King's Highway
Disclaimer: Same as before.
June 2142: Wiersbowski recovered a month earlier than I. Recovery was pretty slow, and painful, but I have recovered as well and will be sent to my old unit again. I lazily watch the clouds of sand the truck kicks up as it ferries me and several replacements to the 15th Light Infantry's positions.
I recovered all of my old gear from the storehouse. Kat made sure my pistol didn't get taken, and it's on my web gear. I look at the replacements, tight faced young boys dragged too quickly from mama's skirt into hell. They are fresh faced, clean shaven, in freshly issued desert yellow fatigues that have yet to fade into the almost white shade that most of the old hands' uniforms have faded into.
Much has changed in North Africa since I was wounded. We have been driven entirely out of Egypt and any chance of linking up with the Middle Eastern Corps is for naught. As it is, we are barely holding out in countless rearguard actions, fighting and dying in ditches and foxholes along the Old King's Highway across the North African coast.
I see Kat and Wiersbowski sitting behind their machinegun in a foxhole near the edge of the road and join them. We barely exchange any greetings. Out of a remaining sense of pity we try to teach the new recruits all that we have learned in two years of vicious desert fighting. We teach them the importance of camouflage, of how to distinguish mirages from actual sights, how to throw hand grenades so they explode a half second from hitting the ground, and not to cluster together at any air raid or bombardment.
Our ultimate objective is to retreat into the Tunisian highlands and form a hedgehog defense, much like the Afrika Korps of old. We are retreating along the Old King's Highway in a bitter struggle from crater to crater. Our trench lines in Egypt and the Libyan frontier have been shot to pieces for quite some time and our main army is retreating. The 15th Light Infantry Division and the 115th Libyan Infantry Division are fighting the vast majority of this rear guard action with the 3rd Egyptian Armored Division using its tanks as a mobile reserve to delay any enemy armored thrusts.
Once we get to the Tunisian mountains, we can hold out almost indefinitely by burrowing into the caves and resisting any major enemy thrusts. Crater to crater, road to road, day by day, we retreat, fighting all the while across the Libyan frontier. We now form an elastic line of defense. Whenever we are hit, we withdraw, fighting all the while as the armored units attack and encircle the enemy spearheads. This tactic seems to be working, but we are being steadily pushed back. Our elastic defense also kills a lot of soldiers.
Our fresh troops are little more than anemic boys who barely can carry a pack and know very little except how to die in great numbers. I witnessed two squads of them get wiped out in a massive zombie attack, because they didn't know to fall back under covering fire of their mates and get messily devoured as a result by swarms of the undead. I could hear their screams well into the night from my post. I called in artillery on that position and got four shells, because the batteries are starting to ration their ammunition. Intensive fighting is going on all around the Mediterranean. Northern Spain and Portugal, our initial source of fresh recruits, are under heavy attack and barely holding enemy forces in the mountainous border with France. They can no longer supply us with men.
Britain and Ireland are husbanding their troops for the defense of their island nations. Most of Algeria has been taken over by the Biohazard and the force of the Biohazard is reclaiming almost all of the territory we conquered. Our orders now consist of holding Tunisia and waiting for a double-edged sword from Egypt and from the Algerian coast to come and rescue us.
Great phalanxes of ogres and swarms of scorpions charge across the no- man's land. We retreat backward only so far and use specialized anti-tank squads to dual the great arachnids while our infantry fights off their infantry escort. By the hundreds our dead are buried in simple graves along the Old King's Highway. The British road through the desert is becoming known by old hands of Army Corps Africa as the Highway of Death.
Our machinegun sweeps in a great arc across the front of the shell crater we now occupy. A row of zombies falls to our shooting, but more keep coming. Kat fires the machinegun constantly, the barrel glows white hot. One of the recruits helps Kat change out the barrel as Wiersbowski keeps firing his Wraith cannon into the attacking horde. My own rifle is firing constantly into the ranks of the undead clamoring before us. It goes empty again and I pull my pistol from my web gear and keep firing.
We are not beaten, for as soldiers we are more experienced, we are merely crushed under a great and overwhelming mass of enemy troops. For every hungry and wretched soldier of Army Corps Africa, there is at least ten of the enemy. For every tank or armored vehicle there are at least ten scorpions. For every creature that we kill, at least ten more of the infected take its place.
Again we retreat, our position has become untenable and this stretch of the King's Highway now belongs to the enemy. All we have done is bought time for more soldiers of Army Corps Africa to retreat further back into Tunisia where we are prepared to make our final stand.
I see an energy orb obliterate five new recruits on my right flank. The impact jars the helmet from the top of my head and I see Andi's picture inside it. It fails to bring me the courage and inspiration it once did. It only serves to bring me pain and a deepening hatred of these loathsome things that were once human beings. It brings me hate for I knew these things took my beloved Andi away from me.
As soldiers we are very well disciplined and can make ad hoc combat groups consisting of survivors from other units. Being one of only eight survivors from a forty-man platoon, this is where Wiersbowski, Kat, and myself find ourselves. I see another soldier get dragged over a dune by a dozen decaying hands. I throw a grenade over the dune as I hear the zombies start eating him alive. The explosion kills several of them, tossing blood and viscera over the dune, splashing the shaken survivors protecting this wadi.
I cannot help but wonder as I look at my greatly reduced circle of friends. How many of us will be left in the days to come? How many more of my generation will this war kill off?
The desert sun fiercely blazes in the sapphire blue sky over the sandy expanse of the desert. It is almost a beautiful sight, were it not littered with corpses, shell craters, and the burned out wreckage of vehicles and aircraft, markers of a failed campaign to remind the living of the hell that they currently inhabit.
The salt sea air blowing in from the coast less than three miles away smells sweetest when not mingled with the scent of death, decay, and smoke from the battlefield. Another barrage falls in our sector. We crouch down wishing our foxholes were a few feet deeper, or that we had the concrete bunkers and pillboxes we struggled to hold in Egypt and the Libyan frontier.
Then it ends and again we find ourselves fighting another attacking band of ogres advancing towards our position. We fight it out as long as we can, again the moments blur together as our machinegun rips swaths through the enemy ranks and Wiersbowski sprays several of them with bursts of 20mm fire. Grenades are simply wonderful in this situation as I throw them with wild abandon into the ranks of the ogres and firing my rifle and pistol when I find no more grenades to throw.
Then suddenly three large scorpions scuttle over the dunes towards our positions. We know that our hold on this particular stretch of the Old King's Highway is untenable. From a mockery these giant arachnids have become a crushing, terrifying form of death. Our personal arms are matchsticks against their chitin exoskeletons and our grenades are mere firecrackers. We know the order of the day is to retreat yet again. At least with zombies, ogres, or Gollums we could see that our foes were once human.
This is not so with the scorpions or wasps. They are more terrifying versions of creatures that already are pests to humanity. How ironic to flee from something I once swatted with rolled up newspapers before 2142.
We young men are lost boys now. We are hailed as heroes and men of iron, but what sane man would keep such a view if he were to see the soldiers on the frontline. We are little more than hungry, wretched beggars, our uniforms worn ragged, our eyes sunken into our heads.
There are rumors that DeRutyer wants to plan a counteroffensive after the relief force invading through Algeria in October comes through. The possibility of us undertaking offensive action in our current state is laughable. The 115th Libyan Infantry Division exists in name only. It's soldiers are either shambling about the dunes as part of the horde of the undead, broken bodies in hospitals, or buried in countless cemeteries across the Old King's Highway.
The 15th Light Infantry Division is on the verge of destruction. I have received a promotion to Sergeant and am in charge of our small group of twelve infantrymen holding a ditch along the Old King's Highway.
For nearly two months they have been steadily pushing us back. Sergeant McCron was killed nearly three weeks earlier, and it is his stripes I now wear. A crimson head leapt over a dune while we were struggling to hold yet another roadside ditch and started to tear him apart before we in turn started to shoot this crimson head into fragments with concentrated gunfire.
The 9th Sicilian Infantry Division is rotated to the front and we are relegated to the rear. We are merely given a few days rest, but it is certainly a lot less miserable an existence than that which we eked out fighting to delay an enemy advance. The Sicilians have that responsibility now and I do not pity them.
A letter arrives from the world that I no longer inhabit. It is a world who's tender embrace war's desolation violently tore me away from. Like Persephone's violent abduction by Hades in Greek mythology my generation and me were torn away from the kind nurturing worlds we knew and cast into the very depths of Hell itself. The letter tells me that Zack has been drafted and has been sent to join the 1st Infantry Division in its assault on North Africa.
How many? That is all that I ask. How many more of our young must be violently torn from nurture and love into violence and hate like I have been? How many of our young must die before we finally sing Non Nobis, finally signifying the destruction of the undead scourge. Earth shall be bled white and empty before this plague is finally stopped and destroyed.
I know that no corner of Earth, even if it does not know the shamble of zombie feet, will escape unscathed by this Biohazard. Already in many a household across Earth folded United Systems flags are in the window, representing sons and even daughters killed in the fighting or even on the home front.
I am dirty, tired, bloodied and exhausted. So are the men around me. We are victims of months and years of savage desert fighting. As part of the reserve division forming the rear guard we march to the sound of guns. The Egyptians have done what they can and I notice their numbers have significantly shrunk.
Yesterday I saw a soldier coughing out his life from a chest wound. He was not from my unit. He was a youth from the 9th Sicilian Infantry. I was closest to him and as the chaplain read him his last rites I held the dying boy's hand. I could feel his thin fingers gripping my hand like a death grip. Almost as suddenly, I feel the grip tighten and then slack, the pale hand limp. Yet another boy has been sacrificed on the altar in order to protect Earth from the scourge of the Biohazard.
The last look in the dying boy's eyes told me this, "Remember."
That I will try to do. If I remain alive at the end of this great tribute to madness I will do so. Rest easy my son, and should you meet Andi in the afterlife, tell her to wait for me under the shade tree. I do not know what hour I shall arrive, but in all probabilities it shall be soon.
"He today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother." -Henry V, St. Crispian's Speech.
Disclaimer: Same as before.
June 2142: Wiersbowski recovered a month earlier than I. Recovery was pretty slow, and painful, but I have recovered as well and will be sent to my old unit again. I lazily watch the clouds of sand the truck kicks up as it ferries me and several replacements to the 15th Light Infantry's positions.
I recovered all of my old gear from the storehouse. Kat made sure my pistol didn't get taken, and it's on my web gear. I look at the replacements, tight faced young boys dragged too quickly from mama's skirt into hell. They are fresh faced, clean shaven, in freshly issued desert yellow fatigues that have yet to fade into the almost white shade that most of the old hands' uniforms have faded into.
Much has changed in North Africa since I was wounded. We have been driven entirely out of Egypt and any chance of linking up with the Middle Eastern Corps is for naught. As it is, we are barely holding out in countless rearguard actions, fighting and dying in ditches and foxholes along the Old King's Highway across the North African coast.
I see Kat and Wiersbowski sitting behind their machinegun in a foxhole near the edge of the road and join them. We barely exchange any greetings. Out of a remaining sense of pity we try to teach the new recruits all that we have learned in two years of vicious desert fighting. We teach them the importance of camouflage, of how to distinguish mirages from actual sights, how to throw hand grenades so they explode a half second from hitting the ground, and not to cluster together at any air raid or bombardment.
Our ultimate objective is to retreat into the Tunisian highlands and form a hedgehog defense, much like the Afrika Korps of old. We are retreating along the Old King's Highway in a bitter struggle from crater to crater. Our trench lines in Egypt and the Libyan frontier have been shot to pieces for quite some time and our main army is retreating. The 15th Light Infantry Division and the 115th Libyan Infantry Division are fighting the vast majority of this rear guard action with the 3rd Egyptian Armored Division using its tanks as a mobile reserve to delay any enemy armored thrusts.
Once we get to the Tunisian mountains, we can hold out almost indefinitely by burrowing into the caves and resisting any major enemy thrusts. Crater to crater, road to road, day by day, we retreat, fighting all the while across the Libyan frontier. We now form an elastic line of defense. Whenever we are hit, we withdraw, fighting all the while as the armored units attack and encircle the enemy spearheads. This tactic seems to be working, but we are being steadily pushed back. Our elastic defense also kills a lot of soldiers.
Our fresh troops are little more than anemic boys who barely can carry a pack and know very little except how to die in great numbers. I witnessed two squads of them get wiped out in a massive zombie attack, because they didn't know to fall back under covering fire of their mates and get messily devoured as a result by swarms of the undead. I could hear their screams well into the night from my post. I called in artillery on that position and got four shells, because the batteries are starting to ration their ammunition. Intensive fighting is going on all around the Mediterranean. Northern Spain and Portugal, our initial source of fresh recruits, are under heavy attack and barely holding enemy forces in the mountainous border with France. They can no longer supply us with men.
Britain and Ireland are husbanding their troops for the defense of their island nations. Most of Algeria has been taken over by the Biohazard and the force of the Biohazard is reclaiming almost all of the territory we conquered. Our orders now consist of holding Tunisia and waiting for a double-edged sword from Egypt and from the Algerian coast to come and rescue us.
Great phalanxes of ogres and swarms of scorpions charge across the no- man's land. We retreat backward only so far and use specialized anti-tank squads to dual the great arachnids while our infantry fights off their infantry escort. By the hundreds our dead are buried in simple graves along the Old King's Highway. The British road through the desert is becoming known by old hands of Army Corps Africa as the Highway of Death.
Our machinegun sweeps in a great arc across the front of the shell crater we now occupy. A row of zombies falls to our shooting, but more keep coming. Kat fires the machinegun constantly, the barrel glows white hot. One of the recruits helps Kat change out the barrel as Wiersbowski keeps firing his Wraith cannon into the attacking horde. My own rifle is firing constantly into the ranks of the undead clamoring before us. It goes empty again and I pull my pistol from my web gear and keep firing.
We are not beaten, for as soldiers we are more experienced, we are merely crushed under a great and overwhelming mass of enemy troops. For every hungry and wretched soldier of Army Corps Africa, there is at least ten of the enemy. For every tank or armored vehicle there are at least ten scorpions. For every creature that we kill, at least ten more of the infected take its place.
Again we retreat, our position has become untenable and this stretch of the King's Highway now belongs to the enemy. All we have done is bought time for more soldiers of Army Corps Africa to retreat further back into Tunisia where we are prepared to make our final stand.
I see an energy orb obliterate five new recruits on my right flank. The impact jars the helmet from the top of my head and I see Andi's picture inside it. It fails to bring me the courage and inspiration it once did. It only serves to bring me pain and a deepening hatred of these loathsome things that were once human beings. It brings me hate for I knew these things took my beloved Andi away from me.
As soldiers we are very well disciplined and can make ad hoc combat groups consisting of survivors from other units. Being one of only eight survivors from a forty-man platoon, this is where Wiersbowski, Kat, and myself find ourselves. I see another soldier get dragged over a dune by a dozen decaying hands. I throw a grenade over the dune as I hear the zombies start eating him alive. The explosion kills several of them, tossing blood and viscera over the dune, splashing the shaken survivors protecting this wadi.
I cannot help but wonder as I look at my greatly reduced circle of friends. How many of us will be left in the days to come? How many more of my generation will this war kill off?
The desert sun fiercely blazes in the sapphire blue sky over the sandy expanse of the desert. It is almost a beautiful sight, were it not littered with corpses, shell craters, and the burned out wreckage of vehicles and aircraft, markers of a failed campaign to remind the living of the hell that they currently inhabit.
The salt sea air blowing in from the coast less than three miles away smells sweetest when not mingled with the scent of death, decay, and smoke from the battlefield. Another barrage falls in our sector. We crouch down wishing our foxholes were a few feet deeper, or that we had the concrete bunkers and pillboxes we struggled to hold in Egypt and the Libyan frontier.
Then it ends and again we find ourselves fighting another attacking band of ogres advancing towards our position. We fight it out as long as we can, again the moments blur together as our machinegun rips swaths through the enemy ranks and Wiersbowski sprays several of them with bursts of 20mm fire. Grenades are simply wonderful in this situation as I throw them with wild abandon into the ranks of the ogres and firing my rifle and pistol when I find no more grenades to throw.
Then suddenly three large scorpions scuttle over the dunes towards our positions. We know that our hold on this particular stretch of the Old King's Highway is untenable. From a mockery these giant arachnids have become a crushing, terrifying form of death. Our personal arms are matchsticks against their chitin exoskeletons and our grenades are mere firecrackers. We know the order of the day is to retreat yet again. At least with zombies, ogres, or Gollums we could see that our foes were once human.
This is not so with the scorpions or wasps. They are more terrifying versions of creatures that already are pests to humanity. How ironic to flee from something I once swatted with rolled up newspapers before 2142.
We young men are lost boys now. We are hailed as heroes and men of iron, but what sane man would keep such a view if he were to see the soldiers on the frontline. We are little more than hungry, wretched beggars, our uniforms worn ragged, our eyes sunken into our heads.
There are rumors that DeRutyer wants to plan a counteroffensive after the relief force invading through Algeria in October comes through. The possibility of us undertaking offensive action in our current state is laughable. The 115th Libyan Infantry Division exists in name only. It's soldiers are either shambling about the dunes as part of the horde of the undead, broken bodies in hospitals, or buried in countless cemeteries across the Old King's Highway.
The 15th Light Infantry Division is on the verge of destruction. I have received a promotion to Sergeant and am in charge of our small group of twelve infantrymen holding a ditch along the Old King's Highway.
For nearly two months they have been steadily pushing us back. Sergeant McCron was killed nearly three weeks earlier, and it is his stripes I now wear. A crimson head leapt over a dune while we were struggling to hold yet another roadside ditch and started to tear him apart before we in turn started to shoot this crimson head into fragments with concentrated gunfire.
The 9th Sicilian Infantry Division is rotated to the front and we are relegated to the rear. We are merely given a few days rest, but it is certainly a lot less miserable an existence than that which we eked out fighting to delay an enemy advance. The Sicilians have that responsibility now and I do not pity them.
A letter arrives from the world that I no longer inhabit. It is a world who's tender embrace war's desolation violently tore me away from. Like Persephone's violent abduction by Hades in Greek mythology my generation and me were torn away from the kind nurturing worlds we knew and cast into the very depths of Hell itself. The letter tells me that Zack has been drafted and has been sent to join the 1st Infantry Division in its assault on North Africa.
How many? That is all that I ask. How many more of our young must be violently torn from nurture and love into violence and hate like I have been? How many of our young must die before we finally sing Non Nobis, finally signifying the destruction of the undead scourge. Earth shall be bled white and empty before this plague is finally stopped and destroyed.
I know that no corner of Earth, even if it does not know the shamble of zombie feet, will escape unscathed by this Biohazard. Already in many a household across Earth folded United Systems flags are in the window, representing sons and even daughters killed in the fighting or even on the home front.
I am dirty, tired, bloodied and exhausted. So are the men around me. We are victims of months and years of savage desert fighting. As part of the reserve division forming the rear guard we march to the sound of guns. The Egyptians have done what they can and I notice their numbers have significantly shrunk.
Yesterday I saw a soldier coughing out his life from a chest wound. He was not from my unit. He was a youth from the 9th Sicilian Infantry. I was closest to him and as the chaplain read him his last rites I held the dying boy's hand. I could feel his thin fingers gripping my hand like a death grip. Almost as suddenly, I feel the grip tighten and then slack, the pale hand limp. Yet another boy has been sacrificed on the altar in order to protect Earth from the scourge of the Biohazard.
The last look in the dying boy's eyes told me this, "Remember."
That I will try to do. If I remain alive at the end of this great tribute to madness I will do so. Rest easy my son, and should you meet Andi in the afterlife, tell her to wait for me under the shade tree. I do not know what hour I shall arrive, but in all probabilities it shall be soon.
"He today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother." -Henry V, St. Crispian's Speech.