Clara slowly lowers her hand.
“What is it, Private Cow?” Kirkland demands.
“Nothing, Sergeant.”
“Then I’d like to go on explaining, if that’s all right with you.” It is. “As I was saying, for those of you who want out of the army, this is your lucky day. Because all it will take . . . is standing up.” He grins, apparently believing he’s made a joke. “In fact, all you gotta do is raise your head up. Just a few inches. Just a little bit.” He’s still grinning, but now his voice turns flinty. “Because today is live fire, bedbugs, live fire. Bang, bang, bang!”
Frangie puts it all together in a flash of insight: the barbed wire, the berm, and, now that she looks more closely at the field beyond her amused sergeant, the machine guns placed along that berm.
“Raise your heads even an inch above that wire, and a thirty-caliber machine gun round will drill a hole through your helmet, through your skull, through your brain, and then blast its way right on out the other side. Those machine guns are locked in so they fire just an inch or two above the wire. The bullets are real.” He’s not joking, teasing, or even insulting now. “You’ve been trained in how to advance on elbows and knees keeping your rifle clear. Elbows and knees and keep your heads down below the wire. Failing that you may choose to roll over on your back and kick your way along. Are you hearing me, men? And women?”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
The sergeant sounds concerned for their safety, even their lives. This is very different from the way he’s sounded when they were practicing hand-to-hand combat (at which Frangie performed pitifully), and bayonet practice (also pitiful), and the regular obstacle course (where she did surprisingly well, being fast on her feet and having a slight frame that is easier to haul over a wooden wall).
They are lined up in rows of twelve. Sixty seconds will be counted off between each group. Frangie is in the third row.
“All right, test fire!” a noncom over behind the machine guns yells. There is the sinister metallic throat-clearing of six machine guns being cocked, and then . . .
It is the loudest thing Frangie has ever heard. These are not the machine gun sound effects she’s heard in movies; these are the real thing—six bulky, water-cooled models from the last war. They fire 450 rounds a minute, and each round is like a ball peen hammer against Frangie’s eardrums.
The test burst is just a few rounds, but it is more than enough to wipe away the last grin on the last face.
“First row. Go!” Sergeant Kirkland yells.
The machine guns fire, not all at once, but a couple at a time, firing two-second bursts, which is approximately fifteen rounds each.
The first row drops down into the mud. They cradle their rifles by resting them in the crooks of their elbows and crawl like scared babies. The barbed wire plucks at their backs and scrapes along their helmets. The machine guns open up, two-second bursts with a few seconds between.
“Second row, go!”
From the far end of the course a corporal is yelling encouragement. “Move it, you slugs! Keep your damned head down, Matthews! Jesus H.! My baby sister is faster than you people!”
It doesn’t look hard. It really doesn’t. Until Kirkland yells, “Row three, go!”
Frangie drops quickly to her stomach, cradles her carbine—she’s too small to manage the rifle that is both longer and heavier—and slips her head beneath the first row of barbed wire.
She quickly realizes that there is no dignified way to do this. To stay below the stream of bullets she has to press her entire body right down on the mud, splay her knees out, and push with feet and knees while pulling with elbows. But the drag of her body on the mud makes forward movement nearly impossible. Clods of moist clay push their way into her shirt and accumulate on her belt. The urge to rise just enough to gain some leverage is strong, but not strong enough to make her forget the bullets. She has never been close to a bullet in flight before and had not realized that they make a sound that is distinct from the shattering noise of exploding powder. It’s a flit-flit-flit sound, with the pitch subtly different depending on how close they fly. She is convinced she can tell when they are a safe eight inches away or a terrifying two inches.
She digs her elbows into the mud, keeping her carbine clear of the ground, which forces her facedown practically onto the bolt. Each spasmodic movement threatens to knock her front teeth into steel. Still, she’s doing it. She’s doing it! From time to time the wire will scrape the top of her helmet, but her back is clear and at least she’s not falling behind.
Sometimes, Frangie reflects, being small is a good thing.
She glances left and spots Clara lying still, unmoving. The voice of the corporal can be heard in snatches between eruptions from the guns. It reminds her of listening to the radio during a thunderstorm when the lightning static would punctuate and interrupt the music.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
Flit! Flit! FLIT!
“Move your—”
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
Flit! Flit!
“Damn your bones, you—”
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!