“Orders came through!” shouted the sergeant over the not-actually-distant thunder of artillery shells turning the ground into mud pies. “Seize the hill!”
“Aw hell,” said McClunksy, spitting theatrically. “Why we gotta?”
“Do it or you’re a buttmunch.”
“You take that back you son of a bitch!”
“Seize the hill or you’re a buttmunch. Buttmunch. Butt. Munch. Butty butty buttmunche-”
McClunksy snarled in fathomless rage and hate, snatched up his rifle, and began eeling his way up the hill, choosing each tuft of grass and clod of earth with care to block the sight of his round little helmet advancing upwards, towards the enemy.
“And that goes for the rest of you!” said the sergeant. “Stop trying to sneak off when I’m not looking. Peck! Dobson! Clarke! Get your rears in gears and go kill those dumbasses.”
“My leg’s tired and I peed myself,” whined Clarke.
“You can pee yourself when you’re dead! Get up that hill, you dope!”
“I’m NOT a dope!”
“PROVE it! Dobson, I just TOLD you to stop trying to sneak off when I’m not looking! Just for that, you can go first!”
“McClunksy went first.”
“Then you’re second. What are you, chicken?”
“I’m NOT chicken!”
“Prove it and get out there!”
And so, after much cajoling, threatening, taunting, and peer pressure, the squad started their journey into hell, because none of them wanted to be chicken, babies, or big fat losers.
Worse had been done for less cause.
***
“Throw the damned grenade, Peck!” roared the sergeant.
“My arm hurts.”
“It can hurt when it’s dead!”
“You’re ALWAYS telling me to do things when I’m dead!” pouted Peck. “I don’t wanna! Why not make Clarke throw the grenade?”
“Clarke’s pinned down under enemy fire, you get to throw the grenade and by every devil and demon in hell you are going to do that right now damnit!”
“Don’t wannnaaaaaaa-”
“CORPORAL PECK IF YOU START A TANTRUM RIGHT NOW IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ASSAULT I WILL PUT YOUR ASS OVER MY KNEE DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Peck turned his back to the sergeant and kicked viciously at a rolling fragment of what had once been a man.
“Look. Throw the grenade, and when we get back, you can have an extra MRE.”
Silence.
Then: “One of the beef ones?”
“Yes, one of the beef ones.”
“…okay. But just this once.”
“Good. Here’s the grenade.”
Peck wound up threw it and turned a gun emplacement and five men into a jumbled mess.
“Fuck yeah!”
“Language!”
“Eat shit!”
“LANGUAGE OR NO MRE!”
“Dickhead!”
“Acceptable!”
***
They attained the summit at long last, delayed by a vicious fight between Clarke and McClunsky over whether or not Spider-man or batman would be a bigger help right now.
“We’re here. Good job, men.”
“Uggh,” said Clarke, bellyflopping.
“Tiiired,” whined Peck, sprawled out like a beached seal.
“Are we done?” yawned McClunsky. “I wanna go home now.”
“We have to hold it first. C’mon. Peck, you’re on sniper duty; McClunsky, unship the flamethrower.”
“Oh boy!”
Clarke frowned. “McClunsky ALWAYS gets the flamethrower. Why can’t I have the flamethrower?”
“Knock it off, Clarke – you know damned well the flamethrower’s McClunsky’s responsibility.”
“Why does HE get to be responsible! I’m responsible!”
“Yeah you are. You’re responsible for the first aid supplies.”
“Those are boring stuff for GIRLS,” said Clarke, stomping his feet. “I want to use the flamethrower! McClunsky never shares the flamethrower, and you said sharing is good! He’s being a selfish asshole!”
“Language, Clarke! Don’t you dare talk about your squadmate that way. LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU. Thank you. Now you stop giving me sass and you apologiz – look, never mind. Just stop trying to take McClunsky’s stuff. How would you feel if we took your stuff?”
“Good. Bandaids are stupid.”
“They aren’t bandaids, Clarke.”
***
The counter-attack was fierce and furious.
“Woooo!” shouted McClunsky cheerfully, piping molten death into the faces of his fellow humans. “Eat it! Hahahah! Owned, bitches! Owned! Owned! Owned! Noobs!”
“Language, McClunsky,” said the sergeant. “Peck, there’s one downslop-”
“I KNOW, okay? Stop telling me what to do!”
“I’m just making sure you do it right.”
“You don’t trust me! You never trust me! You don’t trust anyone but McClunsky because he’s your favorite!”
“I don’t have favorites, I love you all equally.”
“You’re lying!”
There was a little ‘spang’ sound and a bullet smacked into the sergeant’s backpack.
“Peck? Do your chores.”
“Ugh. Fine. This is abuse.”
“All done!” shouted McClunsky brightly from downslope.
Then a shell hit him and he went away.
***
The lieutenant looked like a visitor from some strange other world, picking his way through the smoke and smouldering ashes and burnt metal. A heron wading through the reeds.
“Sergeant. Well done. Victory is ours, and your men deserve congratulations for their part in it.”
“Not all of them, sir. McClunsky is gone.”
The lieutenant followed the sergeant’s pointing finger to the physical evidence that was all that remained of McClunsky’s mortal presence on this earth and threw up a little in his mouth.
“I can’t….I can’t believe he’s gone!” he gasped out, once the retching was done. “He was going to go home, start a family-”
“Asked him yesterday, sir; he still thought kissing was gross.”
“-go home, rejoin his family. And now he’s just been turned into a meat crater by some half-awake dork at a little console miles away. What kind of death is that?”
The sergeant shook his grizzled, pube-chinned thirteen-year-old head. “It’s the kind we’re given, sir. War is a young man’s game.”