The town had seen better days. It had also seen better weeks, months, and centuries. Still, when stacked up against its fellows of the past few weeks, the last minute or so had been pretty good. Oh, some hundreds of men had died within its sixty-second boundaries, but most of them had been relatively clean and painless. Or maybe just painless. Well, at least that special sort of painlessness where the pain was actually incredibly intense but over inside a nanosecond.
There was a man running between the snowy buildings, dodging and weaving through its less glamorous streets. Not the red light district, oh no, nothing so dramatic, merely all the unfashionable neighbourhoods that had been beset with precisely the wrong sort of stores for convenient living. The man himself was thin and ragged and wearing some sort of torn thing that had probably once been a uniform (a little American flag had been sewn into part of it, but an exciting explosion had long ago removed that). A beaten and abused rifle swung from his hand with monkeylike carelessness, held in exactly the wrong manner for easy and quick defence.
With a heave, a jump, and an accidentally-falling-on-his-face, the soldier stumbled his way to a specific ruin that had once been a rather ugly house. There he looked hopefully at two equally thin, ragged, and abused men.
“Am I too late?”
The most bearded of the three frowned. The shape and style of the thing on his head that had once been a helmet marked him as probably German. “Yes,” he said in an accent so thick that it was completely indescribable, “you are too late. Over half an hour – what if we’d had to wait much longer? We’d have had to shoot each other or something. There’s a war here that we’re busy losing.”
“I thought you were losing,” said the other man, who the others had a sneaking suspicion was British. He’d once expressed a fondness for tea that they found most telling.
“Nonsense. We are all infantry, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Naturally.”
“Then we are all losing,” said the German with satisfaction. “Now, shall we begin the game?”
“Which game?” asked the British man.
“You know, the one game,” said the American. “You pass Go and then collect money. I’m the Iron.”
“I prefer the steamship myself,” said the British man. “Lovely little boat. My father was a steamship captain, you know.”
“No,” said the German crossly. “The other game. You know, the one with three parts and three people.”
“Oh, that one,” said the American. “Yeah, let’s do that one. Count of three then?”
“Yes.”
All three men sat down, chucked their various broken and beaten tools of violence aside, held out their hands, and pumped them as one to a steady beat: “one, two, three!”
“Scissors!” said the American.
“Rock!” said the German.
“Paper?” said the British man. “Yes, that’s that. Sorry. Forgot for a moment.” He peered around the little triangle. “Oh, did somebody win?”
“No,” said the German. “No one ever wins. We have all lost once again. Why must even our games reflect our pointlessness?”
“Speak for yourself,” said the American. “I beat the limey here, and that’s good enough for me.”
“But we’re on the same side,” protested the British man.
“Yes, and that makes it all the more important. I’ve got to beat you to beating up him, or how else will I look myself in the mirror?”
“But I beat up him while you were beating up me.”
“Aha, and I beat you up myself,” said the German. “You had best watch your step, or in beating your allies you may yet be beaten up by me!”
“Really?” asked the American. A sudden and inexplicable fear had seized upon his heart and he knew not why.
“No, not really,” said the German. “I think I am pretty much screwed. But I will not go down quietly!”
“Howso?”
The German looked from side to side. He looked up and down. He looked from north-north-east to south-south-west. He spun in a little circle and then sat down again before beckoning them closer.
“You see, I have a secret weapon,” he whispered.
“Gosh,” said the British man.
“Yes! Very secret. Very powerful. Newly developed with local materials, very hush-hush. It was so obvious, even our greatest minds didn’t realize it until just within the month.”
“I want to see this,” said the American.
“You’re the enemy, don’t be silly. You will see it when we use it on you.”
“But I want to see it now.”
“Yes, show us your secret weapon!” said the British man. “We promise not to tell anyone. Go on, show us!”
“Oh all right. But only because you asked so nicely.” The German man glanced about conspiratorially, then reached into his pack and rooted around for a moment. With a grunt of exertion, he extracted an unrounded and irregular object.
“There! Is it not beautiful?”
“It’s a brick,” said the American.
“Three-quarters of a brick,” said the British man helpfully. “That’s a whole lot more than a half-brick, and those are pretty dangerous, let me tell you. Top drawer!”
“It’s a regular brick,” said the American. “There’s buckets of them everywhere!”
“That is the brilliance!” reminded the German. “Infinite ammunition! You had best surrender while you still have the chance.”
“That’s stupid,” said the American. “Anyways, I’ve got a secret weapon too.”
“Show us, show us, please do show us,” begged the British man.
“No, don’t be silly. I’ve got to use it on his commanding officer,” he said, pointing at the German. “It’s too secret to be wasted on showing it to you guys.”
“Come now, don’t be a poor sport,” begged the British man. “How about a bet? If you lose the next match, you have to show us your secret weapon. Come now, don’t be yellow.”
The American considered this. “Sure. I don’t lose.”
“You just lost two minutes ago, with the rest of us,” reminded the German.
“Yeah, but I lost with scissors, and you guys lost with rocks and paper. That doesn’t count.”
One, two three went their fists.
“Scissors!” said the American.
“Rock!” said the German.
“Paper, I suppose,” said the British man. “Now then, what was this about the secret weapon?”
“I just told you, losing with scissors doesn’t count. No way am I showing you.”
“I happen to have, in my satchel here,” said the British man, “a packet of biscuits sent to me from my dear old mother. I will trade you one biscuit for a look at your secret weapon.”
“Well, I dunno…”
“And I’ll show you mine too.”
“Deal!” The American rooted about in his backpack with genuine enthusiasm, then hauled out an object indescribable.
“Feast your eyes on this, fellahs,” he said. “It’s got a calibre of forty-five-forty-eight and it’s breech-reverse-loading-reversable, with a backup backup grip for extra precision during naps. I can fire this baby backwards, forwards, and while sleeping, and at ninety-nine per something without even having to reload for a real good while!”
“What is it? It is a bomb? A toy tank?” asked the German.
“Perhaps it’s a battleship someone trod upon,” suggested the British man.
“Not important,” said the American. “Sure is swell, isn’t it? You don’t stand a chance.”
“Absolutely,” said the German. “Is it a gun?”
“Who the hell knows? Now, limey, you said something about your own secret weapon…”
“Oh yes,” said the British man. “Quite right, thank you, nearly forgot. Hold on a tic…” He removed his helmet and began to sort through its insides.
“Best place to keep things you don’t want found,” he confided. “Everybody searches your kit, sure, but they keep out of your hair quite nicely. Oh, I’d best get you that biscuit while I’m looking….wherever did they go?”
“They are in your hair,” said the German.
“Oh? Oh. Thanks there, had no idea. Want one still?”
“No thanks,” said the American.
“Your loss then – aha, here we go!” An extraordinary bulk of cloth was yanked out of the helmet’s lining. “Kept it secret down there…lads, meet the next step in warfare: standardized woolly socks!”
“Those are socks?” asked the German.
“Of course they’re socks. What else could they be?”
“They look sorta like old towels,” suggested the American.
“Discarded and ill-fitted mittens,” added the German.
“Old rags.”
“Stained underpants.”
“I’ll have you lot know that these are the tactical evolution of comfort and warmth in frozen climes,” said the British man. “I’m twice as comfy as both of you put together as long as I’ve got these on.”
“Then why not put ‘em on?”
“It’s too soon.”
“There’s snow on the ground and the wind’s freezing everyone’s nuts off, just put them on.”
“They keep my ears warm up here. I can’t waste that.”
“My best friend lost three of his toes to frostbite last night. Put them on.”
“Not in front of everyone, surely!”
“Three toes? Geez, that’s hard.”
“Not especially. First meat we had eaten in months. A little bit chewy, but succulent.”
“Really? You tried rats? Me ‘n Stinky Joe caught a big fat one last night, had some real meat on it, especially around the thighs.”
“Sounds like a girl I knew back home,” observed the British man. “Terrible temper, ugly face, but a lovely cook. Pity she ate everything she made herself.”
“Look, this’s getting us nowhere,” said the American. “We’ve got three counts of treason and the smell of limey’s socks here for our troubles. One more round and then we head home?”
“So soon?” said the German. “What if we are shot tomorrow? We may never get another chance to play the game.”
“You say that every time,” said the British man. “I think you’re just gloomy.”
“I am losing this war.”
“Thought you said we were all losing it,” said the American.
“Yes,” said the German. “But I am losing it slightly harder and faster than the rest of you. And I am also out of ammunition; I shot the last of it against your barricade on Sunday.”
“So am I,” said the British man. “Lovely day for it, though. Too nice out to spoil it with shooting at people.”
“It’s nine below and the sky’s greyer than my granddad,” said the American, who was sure he had bullets left. Somewhere. In his locker for sure. “You have a strange way of pronouncing ‘lousy.’”
“Well, it could be worse, you know. Times like this you should be grateful for what you have.”
“Yes,” said the German. “I am grateful for my brick. I am also grateful for my skin, which has only three bullet holes in it, all too small to be lethal.”
“I’m awfully grateful for my woolly socks. Or maybe it’s a scarf. Also, these biscuits are simply delicious. Sure you don’t want one?”
“No.”
“No.” The American thought for a minute. “I’m grateful for my still being alive. Hey, my best friend got shot last week, but I’m still here. And then my other pal got shot the day after, but I’m still here. And I got shot yesterday but all it did was sink a bullet into my secret weapon so the damned thing won’t start up, and I’m still here.”
“That’s the spirit!” said the British man. “Now, I’d best head back to base before someone charges me with desertion again.”
“We just shoot them now,” said the German. “And the last few, we haven’t even bothered that. The snow does the job for us.”
“Come back with us,” offered the American. “We can take you prisoner or something. Hey, I’ve always wanted to take someone prisoner.”
The German shook his head. “I don’t think so. I still have to try out my brick. Maybe next time.”
“Can’t say I didn’t give you a fair chance. Scissors!”
“Rock!”
“Paper! Oh dear, wait, I picked scissors. I meant paper though, does that count?”
“Why not?” said the American. “Now, let’s get the hell out of this dump before one of us decides to shell it. Merry Christmas, guys.”
“The same to you both.”
“And a jolly New Year!”
The three men hopped the broken-down pieces of the house in three different directions and trudged back to their respective not-homes-away-from-home as it started to snow again.
By strange coincidence, each had just come within sight of their fortifications when they recalled that they had completely forgotten to get the others any presents.