Sorry for the shorter chapter everyone. I thought I should just get something out there since it has been a while.
An Eldian's Journal
The Tale of 1000 Men
Chapter 49: Warmth
The boys and I went on our merry way away from the mid-east trenches, deeper into the unknown land. We committed our fair share of stupidities during those stages prior, and to this, I am not ashamed to say that we were unqualified for our duties. That has been made quite apparent. I don't believe I need to go into greater depth about it, but this is my life's story, and who would I be if I didn't show my incompetencies?
You will continue to see my mediocrity unfold underneath your grimy fingers, in the ink that has formed literary trenches on the pages. Words are the soldiers flowing through them.
After completing our rifle pact, the boys and I fell silent for a few minutes. Kurt looked around the terrain, almost like a careful dog searching for a squirrel. Viktor walked tightly as if holding every one of his bones compact. I noticed all this in my peripheral vision while my gaze stayed forward.
The slabs of rock and stone gazed back at me with an attitude. They permeated from the downward sloping dirt in comparable quantities to sniveling weeds you find in sidewalk cracks. The ground wore extra sandbags here and there like hats and used X-shaped, metal structures as broken combs. Small mountains stood awkwardly in the distance, trying to be seen but hiding simultaneously.
Kurt mumbled something until he asked, "how do you think Falco and Colt are doing?"
The question caught me by surprise, and I looked directly at the boy. I gave a despairing sigh and said, "I'm sure they're doing fine. I saw them one time in-between our 'fun night' at the bar and our departure a few days ago, and they looked okay."
Viktor interrupted, "everyone looks 'okay' in that camp, but I'm not so sure if everyone's minds are." He paused, thinking further, then asked, "what did Falco and Colt say?"
"The usual stuff," I replied. "Don't die. Don't get killed. Stay safe."
Viktor scoffed, "they said 'don't die'? That's a confident way to send someone off."
"I'm joking."
"That was a bad joke."
I took a second to think about it properly and mentioned, "they told me to save people." I said bitterly, looking at Kurt's back, "so far, Kurt has done more saving than I have."
Viktor didn't dwell on the thought and filled the quiet space following the comment. "Save Kurt next time. That will make up for it." He said sarcastically, "how about we practice. I shoot him right now, and you do first aid on him."
"You always come up with the best ideas, Viktor."
"I'm glad to have your valuable approval. Now come on, I'm gonna shoot this guy."
Kurt shooshed.
"Why are you shushing?" Viktor asked, offended. "We are in an open field. I don't think anyone is waiting to ambush us."
"Someone could be wearing a dirt suit and snipe us from afar," Kurt answered.
"I don't think dirt suits exist yet."
"It will exist when someone makes it."
Viktor made his statement almost sound like a question in confusion. "Yes, that's how inventions work."
"Speaking of how people are doing," I intruded, preventing another petty argument. "How do you think your parents are, Kurt?"
"My parents, huh?" He paused, "Hmm. They're probably still angry at me for stealing the papers and becoming a soldier without their permission."
"I don't think anyone can be angry for over four months," I replied.
"You haven't met my parents yet if you think that. The irony is that you already did meet them. Not to mention, the cabbage man somehow managed to be angry with your parents for longer."
Viktor added, "the cabbage man doesn't feel like a real human to me sometimes. I don't even know if he has a name."
The boys quieted as if they realized too late that the cabbage man was somewhat taboo to me after all the horrendous things he did to my papa.
"He has a name," I whispered, and my friends looked expectantly. "'The cabbage man.' That seems like a good enough name to me."
Kurt tried sounding sympathetic, "I've never been around the guy that often, but I know he did so many bad things to your papa. Do you forgive him?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"For one, it's been a long time since I've seen him. Two…" I couldn't figure out how to best word the second reason.
Viktor said, "Heinrich, you fell off there."
"Two… I'm not sure how best to word this, but for some reason, a place as pathetic as the internment zone starts to feel like a home when you're surrounded by Kaslow's antics."
My sentence was unexpectedly warm to the touch, much like when you have a warm forehead out of the blue and realize you have a cold. It was odd and sickening. I didn't want to accept my stupid home, I didn't want that mission, and I didn't want a dumb honorary Marleyan position.
Alas, I did want to leave my military position, I did want to survive, and I did want to write my little story again. But I'm just another number in the Eldian birth records, being bred as live ammo. Who cares what I want?
After turning around to look at me, Kurt changed the subject, but he directed his attention to Viktor leading the squad. "How do you think Lina's been?"
Viktor replied off-handedly, "who knows? If she lost all her money and mine, she could be a prostitute or she could have smoked herself to death."
I asked, utterly disgusted, "How could you talk about your sister like that?"
"I used my mouth. It makes words."
"This is not funny."
"Whatever," Viktor looked forward, and I glared at the back of his head. His words hushed, "when I used to wake up early during the training camp days, I wondered if the public security people stole my sister so they could use her as a titan. She's eighteen years old by now, so it's legal for them to do that. Anyway, I think it's easier to assume she's dead, so when, or if, we get back, I won't be disappointed."
"That's pathetic," I muttered. "That's pathetic. How could you think that?"
"I used my brain. It thinks things."
I felt the urge to spit at Viktor, but I refrained from it when wondering about my family. Were they alive still? I had sent letters to my parents, but what if they no longer existed to receive them? Did my papa get bombed with his trench digger activities? Did mama get thrown out of a blimp?
What if.
What if.
What if.
At that moment, I conjured an image of my parents. I could see papa's receding hairline accompanying his hyphen-like scar and mama's metal eyes, melting and molding into a hug instead of an iron sword. The memory of them made me feel warm in the right way, not as sweltering heat, but as the coziness of smooth tea dribbling down my throat like humid raindrops caressing a rose.
I almost felt bad for Viktor. He rejected Lina's existence to prevent disappointment even when her presence was uncertain. He couldn't savor the warmth of a memory with her.
I tried recalling our smoky neighborhood cigarette wielder. I could remember the outline of her midnight hair and the dust particles on her eyebrows from her tendency to look underneath tables after dropping light matches. The soot-littered face shined despite the impurities she wore unintentionally as make-up.
The old ache I felt when looking at her was no longer there. My crush must have disappeared. Had I outgrown it, or had distance taken its toll? Nonetheless, I felt a different warmth for her, likening to pity. She must have been so alone, especially without her brother and the friendly bra-stealer.
Viktor said frankly, "let's just focus on this mission. There's no point in getting sentimental now." He looked back at our freckled friend. "Where to now, Kurt?"
"Let's just keep heading in this direction."
Thankfully, the fog weakened as the seconds passed, and my visibility improved. I honed in on a village that was packed together succinctly a safe distance away from us. As expected, the building colors were so uniform that it looked as if large portions of the ground rose together, and the sand humans used industrial cookie cutters to transform them and create an establishment. These houses weren't in dire need of hugs, but they were in dire need of moisture.
I asked, "should we worry about that village, Kurt?"
He looked back at me, "I think we should be cautious about any building we see."
"Are we going to throw grenades again?" asked Viktor, to which no one answered. It was a rhetorical question.
Kurt answered something unrelated. "The ground slopes up to the village. Maybe if we move past that village through that bank below it, we could avoid contact." He paused and ruffled through his bags, "do either of you have binoculars?"
Viktor and I shook our heads, and he continued, "Shit. Anyway, the path we are on is starting to level out so let's keep going through that bank and cut through the space past that hill. I don't think we need to walk to those small mountains."
Viktor commented, "I never thought the first time I'd see mountains was here in the mid-east."
I added, "you never thought you would see mountains in general."
Viktor shoved past Kurt to take the front position of our line as he often did. It was as if being a leader came naturally for him. Lucky bastard. I wish I could be like that. (Nonetheless, when I tried to be one, it didn't work.)
The boys and I paced secretly past the village. The dead shrubbery that initially crowded our footprints decreased in frequency, and the ground grew more naked, so there was less cover for us than usual. You could even see the potholes where explosives scooped out the land, and the convoluted mess of rocks and pebbles formed patches that could make one wonder if the ground had a skin condition. It needed lotion.
I tried my best not to talk. The surrounding silence was strained like a tight knot where I almost was afraid to glance sideways at the village. What could be there? Besides the troops, would there be more dangerous mines and even more dangerous goats waiting to kill us? Either way, I wanted to avoid contact at all costs.
I felt like I was walking on a tightrope. Sure, I wouldn't have fallen if I stepped awkwardly on the ground, but paranoia can take you to wild places. The heights of my stress made the land beneath me feel less substantial as if there were more important things to worry about than tripping on something.
"We're halfway through," Viktor mentioned.
"I'm surprised no one's there," Kurt whispered.
"There could still be someone there," my pessimism reintroduced itself. "We just haven't met them yet."
It only took a few seconds for my doubts to be affirmed when someone threw a language around the village that I couldn't understand. It only seemed to be a few voices, but any, in general, was already too much.
Kurt stopped progressing and whispered, "run."
"They'll notice us if we move too aggressively," when Kurt mentioned that, Viktor ran off. Kurt and I were left with no other option than to follow the fighter's example.
The unintelligible gibberish the man shouted from the village increased in velocity, for he must have noticed us. But him yelling at me was like sticking a triangle block into a square hole-my brain wasn't trained to accept his language.
A rifle played its typical illusion as I dashed through the bank. It sounded like a firework, with its voice cutting circles in the air, but I'm sure it was less than a thousandth of a firework's spectacle.
It didn't matter to me what the bullets looked like, though, since I ran atop the thin edge of survival. I tried running in a squiggle to make it difficult for the troops to predict my movement. But it reduced my speed, and I decided to sprint in a line.
A bullet landed in front of me and behind Kurt, and I stepped over it on instinct. I'm sure I screamed an assortment of homophobic slurs, racist terms, and the entire catalog in my mind. I don't remember the specific ones, but it would be rude to mention them anyway.
The gap between us and the hill grew closer, and Viktor successfully passed around it. Kurt followed up next, and before I passed the gap, I looked over my shoulder to see two men wearing sun-protection scarves rushing out the village. One of them raised their rifles and fired. I didn't know where the bullet landed, but I heard a clang somewhere.
I rounded the hill and met up with my friends.
"Heinrich, are they chasing after us?" Kurt asked with hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.
"Yes! Two of them! Do either of you have spare grenades?"
"No!" Viktor replied. "Quick! Let's find something here to trap them with."
The boys and I did a haphazard search in the bit of land we entered. But we were met with disappointment when pebbles and dust were the best bullets we could find. Sure, we had guns, but it didn't seem to hit us that rifle-firing can be a two-way street. Idiots.
Or maybe it was something more significant. Perhaps we just wanted to avoid killing. Idiots.
The footsteps of the two bumbling mid-easterners increased, so the boys and I crouched at the footsteps of this little hill by some crates. We hid out of sight to the best of our abilities.
"What do we do?" I asked Kurt, whispering oddly loud.
He shushed me.
When the footsteps reached their peak volume, Kurt shoved his rifle into the small pathway past the hill where the evil troops could come around as if planning to shoot them. He timed it perfectly.
But he executed it poorly. Only one mid-east troop fumbled.
The issue is, I thought Kurt was aiming to kill, but he tried tripping the soldiers instead. Kurt's two-second strategy succeeded only halfway since one troop remained un-fumbled. When you are only leveraging the rifle using one arm, there is not much tension for people walking into the gun to fall from it.
Viktor rushed towards the standing mid-east soldier. He used his rifle like a brace to topple the soldier over and bar him from using a weapon. He must have known running away and facing his back to the troops again would be a sure-fire chance to get killed, so he chose to fight the person head-on.
I didn't have time to be surprised by Viktor's ability to hold down someone heavier and likely more muscular than him. I instead rushed to the soldier that had already fumbled and mirrored Viktor's move.
As my rifle weighed on the soldier's neck, I met the scarfed man's face head-on. The copper skin was littered with sweat. I screamed in desperation, "I'm a medic! I'm a medic!" hoping that he wouldn't hurt me. Instead, he replied with sounds disordered, like a scratchy radio, and spat on my face.
Alas, I was a kid battling an adult. I didn't have as much stamina as him, and in seconds, the mid-east soldier took advantage of my short spurt of weakness and pushed me off. My back met the ground the next thing I knew, and a half-shattered dagger shimmered in the air attached to the soldier's hand. In a few moments, he forced me to switch places with him, yet somehow he didn't show the restraint I had shown him.
Two shots were fired. A dagger doesn't make that sound.
But a rifle does.
The body landed on me like a sandbag, but this one was leaking as I felt a dampness in my lower right abdomen.
"Viktor…" I called. "Kurt…What did you guys do?"
I pushed the body over and looked down at my abdomen to see blood splatter. 'Is this mine?' I wondered on the edge of panic. I tapped at my stomach, searching for a bullet, and felt briefly relieved when I couldn't find one until looking at Kurt.
He pulled a rifle bolt to reload.
"Kurt, what did you do?" I asked with a voice, light from fear of the answer to come.
"I shot him." Kurt looked in my direction and to another. "And him too." Viktor pushed off the soldier he attacked.
"Are you okay?" I asked, trying to stand up but couldn't take my gaze off yet another body whose life was usurped.
"I'm okay right now," Kurt said, sounding neutral. "But I don't know if I still will be later."
"You shot someone, Kurt." I said.
"I know, Heinrich."
"But you don't realize. You shot someone, two people at that."
He squinted in confusion. "I know."
I got up and put my hands on his shoulders, almost trying to wake someone up. "You shot two people."
"And I saved two lives."
I backed away and looked at Viktor, waiting for him to say something, but his words must have been trapped in the barbed wire somewhere. He just stood up and pulled at his shirt, staring at some stains.
"Heinrich, you almost died three times in the past few…I don't even know how long we've been doing this today…and you are complaining about me shooting someone?"
"I'm not complaining. It's just..." The emotion I felt arrived packaged as an enigma, so much so I struggled with what to say. "I just wonder if you'll feel the same way I've felt for all these months after using a gun accidentally."
"It won't be the same. You didn't mean to kill anyone, but I did. I was just following our pact."
Viktor rummaged through a dead soldier's body without a word falling from his mouth. He was a robber searching for anything he could use, even the thin scarf that could protect someone's neck from the heat. "Let's keep moving," he said quietly after sliding a dagger into his boot. "If we stay here too long, Kurt might start feeling something."
The freckled boy I believed was weak and incompetent in hazardous situations had shown me otherwise. I realized you never know how someone could act in a life or death situation from their behaviors in regular day tasks. A well-built man may cower with a weapon in their hand, but someone frailer may pull the trigger more quickly.