The Mud in Your Boots

Hey all, sorry I didn't post last Friday, I wrote the post earlier in the day than I had done the past few weeks and by the time I got back to my computer I had forgotten all about it. Then every day since I have tried to remind myself to come on and post it but I am just that damn forgetful. So here it is now, and I promise business will resume (hopefully) as usual this Friday, where I will begin writing your ideas as short stories. (Its not too late to send me a quick email telling me what you think I should write) So with this story I told myself I would NOT write about war or a battle or someone fighting the 'man' and yet that was all that sprung to my mind last Friday, it would seem that is all my ideas would appear to contain however because that is about what I have written. If it helps in any way, shape, or form, this time I have not written about the past, but the future this time and *spoilers* nobody dies at the end, so 'yay for me!'. Still, I like the promise of fresh ideas from you and I never say 'no' to any form of constructive criticism - somewhere2open@gmail.com 
So until Friday, I hope you enjoy! C


A bomb flashed somewhere to my left, the sound of gunfire rained down around me. My captain was dead, my comrades; all gone. I was all that was left – me and a few other lost souls that roamed the broken battlefield for some shelter or hope of rescue.
I stumbled through the mud of the undergrowth, slipping and sliding in my broken boots. They used to say that concrete lay beneath all the dirt of the ground I knew; the captain said you used to be able to walk down these streets without getting so much as a stone in your shoe. Nowadays you were deemed lazy if you didn’t have so much mud in your boots, you could barely walk.
I shifted my gun in my arms and searched around. I had two bullets left and the torch attached to the top had died out hours ago. It was barely any use to me anymore but I still felt safe to have it. As I looked, a light began to shine above and I dropped to the ground, hiding myself away from it. I used some body, sticky with blood, smeared across the chest, bullet holes peppering the ‘armour’ – a standard cotton shirt, brown overcoat and a thin sheet of plastic that you hung from you neck with a brittle piece of string. I doubted this armour had ever saved a life. It certainly had never saved anybody I had seen wear it.
There were rumours back in camp, they swarmed like flies and multiplied until you were unsure who told the truth and who told you fibs, but there was a favourite amongst my comrades that said the Enemy had state-of-the-art metal plating, helmets, the lot; like the old days when they used swords not guns, but better than those of the past. I had no idea if it existed but I certainly hoped I never had to come face to face with that armour.
The light began searching in the mud and rubble, flashing this way and that for signs of life so I buried myself deeper under my hiding place, freezing myself to a state similar to death with the mud that began to cake my face as I stared up at the ‘copter above. Which was where I noticed something.
Their sigil was not of us or the Enemy. Ours was an old beast, a wolf I think they were called on a circular splash of blue. The Enemy’s; crossed swords in a triangle of green. Both reminiscent of the old ways. But this? No, it was not of the old ways, at least the old ways we all appreciated. It did not have fancy designs in perfect shapes, all it had was a large cross, like a plus sign, crudely painted so it blazed in a fiery red.
I did not know who they were or what they were doing; for all I knew they could have been the Enemy – some strategy to collect the weak from the battlefield. For all I knew it could have been us. I was just some foot soldier, now was a lost ghost with two bullets in a broken gun and no hope to survive.
It was that thrilling uncertainty that made me pause a moment then push myself out from my hiding place and jump up and down, waving frantically up at them. When they saw me, they lowered themselves slightly and allowed a rope ladder to fall from their great metal belly. With shaky arms and blocks of ice for legs, I hauled my body up it until I found myself falling into the deck above.
“Welcome aboard, Miss…” A bleep resounded, “Greenwood. You will be safe now with us.”
I looked up at the young man’s smiling face and could feel that it, that smile, not the simple clothes and decent armour he wore, not the shining surfaces of the inside of the ’copter, not even looking back down out the window at the carnage I had just been rescued from below, the smile. It was that and that alone which made me knew that he wasn’t lying. These people were some kind of underground movement, I could feel that in my chest and they were only here to help. Finally I was safe.