AN/ Skipper's logs will now be put as preliminaries to existing chapters. I realised if I made them into thier own chapters, my story would have a lot of short chapters that would break up the storyline. \AN
Skippers log. 1800 hours on May the twenty third.
We've settled into our new home here on this military base. After all, its been over a week since we arrived here. Processes go down here not much unlike how they did at boot camp. At six hundred hours sharp we wake up, and go for role call. We eat slop for breakfast. The officers claim that it's fish, but it tastes more like cardboard. Eight hundred hours is morning training and exercises. At twelve hundred we start our duties.
Manfredi and I got assigned to construction, and unfortunately its not very exciting business. We're putting up a new bunker on the northern front, and it's long, hard work. We have to heave heavy bags of concrete, mix it, and pour it to the exact specifications of our superiors.
Johnson said he had been working in the kitchen, which made Manfredi and I laugh. They only assigned the weakest to do tedious jobs such as that. I feel bad for the little guy though, he barely knows what the word 'military' really means.
After that, we get a little bit of time to ourselves before it's lights out at twenty one hours on the dot. It's an exhausting routine, and I'm sore. I thought the physical training I had encountered in boot camp was enough, but apparently the long hours of manual labor are past my level of endurance.
Manfredi has spent most of his free time putting hundreds of pictures of his home up on the walls round his bunk. 'This is my girl,' he said to us on more than one occasion. He talks a lot of how he's expecting a son or daughter by the time he gets home. It makes me wonder why I haven't been able to settle down and start a family yet. After all, he's younger than me.
Johnson writes in his journal, which he guards closely and threatens to snap off our flippers if we try to get too close to it. I know if Manfredi and I really wanted to get a peek, we could easily overpower Johnson, but I know to respect his privacy. After all, I'm not really sure if I would be able to read very much of his writing anyway. He must have had some sort of formal education, which is rare among penguins. If my suspicions are true, however, he'll make a great addition to the team.
I'm beginning to wonder when we'll see any action. After all, we're in the middle of nowhere, who would want to attack us? I've heard stories from the old penguins back home about how they sat at their bases and did nothing but manual labor for years before they were finally deployed to battle. I wonder if that'll be true for us, but I certainly hope not. I don't want to spend years working just like I could at home. I don't want to shoved up into this little room with barely enough space for the three of us while I wait for something to attack.
The funny thing is I don't really know who it is we're fighting. We're stationed here, and we don't even know who to attack if we see them. I've questioned my superiors a few times on the subject, but they don't seem to know either. I just saw the recruiting poster and signed up, not even thinking about what this war was for, about, or if it even existed. Judging from Manfreeti and Johnson's backgrounds, the Penguin Army recruited far and wide, but for what? I hadn't heard of any fighting going on anywhere in the world.
I spent six months in boot camp, and I'm not going home before I see some action.
The Speed of Darkness
Chapter 5 - The Wrong Target
He found himself walking down a deserted alley in the middle of a city he didn't know. His surroundings looked dark, damp, and hopeless. The sun didn't seem to reach this narrow spot between the buildings, and it left the whole place feeling very odd and unusual to him.
He didn't know exactly where he was going, but he knew that if he kept walking, his feet would eventually bring him to his destination. His target. He twirled the revolver around on his flipper, whistling a happy tune.
This alleyway would have given even the most hardened soldier a feeling of fright and make them wish they weren't there. It was the sort of narrow passage that unspeakable crimes had occurred in, ones that nobody ever knew happened. Faces come and gone, lives had been ended here. Innocence had been taken here. The entire place smelled of the vile hoodlums that had come here to hide out from the police. It was enough to make anyone want to run and never look back at that wretched place, wishing they had never stumbled into it from curiosity.
He continued walking. As he waddled further into the unknown of the alley, he could feel his fear levels rising. His heart quickened slightly. He was trying to tell himself that he should turn back, run, and find a different route. But he wouldn't listen to himself. He liked it here. He liked how it smelled of decaying garbage. He liked watching the small rodents scatter as they heard his feet make contact with the cold pavement.
He looked at the graffiti as he walked. It lined every brick wall and the side of every dumpster he passed. He looked at the piles of forgotten garbage that was due to be picked up years ago. He liked how this place was important at one point, but now forgotten. It was important to the shopkeepers who used to own stores and restaurants on either side of it, then it was important to the criminals that used it for an escape route. It was even important to the homeless men who found refuge in it. Now it was forgotten, just like he was. He was important at one point, just like the alleyway. Everyone knew his name, everyone knew where to go where they needed help. Everyone knew to come to this alleyway, everyone knew to come to him. He felt like him and the passageway were one in the same. Forgotten by the ones that had held them dearly.
But Sara would never have forgotten him... If she were still alive...
He stopped whistling his happy tune. He clenched the handle of his revolver tightly and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet ricocheting around the alleyway. It left by passing through a glass window without breaking it. Sara would have never forgotten him...
"Hey, what are yous doin'? Havin' a fist clenching contest?" a voice said from above him, breaking him from his thought.
He looked up and saw a pigeon perched on the lowest level of a fire escape. He noticed the gray feathers, the colorless eyes, the small beak. The pigeon was a small bird, not even half of the penguin's size.
"Look buddy, I heard yous whistlin', and I gotta say, you ain't no song bird," The pigeon mocked, laughing at his own words. The penguin on the ground glared up at it. What gave him the right to insult him like that?
"What is a penguin doin' back here anyways?" the pigeon asked him. "A penguin in a really ugly costume."
The pigeon had a smirk on his face. A smirk that tore deep into the penguin worse than the words. The smirk reminded him of when the apparition had smiled evilly upon him.
"Yo, buddy, you there?" said the Pigeon, it's head now cocked to the side with curiosity. "Yous lost?"
The penguin clenched his beak tightly, and twisted his flippers into tight balls. He couldn't help the rage building up inside him at the bird perched above him. The pigeon thought that he was better then him. His target thought that he was better than him. His target thought he could get away with betrayal and murder. This bird thought he could get away with his hurtful words.
"Here yous go with the fist clenchin' again. What yous got planned?"
"You were just in the way of the plan. You and Johnson both."
"Buddy," the perched bird called down to the penguin. "You lost?"
He looked back up at the bird. Gray feathers were now distinguishably black and white. The colorless eyes were now blue. It's small beak had become wide and flat. Its new size made it look like it could barely balance on the beam it was perched on.
"You!" He called up to the pigeon. "You did this to me!"
He pointed with his flipper to the metallic flipper that hung at his side. The reflective material continued up over most of the right side of his torso and onto the right side of his face, encompassing his right eye. It was a mysterious material that reflected the face of whomever gazed into it back at them.
"I didn't put yous in no ugly Halloween costume," answered the bird. "Yous must have lost a pretty big bet to be wearing that, though."
Everything word the pigeon said was like daggers that burned into his flesh. He wanted it to stop, wanted it to go away. He grabbed a rock that was nearby on the ground and picked it up in his metal flipper, squeezing it until it crumbled in his hand.
"Yous are the weirdest penguin I have ever met," said the pigeon. "Or are yous a robot?"
That was too far. He looked up once more, now looking directly into the eyes of his target. The penguin he was looking at was smiling widely and looked confident in what he said.
"Look at you, you should be dead, but instead you decided to cheat death and become a robot, didn't you?"
"You did this to me!" he screamed. The pigeon shivered at the sudden outburst, but stayed anyway.
"I didn't do anything to nobody," it responded, plainly.
"I should have made sure you were dead from the start,"
He snatched up another rock and gripped it tightly. Without warning, he pulled his arm back and threw it with all of his might at the penguin perched on the fire escape. There was a sound of fluttering wings, but the rock contacted with his target's head and it plummeted to the ground, hitting hard.
He walked over to his target, smiling. There was a little bit of blood leaking from its head, and its eyes looked blanked. He liked when they were blank, just like Johnson's had been when he had discovered his body that long time ago.
He continued to stare at the eyes when suddenly they began to change. They were no longer blue, but a deep green. He watched the whole penguin's body transform and now he was looking at the curved body of a female penguin. He recognized it as Sarah, and fell to his knees and began weeping over the dead body.
"I'm so sorry I didn't get there in time..." he said. "I failed you and our child."
Suddenly the body changed again. He was now looking at a penguin chick, looking like it had just hatched from an egg. It was his son. His unborn son, dead on the ground, killed by him. He choked suddenly, gasping for breath before emptying his stomach onto the ground.
He was a monster. A murderer.
"Ernie? Ernie!" a female pigeon cried from above. "What have you done to Ernie?"
The penguin opened his eyes and looked at the pigeon's lifeless body on the ground. He had ended the innocent bird's life, thinking he was his target. He was a murderer. A creeping feeling grew in his chest and he found it hard to breathe again. He clutched it before glancing around madly and sprinting off, away from the horrible alleyway.
"Oh, Ernie!" said the female Pigeon. She landed next to her husband's dead body and began to sob.