A Soldier in Love (8 page)

“You ready for today?”
Bryce smiled.

“Yeah, but I was
wondering…” Michelle trailed off.

“What?” Bryce furrowed
his brow.

“We’re not going to
have all this gear out there…”
 

Bryce looked pensive
for a minute before replying, “I suppose you’re right but it’s against
protocol.”

“Protocol?
What’s protocol going to do for us out there?”
Michelle argued.

“OK. Have your way but
if you get hurt…” Bryce said in a hushed tone.

“I won’t,” Michelle
replied confidently.

Michelle strode out
onto the sparring mat. Bryce took his position at the opposite end of the mat.

“You ready?” he called
out.

Michelle nodded.

The two circled around
each other. Bryce took a swing but Michelle ducked. She stepped back. He
followed forward taking a swing again. She briskly jumped back making a circle
around the mat. She knew she was too fast for him.

He came at her again
but she blocked his punch. She hopped back to retreat to her corner. He whirled
and glided across the mat. Michelle knew he was becoming annoyed and overconfident.
With all the strength she could muster she arose from her corner and rushed
across the mat. She hopped back as he swung and then placed a punch to his left
temple. Bryce looked stunned for a moment before he dropped down to his knees. His
body went limp and he sank down the mat. He was momentarily unconscious.
 

Michelle caught her
breath.
“Sorry, Bryce.
I had to.”

Bryce blinked his eyes
as he looked up at Michelle who was stood in front of him.

“Hey, you OK?” she
asked softly.

“That was some hit,” he
said with a dazed look in his eyes.

“Let’s get you to the
medic station,” Michelle said as she slung his body over her left
shoulde
. They began to make their way to the medic station
as he limply walked with her support.

Aaron
sighed as Michelle entered the room with a disoriented Bryce.

“Let’s
put him in the exam room,” Aaron said as he took Bryce’s other side.

Michelle
and Aaron helped Bryce down on the bed. Aaron looked over him and took his
pulse. He pulled open his eyelids open and held his small flashlight as he
checked his pupils.
 

“What’s
your name?” Aaron asked sternly.

“Bryce,”
he replied rubbing his left temple.

Aaron
looked down to his watch as he took Bryce’s pulse.

“How
did you get here?” Aaron asked as he wrote in Bryce’s chart.

“That
one,” Bryce pointed.

Michelle
poured a glass of water unsure of what to do with
herself
.
She handed it over to Bryce. He took a few gulps.

“How
do you feel?” Aaron asked.

“Not
great but I’m OK. My pride is hurt more than anything,” Bryce sighed.

“I’m
going to need you to rest for a few minutes. I’ll come get you in a little
bit,” Aaron said decisively as he walked out of the exam room.

Michelle
followed as he closed the door.

“I
knew I wasn’t going to like your plan. I hope you didn’t give him a concussion,”
Aaron gave Michelle a stern look.

“He
was only out for a few seconds. He’ll be fine, he’s used to it,” Michelle
replied with a sly smile.

Michelle
followed Aaron to his office.

“I
have something to show you…”

“OK,”
Michelle replied.

Aaron
revealed the journal hidden in his desk.

“What
is this?” Michelle said looking over the handwritten pages he had bookmarked.
It seemed so foreign to her to see something handwritten instead of typed.

“Does
it say how to kill them? I haven’t finished reading and I know you’ve been
through this whole thing,” Michelle asked.

Aaron
shook his head.
“No, not really.
Whoever wrote this
journaled
almost every day but then the writing just
suddenly stopped.”

“Well
then, we are going to trap one and find out. Any luck on the trap and the
supplies?” Michelle asked.

“One
step ahead of you, Z,” he grinned.

He
rummaged around the supply closet and retrieved a cage like contraption.

“I
found this out back. I made a few adjustments to it according to this,” he said
as he took the journal from her and flipped to the page with a crude drawing
and scale of the contraption. It was the same one that he had shown her before.

“Let’s
go set up a trap,” Michelle replied as she clasped her hands together.

***

“Are you sure this is
going to work?” Aaron said to Michelle with great hesitation.

She nodded. “Yeah, it’s
what the IS said. They hate anything acidic in nature.”

“That doesn’t make
sense. Our skin is slightly
acidic,
it is covered in lipids
that make it hard for germs and bacteria to enter our bodies. We’re slightly
acidic. Why do they keep trying to attack us?” Aaron questioned.

“They’re vicious but
dumb. They think everything is an enemy,” Michelle replied. She had to admit
she had never been the expert on anything in her civilian life, well, maybe to
her students she was the expert on some things, but not like this. It felt
strange to have Aaron, who was a doctor, look to her for the answers. It seemed
as though he had held all the information until now.

“I guess not everything
makes sense here. I mean we are another planet. Maybe here we are way more
acidic than what we consider normal on Earth,” Kate added.

Michelle nodded. “We’re
not on our turf. This place has different minerals, different soil, Hell, it’s
a giant fucking desert, maybe that’s why it can’t handle anything acidic.”

Aaron nodded. “Yeah, I
just wish we had more information.”

“I guess all you have
is me,” Michelle replied quietly before the three turned their attention to the
trap.

“Aw, shit,” Aaron
muttered as his flashlight went dim.

“Damn, I thought I
charged it,” he said hitting it with his palm.

Kate shook her head.
“It’s OK, you can share with me.”

“I hear it,” Michelle
said over them.

Aaron nodded. “Yeah, I
can smell it.”

“That thing smells
horrendous,” Kate replied as she crinkled her nose.

The three stood back
from the cage as the thing shrieked in terror. Michelle shined her flashlight
at it.

“I’m sorry, I know this
thing… I know it is bad, I just I’m not a good soldier, I hate killing things,”
Kate said with a look of fear in her big brown eyes.

“It’s either us or them,”
Michelle said shifting the flash light between her armpit and putting down the
pack of supplies she was carrying.

She opened the pack.
From a distance she then proceeded to squirt the molcos hund in the eye with
vinegar.

It hissed and let out a
piercing screech before it lurched to the front of the cage attempting to claw
at whatever it could between the bars. It retaliated towards the back of the
cage before lunging forward again hitting the bars with its claws. It screeched
again and began to gnaw on the cage.

“Are you sure it can’t
get out?” Aaron said looking to Michelle. His face was serious and concerned.

“Yeah, yeah I’m sure.
Remember, I’m a farmer?” Michelle replied with a grin. She knew it wasn’t
really funny but she couldn’t resist.

“Michelle…” Kate began
with a concerned tone in her voice.

Michelle shook her
head. “No, really guys I’m serious it can’t get out.”

Michelle approached the
cage and watched as it
bared
its teeth at her. They
looked like the kind a dog would have, except much, much sharper. They looked
almost as though they were dingy yellow knives affixed to its mouth. It both
growled and hissed menacingly at her. Michelle had never heard anything as
disturbing as its growl. It was an ugly, smelly thing. It was about the size of
a large dog and its hide looked like that of an armadillo or maybe an elephant.

Aaron shifted his
weight and peered at the molcos hund. “Well, that didn’t do much except piss
him off.”

Aaron shifted through
the things he carried. He opened a bottle of bleach and poured a small amount
in a cup. He took a stepped back and hurled it at the caged being.

It shrieked in pain and
the smell of its burning flesh filled the air.

Kate turned away and
covered her ears.

“The flashlight,” Aaron
called to Kate.

“Sorry,” Kate replied
turning back around to hold the flashlight in place.

“Put it out of its
misery,” Kate begged.

“It’s either us or it,
Kate,” Michelle warned. To Michelle it seemed simple and she kept it that way.
Kill or be killed is what she told herself the weeks and days leading up to the
war. She wasn’t sure how Kate could see an in-between.

Michelle followed
Aaron’s lead and poured another cup splashing it in the thing’s face. She
watched as its hide seemed to melt and it collapsed in the back of the cage.

“What should we do with
its body?” Aaron asked looking to Michelle.

“Leave the carcass out
here. Maybe it will scare off its friends,” she said collecting the various
items they used in their experiment back into her pack.

“God, that thing smells
awful,” Kate said.

Michelle coughed as the
stench rose around them. It was a putrid scent that made her stomach uneasy.

“We better go back
before The Commander notices we’re missing,” Aaron said.

They turned and began
to head back to base. It was a strange thing being almost burnt to death in the
day and frozen to the bone at night. With their increasing thinness, the heat
that used to radiate within them from the day had faded; it had nowhere to
cling to anymore. Michelle didn’t know if she could ever get used to it. With
the sun down, the sandy desert planes were cold. The two moons that orbited the
planet could be seen clearly along with a mirage of bright stars in the sky. Michelle
shivered; she knew that her lack of body weight making her more susceptible to
the cold.

“What are we going to
do?” Kate asked softly.

Aaron and Michelle
remained quiet for a minute both thinking to themselves.

“Why don’t we keep a
small bottle of bleach on us at all times,” Aaron offered.

Kate nodded. “OK but
how?”

“I hope a small bottle
will be enough,” Michelle interjected.

The three went quiet
for a time. The only thing that could be heard was the sound of the soft desert
wind and the crunching of their heavy boots on the sand. The moons provided an
eerie haunting glow to the red sand dunes around them.

“Well, it’s just an
idea…” Kate started.

“Tell us,” Michelle
encouraged.

“Aaron, do you think
our cooler packs would still work if they had bleach in them?” Kate said
pensively.

Michelle looked to
Aaron who was deep in thought.