Lately, I’ve been reading about army ants.

There’s a phenomenon with them, I’ve learned, where they misinterpret a pheromone trail and accidentally start walking in circles. If too many other ants start following this confused ant’s trail, the pheromone trail gets stronger, and eventually you end up with a huge spiral of ants, sometimes the size of the entire colony, walking in endless circles until they all keel over in exhaustion. Army ants are blind, so the pheromone trails are their only way of figuring out where they’re supposed to be. When that fails them, they’ve got nothing. It’s their only lifeline.

This leads me to two places.

One: do the ants ever realize what’s gone wrong, as they go around and around? Does the fear of being lost keep them in line, even to their ultimate end?

Two: do the other animals, when they come to a clearing in the forest and see a vast spiral of crumpled-up ant shells—do they know what happened there?

Do they know who to blame?

0 0 0

We’d tracked the operative to the strip of pavement behind a K-Mart—the little pseudo-street behind all the department stores, where the trucks park. She was, by my best guess, crouching behind the set of concrete steps that led up to one of the building’s back doors; clutching a small bent object in her hands, something with a hole in the front—a gun, surely. Between us was a parked semi-trailer, but the woman could have theoretically put the gun out close to the ground and shot at our legs from around the steps if she wanted to.

It would’ve been a mostly blind shot, however, and making blind shots at a metallurgic is generally not advised.

“She’s got a gun,” I whispered to Cygnus.

“Man,” he said, back against the wall, staring down the row at the set of concrete stairs she was supposedly behind, “I couldn’t even feel that yet. And that’s supposed to be my shit.”

“I’m not doing all that much else,” I said. I could only give him half my attention. Keeping track of all the objects in the area—every little thing someone could hide behind, the slow breath of the target, all the entrances and exits to the strip, the condensation dripping off the exhaust pipes on the single truck parked at the end of the row—it was more than enough to keep my fully occupied.

Cygnus didn’t reply. He inched forward, slowly along the wall, until he made a little affirmatory noise. “I got it.”

“Now?” I asked him.

He pursed his lips, and clenched his left hand.

Something from behind the concrete steps screeched and snapped hard and the woman cried out, involuntarily—her breathing went from shallow and measured to a panicked heavy. Her hand, now a shapeless, semi-round mass, hit the pavement with a heavy thwack. I wasn’t entirely sure what Cygnus was going to do when I asked him, but that was more than good enough.

“Does she have a key?” I whispered to him—not that she’d be able to hear us over the sound of her own pain.

Cygnus frowned, then said, “No. Just a gun.”

That was relatively common among enemy combatants now. Only one in maybe five or so had access to real magic, and even fewer had anything approaching what Cygnus or I would call “powerful.” None of them were even within orbit of me or Bell.

Unit 2’s stellar drafting was paying dividends yet again.

“Let’s move in,” Cygnus said.

“Right.”

We stepped away from the wall, followed the truck’s outline around, and emerged in eyeshot of the woman from a distance of around twenty-five feet—more than enough to react cleanly to anything she might try to do.

Cygnus walked a touch faster than me, just to get ahead. With a better vantage now—and less I needed to pay attention to, now that we’d de-escalated the situation—I could better focus on the bleeding ball of shrapnel that the woman had instead of a right hand. Cygnus had bent the gun backwards in her grip, fusing it around in a circle without regard for the soft, fleshy bits curled around the trigger.

No amount of surgery would be able to save that. I wasn’t even sure Bell could do it.

The woman, gritting her teeth to keep from making any more sound, held the metal-fused hand in her left, squeezing it as if that would make it hurt less. She forced air through her nose hard, in and out, and watched us approach without a word.

“Yo,” Cygnus said, waving. “Need a hand?”

I personally wasn’t a fan of kicking combatants when they were down, but I also wasn’t about to make us look conflicted in front of an enemy, even if there wasn’t a snowball’s chance this woman was making out of this place alive.

That said, if I had to make a list of worst places to die, “behind a K-Mart” is probably up there, maybe topped only by “a K-Mart parking lot.” At least the employees would see the scene if you got murdered inside one; plus, by this point you probably had to actively seek out a K-Mart to die at.

I snickered a bit, despite myself, and to his credit Cygnus did exactly the same thing I did just a moment previously and ignored the sound, despite the sequence of events making it look like we were reacting to each other and that neither of us cared.

Maybe it was better that way.

The woman didn’t react to any of that. Judging the heights of crouching people is fairly tough to do by shape alone, but I did my best and pinned her at around five-five. She was wearing a soft t-shirt and exercise shorts that she may or may not have bought at the K-Mart immediately prior to us ambushing her. Aside from the fresh bloodstains and the sweat, the spots glowing warm in my perception like embers all over her, both of those garments seemed fairly new.

There’s a lesson here, I think.

“Are you a part of a platoon?” Cygnus asked her.

She kept her mouth pursed and said nothing.

“A company?”

“You’re going to kill me no matter what I say,” she grunted, voice slow and forced even over the pain. “So why the fuck should I bother telling you anything.”

“Well—if you tell us you’re a part of a group, I’ll pull the gun off your hand. How about that?”

“You think I’m retarded or something?”

I grimaced.

“I mean, a little. Figured it was worth a shot, seeing as I lost nothing from trying.”

Cygnus glanced down at me for half a second, then turned back to her. “And watch your language.”

“Who the hell cares?”

“Some ways to die are far more painful than others. All I’m saying is that this is entirely your choice.”

“I’ll be dead either way.”

“What time is it?” Cygnus asked me.

I froze up for a second. He recovered pretty quickly from the slip-up—how was I supposed to tell the time in my predicament—and said, “Well, it’s eleven PM. We’re not supposed to report in for another two hours, so that’s a good—what, how long do you think it’ll take for us to get back to the check-in spot?”

I’d already made up my mind about this, and despite my earlier decision to not question Cygnus’s methods, I pushed.

“Anywhere between one second and an hour-fifty-nine,” I said. “Can we speed this up? She’s obviously not going to talk.”

“Thank you,” the woman wheezed.

“You say that now,” Cygnus said.

“I’ll say that later, too,” I said.

“It’s a rhetorical statement.”

“Just do whatever you’re going to do,” I said. “I don’t care. I’ll keep watch.”

I turned around and faced the thin woods that separated us from the swamp behind the development. The swamp was moist enough for me to draw some water out of if I needed it, but Cygnus had this more than under control, so I didn’t feel the need to be ready.

I sat cross-legged on the cool pavement and let myself feel everything.

Behind me, the woman said, “How old is she? Sixteen?”

“Fourteen,” Cygnus replied, terse.

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

Under the leaf litter, in the fifty-degree water, there wasn’t much in the way of life. On a micro level it reminded me of something in the great northern tundras—to an amoeba or a tadpole, an endless expanse of near-frozen waste.

I let myself be distracted by it. I had a whole system for this now—a loose cloud of droplets on either end of the strip mall that I’d feel if something passed through, a gentle fog over the swamp from the other direction, and another one directly above us. That covered all the angles with minimal effort on my end. I could search for tadpoles now and nothing could possibly hurt us.

We were safe and invincible and there was nothing at all that woman could do to stop what was coming.

“Lots of things,” Cygnus said. “What’s your point?”

“I mean, I’ve heard all about you two,” she said. “I’ve heard the rumors. It’s weird that you two would get sent after someone who literally doesn’t mean anything like me, but whatever. I’m not going to pretend to understand what goes on in Prochazka’s head. Dude’s a fucking wackjob.”

“If he had a list of everyone who’s called him a wackjob twice, he’d have a blank piece of paper,” Cygnus said.

“Yeah, because he just shoots everyone who dissents,” she said.

“That was the joke, yeah.”

“If we’re calling it one, sure.”

“You’re awfully comfortable now.”

“You’d be surprised how fast you come to terms with hopelessness. I’m already dead, right? Least I can do is make small talk.”

Cygnus rolled his eyes. “Sure. Why not.”

“I’ve heard all the rumors,” she said, again. “All kinds of stories about you Unit 6 people. And, like—I remember the superiors telling us all this shit and me just going, “Oh, this is just war propaganda, you know, they do this on both sides in every war, whatever, they’re probably not actually that bad,” and—you know what? Normally they’ve got to doctor the truth a bit but I think they just read off a laundry list of shit you two have actually done.”

“It’s possible,” Cygnus said.

“No, seriously,” she said. Her voice was stronger now—she’d gotten Cygnus invested in whatever it was she was spinning.

I’d found a tadpole, and I was following it though the water by the vibrations it made with its tail.

She went on. “They told me y’all were evil incarnate and that Prochazka was a commie and, like, that’s all actual, true facts. For fuck’s sake, I was alone and basically unarmed and you froze this gun to my hand for shits and giggles and then walked over here and made fun of me. Like, c’mon, guys.”

Cygnus rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

“And Erika froze up when you asked her for the time like you’d told her that her parents were dead. So I guess all that stuff’s true, too, right?”

What do tadpoles eat? Do they just chase after bugs that fall in the water, or do they eat plants? I was pretty sure I’d read about that at some point but I’d long since forgotten.

“Like—what’s she even doing over there?”

How long do tadpoles bumble around before they’re frogs?

“Did you tell her she doesn’t get to kill me so she’s just…sitting there? Like that’s all there is?”

“You know—”

“I certainly do, don’t I?” she said, again. Slowly, she got to her feet—somehow, although in hindsight only her hand was messed up so it wasn’t quite as impressive as I thought—“God. If Prochazka’s plan is to win the hearts and minds, he’s doing a pretty shit job if he’s sending a—"

I didn’t even really think about the icicle I shot backward, without even turning to face her, square into the center of her forehead. I certainly didn’t think about it enough to make sure it was sharp enough to pierce her skin, but I did shoot it with more than adequate force, since it slammed her head into the edge of a concrete step so hard that the resulting impact of her skull on the pavement smashed her open like an egg.

“You know,” Cygnus said, after a second. Regarding the wreckage without a change in expression. “I was probably going to do that once she got to the second half.”

“I know,” I said. “Do you feel robbed?”

He regarded the wreckage—the skull fragments and the wet spray spread wide in a fan across the steps—without a change in expression. “Not really.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

Cygnus grimaced, shoved his hands in his pockets. Turned away. “Sure.”

We set off back the way we came. On our way out, I told him about the tadpoles, but it was obvious even to me that he wasn’t really listening, so after a few moments of talking to myself I let it taper off.

It didn’t matter, anyway.

0 0 0

I never really thought of myself as a solider. I was, but I wasn’t. It follows, then, that I don’t really think of these as war stories. They are, but they aren’t.

A war story isn’t the same for me as it would be for someone else. I think, for essentially every anecdote I’m planning to share, that I could give you the first few lines, trail off, and say “You had to be there,” and get about as much meaning across as I would have if I finished.

If I was a solider, who was my company? Unit 6? We were rarely ever all together; some company that would be.

If I was a solider, who was my general? Prochazka? I made too many of my own decisions, made too many judgement calls on the fly. Prochazka’s orders only went so far and only covered so much; some general he was.

If I was a solider, where was my gun? I was the gun.

If this was a war, and if I was a solider, then why were there only a thousand combatants, total, on all sides? It was a spat, it was a street fight, a bickering between gangs. A war is supposed to be grand. Countries, lives, generations on the line.

And sure, they were—but they also weren’t.

I’m older now. I suppose I classify as a veteran, if what I fought in was a war; but I’m not allowed to get any benefits. I can’t go to a veteran’s hospital. I can’t get a military pension; there’s no such thing for people like me. I don’t get to share my story when we’re all crouched around the campfire.

I can’t even rent a car.

War stories are supposed to be like war itself—they’re supposed to be grand, to reflect the size and scope; they’re supposed to be brutal, to reflect the deaths and tragedies; they’re supposed to be moving, to reflect the dreams and the force behind every action.

I don’t think I have that. If I did, I don’t remember now. What I do have is all these anecdotes about this big grand thing we did. All this half-baked nonsense where we did things nobody else could do for people nobody should be, in places nobody should go, in ways nobody should fathom, for purposes nobody should ever describe.

If that doesn’t make me a soldier, I don’t know what would.

Oh well. I suppose you just had to be there.