Letters to Abigail



  Letters to Abigail

  Inspired by the music and lyrics of FuzzBot

  By Mike Chinakos

  Copyright 2014 Mike Chinakos

  ISBN 9781311805249

  Dearest Abigail,

  I hope this letter finds you doing well.

  I wish that all of your hopes and dreams come true, and that I will be there to see them come to you. But my dear, I feel as if I’m lost to the dark. There is death and despair everywhere I look around me. You cannot imagine the horrors of this war.

  The only thing that helps me carry on in these trying times is the thought of your love for me, and the idea of holding you in my arms once again.

  Thank you for the pictures that you have sent. These pictures remind me of the good things we are fighting for. They help me to carry on as we march down into Lexington. The captain has given us orders to break camp, so I must go.

  Remember, in your dreams, I will be there.

  Yours truly, with all of my love,

  Jonathan.

  The march down to Lexington had not been a clean one.

  That thought went through Lieutenant Jonathan River’s head as he held the bloody stump of a fellow Union soldier. The doctor’s bone saw had just made the final cut of the amputation. The stench of the soldier’s gangrenous flesh filled his nostrils, and the young man’s horrid screams still rang in Jonathan’s ears. Mercifully, the private had passed out near the end of the gruesome surgery. Whether it was from the incredible pain or the copious amounts of morphine being injected into the young man’s arm, Jonathan didn’t know.

  As the doctor readied the glowing branding iron that would cauterize the boy’s amputation, Jonathan gripped the leg tighter. He had no illusions that the soldier would remain unconscious once the searing iron hit the bleeding wound.

  When the hot steel hit flesh and bone, the private awoke sharply, bellowing through the bit between his teeth. The hissing sound and the sickly sweet smell of the boy’s burning flesh sent shivers down the lieutenant’s back. Then the boy passed out again.

  The doctor looked at Jonathan and nodded grimly.

  “I can take it from here, Lieutenant. You can return to your duties.”

  Jonathan wasted no time leaving the tent full of wounded and dying Union soldiers.

  Not that he had any duties to attend to at the moment. He knew he should take the time to write another letter to Abigail, but his head and heart weren’t in it right now. Assisting in the amputation had sapped Jonathan of what little energy he had left after his platoon’s last battle.

  Even if the desire to write his beloved wife had overcome him, Jonathan didn’t know what else he had to say since the last letter. He remembered how long and eloquent the first dozen or so letters he wrote to her had sounded when he first went off to fight against the Confederate Army. Those letters spoke of their home in Wichita, their family and friends and his deep devotion to Abigail. He had painted images of his longing for her, feeling like the bards and poets of a more romantic time.

  Now, whenever he picked up pen and ink to write, all the words and images that leaped to mind were of blood and death.

  Jonathan could never truly tell Abigail of the horrors he had seen on the battlefield.

  His letters had become brief and to the point, not because Jonathan didn’t have time to write, but because he didn’t wish to fill her head full of the nightmares that haunted him day and night. He would never wish the sights and experiences of war on another human being.

  As one of two thousand Kansas state militia members of the First Division of the Army of the Border making their way from Kansas to Lexington, Missouri, Jonathan had seen many battles. The Confederate forces had found an unusual ally across the Atlantic in President Franz Joseph of Austria and his German Confederation. Along with mercenary reinforcements from the Germans, the South had also received ammo, medical supplies and weapons.

  The most frightening of these German weapons of war deployed by the Confederacy was the Panzer Faust Mark I Behemoths.

  These war machines, powered by a combination of super science, steam and fluidized coal, wrought havoc and slaughtered Union soldiers like a scythe cuts down wheat. Jonathan’s superior officers promised that the means to fighting the Behemoths were on their way and would be deployed in the field soon. None of the men actually doing the fighting, bleeding, and dying really believed them. But what else could they do but press on with their duties?

  The war that they fought did tear the country apart, but Jonathan believed in their righteousness. He fought so that all men and women could be free. If any war could truly be called noble, then the American Civil War was that war. But beliefs, ideals and virtuous thoughts can never prepare anyone for the realities of war. They had all marched south, heads held high, uniforms pressed and upright, eyes gleaming with patriotic duty. Jonathan imagined the Confederate Army looked much the same—probably basking in their righteousness even more than the North because they fought to maintain a way of life they truly believed to be God-given.

  As Jonathan walked between the muddy tents of the Union camp, he wondered if God favored either side—and he felt more than a little guilty that in his heart, he believed that maybe God had abandoned them all.

  “Lieutenant!”

  Jonathan turned toward the sound of boots sloshing through mud, coming up quickly behind him.

  His right hand man, Platoon Sergeant Blake, came sliding to a halt and saluted. Jonathan returned the salute, suddenly aware that the sleeves of his tattered uniform were drenched in the blood of the private who had just lost his leg.

  “Report,” Jonathan told the sergeant.

  “The captain needs you up on the ridge we scouted this morning. A Behemoth has been spotted south of our position, coming up Independence Road.”

  “And,” Jonathan sighed heavily, “Major General Blunt wants a squad to intercept under my supervision.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get Second Squad moving,” Jonathan commanded.

  “Same as last time?” Blake asked.

  “Yes, Sergeant. Dynamite. Ask for three volunteers from Second Squad.”

  “Only three, sir?”

  “The Chief Quartermaster tells me we’re running low on dynamite. We need to conserve what we can. Three sticks and three men should be enough to take down the Behemoth.”

  “Sir!”

  Jonathan watched Blake slog his way back through the orderly tents.

  He looked down at his gore covered sleeves and realized with the limited amount of dynamite they had to face the Behemoths, he would have much more blood on his hands before the day was over.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Finding volunteers brave enough to climb up the backside of a moving Behemoth proved to be a Herculean task. In the end, Sergeant Blake had to order three men from Second Squad to carry out the mission of destroying the metal juggernaut.

  From a hiding spot upon the ridge overlooking Independence Road, Jonathan Rivers held his breath as he watched the second attempt to bring the beast down. Hunkered low in a thick stand of Chinquapin oak trees with Blake at his side, the lieutenant gazed through a long spyglass of burnished brass. He could see the mangled body of the first soldier he had sent laying fifty feet behind the Behemoth. Most of the man’s head had been blown apart by a Confederate sniper. Blake sent their own sharpshooter down the ridge to hunt down his Southern counterpart.

  Twisting a dial on the spyglass, Jonathan heard gears grind. The field of combat blurred for a moment while the glass refocused, zooming in like the eyes of a hawk. In the black crosshairs of the spyglass he saw his second volunteer creeping alongside the road on the opposite side of the ridge. The trees were thick on that side as well, and alt
hough it was October, the tress still held their leaves. A corporal whose name Jonathan couldn’t remember was making the best out of their offered concealment. As the Behemoth neared the corporal’s hiding spot, Jonathan watched the man carefully securing two sticks of dynamite in his worn leather belt.

  With crashing steps, the Behemoth passed by the corporal. The man didn’t hesitate, darting out directly behind the towering machine. He zigzagged around the large indentations the feet of the beast left behind in the muddy road. Jonathan imagined it was as much to confuse the hidden sniper as it was to avoid falling into the wet pits being left in the Behemoth’s wake.

  To destroy the giant machine, the corporal had to climb up the Behemoth and drop the dynamite down its two steam stacks. A task easy enough imagined, but much harder to execute under combat conditions.

  The Behemoths were in constant motion, powered by two massive metal legs—legs that held the square-shaped command bridge of the beast—towering at least twenty feet above the battlefield. If the Confederate sniper didn’t kill the man scaling the leg, and if the corporal didn’t get caught in the complex gears and motors that made the machine ambulate, he might reach the scalding hot steam stacks. Attacking the Behemoth from behind gave the men slightly better odds of success because none of the myriad weapons attached to the bridge could be brought directly