Darkest Before The Dawn

“Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.”

  Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now.

  There are at least four kinds of sweat, you figure, including the two you are suffering from now: the sweat from inescapable, soul sapping heat and the sweat from relentless terror; terror resulting from involvement in a conflict that you did not sign up for, but nonetheless have no choice to participate in.

  You crouch in the culvert, waiting for one of your men, who is scouting ahead. The street looks deserted and calm, but appearances can be deceptive; for all you know it could be a trap. So you crouch here, sweltering in the unforgiving sun, sweat banding around the crown of your hat.

  In your damp grasp is an antique M9 pistol from the 1970s. There are seven bullets in the clip; you know this because, the days of mass production being long past, every shell is precious. You don’t intend to waste them if you don’t have to.

  Of course, you would be happy to avoid conflict at all, but it seems in this desperate new world, it is inevitable; the less there is, the more people are fighting over it.

  Your squad consists of yourself and three others: Dom White is a nervous young man, held together by the weakest of threads. Possibly he might have been unconfident before the war, but there has been enough trauma to turn even the bravest men into candidates for the asylum. Intermittently he shakes; if post-traumatic stress disorder exists, then nearly everybody has it these days. To his credit, he wears the red armband on his left arm that marks him out as a soldier. In these days many would be content to cower in dark holes. Only these brave few dare to stand against the enemy.

  A trickle of a stream flows down the bottom of the culvert, but not deep enough to make you nervous. In the old days it would have been too dirty to risk drinking, but now, since the water went off, some might be desperate enough to try. But there are cleaner places, once you know where to look and you try to fill up from those.

  You moisten your mouth with a tiny sip from your canteen. You need to ration it until you can fill up again; in this heat it would be easy to gulp it down in no time at all.

  Your other companion in waiting is a man named Dean Scott. In his own way he is as eccentric as White. He wears cargo trousers with a tie-dye shirt, the kind that was popular in the 1990s. There are a number of pouches tied to his belt and he carries a large backpack on his back, full of the other essences of his calling. You can hear him talking under his breath now. You are never sure if he is talking to himself or to someone else unseen; you remember it happened a lot in the old days with those hands free mobile phones. While he waits, he sits, lying back against the culvert, eyes to the sky, smoking a tiny rollup, as though he were on relaxation time, rather than in the middle of a warzone. Mind you, here is comparatively quiet compared to the coast - no-one goes there anymore, unless they absolutely need to.

  You risk poking your head up onto street level, but there is no sign of the missing scout. Of the three, Luke Harding is the second youngest, but also the most dependable. Something about his easy going attitude to life has enabled him to take the horrors which the war has brought in his stride. He normally wears a dirty denim jacket and jeans (with the requisite red armband of course) and has long, slightly tangled brown hair. You wonder what he might have been before the war.

  Imagine a thousand sleepless nights, disturbed by terrors your mind cannot quite comprehend. You are so perpetually weary that none of this seems real; the mission could be happening or it might not. While you wait, you allow your mind to slip back in time, if only to escape the heat for a few seconds.

  The briefing was in a dark stone building with blackened walls. The stone was covered with hundreds of chalk marks, applied then rubbed out into a smudge. Here and there the process was incomplete and whole words remained legible, tantalising clues to other projects.

  Every now and then, children ran in and out of the room, in play. There are few places safe to hide, so there is no room for the luxury of a private briefing room that serves only one function. The children were ignored, even though they appeared as the mission was described.

  General Goddard is a tall, thin, pale man, prematurely grey and weary, life sucked from him by a multitude of difficult choices - he has been the one to send so many to their deaths in the scant hope of victory. Early in the conflict he lost a leg, rendering him incapable of volunteering himself in their place; no doubt this haunts him as much as anything else. He is not a real general. None of the military structure survives from the days before the war began. Now men are appointed to command when their actions or courage prove them to be leaders.

  You remember Goddard drawing a shape on the wall, like a tall pillar. Witnesses have seen this in the woods of your destination, in different locations amongst the trees. The enemy must be moving it around to some unknown or unknowable purpose. But what is suspected by the most brilliant thinkers still surviving, is that this object contains some kind of library. To capture it from the enemy would be a major step forward. To understand the enemy, determine his codes and his future plans might elevate the conflict just that little bit beyond the hopeless cause it currently is.

  Returning to the present, you wonder how many of your team will live through this mission. You have seen so many die or be crippled just by the processes of day to day living, once taken for granted, let alone a journey into the heart of enemy territory. It could only be worse if you were headed for the sea.

  You are just dwelling on how dry your mouth is and deliberating when you should next take a sip of water, when there is a flurry of activity. You raise your pistol with determination, but quickly see it is Harding returning. He slides down the slope to recline next to you, a small cloud of dust kicked up in his path. Holding his sawn off shotgun close, he smiles at you even as he regains his breath. He nods; the way ahead is clear. You do not know if this is good or bad.