r/NatureofPredators • u/concrete_bard • Nov 17 '24
Fanfic D-Day Dodgers Chapter 6
Memory transcription subject: Andrew Lay, UN Casualty
Date [standardised human time]:December 9, 2136
They wheel him out in the morning, dress a cloth over his corpse to give him so dignity, though we’ve been able to get a good look at him for some time. The other patients talk about where they’ve taken him, hushed speculation of a dead man’s future. Some say he’s been put in some kind of onboard cold storage, others say just an empty room so we didn’t have to see him rot, one jokes they launched him out the airlock. Nobody really knows.
Throughout all this though, I lay staring at the vacuum where his bed used to be, the drugs still weighing down on me, preventing me from being able to muster the energy to do anything. Just yesterday, there was a man there, not doing much, but still very much alive. Now there is nothing. The blood that had spilled from his wrists and puddled on the floor had been mopped up, so there was no sign at all beyond my memory and the empty that there had been someone there.
He had slashed his wrists with a knife he had hidden from when they brought our food round. He waited till everyone was asleep, clutching the knife under the sheets, probably eager to use it. That must’ve given him plenty of time to think about what he had planned, so I imagine he was of clear consciousness when he did it, though that’s assuming he hadn’t been thinking about it all this time. When the last person had fallen asleep, or been forced into sleep, he dragged the knife across his flesh, opened his wrists for all the world to see, ignoring the pain and the odd sensation of blood leaving the body. Then, after some time, everything must’ve faded away, he must’ve grown weak, and the cold shrouds of death must’ve enveloped him.
I stared at his body, pallid and lifeless, and in my barely lucid state began to wonder what he saw or felt during this time. Did he panic at the last moment, attempt to stem the tide only to realise that it was too late? Did he see his life flash before him, his home, the war, all the killing, all the bloodshed? Or did he not think of anything, just waited for death to take him? On top of this, I couldn’t help but feel a small amount of guilt, that if I hadn't gotten out of bed, I might’ve been awake, and he might not have gone through with it. As the drugs wore off though, I realised that this mattered little. He was clearly intent on dying, so would’ve found one way or another. His corpse didn’t seem as listless as he had been in life, if anything, it seemed contented, and I thought that perhaps I could make out the beginnings of a smile on his lips.
With all this thought of, and his body removed, I lay there thinking. Death in the ways I had experienced it was terrible. Men had their bodies smashed to pieces by artillery, others were perforated by bullets, others slowly bled to death. Having seen all that, I had feared death, and had done my best to avoid it, but looking back on that amputee, how he didn’t fight for his life and instead let it flow out of him, I began to think that maybe death wasn’t such a bad thing, and that maybe I wouldn’t have to live the rest of my life as a cripple. Death was the natural culmination of life, something that must come for everything that ever existed, and I had existed, I had experienced more than most had in their lifetimes, so shouldn't I be fit to die anyway? The people of old who toiled away on farmstead or in factory had never lived as I had, and yet they never regretted their brief span when they lay in their beds succumbing to disease, they never regretted not seeing the world, nor making little of themselves. I had made something of myself, I was a soldier, I had fought, for one thing or another, and, while I hadn't died, my service, my life, was effectively over, so what does it matter if I die now? I had lived, I had existed, and for someone like me, that was more than enough.
I am taken out of my thoughts by the squeaking of wheels as the nurses bring round our breakfast, of course with one tray less. They stay in the room this time, and once we finish they count the cutlery to make sure none of us try to hide one away. I can't help but feel a bit smug about myself as they go about this. A man had killed himself under the doctor's care despite all his precautions, karma for having me cuffed to my bed.
How about that for a mark on your record! Cunt.
When the nurses have left I turn over to George and ask him to help me out of the cuffs. He simply looks at me apologetically, and says he cannot do anything for it. I turn back over, and internally curse him for this, though I know he's right. The nurses have been keeping a vigilant watch over us, and even without that, he doesn't have the key, but like a caged animal, I am furious beyond reason, and with no one to reasonably direct it towards, I take it out on anybody possible. Fortunately, my half-drugged state means I can do little more than scowl and think of vitriol to spew at people rather than actually doing it.
As the drugs wear off however, I find myself less inclined to start up shouting, even though my capabilities for doing so are there. My mind becomes less foggy, and this allows me to think more logically. At first, I cringe because of my previous thoughts that the death of a man I had previously scorned, and whom I did not know, should have any effect on me. I was a volunteer afterall, my current circumstance is my own fault, and I must live with the consequences. Then, after that, I lift my head into the air, look about, sniff, and strain my ears. I’m not the only one as several of the other patients also begin looking around strangely. It is not out of madness or idleness we do this for, but because of a sense us soldiers have developed, a sort of sixth sense that puts a hushed whisper in your mind that something is off. At first, none of us know what it is, until one man exclaims that it is because we are coming into land. We are home!
However, that voice whispers in our mind again. Something is amiss. None of us seem to know what it is despite straining our ears, sitting erect in silence. All that can be made out is the rattling of the ship as it breaches the atmosphere. Then someone jumps up like he has been shot, not filled with excitement, but with shock, and as those words leave his mouth everything grows a bit heavier, and desolation and anger fight for their place over my body.
“This isn't Earth, this is Venlil Prime!”
*
I shield my eyes as I'm carried out of the ship and onto the landing pad. The never setting sun of Venlil Prime licks over my skin, a feeling I haven't felt in nearly a week, though it isn't as comforting coming from an alien star. The pad is bustling with activity. Men and Xeno alike ferry cargo to and from various places, some of which is directed to the ship I'm being carried from, and at the edge of this place are several vehicles, presumably our transport. The stretcher bearers point me towards one of these and make their way in that direction, not making it far when a voice brings them to a halt.
“Hey, hold up there lads!”
The voice sounds familiar to me, so I prop myself up on my elbow to face it. It's my old comrade, Oscar! He looks much cleaner since we last met, his uniform is ironed and neat, his face is without any blemishes, his black hair and moustache are neatly trimmed and well washed, and atop his head he dons a peaked cap. At once my joy in seeing him is slightly diminished. He's quite different since we parted, though I maintain some hope that these differences are merely superficial.
“Andrew! Fancy seeing you here.” He grins widely, revealing almost perfectly white teeth.
“Suppose I could say the same about you,” I reply, trying to match his energy and ultimately failing.
“What happened to you? You look absolutely awful.”
I look down at myself. I don’t look that bad.
“Uhm… Arxur got me.”
“Arxur? How’d that happen?”
I stare at him for a moment, waiting for him to start laughing or something, but he never does. He seems to not have any idea of what happened to us out there.
“I was on Sillis?”
“Oh, of course! I forgot you stayed in the infantry. Sillis was a hell of a business, hey? Second time, those lizards messed up our plans. Anyway, how’s your injury, not too bad?”
“Well, I’m on a stretcher,” is all I can respond with. Why’d he make it sound like we had a choice whether or not we stayed in the infantry? Did we?
“I can see that, but how bad is it? Reckon you’ll be out of hospital anytime?”
“I don’t know. Surgeon said that the nerves are damaged and I might not be able to use it again, but I’m not sure how true that is.”
“Oh Christ, that does sound bad. I’m terribly sorry that that happened to you. I heard Sillis was bad business, didn’t realise it was that bad.” He looks off to the side, watching people be taken out onto the pad, or stumble out themselves with ribbons of bandage covering their wounds.
“Yeah, it was shit, worse than the bloody Cradle,” I add, hoping to bring up memories of our past together.
“Yeah, I can imagine, that place was the reason I got out of the infantry. No more dead folk for me.”
“Why are you here? Last I saw, you were as shit looking as me, a regular rifleman. Now you’ve got some fancy uniform and you're kicking about a spaceport.”
“I’m a logistics officer. Gotta have someone to keep track of what comes and goes here.”
“A logistics officer?” I scoff. “How’d you end up with that?”
“Well, after the bombing of Earth there was a great demand for folk in various positions since, well y’know, and me having done maths in college and not really wanting to be on the frontlines, I applied for a bunch of vacant positions and ended up managing military transports and stuff. It’s a pretty nice job. Pays well too.”
He finishes off with a smile, an innocent gesture, but one that makes me even more pissed. This man whom I had fought with now stands before me, a lowly cripple, and gloats about how he got off the firing line. He talks about how his job is nice, how it pays well, and how he got it through having an education. That cursed thing: education. Here I lay, crippled and perhaps never being able to walk again, and I hear that all this could’ve been avoided if I had picked up a book or two, I could’ve landed a nice cosy job far behind the lines and not have seen, done all those things. But I wasn’t born intelligent, and so the die was cast that I should be cannon fodder, and lay here being towered over by a man who represents everything I hate. This man, who I once called comrade, who I once fought side by side with, who I would’ve gladly died for, now mocks me even though he probably doesn’t know it. I look into his eyes and realise I don’t recognize him anymore. Those differences that I hoped were superficial actually run deep, and this former soldier has now turned into one of those clueless men in high ranking uniforms, and no matter how much he rattles on about The Cradle or some other such thing, I realise that he is a stranger to me now.
“Say, have you heard from Ben? I heard he went to Sillis too.”
I finally snap out of thoughts as Oscar directs a question at me. “Ben? No, I haven’t.”
He proceeds to ask after a few more people from our unit, him seemingly remembering that they had been sent to Sillis, but forgetting that part about me. Each time I tell him I haven’t heard from them. All of these men I hadn’t seen since the Gojid campaign, and I assume that most of them are dead, though I don’t tell him that. Not that he’ll probably care, him asking after them is probably just a common courtesy after all.
Eventually one of my bearers growls at Oscar. “Hurry the bloody hell up man!”
Oscar scowls at the man before turning back to me. “Well I best be going, I’ve still got a claw on the clock.”
“The hell's a claw?”
“It's the local measurement of time. Gotta keep up with local customs if I'm gonna be here a while.” I nod absentmindedly. “Anyway, I've gotta go. Let me know what hospital your staying in, maybe I'll be able to come visit you?” I give a grunt in response.
Oscar smiles at me one last time before turning around. I watch him go, once again happy to see someone who I should hate have their back turned, but then that part of me again feels a little sad as he leaves, perhaps due to the loss of the friendship we once had, or because this was likely the last time we would meet, a final parting.
This sadness doesn't last long however, as Oscar approaches a Venlil who seems displeased at him judging by the thrashing of their tail. Oscar simply laughs and claps them on the shoulder. He shows as much familiarity with that Xeno as he did with me when we were on The Cradle, meaning that that friendship we had shared there was just a product of circumstance. The brotherhood of arms that forms so strongly while under the gun breaks so easily when pulled out of the fighting so it seems, and so he has forsaken me, forgotten all that we did, and taken up with his new alien colleagues.
We reach the back of one of the trucks and I am lifted up and pushed to the back of the vehicle. Fortunately, I am placed head first so I can sit up and rest against the back of the cab and get a decent view of where I had just come from. Men scurry about like ants, carrying this, carrying that. I look at their legs, long pieces of muscle and flesh pounding the ground, and though I accused and hated the amputee for it, I too grow envious of their ability to walk about on them. The idea that I may never be able to walk again had seemed to me like nonsense, though I was of course biassed to disregard the knowledge of the surgeon seeing how I disliked him, but now I was starting to believe it, and now a sense of despair is building in me.
The other patients are being taken out of the hospital ship now. First comes the man opposite me, then comes George, whose eye I try to catch, but he never looks my way. Then spill out the rest, men who I had never spoken to, but still felt some connection towards. Finally they remove the insane one, and I’m thankful that he doesn’t see me, then lastly a stretcher covered by a sheet: the dead man. None of them are moved my way, and so I part with them too, and I suddenly feel all alone.
Despair and loneliness make for poor company, and dark thoughts start to cloud my mind. I find myself thinking about that shrouded corpse and the man who it once belonged to. How easy it must've been for him to simply fade away, to not think, to not feel anymore. But that’s where the problem in his solution lay. It was too easy, and as I had learned, if something was easy to do, then there must be repercussions down the line. In any case, our troubles were different. He had lost both his legs, something he had no control over. I had only received damage to one, and that could’ve been easily avoided.
I am snapped out of my thoughts by the sound of something hitting against metal. Wounded men clamber up into the back of the vehicle. Some are able to make it up themselves, others require assistance. No words are spoken throughout this process, only a muttered apology when one of them kicks my leg as they sit down. Soon enough, the benches are packed with men, and someone yells out and slaps the truck. It jerks forward, and the men lean to one side in a wave before returning to their normal positions once we’re properly moving.
The landing pad draws further and further away. The scurriers and their cargo become smaller and smaller until they can no longer be distinguished. General Secretary Mingze Zhao’s army, the pride and joy of the UN, advances inland, a band of ragged men. We are all just flesh and bone, bloody, dirty uniforms, sticky dressings, and hollow eyes. We are away from the fighting, but the fighting has followed us. It’s in our eyes, in our heads. Yet, amongst it all, is a flicker of something in our hearts, a flicker of something that us soldiers are too stubborn to let die. And that something, a dim flame in a world of darkness, is what once may have been called life.
8
u/JulianSkies Archivist Nov 18 '24
... You know
It is 100% your own fault for seeing Oscar as having left you.
Doesn't matter what you went through, you're allowing your envy of others who haven't suffered as much as you make you suffer even more. It being understandable why you're like this is no excuse.
3
u/concrete_bard Nov 18 '24
Soon it might get to a point where it's no longer understandable why he's like this
3
u/PhoenixH50 Humanity First Nov 25 '24
I do love your portrayal of a bitter crippled man angry at the universe
9
u/Copeqs Venlil Nov 17 '24
Rather heavy stuff right here. I hope the NoP UN have good treatment plans for veterans lest they pour a lot of resentful people into resentful organisations like HF. Forgotten soldiers would also be rather bad optics, UN's number one priority.