and strong.  “What is the status of the rest of the line?”

Sergeant Vega prided himself on being a good soldier, but Lieutenant Belafont intimidated him.  His brash attitude and confidence screamed aristocracy.  There was a time when a junior sergeant like Jonas Vega would have never approached or spoken to his lieutenant.  That was a role for the platoon’s senior sergeant.  Unfortunately, an artillery attack by the Browns had killed the senior sergeant a few days before.  Now, it fell on the juniors like Vega to fill his role, including interacting with the officers.

“Sergeant?” the lieutenant prodded.

“Sorry, sir,” Vega responded, coming out of his stupor.  “Their situation is just the same as ours.  They’re low on both soldiers and supplies.  Everyone keeps hearing promises of reinforcements being shipped in from the rear over the next few days, but no official orders have come down yet, at least, not anything they can put their hands on.”

Lieutenant Belafont sighed.  “And supplies?”

“2nd Platoon was told there’s an airdrop coming tonight with both ammunition and rations.  The supply trains will distribute them down the line once they’ve touched down.”

“Tonight,” the lieutenant muttered disapprovingly.  He turned back to the map he’d been studying and traced the grease pencil markings of enemy movements.  “They make a lot of assumptions that we’re still going to be here tonight.”

“You think they’ll attack us today?” Sergeant Vega asked, knowing that he might be overstepping his responsibility by asking.

Lieutenant Belafont looked up, surprised.  “They attack us every day.”  His eyes fell back to his map before he continued, “You’re dismissed, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Vega saluted before slipping back out the door, and into the frigid cold.

        Sergeant Vega’s squad was buried in the middle of the platoon’s line.  A small fire burned as he approached, lit inside a tin ration can.  Around the meager fire a pair of soldiers huddled, trying to absorb what warmth they could.  A third slept nearby, his head resting on a torn coat and his back to the flame.  Two other soldiers, the remains of his sadly undermanned squad, were perched atop their ladders, pulling guard duty on the edge of No Man’s Land.

The sticky mud sucked at Vega’s feet, alerting his men of his approach.  They looked up, as pathetic as the rest of the soldiers in the trench.  Their noses were red, bordering on purple from frostbite.  Those who dared remove their gloves to warm them at the fire revealed swollen joints that ached in the frigid air.  Assuming they were in the same shape as he was, Sergeant Vega knew that inspecting their feet would expose rotting flesh, the result of feet being kept in damp boots for far too long.

Despite their obvious misery, his men smiled at his approach.

“How’d your visit with the El-Tee go, Sarge?” Corporal Eli “Mac” MacKenzie asked.  The redheaded corporal leaned back against his ladder and spooned another scoop of military rations into his mouth.  Grimacing as he swallowed, Mac dropped the can next to his carbine rifle, whose stock was lodged firmly in the muddy ground.

Vega shrugged.  “This may come as a surprise, Mac, but he thinks we’re going to be attacked today.”

“Mother of God,” Mac replied, his southern drawl muddling his words.  “Say it ain’t so.   You know, that’s why he gets paid the big bucks.”

The others smiled softly; despite the pain it caused in their cheeks to do so.

“Believe me, Mac,” Vega replied.  “No one gets paid enough to sit in this trench day after day.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Private Donovan muttered from her frozen seat.  “Did he happen to mention us getting replacements?”

Vega turned toward Donovan.  Her face was mostly covered from a combination of fur-lined hood and a knit cap that was pulled down nearly to her eyes.  Only the end of her greasy ponytail stuck out from the edge of her jacket’s hood.  Donovan had been stationed with Sergeant Vega in the trench for the past two weeks.  When she arrived, Vega remembered thinking that it had been far too long since he’d seen an attractive woman.  The lack of shower and facilities over the past two weeks had done wonders in dulling her beauty.

“Same thing as yesterday and the day before,” Vega answered.

“Nothing, huh?” Donovan concluded.

“It’s just us for a little while longer,” Sergeant Vega replied.  “Lucky you.”  Pausing, Vega gestured to the sleeping soldier.  “How long has he been out?”

“Wagner?” Mac asked, turning toward the man.  “He fell asleep just after sunup.  He’s been out, what, six or seven hours now?”

“Then it’s about time to wake him up.  Can’t have him sleeping the day away.  We have too much to do.”

“Let him sleep,” Donovan interjected, pushing the fur-lined hood away from her face.  “He pulled duty all night by himself.  He’s got to be exhausted.”

“He pulled duty by himself because the Browns don’t attack at night,” Vega corrected.  “It’s already coming up on lunch, and they haven’t attacked yet.  That means we’re due.  So, unless you plan on putting his mask on him if Betsy starts screaming, I suggest you wake him up.”

Mac and Donovan followed Sergeant Vega’s gesture to the large telephone pole behind him.  There, among the wires and cables across its top, was a yellow light and a loud speaker; the combination was fondly nicknamed “Betsy”.  Neither the light nor siren was currently active.

“I got him,” Mac replied, moving over to the sleeping shape.

He started shaking him gently and the sleeping soldier stirred, slowly at first, but moving more quickly as he came fully alert. Sitting up in the mud, the dark-skinned soldier blinked away the sleep.

“Something wrong?” Wagner asked, noticing the rest of the squad watching him.  His voice was deep, and carried clearly in the quiet trench.

“Nothing, Private,” Sergeant Vega replied.  “Just didn’t want you getting more beauty rest than the rest of us.”

Wagner nodded.  The African was a soft-spoken man, but a massive one even when seated.  At full height, his head nearly crested the walls of the trench.

“I was worried that the Browns were attacking,” Wagner muttered in between coughs.  A cold had settled into his chest, threatening to take the large man out of combat.  Unfortunately for Sergeant Vega, he wasn’t the first soldier to be lost that way.  As many men were sent back to the rear echelons due to non-battle injuries and sicknesses as actual wounds.

“I’d say you shouldn’t worry about that, but hell, I worry about it everyday,” Mac replied.  The others nodded in agreement.  “I’m a little more impressed that you don’t, Sergeant.”

“Who said I wasn’t afraid of the Browns attacking?”

“I’ve been in the trench with you for eight weeks now, Sarge.  I haven’t seen you be afraid of anything.”

“You may not have seen it, Mac, but plenty of things scare me.  It just happens that dying isn’t one of them.”

Donovan guffawed.  “You’re saying that you’re not afraid of dying?”

“You guys need to realize that dying doesn’t scare me.  What scares me is not dying.  I’m worried about being ordered out of the trench and getting cut in two by a machine gun or stepping on a mine, and living to tell about it.  I’m scared of having to wake up every day for the rest of my life and know that my wife and sons have to take care of me because I’m some invalid.”

A hush stretched between the soldiers as they absorbed what he said.  Finally, Corporal Mac broke the stony silence.

“Thanks a bunch, Sarge.  Now I’ve got one more thing to worry about.”

The small group laughed around the fire, their voices carrying up and down the trench.

“What’s so funny?” a voice asked from atop one of the ladders.

“Nothing, Private Cho,” Vega replied, glancing up at one of the squad members on guard duty.  “How are you doing up there?”

“I’m freezing my balls off, Sergeant,” he replied.

“Think positive,” Donovan said.  “You’re pulling duty at the warmest part of the day.”

“That’s not making me feel any better about this shitty job,” Cho grumbled.  “How did I already come back up on the duty roster?”

“Because you’re special,” Mac answered.  “You see, it’s your eyes.  The slanted corners give you a panoramic view of the battlefield.”

Sergeant Vega, despite his better judgment, laughed along with everyone else.

“Fuck you, Mac,” Cho replied, laughing as well.

“How are you holding up, Mitchell?” Vega called to the other guard.

Private Mitchell shrugged noncommittally.  Vega stood, groaning at the muscles that refused to work quite right in the damning cold.  Stretching stiff joints, he walked over and climbed the ladder closest to Private Mitchell.  Raising his head slowly over the crest of the hill, so as not to make himself too obvious a target, Vega viewed the deadly stretch of land that he and his men were sacrificing themselves to defend.

When Vega had arrived to the platoon twelve weeks ago, No Man’s Land was already a muddy hell, spotted with wooden pickets, rusted barbed wire and razor wire, and small craters caused by either shelling or land mines.  Now, much like the bottom of the trench, the mud was gummy, partially-frozen in waves of muck and cresting at the lips of craters, only to crash around the bases of the pickets.

The sun was covered today, like it was most of winter.  It left the battlefield in a depressing haze, which crept dangerously into the spirits of the soldiers assigned to this particular stretch of hell.  Despite knowing that his platoon maintained just one small section of a massive battlefront, it was still his piece of home.  Through the past couple months, he had come to know every picket and loop of razor wire.  Much like the other senior members of the platoon, every time they noticed freshly churned earth or new mounds of the tacky dirt he knew the Browns had buried another series of anti-personnel mines along their route through No Man’s Land.

Glancing to his left, Vega watched Private Mitchell peer through his binoculars at the far side of the muddy plain.

“See anything out there?” he asked.

Mitchell shook his head.  “No people.  The Browns are holed up tight in their own trenches.  I am worried about the fog rolling in, though.”

Vega pulled out his own set of binoculars and followed Mitchell’s line of sight.  His first view was of filthy brown helmets, jutting from the crest of the trench hundreds of meters across the plain.  Far outside of rifle range, the two sides watched each other cautiously. Then when the ranking officers that were huddled safely within their bunkers ordered it one side, or the other, would send an assault that almost invariably was slaughtered in the wires and pickets of No Man’s Land. Tearing his eyes away from the sight of the Browns, he glanced past them to the purple-capped mountains beyond.  From their crests and around their bulk, a thick fog was rolling down into the valley in which the two sides waited.  Due to the gusty winds on the plain, the fog was already creeping slowly into the far side of the valley, behind the Browns’ position.

“How long do you think we have until it covers us too?” Vega asked.

“At the rate it’s moving?  I’d say an hour, maybe two.”

Vega swore under his breath.  “The Browns are definitely going to use this to their advantage.  Looks like our smoking and joking is done for the day.”

He raised his voice so both guards could hear him.  “Keep your eyes open, both of you.”

“Roger,” they replied in unison.

Sergeant Vega slid down his ladder, feeling nervousness spread through his gut.  Donovan was wrong by saying Vega was never scared.  He was nearly always scared, but did his best to mask it in front of his soldiers.

“On your feet,” he ordered as his feet landed on the bottom of the trench.  “A bad fog’s rolling in.  I can almost guarantee the Browns are going to use it as a chance to hit us.  Wagner, go tell the lieutenant that we’ve got a couple hours at most until this entire area is blanketed in fog.  Let Alpha Squad know when you pass them too, if they’re not already tracking.”

Turning toward the other two, he nodded toward their carbines.  “Make sure those things aren’t frozen shut.  I think you’re going to need them soon.  I’m heading over to Charlie Squad to let them know.  Mac, you’ve got the squad until I get back.”

“We’ll be ready for them,” Corporal Mac replied, a stern seriousness replacing his previously relaxed demeanor.

Adjusting his mask carrier and lifting his automatic rifle, Sergeant Vega trotted down the line.  He cringed at the amount of time it took him to get from one squad to the next.  Ideally, the open space would be filled with soldiers manning their ladders.  Unfortunately, his squad wasn’t the only one to be severely short-staffed.  The whole platoon barely had enough people to man the ladders day and night and still manage to let anyone get a few hours of sleep in between their shifts.  They were becoming the walking dead, and the “walking” adjective would soon be dropped if they couldn’t get replacements.