The Body Builders

By Jack Swan

Pained grunts and sharp squawks of injury filtered in from the next room. Haktar sighed. He walked back from the broken windowpane, away from the view of the cratered street lit by the rising moon, and towards the adjoining wall. Flaky white plaster clung to the mortar beneath the peeling wallpaper; just another sign of this house that was falling apart, this world which was falling apart – this band of survivors that was falling apart. Another of Haktar’s soldiers was dying.

He took a step across the uneven dust and debris that lay scattered on the exposed floorboards and pushed the faded wallpaper, with its yellow-flowers-on-mauve-background, back over the bulletholes. He didn’t know why; he hoped the rough, curling paper could mask the sound. But another muffled groan escaped through the clean round holes in the masonry.

The door hinges squealed; Haktar turned and watched as Nephen put his head round the corner. “May I have a word, sir?”

“Certainly,” Haktar replied. He realised he was gripping his gun barrel tightly; he relaxed his leather-gloved fingers, and cursed his damned war-frazzled nerves. He couldn’t help but worry about his troops – his surviving troops – but these days, everything put him on edge.

Nephen walked in, heavy boots crunching the broken brick on the floorboards. He straightened up the bloodstained cloak that hung over his dusty Kevlar combat jacket, walked out into the moonlight that shone between the broken rafters of the room’s shattered ceiling, and spoke.

“We’ve done all we can for Calsie, sir, but she won’t make it. Her body’s taken far, far too much damage for her to survive in any useful capacity. Frankly, sir, if she were a normal human, she’d be dead by now.”

Haktar didn’t reply right away. He had been expecting this – he had pre-empted what Corporal Nephen would say almost down to the word – but the news was still unwelcome. There had been so much suffering and death these last few months, since the war broke out... he couldn’t bear to see anyone from his precious, tiny group of survivors pass on too.

If only we hadn’t walked straight into that ambush –

But he couldn’t trouble himself with ‘if only’s. As the last lieutenant left in a hundred square miles of wasteland, he had to make sure the best action was taken every time. And in this case, he couldn’t let sentimentality get in the way of the proper way to treat a dying soldier. He took a deep, silent breath, and looked at Nephen’s bloodstained, unshaven face.

“Where’s the damage, exactly?”

“Her stomach and left kidney, sir. Most of the rest of her body should be perfectly intact for salvaging.”

“Do it then.” Haktar said that too fast; he paused, gathered himself, and carried on. “Euthanise Calsie and break her down for parts.”

Nephen stiffened, just barely; he managed to make it look as though it were part of his slow, controlled salute. He held his right hand, with its missing ring finger, smartly to his forehead. “As you wish, lieutenant. Will you be...?”

“What?” Haktar had already drifted off into desensitised daydreaming. “Oh. Yes. Definitely. After all, I’m her commanding officer.” He nodded quickly, a mask of authority. Nephen’s eyes betrayed some kind of apprehension but he turned nonetheless and led Haktar out, into the dark corridor, and through into the other room. It had once been a young boy’s bedroom, and one who clearly had enjoyed playing at being a soldier; the walls were army green, and when Haktar and his survivors had first taken up residence in the broken house they had cleared out hordes of abandoned plastic soldiers. The green walls turned the bloodstains, the unwashed crimson stains of bloody and basic surgeries,  to a shade of black that hid well in the shadows that filled most of the room.

Calsie lay in a pocket of light in the corner, with a small gas lamp rasping softly next to her and throwing a yellow light across her bed. Overhead, emptied bookshelves now carried the unit’s dwindling stockpiles of painkillers and bandages. Every now and then she would squirm weakly and wheeze out a quiet exclamation of pain. She turned her head just enough to see her commanding officer enter the room.

“Sir...” she muttered, and attempted a weak salute. Haktar looked back with the best and most confident look he could muster.

It wasn’t even a smile.

“How are you feeling, private?”

She, at least, managed to affect a weak smile. “Grim, sir... Had better times...”

“Your bravery is commendable, Calsie.” She smiled a fragile smile at her commander’s words. “Truly inspiring. You’ve done an excellent job coming this far.” He took a deep breath. “But...”

“S’... s’okay, sir,” Calsie said. “Knew that... this was coming. Be... honoured, to... let my body... keep serving our u – unit, sir.” Her eyes were watering up. Haktar wasn’t sure whether or not they were a malfunction with her eyeballs, or if they were genuine tears. He didn’t know which to hope for. On the one hand, if the eyeballs were malfunctioning, they couldn’t be recycled and reused by the rest of the unit. On the other, if that was genuine emotion – well, Armen like he and Calsie weren’t meant to have feelings that intense. But if she could cry, then so could he, and all his authority would be lost...

He snapped back to the moment, even though he’d so much rather be fretting about threats to his command position than dealing with losing one of his few survivors.

“I’m... glad you accept that. It’s an honour to have a soldier of such calibre... it’s an honour to have fought with a soldier of such calibre.” He pushed out a smile. Nephen quietly passed behind Haktar. In his hands he cradled a cold metal probe four inches long and as wide as a pencil. He hovered just outside the edge of Calsie’s field of vision.

“You’re a fine soldier, Calsie. One of the very best I’ve ever commanded. I promise you, when we link back up with Command, you’ll receive the highest commendations.” Haktar nodded at Nephen. The medic returned the gesture and extended his left hand – the one with a finger missing – to Calsie’s strawberry-blonde hair, and brushed the short curls away to reveal a small ring-shaped protrusion hidden behind the flap of her ear, the size of a fingernail. He pressed the probe into the thin skin that stretched across the ring like a drum, punctured it, and pressed the probe into her skull.

Calsie’s weak hands trembled over the bed, until she was dabbing her cold fingers on Haktar’s own wide, gloved hands. He pulled off the warm leather mitts and laid them down and, in an acceptable breach of etiquette, took her hands in his.

“It’ll be alright, Calsie,” he said, flicking an eye to his medic. Nephen was calmly pressing the grey plastic plunger on the end of the probe, eyes focused, face expressionless. He turned back to look at Calsie, who was staring at him with fading emerald eyes.

“Good... luck... chief...” she whispered, through lips that were barely parted. She stiffened, suddenly; then her grip relaxed, her head rolled back on the pillow and her eyes fixed their gaze on the ceiling. The light in her eyes faded to a jade mist.

The worst part of an Arman’s death was that, despite being entirely artificial, and with the concept of a family entirely alien to them, there was always one ingrained piece of normal human behaviour that broke through at the barrier between life and death. Armen didn’t have mothers – but like every normal man, woman or child in what remained of the human race, their last words were always the same, the final motion on dry, dying lips:

“Mum –”

Calsie relaxed into the pillow; then, she wasn’t Calsie anymore – only Calsie’s body. Haktar sat, silent, for a few long seconds, then rose gently to his feet. He hid the faint quiver in his hands from Nephen.

“Take an inventory of the corpse,” Haktar ordered, smartly and businesslike. “Break her down and start patching us all up with whatever intact organs and muscles you can get off of her. It. From it.” He tipped his head towards Nephen’s hand. “You look like you could do with a replacement finger. I need my medic in top physical condition. Take her – damn, its finger and fix it on.”

He was going to clap Nephen firmly on the shoulder, but his verbal slip made him reconsider, made him doubt if it was a good idea – just like everything else did. He nodded awkwardly instead. “Carry on, corporal.”

“Sir,” said Nephen, and turned to the corpse. Haktar let himself out of the room, out into the dim corridor. He leaned gently on the railing that hung out over the open stairwell, listening to the dim chatter of the other survivors in the rooms downstairs. He would have to tell them that Calsie had died, have to pass on the macabre news that if they needed any body parts replacing – and they all did, after months of battle damage – to report to Corporal Nephen and have their bodies patched up. It shouldn’t be disturbing – Armen, Artificial Men, were designed to be easily broken down to their component muscles and bones and used to repair their injured comrades – but after all this war and fighting, and all the bonds they had made, and the fact that they were quite possibly one of the last bands of any kind of humanity left on the planet, the thought of losing one of their number was a grim one. Even if it did benefit them overall.

He wanted to cry. Luckily for his pride, dignity, and most importantly, authority, he didn’t – Armen weren’t built to cry.