The Battle
Gunshots were heard everywhere. Many times a small troop of Trench Rats would run out of the trenches. Gold waited for some to pass, then ran out after them. Soon he dropped down beside Purple, gun in hand.
"How's life?" Gold asked conversationally, as if the bullets whizzing over his head meant nothing.
"Great," Purple replied, rolling up and returning the Nazi Rats' gunfire.
"Weelllll, since there's nothing else to do," Gold yawned, and followed Purple's example. As he dropped down again, he heard a CLANG! and a yowl.
"Nothin' personal!" he shouted, and immediately ducked as a grenade flew in and landed with a splash.
"Whoop!" Gold said. Purple flung the grenade back out.
BOOM!!! "Yaaaaaaiiiieeeeeee!!"
"Sorry! Not," Gold said. He reloaded his gun. "Purple, where the heck's Black?"
"Somewhere," was all Purple said. He threw a teargas bomb out. Moments later there was a lot of shrieking. Peering out, Gold saw the Nazi Rats running every which way. Startled by a sound beside him, he dropped back into the trench. Blue Rat started to load his gun.
"I hate this. I just hate war," Blue muttered.
"Aw, these Nazis'll give up soon," Gold said.
"Yeah, but it's still stupid," Blue said, getting up and aiming. "Putting people in concentration camps just because they worship a little differently? That's dumb." He fired. A Nazi Rat grabbed his arm and ran for safety.
"You aim so good," Gold said jealously. "Y'oughtta aim someplace else."
"No way," Blue said, picking out another rat and shooting him in the foot, as he had earlier. "Gasmasks?"
"We got 'em," Gold replied.
"Good thing. Hey--!" Blue dodged back as Purple leapt up and exchanged bullets with the Nazis. Gold watched with awe as six rats fell.
"Keep that up and you'll be Purple Rat with a Purple Heart," Gold said.
"His skin'll be purple 'cause he'll be dead!" Blue shot back.
"Shut up and keep your eyes open!" Burgundy called from nearby.
"Sometimes I'd swear that he and Turquoise are really identical twins separated at birth," Gold muttered.
"Good thought!" Blue said.
"Well, looky looky looky, take a little looksie [sic]," Purple said, "they're retreatin'!"
"About darn time!" Gold exclaimed. He and the others waited until all clear was called, and then they climbed out of their trench. They were muddied up but took no notice, being quite used to that condition. A rat [sic] sought out Gold and told him he was wanted inside, which was where he was headed anyway, so he tugged the nearest rat's [sic]--Silver's--cape, and they went in. It turned out that Black wanted his signature on a paper. Gold did so while Silver waited outside of Black's office, then started to leave. But he stopped short in the undertrench, Silver nearly running into him.
"What is it?" Silver asked.
"Turquoise," Gold whispered, and continued. Silver stayed where he was, gawking. At the end of the trench were three faint forms. One of them was limping just slightly and the other two were following close behind. In the dim light Silver could barely make out their colors--orange, gray, and turquoise.
On reaching the three rats [sic] Gold noticed that Turquoise was the one who was limping. He appeared to be alright [sic] apart from the fact that he walked more slowly than usual and seemed tired. Orange and Gray were along, seemingly, to make certain he had no accidents.
"Turquoise?" Gold asked. "Turquoise, how are you?"
"I could be better," Turquoise replied. But there was none of the usual biting sarcasm in his voice and from this Gold could tell he truly didn't feel well. In fact, as soon as he stopped he swayed slightly from side to side as if dizzied by his surroundings.
"Well, when will you be better?" Gold persisted. "I mean, will you be better? Or is something wrong, or what?"
"Of course I will!" Turquoise tried to snap. He was seeming angry but Gold could tell he was only trying to reassure him. "I'm just a little tired. You don't need to be so nosy."
"Well, you don't need to get so mad," Gold said.
"I'm not mad! I--" Here he stopped and put a hand to his head, coming dangerously close to falling. Gray caught his arm and Turquoise jerked it away.
"Let me alone," he snapped. "I don't need either of you here so you can go away now."
Orange looked mildly annoyed, but he and Gray left.
As soon as they were out of sight, Turquoise turned back to Gold. His attitude was suddenly changed. He was almost placid again.
"Is there anyone with you, Gold?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder.
Gold turned to look. Silver had since left. "No, not anymore." [Note--notice the unimportance of Silver as a character--and the utter absence of current important characters like Reseda, Copper, Indigo, Mahogany, Citrine, Teal, Amaranth, Mirela, Didrika, Boris, Papillon, Ratdog, Klemper, Helmstadt, Addy Dobermann, Gerhardt, Senta...the list goes on and on. Characters Papillon and Addy actually came along not that much later, in unfinished/unwritten sequels to this story; but most of the others are of relatively recent date. They also play much bigger parts in the current story than previously important characters like Red and Purple, neither of whom has shown up yet, as best as I can recall.]
"Good. Come with me."
"Where?"
Turquoise started off. "To the West Wing."
"The West Wing? But that's been sectioned off for years!"
"I know that."
"Then why are we going there?"
"So no one will bother us! I have a story of sorts to tell you."
"Man, I think you got hit harder than we thought," Gold said, shaking his head with puzzlement.
Turquoise glared back at him. "Just come on, okay?"
Gold followed wondering what Turquoise could be talking about. The trenches grew progressively darker and danker as they continued on toward the abandoned West Wing. Gold knew not why it had been cordoned off, but he did know that it had been done during the occupation by the original Trench Rats, of which Turquoise was a member. Finally they reached its entrance, boarded and bricked up, with "HAZARDOUS AREA--DO NOT ENTER" signs stretched across it. He could only guess that it had been closed down for safety.
"We're here," he said. "Now what's this about, Turquoise?"
His older friend heaved a great breath and let it out. "There's something I've been carrying with me for years Gold, and now I want to get it off my chest before I lose it."
"Why now?" Gold asked.
"It's because of the grenade explosion," Turquoise replied. "When I woke up I thought of how close I came to getting it, and how next time I might not be so lucky so this secret would die with me. So I thought I'd tell it to you. You're tougher than an old bird like me. Sit down and make yourself comfortable if that's at all possible."
Gold did as he was told and Turquoise, with the West Wing entrance looming as his background, began his story.
"Of course it was a very long time ago when all of the original Rats were here, before the Wing was closed," he started. "We had a totally different sergeant, a totally different corporal, different lance-corporals and privates. Even Blue was rather new and he was still a private first-class. You probably wouldn't know this, but back then we had another thing that was totally different; we had a female Trench Rat."
"A lady Rat?" Gold interjected.
Turquoise nodded. "And I don't mean like Mam either. She was just like us--only more like Burgundy. She never did any real fighting but was more into Burgundy's line of work."
"You mean doctoring and bookwork."
A nod. "But nonetheless she was a Trench Rat, like you or me. Now, how do you think the others' feelings would be about that?"
"A lady Rat?... I guess they wouldn't like it too much."
"You're right. Barely anyone liked the idea. Most hated it from the start but the sergeant wasn't for sexual discrimination and let her enter. I suppose you can imagine the jeers and remarks she had to take."
"You bet I can."
"There were only a few of us who took it in stride. I myself was one of them, and Burgundy, and--"
"Let me guess: Blue and Doomsday."
"Right again. So of course we were about the only ones whom she really became acquainted with. And that was mostly just on a professional level. This is a cold, cold world. I suppose she learned that, also. In a terrible way."
"What do you mean?"
Now Turquoise acted almost guiltily. "Afterwards she told me most of the story, so I'll piece it together. As best as I can remember, several of the Rats were apparently growing bolder in their actions. They disliked how well the lady Rat and the sergeant got along. Maybe they misinterpreted their casual friendship, for that's all it was, and decided to do something about it. Do 'something' they did--one night three of them accosted her in the empty West Wing, first pretending to be friendly, then becoming more threatening, and finally raping her and leaving her behind." [Note--this part was REALLY hard for me to write. I have extreme difficulty using the "r word" in my more PG-13 work, and always try to find ways to euphemize or avoid it entirely, even to this day in my current story Escape From Manitou Island.]
Gold shuddered. "I never thought they'd do something so low!"
"That's not the end of it. I'm not certain how long after it was, but later that night or the next she came to my quarters and cried to be let in. There she told me everything, except who the Rats were; she didn't know their names but could only point them out. She said that if she told anyone they had threatened to get rid of her in some way--I don't know if by actual killing or not--and further stated that during the attack she had seen another Trench Rat, a great distance away at the entrance, notice what was happening and quickly dart away. I had her go to bed, telling her we could look through the files tomorrow after she had settled down a little more. She never got to identify any of the four Rats though because directly after she disappeared."
"Disappeared?" Gold said with great surprise.
Turquoise nodded a third time. "The next day she was gone. There were signs that she never even made it to her quarters. Later in the day while we searched one of the Rats came to me and asked if she had visited and told me anything unusual. I said no, she'd just dropped in to give me something, but hinted that she had been acting oddly, as if she were afraid of something. This seemed to shake him up a little, but he left and it was supposed then that she, finding barracks life too hard, had gone AWOL. Not long after, before I could figure out how to tell my strange story to the sergeant, there was the trench raid, when the poison gas killed off nearly all of the Rats. The Rat who had so oddly questioned me was killed, and the sergeant's body, if he too died, was never found."
"What about the other three?" Gold asked.
"I don't know. The Rat who visited me seemed to have several friends waiting, and I recognized them as killed or missing in action, and I never did find out about the last Rat."
Gold was silent for a moment. "He was the only one...?"
Turquoise closed his eyes and nodded. "The only witness. The only one who could tell who the attackers were. And I don't know if he's dead or alive." He heaved a sigh of helplessness. "He could be almost anybody! He could be Purple, or Blue, or D-Day, or any one of those scores who were killed in the trenches or taken prisoner. I don't even know who he is."
Another silence. "What happened then?"
"There were only about two dozen of us, so we cleared out the rooms of the West Wing--one of which was her original quarters--and had it boarded up. I had only several days to look around and try to find anything, any little clue as to what happened. She couldn't have gone AWOL. I know she wouldn't. I asked D-Day once if he thought she'd deserted, and even he--someone who has no idea of what really happened--said it seemed doubtful. But nothing ever turned up, and the West Wing was closed down, and now here it is." He took a deep breath again. "You can't possibly imagine how it feels to finally let that all out. All these years I've never told anybody. I didn't know just what to tell them." [Note--Turquoise's tale of the only female Trench Rat, and the ruined West Wing, remain in the current storyline in modified format. The female Trench Rat, who is unnamed here, goes by the name Anna Julian and in the current storyline she DID disappear mysteriously around the same time as the gas attack...but I decided that the story that Turquoise tells here is too ludicrous, hence, Julian's disappearance must have another meaning behind it. Seeing as Julian plays no part in the current story, I have yet to come up with this backstory. In the current story, there is ANOTHER female Trench Rat--Lyndsey Skye--who serves Burgundy as a nurse.]
"You've done more than a good job of telling me," Gold said.
Turquoise managed a weak smile. "I suppose that's because I knew I had to tell someone before I burst. I can't help feeling guilty, like I never did enough."
Gold reached across and patted his shoulder. "Nothing's your fault. Even if you would've told the sergeant probably nothing could be done. I know I would have gone crazy by now holding that in!"
His friend shrugged. "Maybe I have!"
[Note: There is one last bit scribbled in the margin of the first page of Chapter 11:]
He found Blue standing where he was last seen. He was staring down with dazed horror at the lifeless body of a Nazi who had been stabbed. He'd killed his first--and maybe last--person.
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