The Coward

Women and children first! The placards and posters are stuck up on walls and notice boards all over the city. Because they are everywhere, they have lost all meaning. No one lets women and children try to escape first anymore. Every time another bomb falls, or another platoon of gas-spraying masked soldiers barrels through, it is every man for himself. Or woman or child.

I've taken to ripping them down when I see them, and the coast is clear. I could still be shot for defacing government property, theoretically. I cut them up and sell them as toilet paper; they're almost as good as the real thing, if you don't remember the real thing, and who does anymore?

When they first started going up, my army friends and I thought it was a bad sign. An admission of near-defeat, the implication that we were going to be bombed and strafed and gassed and mown down so we might as well make it orderly if you try to survive it.

It took the fight out of me, that's for sure. I left the army and started hiding, started living out of garbage barrels and scrap heaps. 

I see dozens of my dead countrymen every day, littering the streets and alleys. Sometimes, I take their clothes and shoes and try to sell them or trade them. Plenty of them are women and children. The few people you see walking the streets, at least in daylight, are men, worn and haggard, veterans like me who have given up or who were too injured to return to the battle. Some of them are too young for war, but that distinction is growing more and more debatable as the days wear on. But they are always men. I only see the women at night.

There was a place where I slept for awhile, a former basement cabaret, but a bomb hidden in a piano had gone off when a troop transport had rumbled by on the street above and shook the place like an earthquake. I had been gone when it happened, but three people I had known for years went up in smoke. And I needed a new place to sleep.

I found the Underground. We had all heard that the government had flooded the tunnels at the beginning of the end, to make things harder for everyone, apparently. But one evening I found the entrance to Winter Palace Station and vaulted over the wrought-iron fence and raced down the steps as behind me I heard the rattle and clack of machine gun bullets hitting paving stones and walls.

The door was rusted and curled; I could easily slip through. Inside it smelled rankly of piss and other awful things. It was pitch dark and very warm. There was no sound of water, no dampness in the air. I lit a match and went forward down the tunnel, past the abandoned and shattered ticketing booth. The tiles under my feet were slippery and I walked carefully.

The match gave out and I struck another, a tiny globe of orange light illuminating barely the hand that held it. I was starting to sweat in the warmth. I dug my revolver from my pocket and held it out before me. I crept forward, listening.

Three matches later, I was about to turn back. There was no telling how far the tunnel went, how far the train platform was, or whether the place was intact at all. Then I heard steam hissing overhead. A steam pipe percolated just inches above me. I reached up and, keeping my hand on the warm metal, used it as a track to guide me deeper in. Something down here was getting power from the steam. 

My fingertips were singed countless times before I reached a downslope and my hand couldn't reach the pipe any longer. I tread slowly and carefully down the decline, cooler air now rushing upward at my face. Cooler air that smelled of unwashed people. Cooler air moving toward me meant I was nearing a larger room, with greater movement of current. The platform. 

Suddenly my eyes made out something sparkling and writhing in the far darkness. It was a small fire. I nearly broke into a run, but forced myself to remain calm. The downslope evened out and finally I could sense myself emerge onto the platform, the walls on either side disappearing into a cavernous space. There were more fires. My eyes tingled and burned as I looked around me.

Then, suddenly, there was a painfully bright light in my face. Too late I brought my arm up to shield my eyes; images swam in my vision but I froze where I was. A voice called out.

Halt!

I was already halted, but I said nothing and raised my hands, one still holding the revolver. 

Drop the gun.

I dropped the gun. It was a woman's voice, I realized. A young woman.

Who are you.

Not a question, I noted. A demand.

I gave my name and serial number and the date of my desertion.

He's one of them. Just kill him, said another voice. A child's voice this time.

I said nothing.

The light went off and my vision was instantly black. I could see nothing, but I heard two sets of boots coming my way. I stood still, blinking and trying to focus on something. Finally, the boots halted right in front of me.

Come one, the woman said, taking my hand roughly and dragging me forward.

She led me, followed by whoever had come with her, to one of the fires and shoved me to the floor. Eventually, my eyes adjusted and I saw three adult women and four children - two boys, two girls - sitting around the fire, staring silently at me.

So this is where the women and children go, I thought. The woman who had brought me over handed me a tin cup half full of broth with bits of something floating in it. I thanked her and gulped in down, burning my mouth and throat.

In the morning, we'll decide what to do with you, she said, taking the cup back from me. For now, Carsten will show you where you can sleep. With that, she whistled, and a tall thin boy of maybe thirteen came running up, an army rifle slung over his shoulder.

The woman muttered to the boy, who nodded and then said, Come with me. I followed him slowly. Once we were out of the fire's light and the earshot of anyone sitting at it, the boy Carsten took my wrist in his slight hand and led me through the near-dark to a bench some ways down the platform.

Here, he said, gesturing to the bench. No one sleep here anymore, you can have it tonight.

Thank you. Why does no one sleep here anymore?

He shrugged. People die here very often.

How many are you here?

He shook his head. I don't really know. People come and go, or die. He paused. Never like you though.

Like me?

Soldiers, he said. Men.

He nodded and left me then, and I settled onto the bench and tried to sleep, futilely as it would prove. 

I heard noises all night: coughing, whispered conversations, pissing, snoring, crying. I was even sure I heard fucking. Overhead, the tunnel's exhaust vents showed the night sky fading to murky morning. I sat up. In the light from the vents, the whole platform was visible.

There were perhaps twenty-five women and as many children, most in their pre-teens. Some were obviously teenagers, like Carsten, who came to greet me with a shy grin and I wondered if it had been him I'd heard getting some last night.

Come, he said, taking me lightly by the sleeve. The Mothers want to know your intentions.

Intentions? I just want to stay alive.

Carsten shrugged. In the morning light he looked like a child playing war, with his too-big boots and the rifle.

He led me to who were apparently the Mothers, a trio of middle-aged housewives forced by war and circumstance underground. One of them gestured for me to sit on the floor before them; I did.

Good morning, she said, and I said it back.

We have some questions for you. First, if you have any papers, please give them to Carsten. The boy stepped forward and I fished my certificate, ragged and torn, from the lining of my coat. He took it to the Mothers, who passed it between themselves.

Why are you here? one of them asked, folding the document and tucking it into her shirt.

The place I was living was destroyed. I needed somewhere safe to stay. I thought of the Underground, and found the Winter Palace Station.

What can you do? another asked.

I was a soldier, I said. I can -

- and at that moment a whine filled the place, a faint whine that grew louder and louder, falling from a great height and coming exponentially closer. A bomb. Coming right at us. 

I sprang up and shouted, Everyone, move to the exit! Pandemonium erupted as everyone understood what was coming, but too late. The bomb crashed onto the street above the platform and the explosion collapsed the upper world onto the lower. Stone and metal and fire fell down on us and I raced toward the slope, dragging bodies off the floor, helping children along, pulling women up and herding them up the slope toward the tunnel before the fire surged up and around us.

Most of them were dead, I knew. I ran on, underneath the steam pipe, and behind me I heard pounding footsteps. I looked over my shoulder. It was one of the Mothers. Blood streamed down her face and she carried over her shoulder the lacerated carcass of a child. She also held my revolver.

She came on, rushing abreast of me. In the light now coming in from the collapsed roof, I could see the walls were papered with the old poster. Women and children first! I slowed, and then stopped.

They all rushed past me, up the stairs into the black smoke and fire and the end of the end. I heard machine guns again, screaming, begging. I waited until I heard nothing but the sounds of unextinguished fire and then went up. 

The Mothers and the children, some of them, were face down on the broken street. The rest, who knows? Maybe they got away. Maybe they're hiding in another Underground. I found Carsten beside a burned-out truck. I took his rifle and his boots.

I saw no one the rest of the day, except enemy soldiers. I hid in a pile of rubble until it was dark. I found an alley where people stood silently over a barrel of burning trash. I warmed myself for a moment, pretending I didn't notice the female faces.