Bowman was due back on the front in two days.
Even three miles out, he could tell the fighting had been bad lately.
He heard it at night.
Sleep had become restless a while ago. Now it didn't at all. He didn't dream when he slept. His dreams were where they found him, the rejects of their afterlife.
Arthur. William. the others.
The man that had called his watch. Man who helped him in his early days.
What was his name again?
The days where his family came were bad. But at least he got to see them, no matter the taunts they made.
The area he had found to haunt was one of thousands like it.
A scatter of ammo boxes and a small dilapidated table, sat rather obscurely in the middle of a dirt patch between his barracks and the one behind. Like a sitting area in a corridor. Though nothing looked normal to Bowman anymore.
His rifle sat near him, he'd cleaned the dark ceramic of its body. Tried to clean the inside, though no one showed him how to.
They probably assumed he wouldn't live long enough for it to make a difference.
Just another dregg to be redeemed in his own blood. He felt as if he were drowning in it already, yet no end was coming.
From time to time he'd glimpse an actual soldier, badges, hair cut and all. He watched them doing the process on their weapons.
They were different to his, newer. But he assumed there couldn't be much difference about them.
He used a small brush and cloth he had won at cards a month before; someone had told him once that using the wrong stuff could make it blow up.
He didn't like to think about that.
He'd put it back together right he hoped, almost laughed at the idea of it backfiring on him.
The one guardian he had left.
The one guardian. He liked that, stuck with it.
The builder himself had gifted them this power. This engineering as it was called in the capital.
He could see it too in the weapon he carried. Order, everything having its singular purpose. All culminating in one big action. Beauty in violence, hand in hand.
He looked up at the overcast sky, faint blue light just piercing the clouds.
It was probably time for him to move, he figured.
Getting up he tossed a cigarette he didn't remember lighting and began his march up through the foothills to the steppe.
He didn't go back inside first, he had nothing to bring. Only pushed a hand from his lank unkempt hair and shoved his helmet on, grabbed his rifle and began.
Walking had never bothered Bowman, in fact, it was one of the few things left that he could find any fulfilment in.
He supposed he liked cleaning his rifle too, and for a similar reason.
The mundanity of it was liberating.
His head hung heavy, as if weighted by a thousand thoughts, in a sense it was.
His rifle hung loosely from his shoulder as he walked, lethargic in motion.
This far back from the front one could see grass still, from time to time.
The odd mushroom too. Though not the kind from home, these were strange. Red with flecks of deeper burgundy.
He decided he wouldn't try eating them.
After almost an hour he reached his post, it was a few miles to the east from his last post.
If only the slightest bit closer to home he tried to find comfort in the thought. There were so few things to find light in anymore.
He'd come to a halt the moment he entered that coin shaped bunker. He almost imagined he could feel the colour drain from his face. William.
The aging man sat on a crate smoking, similar to how they met the last time. His beard was longer and he had a hideous burn on his face. But he was alive.
He noticed Bowman, smiled. "You're alive." He chuckled.
"How are you alive?" Bowman asked, coming closer to the man, setting down his rifle on an outcropping in the concrete wall.
"Yes." He said, his smile fading. "Not a good night, that.
Not good at all."
"Arthur is dead." He blurted out at the man. "He got hit by shrapnel just before we made it. I'm sorry."
The old man looked as if he took a second to remember the name, but consoled him anyway.
"At least one of you is alive." He reached up to pat the younger man on his shoulder. "Come. Tell me about your time since then."
It was dry conversation, mundane. It was perfect.
He told the man of his time in the barracks of boring days stuck staring into nothing.
Of how his ghost had come to conquer his dreams besides Arthur's, the old man did look at him with pity then. But after they spoke of better times again. Like last time.
For the first time in years, Bowman felt like he had a friend.
They went about their work in the early afternoon and waited through sleepless nights. During those nights they'd join one another in cleaning their rifles, William teaching him how better to do it. They played cards also, though Bowman was terrible and had to insist on not gambling. The dregg legion didn't earn a wage so they gambled on trinkets; lighters, gloves and cigarettes mostly.
They went on as such for days and while Northman raids did come they seemed slower, even smaller than before.
He and William buried themselves in ritual and braved the hordes together and for once Bowman had found hope, in the dark, not for survival. But for companionship in death.
He would not face it alone.
He was not invisible.
"Hear they brought up an officer from the capital?" William asked. The two walked the trench, cramming themselves into cutouts to let groups pass.
"Yeah." Bowman affirmed to William's back. He'd learned that the man would not slow down for anyone.
Bowman found this irritating. He was far shorter than his senior and occasionally had to jog lest they be separated.
"Translator or something I heard." He continued once he'd caught up to William again. "Heard it from a nurse when I was in medical."
William grunted his amusement at that. "Nurses always know what the officers are up to." A personal joke maybe, Bowman was too tired to ask. Plus, with the man's crass humour he could probably guess what the old git had in mind.
As their time together had gone on he was more and more thankful for William's presence.
He led Bowman along. guided him through the shifting tones of his mood. Something he could never do himself.
The boy he had been before managed to creep out from time to time when he was there. A laugh, a joke. Minutiae, ever fleeting.
Hours later he was asleep, Bowman was left to his thoughts.
Unusual the effect a friend has on a person, one of the few types of connection that, to Bowman, didn't come with limitations.
He could speak of what he felt and not feel judged, or shamed. Not like with his mother, affection was not her native language. Not even to her children, she had told them.
Weakness had no place in order.
'Express your love for me through your love of god. Devote yourself to him.' She did that herself, though it was the coldness of the Kinan that embraced her back in the end.
He would not become like that, he would live if only to spite her. If only to carry his sister's memories. They had gifted him every strength, he could return the favour by making use of that. That's all he could do.
his father may still live too, as far as he was aware. He doubted it. But maybe one day.