Mutant Chronicles

1 The skies had been pissing rain for so long that Captain Nathan Rooker was sure Godif there was such a thingmeant the place to be used as His personal toilet. Nathan knew that he'd been warm and dry at one point in his life but couldn't remember when that had been or what it had felt like. All he knew now was the slick cold of the never-ending rain and the horrors of the everlasting war. Nathan glanced both ways along the sodden trench. Every one of his soldiers stared up at him, their eyes devoid of anger or hope. Curiosity showed only in the fact that they'd raised their heads at all. "Heads up, lads," he said as he trudged through the mud. "Put a smile on it." The soldiers went back to huddling under their gear, trying to preserve the tiny bits of warmth that would stave off a trip to the infirmary or the grave. The rain sluiced off their helmets and coats as if they were little more than statues, frozen in place until the call went up for them to defend this sodden stretch of earth once more or, worse, to charge across it. Finding a thin ladder of wet iron propped up against one wall, Nathan climbed it and peeked out over the edge. "Bloody bastards," he said. "Let's see what's on today's menu of shit." Tracer fire zipped over his head as he peered out over the no-man's-land that separated his Capitol forces from their Bauhaus foes. Gray smoke crawling with tendrils of a foul yellow drifted across the battlefield, curling around the miles of barbed wire and into the countless trenches that crisscrossed the muddy landscape like the distant canals of ruddy Mars. For a moment, Nathan considered donning his gas mask, but he couldn't stomach the stench of the filter againat least not until the gas came too close to ignore. Artillery fire flashed in the distance, silhouetting the battered edges of the horizon with a flash bright enough to burn through the rain and haze. A dull report crumped from the same direction just before the shell whistled overhead. Something would happen soon, Nathan knew. He could smell it in the air. The Bauhausers would tire of trying to shell them out of their holes and would come storming across that battered patch of land to give it a shot by hand. The only question was when. Nathan slogged off to his left, through a ditch that seemed more sewer than trench. The sky flashed above him, then stayed lit. He looked up to watch a flare scudding beneath the clouds like a trapped sun hunting for a way out. Then a blast from one of Capitol's own big guns snuffed it out like a match in a hurricane. Nathan heard the big Bauhaus 880 let loose another of its nearly yard-wide shells. He knew it took four men just to lift one of those loads, much less slam it into the breech of one of those building-size guns. The fact that Bauhaus's Ducal Militia could manage it so quickly spoke loudly of their dedication and training. Nathan worked his way through the maze of trenches, glancing up at the well-worn handmade signs that marked each intersection: Marilyn, Betty, Alison. The irony of naming wartime trenches after women didn't escape Nathan. Did the names come from girlfriends or mothers? he wondered. Perhaps both. He didn't have the energy to explore the metaphors. He turned up Alison to find a squad of soldiers scraping a meal of cold meat out of dented tins. They stood at his approach. One soldier kicked a resting buddy with his soggy boot, but the sleeping soldier didn't move. Nathan waved the kicker off. "Let him sleep." Soon enough the order might come for them to go over the top of the trenches, and the soldier's rest would become permanent.Forbeck, Matt is the author of 'Mutant Chronicles' with ISBN 9780345499059 and ISBN 0345499050.