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WALLS
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I wrote this in 1992. It is 1025 words. I'm never going to do anything with it, so i thought I would inflict it upon you.
Walls
By
Michael R. Gibbons
Langford was about to snap
We'd been assigned to walk our section of Wall, but had stopped in the lee of a tower an hour before to get out of the wind and have a smoke. We had never continued on.
"Major's fucking crazy, ask me." Langford crushed a butt under his heel, dug a fresh smoke from his pack. "'Walk the fucking Wall. walk. walk.' What the fuck are we guarding against? That?"
He flung his arm out. Sparks jumped into the wind from the tip of his cigarette. Reluctant to look upon it again, I did not follow his gesture with my eyes.
"What're we going to do if we're attacked? Shoot it with these?" He raised his rifle. "Fuck that."
I looked down at the wasted land, inhaled some smoke.
"You listening to me, Corporal?"
"I'm listening."
"Well, listen up good. Back in the world, I'm an electrical engineer. Know what that is?"
"Careful."
"Got a kid too. Talking already. Never seen the little bastard." He finished his cigarette in one long, shaky drag. "But here I'm nothing. A morsel at the feet of the beast. Look at it. Look at it. It wants something..."
Looked at it then. Churning Wall of black chaos off in the distance, parallel to the insignificant stone ribbon upon which we stood.
"Lets move," I shouldered my rifle, stepped into the wind. Langford lit another cigarette, then ran to catch up.
We walked in silence, I hunched my shoulders and leaned into the wind. Had a question. Didn't want to ask.
I stopped and looked at the private.
"Langford, what do you think it wants?"
He smiled.
"You been having the dreams, Corporal?"
"Answer me."
"It's hungry. I think it wants to eat."
#
It happened during dinner.
I sat alone near the back of the mess hall, eating without thinking, when Langford stood up.
"You don't know you little fuck." His voice was loud and frantic. He pointed at one of the new guys across from him. "You don't know shit about shit, I been here-"
"Sit down Langford and shut up!" The Sergeant stood holding a dripping fork, eyes narrow and mean.
The first shot took him in the chest; he flew back; a trailing arc of blood leapt from his mouth. The fork spun into the air.
I ducked.
Langford swept the room with his weapon. Rifle-fire and screams drowned out the ever-present sound of wind. My table shattered. Burning debris rained down upon me. I waited for my own weapon to power up.
"You fucks! all of you f-"
I stood.
Langford neared the end of his sweep. He caught sight of me, tried to bring his rifle to bear, but by the time the muzzle came around he was jerking from the impact of my discharge.
And it was over.
Silence.
Wind.
"Make a count!" I backed against the wall. Timmons a seasoned private moved about the room, checking the fallen.
"Twelve dead, Corporal."
"Wounded?"
"None."
"Sweet Christ..."
I took a breath and lowered my rifle, stepped over the fragmented table and went to where the Sergeant lay.
He was on his back, face and chest gone, their vacancy filled with a red hole. The fork lay on the floor next him.
I picked it up.
It was smeared with gravy and all the tines were bent.
Crazy.
I tossed the fork down onto the Sergeant's ruined chest.
Inhale.
Exhale.
"What're you waiting for? Bag 'em." I shouldered my rifle and turned away from the others, "I'll be in the Comm shed. Stack them near the east tower, someone come and report when it's done."
Into the wind.
* * *
That night I rolled and twisted, caught in the noose of dreams.
I stood on the Wall, looking at the boiling black barrier in the distance. Someone was with me. Langford or the Sergeant, maybe both.
Immobilized I was forced to gaze upon the malignant curtain. The Sergeant called to me, I turned to look at him.
He stood there, chest a gory pit, remains of his head and neck lolling against his left shoulder. I waited for him to speak again, but he only gurgled up some blood and raised his greasy fork in salute.
He became Langford, holding a mess tray, and smiling.
"Hungry?" he said.
I awoke to the sound of weapon's fire, pulled my boots on and dashed out to the Wall.
Others were already on the Wall. Timmons looked through a pair of binoculars. Down the wall, a mile to the north, I saw a flashing burst of gun fire atop one of the towers.
"What're they shooting at?"
"Couldn't tell you," Timmons said.
I snatched away the binoculars and looked for my self. but by then, the bursts were sporadic; within seconds, they stopped altogether.
"Shit." I shoved the binoculars back at Timmons.
"The Wall! The Wall!"
I turned my head and saw that the rippling doom had moved closer, was almost upon us. I looked at the others, who were all looking at each other, and looking at me.
The bastards thought I was crazy; I could see it then. They always had.
My arms ached to cradle my rifle. It was time. Time to-
They must have read it in my eyes. The way I moved. I leapt for cover.
Timmon's dropped the binoculars and fumbled with his rifle. One of the others wasted him before he could raise it. A lanky kid, from some back country shithole, began laying down fire at chest level.
Screaming.
"Jesus Jesus Christ"
"Die!Die!Die!"
"Bastards-"
I took a hits in the shoulder and gut. The churning black fence of doom rolled over us, shattering the stone battlements. Breaking the world.
I hung in seething black air, then fell through it, followed by twisting liquid threads of my own blood.
Impact.
Absence of sensation.
I lay there, aware, among the bodies and wreckage, and watched the hungry black curtain dance away- towards the garrison town in the west.
So hungry.
I was so hungry.
Darkness swept in from the edges of the world and took me home.
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