The Kingdom and the Leviathan

by beckoning devil

Act I, Chapter II

Fort Bliss, Texas
July 28th, 1851

"Today we're going to show how to kill a man with a bayonet."

Drill Sergeant Mondale, who had said that, couldn't have been a year older than me, so if he had killed anyone with cold steel, I figured, it had been as an infant.

He produced his bayonet, which was obviously new, judging from its cleanliness, and the way that the afternoon sunlight reflected off it, almost as the sun reflects off water.

"Standard-issue bayonet, to be fixed onto your .69 caliber smoothbore flintlock. When you are given the command, you will slide it onto the muzzle end of your musket. It is three-sided, which will endure that anything you stab with it will have a three-sided wound in its flesh. And even if the enemy surgeon, by some act of God, manages to close this wound, you've still got a three-sided wound in an organ..."

I tried to listen as he went on, but in all honesty I was too tired for this (we had been jogging all day), so I started a whispered conversation with Recruit Wright, one of my friends that I had met in training. He was a kind, respectful man, though a bit old-fashioned in his thinking.

"Psst, hey, Tom," I whispered in as low a voice as I could, knowing my voice would travel quite easily in the still air, save for Mondale's voice, as well as the inadvertent shuffling of the 150 recruits in the training company.

"Yeah?" His voice carried the Southern accent he was born with, a telltale sign of him speaking, since he was the only Virginian in the platoon. The rest of us hailed from Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. 'The Alleyway Volunteers' was a term Tom was fond of giving to us, which seemed fair enough.

"What do you say to some poker tonight, along with that Greene kid?" The Recruit I was referencing was a Baltimore-born kid (such a term seemed to apply to the eighteen-year old, he was obviously not used to the idea of being a soldier yet) whose skills at poker and acquiring extra food were becoming more and more well known within the company.

"Sounds like a plan, maybe after-"

"Recruit Wright and Recruit Carter, QUIET DOWN!" Mondale's voice nearly deafened my ears, as I fought the urge to laugh, given that he was asking the very thing he had been doing the opposite of since we arrived, a few weeks ago.

But, he was a Drill Sergeant, so that's what he was being paid for: the ability to yell in the faces of fresh conscripts, who had never held a musket (Tom was an exception) and were certainly wishing that the conflict with the Equestrians could be resolved peacefully.

That term still felt weird to me. 'Equestrian'. It seemed too long. In the past, we had given the British the term 'Redcoats', and the Indians were 'Redskins' or 'Barbarians'. In this war, we hadn't even figured out what the enemy looked like, so I guess the term 'Equestrian' was there to stay until we had our first battle with them. My guess was more Indians. That would be fun, more fights with those tomahawk-wielding devils. I hadn't personally ever seen an Indian before, but most people knew they preferred to kill you up close. It seemed glorious. Some in the company, however, were radical enough to suggest that they might be Russians.

Mondale, satisfied that he had quieted us down through his ear-shattering voice, continued with his instruction. I briefly wondered how he had heard us, then simply decided that he had magical ears.

"Remember, when you use this, you will stab and twist, being sure to strike in the chest. That is all. Are there any questions?"

Drill Sergeant Mondale pointed to a recruit, probably in his thirties, who asked, at a rather sloppy imitation of parade rest,

"Sergeant, I mean sir, what if they're not like us at all? What if they don't look anything like us?"

I got a good laugh from that, as did Tom and some of the others. The recruit's face turned slightly red as he was clearly cursing himself for suggesting something like that. The very idea was absurd. There was no way that we were fighting some kind of-

"Quiet, quiet down," Drill Sergeant Mondale was serious, something I didn't expect him to be on such a humorous topic, "You have to be ready for anything. We still aren't sure if these are Indians, Mexicans, Spaniards, Canadians, Russians, or rogue frontiersmen, or something else. Like I've said before, we know nearly nothing about this enemy, other than the fact that they are responsible for the deaths of over 800 settlers. You've heard this before, but you must keep in mind that they're willing to kill civilians without cause."

The laughter had died down, and now Drill Sergeant Mondale was looking out on 150 white-coated recruits, all wearing dead serious expressions.

That little voice in the back of my mind, that I learned to suppress, was there again, with questions of 'Why am I here?' and 'Why not send in the professional army?'. I shut those questions out of my mind, like I had done so many times before, but this time they were replaced by a new one, which for the rest of my training never seemed to go away:

'What if they are alien?'

I suppose I had been thinking that since that day that the conscription notice had been nailed to my door, and I had become a soldier in the Army of the USA. Perhaps the Recruit had finally gotten me to acknowledge that I honestly didn't know.

"Any other questions? No? Alright. Recruits, atten-HUT!"

We got off the dirt ground, and stood at attention, knees bent slightly, feet spread apart just enough to allow a foot's worth of space between them.

The rest of the day was a blur for me. We drilled, marched up and down the field, fake muskets in hand, and took imaginary volleys at potato sacks. We even did a few bayonet charges on them, then retired for the day.

I didn't have guard duty that night, so I would have been given a lucky day of full sleep. Not tonight. Even though Tom and I did best Greene at poker, I still couldn't shake that question from my mind.

Who are we fighting?

Suffice to say, I didn't get much sleep that night.

Comments

[DetectivePingles]

This story shows an immense amount of potential and I think it might just be feature box material. Good job!

[Dubious]

Mmyes, This pleases me, especially since It's pre-douchebag government America.

[Farley308]

Wow, I'm definitely going to following this story closely. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. Please don't delay in further chapters.

[Branagain]

I like The Forever War quote you gave a shout-out to, definitely one of my favorites.

[poisedanimeBloke]

2322863 This comment amusses me. Because there was no 'pre-douchebag' government in the US. Actually... out of all my history studies I never found a government that wasn't a douche.