Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Sentinel ❯ One-Shot

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

The enemy wears many disguises. Rated somewhere between T and Y, depending on your tolerance for blood.
Written several years ago, never got around to posting. Be gentle.

Miscellaneous: Original Stories Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi | Type: One Shot | Uploaded On: 09.22.2008 | Updated On: 09.22.2008 | Pages: 1 | Words: 1.3K | Visits: 275 | Status: Completed

Sentinel
Original Characters/story

It was a cold night in the fifth month of winter, the snow falling gently outside, layer after layer creating a white, void world where the barest of sounds fled discernment. I was in my guard shack, watching a roach flit about between where the wall ended and the floor began, munching away at what he could find, I at the same task, endlessly nursing a mug of hot, steaming brounuchi, thinking about the warm days past that seemed like they would never come again. Watching the roach.

The shack was a box of cold and quiet, the grey worn planks of birch collecting the vacuum from outside and amplifying it - making the air shake with the oppressive weight of nothing. The fire in the small metal heat box had long since died a painful, soundless death and the only thing warm on my body were the tips of my fingers clutching the precious mug. The breath in my lungs curled across my chin, my eyes, and the roach didn't seem to mind, exploring his way through the cold, through the bits of flotsam that the years had collected along the crevice that was his world.
And I at my guard post. The length and breadth of my world.

It was on this day, much like the others in this cold, heartless, never-ending winter that my solace was broken - the door nearly broken off its hinges by a mad, disheveled man, wet with snow, his eyes wild with an insane fever. His hair matched his countenance, and I could tell by his mashed hat, his weather assaulted uniform, that he was one of our boys. So far from the battle field? And now home.

Through his blued lips, his touretically chattering teeth, he tried to speak. I jumped from my chair, brounuchi and roach forgotten - though not the winter - and pulled him inside, the snow shown the door and banished once more. I bade him sit without much of a struggle - he was more icicle than man, more maniac than soldier. The look in his eyes that he fixed on me spoke of battles hard, horrors unspeakable, a gut wrenching terror of close gore and evisceration.

"All gone." The words crept out and I realized that he stared not at me but through me, at a landscape whereupon he still stood, rockets crashing, bodies exploding, glories won and struggles lost.

"Gone? What's gone? Are the Pychinthians being pushed back?" The roach held his insectoid breath, lest he blow away the man's words with a sigh.

"No." And NOW he gazed at me, a brain full of ghouls and war scenes and blood, the like of which came seeping out his mouth. "No, our boys... at Tyremski... the Field ...ield" the sanguineous fluid choked off his report. "Field Shield gone. gone? ...gone." And into his bland lipid eyes inched a piecing together, a realization that I did not quite grasp and wasn't sure I wished to. The black knowledge of it burst from his mouth in sobs lined with dread.
"GONE!" His lips spattered blood across my face, the cold papers on my desk, his eyes rolling back into his head as he gripped the arms of the chair with evil intent.
Or perhaps it was merely panic. Panic. I began to panic. The snow kept falling and my companion fell silent, muted eternally by what he witnessed.
Thoughts burst through my mind. The Field Shields weren't supposed to fail; it was a possibility only capable through the vile machiavellian plotting of spies. Did that mean there was a mutiny? But a turncoat in the ranks was as unthinkable as the failing of our precious shields. Comrade Surgeon Chief Movanillo promised us that, created the shields, kept the troops happy.
We were fighting for our home country! Why would anyone be so... so heretical as to desecrate the motherland and our ideals?
It was a mind sickness, must be. What other reason would be behind it? But that was secondary now for my brain started to turn and to work and to realize that if the soldiers on the front were all gone... Where did that leave me?

My guard shack suddenly seemed very small as my curious consciousness crept out along the horizons of the world. All I could picture was snow. Snow, snow, and more snow eating up the fir trees and blotting out the death fields where all my comrades were now gone. Was our enemy advancing? How far had they gotten to the capital - to our wives and children?

Or were they already there? Had those wild, godless heathens already drunk the wine of our families' blood? Had they already feasted on our last happiness?

And I in my isolated guard shack. Outside lay one of many nondescript bunkers, weapons stored safely below ground until the triumphant moment when their roar of death would burst forth.
Perhaps that moment would never come now.

And so the weapon silos sat, cold, silent, unfeeling beneath the blanket of snow and its quiet stranglehold that choked off my poor lonely mind.

I listened for minutes as the snow fell outside, sealing my fate. Just me and the woods and the missiles and the dead body which would set into rigor in a few hours. Vainly, I thought, I must get him out of here before that, much less before he starts to putrefy. But... what does it matter? One more dead body among thousands, millions. Two more dead bodies.

The roach at the floorboard had found a friend, slowly crawling out of the dead soldier's pant cuff. They greeted each other in an insect show of camaraderie and I was instantly jealous - their antennae touching, brushing, shaking hands and swapping tales.

The beetles moved together as one, rank and file across the floor. I fingered the automatic weapon I was given - ordinance never fired. The beetles could take over my watch for me, for I was so cold and so alone and after all there were two of them and nothing left for me to watch over. Nothing for me to guard from.

A third fell out of the boy's clothing, a fourth from his jacket sleeve, joining their friends on the wood boards. Five, six, seven, a dozen poured from inside his gaping mouth, blood soaked, and I was loathe to hold back a yelp, hold down my bile. A soundless stream - a scream, of roaches raced forth from his insides. My god - and gathered by his boots.

Rank and file. Antennae abuzz. Rank and - god in heaven - file! The army moved on me, lowly human now scrambling, faltering to my feet in terror. The monsters! The heathens! A million bloody footprints tracked across the floor to me, the enemy, the battlefield.

It was now clear why the Shields had failed.

In a panic, a mad, beast-like rage for my own self-preservation and the loss of my friends: my sweet wife, my love - even my enemies - my boots tore across their chitinous bodies, crushing and murdering. Oh, the evil!

But it wasn't enough. Not nearly. Up my camouflaged boots, skyward to my uniform, my fatigues. I-I struggled for breath, drew my weapon, and surrendered our last outpost.