Natural Consequences by Elliott Kay Page B

along, heading out to the closest cry for help. At the bottom of a watery crater he found a fellow trooper lying in the mud. The man must’ve been wounded, though in this light Aidan couldn’t see how. The water was already up to his shoulders . It seemed all the man could do to sit mostly upright. “Can you move?” hissed Aidan.
    “I’ve one leg shot, but the other’s fine… just stuck in the mud to the knee,” the man said. “Trapped.” His words came out haltingly as he fought through pain. “I can move if I get unstuck.”
    A flare went into the sky, offering Aidan a clearer look at the crater. He thought better of rolling in. A man could easily sink both legs into that sort of bog. Jumping straight in would only leave two men trapped in the mud. “Half a moment,” Aidan warned, and crept away looking for wiser of options.
    Soon , he found a couple planks of wood amid the remains of a wagon. Aidan crawled back over with them, wishing there was more in the way of cover or shadow out here as he waited out the flickering light of another flare.
    The fellow in the crater stared down at something white and grey in his hands. “Hey, I’m back,” Aidan hissed. “Hey! Chum!” Aidan wondered how rattled the man was. He seemed absorbed with his little photograph. “Look here! I’m going to get you out!”
    The man looked up. Aidan saw another flare go overhead, cursed at their frequency, and hugged the ground. That was when he recognized his company commander. “Captain Westerbrook?”
    The captain just shrugged and looked down at his photo. “Captain,” Aidan whispered urgently, “snap out of it, sir! I’ve got these boards. Put them by your leg so I’ll have something to stand on. We’ll dig you out.”
    No response. Aidan fumed, then tossed the boards down into the crate r and slipped inside after them. Several times the mud threatened to envelop his foot or his hand, but Aidan trudged through it.
    “Captain?” he asked.
    “Shouldn’t have come,” the other man mumbled.
    “Aye, you and me both, sir,” Aidan agreed, his cheerful Irish accent contrasting with the captain’s morose tones.
    “I was married before I left,” Westerbrook continued. “Should’ve stayed.”
    “That her?” Aidan asked, not bothering to look as he fished out the boards and set them around Westerbrook’s trapped leg.
    The captain sniffed. He nodded, though Aidan didn’t see. “Chelsea.”
    “Huh. That’s funny. I’ve a girl named Chelsea, too,” Aidan grinned, probing for the captain’s leg with his shovel. “ Londoner like yourself, actually. Met before the war. Alright, sir, I’m gonna give this a shove and try to get your foot some slack, y’see?” He heard the hiss of a flare above them.
    “Got to stay quiet, sir,” Aidan warned, glancing up at the flare as it soared overhead, then down at the captain, and the captain’s wedding picture.
    It was dark and wet . Shadows and light danced across the photograph as the flare carried on into the night, but Aidan would have known that smile anywhere.
    “Son of a bitch,” Aidan murmured . He stared down into the blackness that followed when the light disappeared from the crater. The captain sniffled.
    You can’t leave him here, said a voice in his head. He’s too important. More important than you.
    Aidan fumed and fought with himself, but he didn’t lash out . He didn’t strike the other man in the head with his shovel, or unsling his rifle and shoot him, or accuse him of stealing Aidan’s girl while he was off to war and Westerbrook was still in school. He thought about doing all those things, of course, but the voice in his head was half right. Westerbrook wasn’t more important than Aidan; he was just another stupid officer. But Aidan couldn’t leave him here. Despite his sins against Aidan—and hell, knowing Chelsea, Westerbrook probably hadn’t a clue—the man didn’t deserve to die out here like this. No one deserved to die alone in a