Photo illustration by Ken Drenten

A Dusty Tires Short Story

By Dusty Tires

The men, all dressed identically in olive drab Army uniforms and helmets, waited nervously for the enemy to attack in the darkness of predawn. They were situated in a rough line on a rocky piece of dirt facing the unseen foe.

The captain, who stood in a semi-crouching posture, held a pistol in his right hand and a pair of binoculars in his left. He ventured a look over the foxhole someone had hastily dug.

“Wait until I give the order to fire,” he said sternly. “No exceptions, hear?”

A sergeant holding a flamethrower knelt nervously as he pointed the weapon in the direction of the expected wave of soldiers. “Not a problem, Cap,” Sarge said, licking his lips. “Although I hope someone lets me know the second they come at us.”

The radioman was situated a few feet behind Sarge listening to the earpiece of his walkie-talkie. “Word from HQ. They said everyone is supposed to come in at 1700,” he said to the captain.

“Get that?” Cap said. “Everyone, pass it down the line. That’s code for an artillery barrage that’s gonna start at 1700. That’s in 10 minutes.”

A private who kneeled nearby aimed his machine gun across the rocky hill and repeated the message. He put his head down for a moment.

“Ten more minutes,” he muttered to himself. He looked at two other soldiers nearby. They were doing the same thing as he was, and he shook his head.

Nearby, a yellow Jeep that had suffered a direct hit was overturned on the dusty, rocky hillside. A blue and red Mercedes Unimog lay smoldering and smashed.

Wielding a machine gun, a corporal nearby relaxed his grip on his weapon and warily came to a kneeling position. “Do you think they’ll hit us with artillery too?” he asked another soldier, who held a bazooka.

“Whaddya think?” the reply came.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“Keep yer heads down,” Sarge growled.

When the first shot came, no one even heard it. A puff of dust in the dirt next to a rifleman was the only clue they had that someone was shooting at them. Then more shots exploded all around them, raising clouds of dust and smoke.

“Everyone hit the dirt!” yelled Cap.

It was too late for two soldiers, whose bodies twirled upward into the air before falling down crumpled onto the rocky earth.

“Open fire!” yelled Cap. “Give ‘em everything we got!”

The soldiers fired, but the unseen barrage from the enemy continued unabated. It was just too much. In just a few minutes, the platoon was shredded. Men were lying everywhere. A medic ran from man to man, doing what he could to help.

“We need to withdraw, sir,” said Sarge to Cap, who had been wounded in the arm.

“I know,” Cap said. “Trouble is, there’s nowhere to go. We’re stuck here. We have no choice.”

“We fight on, right?” Sarge said. “It’s all we can do. Our artillery is going to start any moment.”

“Yep,” Cap said. “We should hear the shells coming over any minute.” He hoped his voice sounded optimistic.

They waited in the foxhole as the rocky outcrop continued to burst with dirty, thunderous explosions all around them.

Soon they heard what sounded like a distant voice calling.

“It sounds like my mother,” Sarge said with wonderment. His voice was suddenly cut off in an eruption of dirt and smoke all around him, and he was gone.

Cap was all alone now, waiting for the inevitable. He hadn’t felt the hit, but he knew he had taken one. The shelling had slackened off, but the Army’s barrage had never taken place as promised. He wondered why, as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

“Kenny! Kenny! It’s 5 o’clock — time for dinner!”

He heard the voice now, too. It must be time to for him to die, because it sounded exactly like his own mother. Then he heard another voice, a much younger one.

“OK, Mom, I’m coming,” the voice said.

He felt hands around him pick him up and put him into a cardboard cigar box along with all his comrades. Somehow, miraculously, he was alive. Wait a minute — they were all alive!

“I gotta pick up my little green army men and then I’ll be in,” the young voice said.

Kenny, one of two young boys, looked at his next-door neighbor Johnny as they picked up the toys, which they had carefully set up and then pelted with rocks and dirt clods on a mound of earth in the back yard.

“That was fun,” said Johnny.

“We’ll do it again soon,” said Kenny. “Next time, bring over your Cowboys and Indians and we’ll have a real battle.”

“Yeah, and let’s bring more of our Matchbox cars, too!” Johnny said.

Cap frowned and shook his head. Cowboys and Indians? Matchbox cars? Well, all he could say was, he was glad to be alive.

Cap said aloud, “What was that all about?”

Sarge, who was also miraculously alive and sitting next to him, just pulled out a cigar, lit it up, and winked at him as he leaned back in the Prince Edward Cigars box.

“Relax — it’s all part of the game, Cap,” he said.

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