Black and Green

New and interesting fact of the week : If you are ever taken by someone (say a family member, or the police) to a psychiatric hospital, you should sign the voluntary form BECAUSE if you voluntarily admit yourself to a psychiatric hospital it doesn't go on your permanent record. If, however, you are admitted with an involuntary status, that will go on your permanent record.

So, just keep that in mind.


Here's the piece for the week. To be entirely honest, I stole the characters and setting from another short story that I never completed. Hopefully, they'll have a more fulfilling life here.




The Black and The Green

    The two nations had been fighting for years on end with a bitter root of hatred grown so deep between them, gorged on the blood of men and the smell of burning cities, that both sides were convinced there could be no truces, no rest until the others were destroyed entirely.
    Blood-spattered, battle-hardened, weary, wounded, and starving their armies fought and fought and fought. Families, friends, life in general had been forgotten. Even the names of the nations they fought for had become truly unimportant. Black and Green, that was what it came down to in the end. Those two colors decided whether the man at the end of the sights was friend or enemy.

Green:
Risen had shattered his radio five weeks before on a tricky descent down a rock slide. For the last month, he had been living off what he could catch and kill without wasting ammunition, which he had little enough of, only the current clip in his handgun, and that half wasted. He still had his long knife and a few grenades. It had become a battle for survival. Values and ideals no longer had any relation to his current situation. He still believed in them, certainly, but they seemed so far away, left behind with the people that he was meant to protect with them.
    He found himself, by accident, in a part of the country that consisted of sharp cliffs, steep, forested hills and creeks that would jump out of little ravines to soak his boots. It was cold, all the time, but especially during the night. He gathered his ragged coat about his shoulders, ignoring the rocks that stuck through the thin soles of his boots and the frigid spots on his hands that corresponded with the holes in his gloves as he made his way through the trees.
    He spotted a light ahead of him for the first time in a month and stopped to squint at it and see if it would disappear. When it did not, he approached it with caution built from experience. Every muscle in his lean body was tense and shivering. Whether the light was friendly or not did not matter. Light meant warmth, and he would have it if he had to take it by force. Too many nights he had spent sleeping in the freezing open air to wake with frost on his whiskers and some strange creature burrowed beneath his jacket.
    He stumbled his way down the hill, clutching at his side where the same old wound that had bled half his life away a few weeks before had opened again. Warm blood on his side made him wince. Now the light was closer. He could make out the flames in a small fire pit. It was nearly invisible. In fact, if he hadn't been approaching just the way he had, he never would have seen it. He wondered if they were friendly, if they were Green. Sometimes, especially when it got so cold that ice crystals formed in the air, he could not remember why he was fighting, whose laws they were trying to enforce or destroy, but he always knew he wore green and his enemies wore black. He needed to remember that to survive.


Black:
    Marsh had fallen a week back and broken his leg. It was embarrassing really. He’d been leading a squad for nearly ten years through far more danger than that little bit of forest could boast. He’d survived fire-fights, assassination attempts (three of them), rebellion, bombings, and, most recently, a transport crash after an enemy shot that had come from what was supposed to be empty territory. Everyone else had died in the wreck, and he’d walked away with a scratch on his forehead. But he set his foot wrong on flat ground and snapped his leg. Which only went to show that fate had a direly black sense of humor, because it was likely that broken leg that would kill him.
    He loosened the straps on the splint around his left leg and pulled his pack closer. It was disturbingly light. He had enough medications for the pain and their were antibiotics, though he hadn’t needed them. The food supply, however, was getting slim. At the pace he was going, he wouldn’t get back to friendly lines until long after his supplies were exhausted.
    Leaves crunched behind him. He froze, only his hand moving carefully to the gun at his waist.“Who are you?” asked a hoarse voice.
    Vocal cords scarred by a chem-attack, Marsh thought, easing his gun from its holster while he wondered if he would be able to turn fast enough with his injured leg in the way.
    “Give me your hands. Slow now.”
    Give me your hands. If that wasn’t a green turn of phrase, then nothing was. Marsh lay his gun down, very slowly indeed, and lifted his hands above his shoulders.
    “Where’s the others?” the voice asked, edging closer.
    “What others?” Marsh growled as he worked his right foot underneath him. If he was going to do anything, he would have to do it before the other man reached him. “You’ve killed them all already.” With that, he snatched a burning branch from the fire and launched himself toward the voice.


Green:
    Killed them all? Risen thought just before the other man leapt at him. He pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession, training and survival instincts overriding everything else. The shots were dead on. If the gun had managed to fire instead of jamming on the first round and clicking uselessly, he would have killed the other man. Risen’s exhausted mind could think of no other course of action then. He stared stupidly at the gun and pulled the trigger twice more as if that would fix the problem. The flaming branch smashed across the side of his head, and he went down without a sound.




To be continued...