Shades of War: A Collection of Four Short Stories (7 page)

              "Yep, I'll go look at it. Show me the way."

              He followed Jones to the next floor. They were all lined up in the middle of the floor. There on the floor were a dozen bodies of North Korean soldiers. Each one had been shot cleanly through the forehead with one bullet. Stacked neatly on each body was a file.

              "Help me out, Jones. Can you read this stuff?"

              "Sure. One sec. Let me give some instructions to my guys."

              While Jones was gone, he pulled open a folder. It seemed to be a dossier on the soldier's life and career. He pulled another and started reading. Jones came back quickly and imitated the Captain.

              "Is that one a dossier too?"

              "Yeah, seems like it."

              Each file seemed to be a dossier on the life of each man, but labeled at the top of the dossier it said the same thing over and over.
Gwishin. What the hell?
, thought the Captain. Why would someone label all the dead mean as ghosts? Asians had very different views of ghosts, and they had so many different words to describe them. This word meant the spirit of the departed. Next to the bodies were several rows of tall filing cabinets. The Captain picked a drawer, ripped it open and started reading.

              The firing outside started to increase and men at the windows on the second floor started firing. Over the firing, Jones yelled at the Captain.

              "I have to go."

              The Captain didn't stop his reading.

              "Go. I'll finish this stuff up."

              With a firefight raging around him, the Captain kept reading. And the more he read the more scared he became. He wasn't scared of the bullets zipping into the building or the explosions slamming against the walls. It was what he read. The Koreans had known something about the effects of EMPs. They somehow knew what would happen to humanity because of those blasts.

              Humanity was going change. Over and over the Koreans used the same word
gwoemul
.
Gwoemul
, "monster" in English. The monsters were coming.

Chapter II

Ford was yelling the same thing over and over.

              "Cease Fire! Cease Fire!"             

And at the same time he was waving his hand across his face palm facing outward. It was the signal for cease fire.

              "Stop wasting ammo, dumb asses!"

              Ford worked his way around the first floor to all of his men. Amazingly they had repulsed the first attack with no casualties. He was just about to head upstairs, when the Captain came rushing down from upstairs.

              "Sergeant Ford, we have to talk."

              "Still busy, sir.”

              "I know, but this is important."

              Ford sighed. Leave it an officer to not understand priorities.

              "OK, just give me five. I have to make sure the upstairs is OK. Wait down here, will you?"

              "Sure."

              Ford went upstairs leaving the Captain standing on his own. All around him the guys on the first floor were piling up chairs and tables in the middle of the room. Seeing nothing else to do, the Captain started to help out. Grabbing an end of a table, he helped a soldier create a makeshift wall in the center of the first floor with it.

              "What are you guys doing?” he asked.

              "Since this whole first floor is just kind of open, Sergeant Ford thought it would be a good idea to kind of make a barricade over here by the stairwell."

              The Captain wasn't about to argue with Ford, or the soldier for that matter. When it came to combat, he was out of his element. Because of all the grit and grim covering the soldier he couldn't see a name or rank.

              "So, what's your name?" he asked, trying to be friendly.

              "O'Neil, sir. Private O'Neil."

              "Cool. I'm sure glad you guys showed up when you did."

              The soldier smiled.

              "No problem. We had nowhere else to go."

              "Well, I wasn't going anywhere."

              "Is it true you hid under those bodies all day?"

              "Yeah."

              "Wow, that must have fucking sucked."

              "I wouldn't want to do it again."

              "I have to ask, sir. Are we going to make it back to our own lines?"

              The question made the officer feel old. He did something every leader has done in every war since time immortal, he lied.

              "Sure, Ford seems pretty squared away. He'll figure something out."

              "Cool, sir."

              The officer and private split off and worked separately for a few more minutes until Ford came back down from upstairs. The Captain motioned for Ford to step away from where the soldiers were creating barricades.

              "All right, what is it?” Ford demanded.

              Cringing, the Captain made his request.

              "We need to hold this building."

              "What the hell are you talking about?"

              "We need to hold this place."

              "Why?"

              The Captain looked up at the floor above his head as he spoke.

              "The intelligence up there is a treasure trove."

              "Bullshit. We're going to wait for a bit and hope the slanties calm down and then we're slipping out the back door."

              The Captain hesitated. He didn't know what to do. He was out of his element. He dealt in languages, history, courses of action, plans and plots. Not the hard cold reality of combat. But here he had to convince a veteran to not only sacrifice himself but also his men along with him. With all the sincerity and honesty he could muster, the Captain tried to convince a man he just met to die in some random building that was worth nothing.

              "Sergeant, I technically outrank you, but I'm not going to play that game."

              "No shit, Sherlock. You're out of your league, sir. You wouldn't know what orders to give. And I'll be damned if I'm going to listen to some Intel puke get my men and I killed."

              The Captain played the only card he knew. He played the card of life.

              "Sergeant, if you guys go, I'm not going with you. I will stay here by myself dying to protect what's upstairs."

              That got Ford's attention. Eyes glaring his next words were more of hiss.

              "You better explain to me what's so damn important up there."

              The Captain got scared as he explained it to Ford.

              "This is going to get worse. It's all written in those files up stairs; thousands and thousands of pages. They wrote it all down as if they knew the power was going go out."

              Picking at a nasty scab on his face, Ford looked hard at the Captain.

              "What the hell is worse than this?"

              "Sergeant, those EMPs are going to change us. It lists a series of effects that will change humanity forever."

              "Change?"

              "Yeah, they call them ghosts and monsters."

              "This isn't a time to joke, sir."

              "I'm not joking."

              "Bullshit."

              "Do you know anything about North Korean psyche?"

              "No, just that they're right bastards."

              "Well I do. Their military doesn't have much imagination. If they state that something is going to happen, they believe it will."

              "They could be mistaken..."

              "No, here's the rub, Sergeant. Here is what scares me. Here is why I will die here. This wasn't some hypothesis on their part. They tested this shit. Those files upstairs are referring to tests, tests that had scarily positive results."

              "Fuck. You really believe it?"

              "Yes, I do."

              "Fuck."

              Ford sat there for a moment mulling things over. The Captain and Ford sat there in silence. The Captain didn't want to interrupt Ford's thinking. The longer Ford thought, the bleaker his face turned. As if before his eyes, Ford's face became gaunt and old. Finally Ford looked desperately at the Captain.

              "Do you have any idea what you're asking?"

              The Captain met Ford's eyes.

              "Yes, we have to hold this place until we can get the information back even if we die trying. If there are survivors to the south they will need this intel."

              Tiredly Ford rubbed both hands across his face.

              "OK, so how do we let people know where we are. This plan sucks unless we get word to someone."

              "I have an idea. Have you heard of a man named Chuikov or the 62nd?"

              "Who? What?"

              The Captain was not a combat officer. Aside from some basic combat skills he had practiced in ROTC, he had very little combat training. But the Captain was also a history geek and he knew a few things. He began to tell Sergeant Ford about a place that used to be called Stalingrad, a General named Chuikov and the 62nd. After spending a few minutes on the history lesson, the officer was honest with Ford.

              "Sergeant Ford, I have no idea how they did it. I'm not infantry. But the 62nd held out for months. Can you tell me how they did it? More importantly can you show me how they did it?"

              Ford's eyes had taken on a faraway look as if he was running a thousand scenarios through his mind.

              "Stalingrad, huh?"

              "Yep."

              "You want me to hold this place, sir? Are those your orders?"

              The Captain was shocked at Fords change in demeanor.

              "Yes, we have to hold this place."

              Ford's eyes met the officer's.

              "Oh, we'll hold this place, sir. This building is now ours. I'll make the Koreans hate this damn building once I'm done. This is now my Stalingrad."

Chapter III

The early morning had dropped a silence around the building. The sporadic firing of the last few hours had petered out. Nothing surrounded the building but darkness and silence. Even though it was two in the morning everyone knew the NKs were still out there waiting.

              Inside the building the red glow of shielded flashlights centered around one conversation. Jones was glaring with both Ford and the Captain. He was a very unhappy man. In reality none the men involved in the conversation were very happy.

              "No disrespect, but are you fucking kidding me?"

              The Captain decided not to answer his rhetorical question. Ford, who was leaning against the wall, also remained silent. Jones, who was still not any happier, looked over at Ford.

              "Sergeant, tell me you're not in on this with him? This idea sucks. And more specifically, this idea is going to get me killed."

              Ford had his head bowed, but when he spoke his voice was clear and solemn.

              "I don't know, Jonesy, you read those files. You tell me, you can read some Korean, is the Captain telling the truth?"

              Jones didn't answer the question immediately. Shifting his weight from foot to foot, he appeared to be thinking.

              "Yeah, I know what it says. But I didn't say I believe what the NKs wrote. Do you really believe that crap, sir?"

              The officer didn't hesitate.

              "I do. I already told the sergeant here that it’s worth staying here and dying for it. I'm the one that asked him to make the platoon stay here."

              "Shit."

              Ford spoke up again.

              "If we stay and hold this place someone has to go for help or it's all for shit."

              "Great. So you guys get to play Alamo while I try and Call of Duty my ass south dodging the entire North Korean Army. Thanks guys."

              Jones wasn't trying to hide his sarcasm.

              "So, why me?"

              Ford fielded the next question.

              "Because, you've been to Ranger School, you speak Korean, and to put it simply, I trust you the most to operate independently."