Holy City: Chapter One - Part One

We live our lives sorrowfully moving towards the end of time. And then are reborn.

Wars begin with the theorists and end with the realists.

Chapter One

The man emerged from the desert. He appeared as a solitary insect against the vast horizon, grew to the size of a bug on a windshield; then slowly, steadily, he became a limping human struggling to move his body across the sand and Pvt. Fontan no longer had any doubt, a man had made it out of the Avaris Valley, which meant he had survived the impossible journey through the Aten Desert.

“Damnit,” Fontan softly whispered.

The man was heading for her checkpoint. She had been prepared for this many months ago but had forgotten most of that training by now. And why wouldn’t she? No one had ever appeared at this checkpoint before. Most likely, no one would ever appear at it again. No one could survive the journey through the Aten, yet here they were. An offense to the laws of nature. An offense to the logic of the desert.

“Damnit,” Fontan said again.

She aimed her M30 automatic rifle through the chain-link fence and called to Cpl. Jannis, her partner. “Look at this,” she shouted. The man was less than forty yards away.

“What?” Jannis said. He was hiding in the shade, under one of the towers, his helmet over his eyes. “Just shoot the ground and it will scare the critter away.”

“It’s a man.” Thirty yards away now.

“I don’t fall for those jokes, Fontan.” Jannis kept his helmet over his eyes, kept his eyes closed.

“Do you think he’s one of ours?”  Twenty-five yards away. “Maybe he’s a deserter.”

“Damnit, Fontan.” Jannis stood and looked over the wide open plain that separated the checkpoint from the mouth of the valley. He saw a mirage.

“He’s a deserter.” Fontan answered her own question. Almost twenty yards now.

“He’s too close. He’s too close.” Jannis’ voice rose an octave. He picked up his M30 and pointed it at the man. “Stop!” He shouted.

The man did not stop. Jannis fired into the ground. The man stopped. Twenty yards away from the fence.

The Damasian Army ran maneuvers in the Avaris Valley. It was a great place to train because it was a great place to blow stuff up. There was nothing to destroy except for rocks and boulders and a few stray lizards. It also allowed Damasia to lay claim over the vacant territory stretching from the Accadan Checkpoint through the Aten Desert all the way to the borders of Alexandria.

This was how Damasian maps were drawn, even if no other maps in the world agreed. Perhaps a soldier had disappeared during the last round of maneuvers. If he had planned well enough, he would be able to survive for weeks in the caves and could emerge as a civilian pretending to be a refugee.

Or this limping man could have been a member of the Vitesian Army. Or perhaps the Lyonesse Army. Maybe he had a similar but more ambitious plan of not only hiding in the Avaris Valley but somehow surviving the trek across the Aten twice. First, from his home nation to Alexandria. And then from Alexandria to the Accadan Checkpoint. The odds of surviving the journey not once but twice would be infinitesimal. Had this man beaten those odds? Was he going to be the first of many? Maybe he was making the journey out of desperation. Out of insanity. Maybe Damasia had already defeated one of its enemies and didn’t even know it.

The man had not moved since the shot into the ground. He was still standing twenty yards away. It was impossible to tell if his eyes were open or closed under long hair that fell over his face.

“Maybe we should shoot him and say he stormed the fence.” Fontan didn’t want to take any chances.

“If he’s a deserter from one of the other armies, the captain will want to talk with him. If he’s one of ours we’ll shoot him soon enough.”

“And if he’s wearing a bomb?”

This was yet another possibility. There were stories of suicide bombers at other checkpoints. They never made it into the official reports. They never made it into the news. They were told as stories passed from soldier to solider like scary nighttime tales told around the campfire. The previous week Fontan heard a rumor about a bombing at the Haten Checkpoint that killed twenty and injured fifteen.  

Jannis thought for a second. “You should go out there and search him.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

Fontan was not happy at this suggestion. If she had been assigned another private as her partner, she wouldn’t always be forced to do such work, but she was unlucky, she was the only one who had been partnered with a corporal.

“Down on your knees!” Jannis shouted at the man. The man slowly complied.

“He speaks Damasian,” observed Fontan.

“It’s one sentence, anybody could know that.”

“Do you know how to say ‘down on your knees’ in Vitesian or Lyonesse?”

Jannis looked at Fontan, his face turning red with impatience. Fontan and the other cadets always made fun of Jannis for this. Jannis’ face would turn red at any change of emotion, not just anger or embarrassment, but when he was flustered by a question or even when he became excited. It made it very easy to tell what he was thinking. He was great to play cards against.

“Get out there Fontan!”

Fontan reluctantly began to move. She undid the first latch of the gate and then the lock. Jannis walked inside the booth and pressed the button to lift the automatic gate that served as the last barrier between the checkpoint and the desert.

Fontan took three tentative steps into the desert. Jannis pressed the button again. The gate closed behind her.

“On your knees!” Fontan shouted at the man who was already on his knees from Jannis’ earlier order. Fontan took three more tentative steps.

The man’s head turned. It was still impossible to see any part of his face. His eyes hidden by the waterfall of muddy hair, his jaw and cheeks covered by a thick unkempt beard.

“Your hands behind your back.” Fontan was mentally going over a checklist of instructions and shouting them one at a time. The man put his hands behind his back. Fontan continued to approach.

“Your hands in front where I can see them!” Fontan shouted the next item on her list directly contradicting her previous order.

The man slowly brought his hands from behind and put them in front of his body.

“Palms down on the sand.”

The man put his palms on the sand.

Fontan was sweating profusely under the hot morning sun. She took her left hand and lifted her helmet in hopes of feeling a cool breeze. But there was never a cool breeze. Only desert heat.

Fontan lowered her helmet again. She had lost track of the items on her list. She wanted to turn to Jannis for help. Jannis was watching from behind the fence, Fontan could feel his eyes on her, judging her. If only she could ask Jannis what to do next. Fontan started to turn her head back to the fence. Jannis saw this slight movement and wanted to shoot her for it. Fontan was breaking the first and most obvious rule of engagement; keep your eyes on the enemy.

Fontan stopped before her head fully turned. She moved her eyes back to the man on the ground. She noticed something on his chest. There was a patch of red amidst the dirty beige and white of the ripped clothes that tumbled over his body.

“What’s that? What’s that?” Fontan gestured with the nozzle of her gun in the direction of the red.

“Are you bleeding?”

Jannis, watching from the tower, heard only snippets from Fontan’s one-sided conversation.

“Are you bleeding?” Fontan repeated.

The man did not respond to the question, palms still face down on the hot sand.

‘Maybe he doesn’t speak Damasian, after all,’ Fontan thought.

“Cuff him!” Jannis shouted from the tower.

Fontan did not move, staring at the dried cherry red splotch on the man’s shirt.

“Cuff him!” Jannis shouted a second time.

“I think he’s bleeding!” Fontan shouted back to Jannis.

“Who cares!” Jannis shouted back to Fontan.

She kept her weapon on the man as she moved towards him. She studied the red. She decided it wasn’t on his chest. It was on his abdomen. And if it was the man’s blood, it was from a wound that had dried many hours ago.

“I saw that! Don’t move!” Fontan shouted at the man. The man had not moved.

“One move and I’ll shoot.” Fontan continued as she lowered her weapon and began to reach for her zip cuffs.

Fontan and the other recruits had been trained on the use of those cuffs during basic training. The only time she had used them since was when she and the other cadets were playing pranks on each other in the barracks. For a well-trained soldier the process of cuffing a hostile should take three seconds, some of the Special Forces soldiers could do it in less than one.

After forty-five seconds Pvt. Fontan had the man handcuffed. She returned him to his awkward position kneeling face down in the sand.

“I’m going to search you now.” She told the man, more to calm herself than to inform him.

His clothes were rags. If he was a deserter he had planned well. There was no sign of a military uniform. He looked like a refugee, at least the ones Fontan had heard about it. His pants were torn at the ankle and at the knee. His white undershirt, with its stain of red in the middle, had a rip down the left side that exposed his ribcage. The beige shirt over his white undershirt had lost all of its buttons and barely closed at the top. He wore a right shoe that didn’t cover his last three toes and a left shoe that was open at the heel. The man’s hands were burnt from the sun.

Fontan went in for a pat-down, her M30 slung back around her shoulder, Jannis’ M30 still aimed at the man. The closer Fontan got to the man the larger the splotch of red became. It was a lot of blood. Could a man survive the loss of that much blood? It was as unlikely as surviving the Aten Desert.

After a not very thorough and very quick pat-down Fontan took two steps back.

“It’s not his!”

“What?”

“The blood. It’s not his blood, he’s not bleeding.”

“What?” Jannis’ said a second time.

“It’s someone else’s blood!” Fontan raised her voice.

“Is he armed?” Jannis said.

“I.. I don’t think so.”

“What?” This conversation was not working.

“No, he is not armed!” Fontan shouted in her loudest voice.

“Bring him in.” The corporal ordered the private.

Fontan’s M30 was off her shoulder and aimed at the man once again.

“Get up.” She said.

The man struggled to stand.

Fontan was surprised at how tall he was. He had seemed so small against the backdrop of the desert, but now that he was standing directly in front of her, he was nearly six feet tall.

The two of them stood on the edge of the Aten Desert, on the edge of the Avaris Valley, on the edge of the Accadan Checkpoint, for two seconds, three seconds, ten seconds. Sweat began to rain from Fontan’s helmet, her M30 aimed at the man’s head of fur.

“Aren’t you going to invite me inside?” the mass of hair spoke. This caused Fontan to jump back in surprise.