Weekly Writing – October 7 2023

They had lost half their platoon the first night in that damned city. And Jameson had no idea how to explain that to his superiors barking on the radio, since they hadn’t actually encountered a single enemy combatant.
They hadn’t found a single living thing since disturbing a flock of birds on the perimeter. A living cyclone of sparrows twisting and screaming towards the horizon; one of the men, the new ones who still needed at least another six-month course in keeping their mouths shut, had said sparrows were supposed to be a bad sign. His mother had told him so, that each of them had a soul they were supposed to carry out of the world with them when they died. So when they got together in a huge flock like that, what could it mean except that they had all found their chosen souls in one stupid, unlucky group?
Jameson had told the kid to shut up – one more lesson in that long course of learning to let a bad silence be. But he’d watched the shoulders of all his men, even the ones seasoned enough to spit on most old wives’ myths, slump under that idea as if the sparrows had come back to roost.
And now they weren’t coming back. Walking out in six-strong bands to scout or just disappearing silently from the fringes, and he had no idea why. With dawn wavering over the city, the colour of champagne left out in the rain, he’d stopped sending scouts. He’d tried to arrange them all so they were facing each other across that unearthly silence, but it was impossible for everyone to watch everyone at once. When eyes strayed, they came back to find no one sitting on the rubble or remains of a park bench where a weary soldier had been before.
He had no answers and fewer eyes all the time. He should have been watching his men, trying to fill in the gaps where their focus broke, but his eyes had started straying to the sky.
Staring up at the watery grey-gold, the same as the kid still huddled under a streetlamp on the other side of their shrinking group. Jameson wouldn’t meet his eyes or admit to anyone that they were both looking for sparrows.