Border

J opened the valve on the propane tank and lit its excretion with a match. The flame illuminated the still dark room with a soft bluish hue. He balanced the dented and flame-licked steel kettle on the grill above the tank and munched on a slice of brown bread while he waited for the water to boil. The room was still cold from the night and he stayed close to the petty flame and its meagre offering of warmth.

He ran a calloused hand across his chin. He should really shave. They were supposed to stay clean shaven at all times. All soldiers were, regardless of posting or circumstance — even if you were captured you were still expected to do your best to cut the hair off your face — but as he sat on that upturned fruit crate and looked at the bucket of brackish, icy water they had retrieved from the river two days earlier, the thought of shaving seemed like a ridiculous one.

K’s beard was longer than his own. At least two weeks longer. And he was technically in charge, so if it didn’t matter to him, then why should J give a fuck?

K stirred behind him, turning over in his cot, trying his best not to wake up. He wouldn’t bother even opening his eyes till the chicory coffee was ready, and then he would just lie there, semi-propped up against the wall until almost midday when he would go for a piss.

K farted in his semi-sleep. Its ferocity caused J to stop chewing and gag. Discarding the rest of his breakfast, he went to one of the open windows and stuck his head into the cold, fresh air outside. The sun was rising quickly in front of him, its rays were scurrying across the ground like squirrels searching for newly descended nuts. The far below ground looked frosty and uninviting. No invitation proffered, none needed — he wasn’t intending to leave the stone tower today. K seemed to have the right idea. J decided that after he had his hot mug of bitter water in his hands, he would wrap a heavy blanket around his shoulders and take to his bunk, maybe read a few pages of the novel he had already read thirty times. It was based in the far, far, very far future, in a human colony on Pluto. A book set in a world that is faced an invasion from a mysterious extra-solar alien race, while its main character also tried to solve the murder of a high-ranking government official. Of course it transpires that these two things were linked all along, and the doctor-cum-private detective protagonist figured it all out in the end and generally saved the day. Thirty times over. The book stopped being interesting to J after about the eleventh reading but had then got interesting again at the twenty-third reading. It was in the process of waning again, however, so he could only really manage a couple of pages a day before getting bored. K had never read it. J had never seen K read anything. He tried to get him to read it once, but K had inexplicably thrown the yellowed book out one of the windows where it landed in a pile of mud below. J had retrieved it and cleaned it off while cursing K’s name. They hadn’t spoken for four days after that, until K asked what the book was about, and J had told him the story in detail, start to finish, putting his own spin on some of the duller parts. After he had finished telling his sergeant the tale of the Plutonic intrigue, K rolled over and went to sleep without saying a word. They had never spoken about anything literary since. In fairness, the available discussion material was thin.

The kettle whistled. He turned off the gas, filled the pot with the ground chicory, left it for five minutes, then poured each of them a fair measure. To his surprise, K had gotten up — actually standing up, on his feet — and was standing expectantly above his ad hoc barista. J handed him his portion along with a slice of the bread and a jar of raspberry conserve which had basically been scraped clean.

K silently took his prize and went and stood by the window J had watched the sunrise from while he avoided the smell of the fart.

He farted again, back into the room. Nowhere for J to hide now.

‘Can you not, please?’

K took a long, slow sip from his steaming drink but otherwise kept his mouth shut. The crumbs from his food that he had hungrily and messily devoured that didn’t fall on the windowsill were catching in his nascent beard. He burped his pleasure.

‘Fuck this. I’m going on patrol.’ J scooped up the haversack they kept ready with two day’s supply and unlocked the rifle cabinet, choosing a carbine without really thinking about it. He picked a Bowie knife off the table by the door and looked at the cot he was not now going to spend the day lazing about in with a heaviness in his heart that should normally be reserved for lost love. But J had never been in love, let alone lost it, so his instincts in that respect were always misplaced.

‘There’s no patrol scheduled for today.’ K said, almost absentmindedly, his body still half turned towards the window. ‘Look in the book.’ It was true. The ‘book’, only had patrols scheduled every second day, but so what? K hadn’t even bothered going on his scheduled one yesterday, or lots of other patrols he was supposed to go on, for that matter. Surely going on an extra patrol was less court martial-able than missing them.

K would sometimes scribble in the logbook he kept under his pillow while looking over furtively and sneeringly in J’s direction. No doubt he was making up tales about what a shit, misbehaving conscript J was, as well as showering himself in the best possible light.

Whatever.

‘I saw something moving out there this morning.’ He lied. ‘Should really go check on out. The book allows it.’ It was true — the book did allow for discretion like that, if the suspicion was justified.

‘See if you can’t get us some proper food then’ A half-hearted permission was granted.

J pulled the wooden door behind him — which creaked in anger at its hinges being so misused and ill-treated — and carefully descended the bleakly lit spiral staircase to the ground.

…

He did the top button of his duffel coat and put on his fingerless gloves. He would much rather wear gloves with fingers, but they don’t issue gloves with fingers for riflemen — a rifleman needs his dexterity, even when it’s cold; especially when it’s cold.

He headed eastwards, into the face of the risen sun, making sure to keep his eye on the border. There was no one to stop them crossing the border, and they often did by accident – one-time K said he ended up in an abandoned village six miles over it, where he found some tinned ham about ten years past its edible date. J was suspicious of the tale, as there was no village on the map in that location, but he never pressed him on it; maps could be wrong, and so could memories…and so could too many questions be — but regulations said they could only cross the border in pursuit of hostiles, and only if the situation reasonably warranted such action.

The icy grass crunched satisfyingly beneath his steel-toed boots. He emerged from the treeline of the woodland that encased the tower and looked across the solid, sub-zero wasteland to the next treeline, about a mile away. He didn’t like being exposed like that – his training was in mountain and forest warfare (even some urban warfare when he first started); there were other conscripts trained at open environment combat — but he wanted to get as far away from K as he could that morning, so he tracked on, walking fast, warming his body, with his rifle slung across his shoulders.

When crossing an unfortified, unprotected or unknow area, a rifleman should always have his weapon at low-ready.

…

He spotted the hare before it spotted him. A rabbit would be better, more meat, more tender, easier to catch, but any fresh meat would be a welcome change to MRE’s and stale bread and biscuits. The animal was thin and looked pretty old, though the average age for hares was something about which J had no idea. It came bounding around a big oak tree that looked depressed in its nakedness, sniffing the air, curiously scratching the ground, trying to part the settled ice and expose the grass below. J was sitting against a tree, resting, contemplating whether he should push on or head back. Going onwards would almost certainly mean making camp somewhere, going back would mean seeing, and smelling, K — a night freezing his balls off under the stars seemed preferable.

He slowly reached for his rifle which was propped against the tree on his left side. The hare looked right at him and he froze, fingers only just touching the cold metal of the gun. But it didn’t run, it went back to finishing its frozen dinner. J had found his, it just didn’t know it yet. He unfroze and picked up the weapon. The carbine wasn’t ideal for hunting. Its sight was a small bevelled piece of metal one that popped out of the top of the muzzle, giving the squinting user an approximate idea of where the bullet would end up.

He waited till the animal was restful and chewing on some sward before he took the shot. The bullet took the top of its small long head clean off. He tied the animal by its legs to a piece of string and slung it over his shoulder. It was bony, he would barely get a bellyful out of it, but it would be all his — he wouldn’t have to share it with K.

A rifleman, especially one working in smaller units, should always be prepared with flint.

He fell asleep next to the fire. The bones of his meal were scattered around him. It hadn’t had much flavour, but his atrophying taste buds were still grateful for the experience. He slept deeply that night and dreamed of being on a boat in a vast warm ocean, with the breeze on his face. When he woke up it was lightly raining and the last of the fire’s embers had glowed themselves out of existence.

He headed east again, still into the sun. The landscape was opening up and beginning to slope slightly. His water flask was nearly empty; he needed to find a fresh water source. He knew from his study of local ordnance survey maps (one of the few things to actually do, bar reading his novel and staring at the walls) that there should be a fast-flowing stream not far up ahead, maybe two miles max.

He heard it before he saw it. Rushing along, echoing off the walls of the narrow, shallow valley he now found himself in. He filled up his flask, drank it all in one go, then filled it up again and put it back in his bag. It was cold and refreshing, pure, probably trickled and dripped through limestone for tens of thousands of years, at least. Water older than the oldest manmade structure in the whole world. So ancient, so alive.

J walked upriver along its bank for about a mile, tumbling once or twice on the uneven, pebbly ground. He needed to find a narrower crossing point. It was a fast-moving river more than a fast-moving stream, and it looked deeper than the maps had led him to believe. But he had to cross. Otherwise he would have to see K again and deal with his chamber music.

He finally came to a bend where the river both narrowed and slowed — a dogleg, really. It would have to do — he doubted he would find a better place to cross. It still looked deep. He would have to wade with his rifle held above his head.

All rifleman will be proficient swimmers at a minimum. No man shall be a liability to his brothers, regardless of circumstance.

He was soaked through and chilled to his core, but he was across. The water had come right up to his chin, much of it flowing into his mouth and nostrils at the swell, but he was across, and he still had all his things.

J removed his jacket — made three times heavier with the water — wrung it out, rolled it as small as he could and tied it to his haversack with a string. Once he got out of the valley, he would hang it on a branch to dry, along with his other clothes, but first he would make another fire.

It took him an hour to crest the valley. He had moved fast and kept his blood warm, which kept the chill at bay. Hypothermia was as liable to kill him as any hostiles were out here. He found a grove of trees, made a fire and undressed, taking care to spread the clothes out so that no part of them could escape being dried. He wrapped the cloak that had been kept dry in his waterproof backpack around his shivering shoulders and sat down on the warm ground by the edge of the fire. He must have crossed the border early that morning; the tower was barely visible to the naked eye anymore, far-off below and away, peaking through the bare treetops. He wondered if K was standing at that window, questioning where his dinner was.

Then J stopped wondering anything, laid his head on the ground and closed his eyes. He would need a nap — he had a lot of walking ahead of him.

A rifleman should have a minimum of six hours of sleep in a twenty-four-hour period. Eight hours if marching.