The Last Grewalda
by Chris Morton
Rain
I hear it. And the rain’s coming full pelt, wiping my eyes between flashes of battle scenes I’d rather forget. Stomping – why stomping?! I laugh and stand, then immediately dive back onto the mud.
I blink tightly, clutching my rifle. The last Grewalda. And I, the last human soldier; my back against the hill.
“Hey!” I shout.
It’s Nicholi. Nicholi, my God! How long has it been? (While in slow-motion he falls, the acid melting his face, his neck.) By the time his body hits the floor there’s only half a body, if that – hey, I think, how long has it been? Mouth open, taking in raindrops.
Nicholi turns. Half a face.
While crouched low, I circle him. Hunched, I roam in circles around my patch of land while the rain belts down. I slip, but no, it’s not Nicholi. It’s another, this one nameless. The black soldier, yes, him. One of them; he was my friend though. We shared rations. His first day.
“How long you been out here?”
“Few weeks,” I sniff.
“They say this war’s nearly over."
“’t’s what they say.”
He’s touching my arm. His hand is shaking.
The clouds above rumble. Dark, out in the open, the open plains. Come day the rain will be gone. The clouds here are white like back on Earth. Another soldier runs past. A ghost, for now they are all dead. All but I and the last Grewalda. I can hear it, smell it.
The Hill
So few hills in this world of plains that stretch on forever. Plains with holes and ditches and trenches and in the background trees and mountains. Always in the background. But for this last battle we crawled to these hills for one final stand. The grass here is fresh like home. Mud and flesh.
“This is it, then,” said our sergeant; the latest one. Us, the latest, the last troop.
The Grewalda were growing thin in number. The sky, once so dense in their glory.
This planet must be cleared of all alien life.
So we were sent in to do the job.
Then this, the terminal stand.
There’s a soldier to the left of me, chewing, saying this war began before he was even born. He asks how long I’ve been out here and for the life of me …
Blinking, I wipe a palm at the mossy grass. The muddy, slithery ground. Just me and it now. Up above the twin suns, Solaris 1 and 2 begin to rise. This is when I should do it, for the Grewalda are nocturnal. It’s injured, for God’s sake – it’s lying there bleeding.
Time for this war to end.
I’ll stride over there, leave this hill and over to the next, to the Grewalda’s hill. I can feel the screams, low and muffled; high pitched and out of my range of understanding.
The rain’s stopped. The whole world has melted away by the two rising suns.
A nocturnal species. It’ll be weak and now is the time as I stroke at my weapon.
The Weapon
Daytime and the sky orange. My feet, my boots, I unwrap them, stretch my toes while the weapon, the laser rifle is balanced on my knees. It’s black, like them, like it, behind me. The breathing. The rifle is smooth in parts, thin, yet bulky and … the charger bolts I load into an energy pack fixed to the butt.
I rise, turn.
Striding purposefully down, slipping and sliding down the bank, then scramble back upwards because I heard it again.
“You won’t get me that easily!”
Laughing, I can hear it.
My God. I’m such a fool and it almost had me then. Staring down at the rifle, I realise it’s empty and scrambling through my pack for more bolts, I fix a new one in, then fire up at the sky, screaming.
At daytime the sky is orange. The clouds, like on Earth. My bodysuit is a part of me now. Stuck to, integrated into my skin. For I am the soldier. The last, and it, the last of its kind.
There’s emptiness, silence and I remember how that silence was the worst part of it all. The waiting … waiting for a death that never came while the acid continued to rain down killing human after human. Soldier after soldier, sent here to do a job and by God I have to finish it.
I rise again with new purpose. Blinded.
Food. (I’ve dived down again and am scrambling in the pack for rations, for grey pills. Nutrition. I need power, for one last burst.)
“I’ll kill you, goddammit!” I shout.
And its lack of reply taunts me while I remember them, the lost.
Three Deaths
An old man’s voice as he died, croaked and moaning, but hollowness more than anything else. So rarely I saw them die slowly, and still I held this one in my arms as his last breaths escaped while the fight went on around us. Trampling and soldiers falling to the muddy floor, laser firing up, acid raining down. The sky a blue-black, the flying Grewalda, like giant bats though when they fell they were more like flapping, helpless manta rays – picture the scene with the soldier’s head in my arms, his eyes red and bulging.
Another, mid-conversation. We were running and he turned at me saying we should head east or west or simply, “Over there!” or something but mid-sentence he fell at the floor, half his body gone while I continued and I think there were tears coming down my cheeks and I was screaming, firing up laser bolt after laser bolt, like a madman running in no direction at all like a headless chicken they later said.
The third was longer, drawn out and I say third but there were so many more of course. The worst? I’m telling you, telling me, telling it (still over on its hill behind me).
“These men you killed!”
The third I describe, it took three days for him to die. Only his leg (the right one) had been hit. The rest of the troop were all dead, under the heat of Solaris 1 and 2 they rotted away. This soldier, I never asked his name – he had no chance of making it. Unable to move him, there was very little point in going for help. He urged me to leave him, but …
“Staying with you,” I panted. There was fear in his eyes he didn’t want me to see.
“Why watch me suffer?”
“Help’ll be on its way soon.”
Back Home
In the room, it had glass walls on one side overlooking some sanctuary and the interior was plush, angular. The man behind the desk took my name, smiled quickly and my status was upgraded to soldier with the promise that when I returned it’d be upgraded again.
“They didn’t say,” I told her later. “Maybe a sweeper.”
“Maybe a sweeper’s guard,” she laughed.
Our last night together and there had been something in her eyes. Her words, they said she’d be waiting but as she watched me depart, she turned at the last minute. She was intelligent, far more so than I.
The turbo train was packed to the hilt with soldiers like me. Fresh uniforms and the kit they’d given to us; the weapons and backpack. The ammunition, the charger bolts would come later but there was excitement in the air.
My parents had been more hopeful. They’d been proud, and I know that even now they’ll be back home waiting and hoping.
“Pray for me,” I told them, clutching my mother’s hand.
The ship out here took four days and months. Time folded, space folded.
And then the plains, the distant mountains, the grass, the night and the blue-black sky filled with screeching Grewalda. The charger bolts, we celebrated!
And one by one we died. Here on this ground so far from home, the twin suns, orange skies. They say the land here is fertile.
“We prepare for the coming invasion!”
A home from home for human kind and us the soldier ants; to this hill for the final battle. The Grewalda were growing thin in number because, pray for us, humankind would win throughout.
Visions; audio
Try to stay calm, though the sounds, most of them from the past but the present sounds too of it behind me. On its hill and I, my back against the grass. An audio of muffled whimpering. It is wounded.
“Hey!” I shout. “Can hear you …” my voice shaken.
Taking a swig from the silver water canister, I look around, ignore the rotting bodies of my fellow comrades and Grewalda alike. What was that?
Heard it again.
The noise is getting closer. I sit bolt upright, listening intently for any further sign that it’s not just my imagination while Solaris 1 and 2 beat down at the grass and mud; further ahead, the mountains.
Then a vision of it scrambling across the grass. They have claws, small and useless for they are flying beasts but dragging itself across the land, wounded and desperate – coming for me, for the last kill.
“Just me and you now,” I murmur. I load up a fresh charger-bolt, the laser rifle loosely hangs at my waist as I stand and turn.
/
I blink and am running into full battle. My rifle shoots bolt after bolt of laser up at the flying Grewalda, the bat-like beasts that, once hit and wounded, flap and scream and dive at the floor and if you’re clever you can hide underneath them. You can watch from afar as your comrades burn and die. Their screams. The acid rains down, from the blanket of flapping bodies up above. The Grewalda soar.
I can hardly see them.
The Last Grewalda
The Grewalda, its tiny claws dragging across the land between my hill and its, like a hunched pterodactyl, slow and steady.
My body shivers and judders. I drop the rifle; bend down to pick it up. My ears are screaming and it’s all I can do to focus. Diving at the floor, I let out a couple of shots.
Stomping, my own feet and then running full pelt. Through rays of sunshine I can see it, God help me and I’m scrambling at the dirt.
I begin to laugh, laugh at it and at myself.
“You’ve got me!” I yell, up at the twin suns.
A shadow and the Grewalda. Its eyes, the eyes of death are bright red and shining. Green alien blood spews over my bodysuit. Their blood is green and like the acid they spurt, deadly to the touch. The bottom half of my face is stinging and I fire again, even though I ran out of charge, what was it, when was it …?
“You’ve got me!” I twist and turn. Its body, I’m underneath the black slimy mass of bat-like wings while around me more soldiers fall.
On a hill.
“Lock and load.”
Re-con
“This is how we found him.”
Muffling.
“Will he recover?”
“Hard to say …”
More muffling. Incomprehensible exchange of conversation in the background.
“He was the last?”
“The last of them, yeah.”
“And the Grewalda?”
“Dead.”
“You sure?”
“Final clear up over a week ago. Re-con picked up nothing.”
“No more soldiers.”
“Not counting the bodies.” (A sound that might be of spitting)
Muffling. A long pause.
“So this is really it?”
“Seems that way, yeah.”
Scuffling sound.
“You hear that?”
Ironic laughter.
“End of the war.”
“Seems that way …”
“And it’s this soldier that killed the last of ’em?”
“Apparently so. (A dull thud). Though we can’t be sure. But … (another thud) … let’s give him that …”
Scuffling. A background of rustling wind.
“A regular hero. He’ll be up for a medal.”
“If he lives long enough …”
“Could patch him up. What d’ya say?”
“For moral you mean?”
“For the ticker-tape parade.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.” Again the sound that might be of spitting.
“That’s it, then.”
“Lock and load.”
More muffling. Another dull thud, then the roar of an engine.
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