Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #21 Entry for The Border.

The Border

In the scant shadow of the guardhouse, a greenhorn Border Legionnaire was waiting for the end of his first watch shift, gasping for the heat.

Below him, there was the stretch of sandy desert that the XIX Floating Fortress patrolled incessantly, moving back and forth in the sky like a surreal and phlegmatic cetacean, with the low and incessant buzz of the managems that powered it.

Behind the line of Fortresses, the Lands of Man ideally began. In that marginal strip, there were meager pastures and stretches of scrubby bushes, attacked for miles and miles by a fine sand, like yellowish talcum powder, that made the desert gain extension every year.

"This year the wind has put so much sand down," the marshal told him, biting a gray mustache, one of the last days before the Duty Beginning ceremony. "And behind the sand, the Those arrive".

He was glad he no longer had just a stunner to defend him from the Those, like the guardians of the border in former times, before the Legions. Once, it was thought to direct the Those into reserves to prevent them from doing too much damage with their insatiable hunger, but then they started to run away, to strip the flesh off every head of cattle, to waste fields and orchards, to devour even the people... and more and more came from the desert.

He had been among the first in his draft class in combat and shooting exercises, but in his heart he was afraid of when he would found himself in front of a real That, and not an illusory image created by the trainers. It took him months to get used to the slouching and snappy movements of those lean and black illusions, all teeth, which he found horrifying.

During that first day of service, however, only an armored convoy had passed, transporting ordered and dull clusters of goleminers to the mysterious and vital mines of managems, on the other side of the desert. The Those did not find goleminers edible, luckily.

The Horn of Danger snatched him cruelly from his thoughts. Intruders in the fortress! How did they get in? How did they pass under our noses?

He grabbed the heavy terminator and ran down the spiral staircase, toward his team's collection point, his heart in his throat.

A scraping noise from a corridor to his right made him stop. Pointing the terminator in the dark, with a trembling grip, he shouted "Who goes there?!?"

The Those came out, completely different from the illusions of the trainers...yet in that moment while his mind halted his body did not. Training pays off and he was quick to react. Without fully understand what was happening he dodge and fired striking the Those closest to him. It fell to the floor with a thump and the one further down the all hesitate looking at the body on the ground between them.

Now with his mind back in control he quickly started to reload the terminator while keeping an eye on the Those down the hall. Before he was done the Those headed way judging it couldn’t reach him in time. He continue down to the collection point to try and meet up with the other Legionnaires.

When he arrived only Jon was waiting he pointed his weapon right at me as I ran up clearly scared and confused. Relax I tell him I got one and the other ran away we will be fine. He pointed towards the back gate it was broken and a few body parts where spread across the area. I started to doubt my own words when we heard gun shots from around the corner. Again my body sprang into action faster than my mind and lucky Jon followed. We rounded the corner to fin 2 other Legionnaires trapped in a corner they had killed a few Those but where desperately trying to reload.

I took aim and was able to hit one of the 4 left and Jon hit another we yelled and charged it was maybe foolish but what else could we do. Our actions bought just enough time for the others to prepare to fire again and as the shots rang out the Those left near us start to run. They headed for the broken gate and the 4 of us got together, reloaded our weapons and headed for the gate. We could hear some noises from different parts of the guardhouse. As we reached the gate it was clear the Those had figured out that our doors are not as strong as our walls. We used a cart and some things to block the path and went back to see if any more Those had stayed in the guard house.

We didn’t find any more Those that day but we did find more body parts. We lost six people that day and it is clear now that their hunger is driving them to more deadly actions. They are calling me a hero, such a joke. Now I am supposed to lead the team here. What did I get myself into? Well the new recruits show up later today. Better get ready to greet them. They are bring new order as well I am told. Wonder what they will have us up to now?