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Warning - Warning - Warning

War is an ugly, awful thing. This chapter involves its effects on people, including children, with all that entails.

If you can handle All Quiet on the Western Front, you should be fine (although Remarque was a better writer than I :P ). Otherwise, message me and I'll give you a summary without the details.

Comments welcome.

Chapter XXV - Running Through Fire

Rene Pileau was a pilot. He was a damn fine pilot. He also had a long and sordid history with women, fast cars, and pyrotechnics. Right that moment, the first two weren't even on his mind.

The abandoned farm he'd commandeered as a covert landing strip was a veritable explosion waiting to happen. A crop-duster airplane owned by the unknown rancher had necessitated an enormous underground fuel tank he'd found within half an hour of setting up this fallback. That coupled with the four 500-gallon propane tanks, trio of silos full of rotting grain, and dozens of smaller 5-gallon bottles meant he could turn the place into a natural gas-fueled death trap in no time.

Which was precisely what he'd done. Getting things to a mixture of air, fuel, and natural gas such that they would explode was the real challenge and time eater. Luckily, he'd realized all of this might be a necessity several days before he and Zebra had infiltrated Sarajevo. Plus, just like the farm he'd grown up on, this place had plenty of leftover fertilizer and sawdust just laying around for an enterprising firebug to take advantage of.

He snickered to himself at the face Sato would make, using such make-shift 'bath tub' methods, as he set up the last of his blast caps and remote control receivers cobbled together from RC car parts.

A chill wind blew through the hair's ears, and he turned to look westward, as storm clouds blustered around on the horizon, ominous and looming, effectively grounding him with the high, chaotic winds and threat of lightning to come.

Now for the bait...

The hare scampered, bent low, across the crunchy dead grain field and thumped his way up rickety steps into the raised farmhouse, going for the old ham radio set he'd found inside during his and Zebra's earlier reconnaissance. Sure enough, the rusty old thing was still sitting on the dining room table, separate handset connected by jury-rigged lines he'd had to build by hand.

Before touching it, though, he took out his much more modern hand set and signaled for pickup.

"Boss, I'm good to go. How far out are you?"

Over the radio set a second later, he heard what for a moment he thought was gunfire, setting his heart racing. The calm in Buck's voice mixed with the fact there were no children screaming told him a bit about the nature of whatever rustbucket Zebra had commandeered.

"We'll be there in five. Start up your toys whenever you're ready."

Rene grinned. He was a high-strung hare, but this sort of action always seemed to calm him and give a rush of adrenaline all at the same time, a sort of guerilla warfare euphoria.

"Roger that, I'll be on the front stoop when you get here."

The radio squawked and shushed with snow.

"Roger that. Buck out."

The rabbit pulled out a rickety old chair and plopped into it in a cloud of dust and mildew smell, and grabbed the old handset and a scrap of paper Zebra'd left for him. The radio clicked on with sounds he could only grin at and think of as 'old-timey', the warbling Doppler effect of old radios making this somehow seem like a spy flick to him.

The words he read were written phonetically, and though he didn't know exactly what they meant, he knew their general intent. He'd just 'accidentally' broadcast as a Bosnian military unit requesting assistance for a pair of broken-down tanks, transmitting their location with a map code two months out of date he knew for certain Milosevic's men had cracked.

Given that Milosevic had just failed to take Sarajevo by force, he knew the general couldn't chance an actual Bosnian military unit showing up. The morale effect on his men would be serious, even if a pair of tanks wouldn't do much to his forces in reality. Milosevic would have to order the tanks attacked immediately, rather than risk them hitting his supply depot, which was just ten miles away through the hills.

Giggling giddily, he left the radio turned to send, just in case the map coordinates weren't good enough, and ran out onto the porch while digging around in his belt bag for his CD walkman.

"Ride of the Valkyries? No no wait...1812 overture!" The hare snickered and did a quick jig with his long legs on the porch while queuing up the percussive symphony piece, leaving it paused until he could start his own little performance.

Rene heard the bus before he smelled it, and smelled it before he saw it. The busted rust-covered old thing was trailing acrid blue smoke as it came around the hillside from the main road, and he could hear the knocking of its engine like an old movie time-bomb. The hare winced, and had to remind himself not to get down about it. They wouldn't need the bus for very long. A few hours at most, if they were going to make it to the border checkpoint at all.

When he reached the front door, it squealed open, and the big black tiger inside reached out and offered him a strong paw up into the stinking, banging bus, while he braced himself with a grab-bar along the side of the walkway. Renee was up and inside in an instant, side-stepping a rusted-out hole in the floor and passing Zebra with a snort and a roll of eyes at the burro for his choice, before he noticed the children and just sort of stopped as the bus began to roll again.

Jesus...

He stared. These kids were filthy, skinny, some crying quietly as others tried to calm and hush them. Their clothes were rags, their eyes full of fear...He saw a pair of black wolves that had to be twins organizing the handing-out of dry ration bars like they were solid gold.

Buck reached up and patted him on the shoulder, from his spot behind the driver's seat. He turned towards Buck and the grey-white mouse girl next to him, who gave him a look of curiosity as she cradled the most mocked-together rifle he'd ever seen.

"Get it now, Rene?"

The hare nodded, swallowed, and slid into the vacant seat just behind them. One of the black wolves came up and slid down next to him, having to be warded off with a paw as the hare hissed in momentary panic as the wolf almost bumped the detonator device in his paw.

"Shit, careful kid!"

The wolf gave him a silent stare of non-comprehension. He didn't like the blankness in the girl's eyes. He'd seen misery and fear before, heaven knew, but this was something else in addition. Rene knew a predatory instinct when he saw one...The wolf wouldn't hesitate to start killing if it meant protecting something it held dear, and he knew it.

As the bus started trundling down the road, the other twin showed up and sat down, forcing the rabbit to scoot up against the cold metal of the bus wall and pull down a cracked glass window so he could see over the grime.

The dingy abandoned farm with its cracked windows and mostly-empty buildings gave him a wistful feeling as they left it in their growing trail of dust and smoke. So much effort had gone into setting it up, and his little plane was in there too, rigged up like all the rest.

Oh well, he mused, at least it'll all go out with a bang.

"What the hell?"

Rene turned to look at the tiger who'd just spoken. Arlen was at the back of the bus, looking towards the horizon with his paw over his eyes.

"What is it, tiger?"

"Uh...Minor kink in the plan. They have a chopper."

Zebra snorted and put pedal to metal. Or would, if there was a floor underneath that part of the bus. Rene winced and shook his head.

"Not good. Boss, they'll intercept us. If we get lucky they'll-"

Arlen called out again, interrupting him.

"Tanks approaching the farm! Zebra, get us around a hill or something!"

Holy shit that was fast...

The kids were looking around, tension and fear amping up in their eyes and postures as they caught on to the terseness in Arlen's voice. Rene winced and ducked down in the seat, even though he knew taking that kind of light cover against tank shells was pretty much utterly pointless.

Startled squeaks and yips of terror passed up the bus like a crashing wave, as something whistled past the bus and impacted the stony hillside next to them. With a tooth-jarring 'WHUMP!', the tank shell blew solid rock to gravel, peppering the bus with chunks of stone the size of thumbnails. Renee nearly fell down between the seats as a larger bit cracked the elderly glass of the window next to his head.

"Drive, Zebra!" The captain was ducking down in his seat too as he yelled, which made Rene somehow feel better. Back behind them, he could hear the caterpillars of the tanks, and he knew that was bad...Real bad. That meant a LOT of tanks, if he could hear it this far away over the sounds of shouting, crying children.

The hare's eyebrows rose as the slender mouse girl sitting next to Buck stood up, spreading her footpaws to brace herself against the bus's suddenly jerky evasive motion. She planted her paws on her hips, thrust her chest forward, and started barking commands at the children. In moments, the screaming had stopped, and the kids were taking cover, sheltering each other with their bodies and taking crash positions.

Kid's got command potential, if we live through this shit...

"Rene! They're in the blast field! Do it!"

The hare popped his head up again, and looked out the half-opened and busted window. Sure enough, he could see the tanks through the smoke cloud that had kept them from a direct hit moments before. At least a dozen heavy Soviet-surplus tanks had rolled onto the farm, and were starting to gain ground as they sped up on the open ground to pursue. Over them, a Sikorsky helicopter was hovering, and had picked them out with a spotlight that nearly blinded him as it passed over and then came back to them, turning nighttime into day.

The hare grimaced and grinned at the same time, bending his face into a rictus that would have frightened most of his friends if they hadn't known him so well. He raised the detonator device in his paw, as if to show it off to the world, and then pressed the trigger.

He knew the explosion wouldn't be instant. The signal travel time was less than a second, but the devices themselves needed a few seconds to start burning, then a few more to begin cooking off. Still, his heart seemed to stop as he held his breath, for a moment worrying he'd done something wrong and the whole thing had failed to go off.

Then night turned to day as the first of the 500-gallon propane cylinders lit off directly underneath the barn, hurling chunks of the structure in all directions and flipping a tank through the air like a toddler kicking a tonka truck down a flight of stairs.

Several tanks fired before they realized what was going on, though the shots went wide as Zebra pulled the bus to one side more nimbly than the hare thought possible. Another explosion lit up the night behind them, the hare's grinning face a half-shadowed demon mask to the wolves next to him, as several other tanks vanished in a blast of earth and shattered building.

Arlen laughed and pumped his fist, yelling in victory at the nearly orgasmic sense of release he associated with those explosions. The grain silo went then, launching into the air like a doomed space craft as the water truck full of airline fuel lit and exploded in a blue-white 'thump' that seemed so understated based on the carnage it was causing, flaming wreckage and stone blocks raining down every which way as tank soldiers slammed their hatches shut, screamed and held their ears, or just prayed that whatever god they'd angered wouldn't find them.

The hell behind them vanished from sight, except for the inferno of lights falling from the sky due to the burning rotten grain, as Zebra turned them so sharply around another hillside that the bus nearly tipped, coming up onto half its wheels for a half-second that felt like an eternity to the Captain. He grunted as Lamia fell into his lap with an 'oof', and he wrapped an arm around the mouse girl to keep her from banging into his splinted, broken leg, or flying through the window.

Lamia looked up at him with such an expression that the stag had trouble knowing what to say. There was a fierce hope burning there, an almost-worship, like one might see after a miracle had just been performed in front of the faithless. Instead of trying to get up, the mouse hugged around his middle and bit her lip to keep from crying in relief at having lived through the might of Serbia's tanks.

Buck ruffled her headfur, and sat up just enough to keep his eyes scanning the roads. Just because they'd blooded the enemy's nose didn't mean they were in the clear yet. Far from it.

Tristan sat back in the computer chair and looked over his shoulder, across the pine-paneled cabin they called home, and called out.

"Tosh, found the site you were looking for."

From their bedroom, she came walking, and Tristan grinned as he caught himself goggling at her. She'd called him a love-struck fool once, and he couldn't help but agree. She was beautiful, tallish, her fur a lustrous red and her eyes a beautiful green that sometimes looked blue or brown depending on the light. Even wearing just one of his long sweatshirts, she was like a supermodel to him.

The Russian vixen laughed at his look of surprised admiration, rolled her eyes at him, and padded over to kiss the wolf, turning the computer chair with both paws as she did to get a better angle.

He felt relief as much as anything. A few days ago, they'd found out he had accidentally gotten her pregnant. His girlfriend had panicked so completely that Tristan had worried she'd try to hurt herself. For the last few days, he had half expected to wake up rolling down the mountainside in just his birthday suit and a few strategically placed knives.

As she pulled herself into his lap, making the chair groan softly, he was pretty sure she'd gotten past that, at least for now. His arms went around her slender waist, and he leaned back, making her chase him into the kiss. She got her revenge by wriggling into his lap, then breaking the kiss and turning away from him, grabbing the desk to turn them both back to the screen.

Tristan rested his chin on her shoulder as she started going through the medical website he'd been helping her find. A hospital in Sao Paolo she mentioned having visited once. The wolf raised an eyebrow at the news segment of the website.

" 'Security Renovations Complete - We Will Never Be Unprepared Again.' Are you sure it sounds like a safe place?"

Tasha shifted again, and Tristan sniffed into her hair as his groin responded to her touch, growing hard against her firm, muscular rear.

"Your uncle tried to have a man killed in there, and it cost him half of his operational teams...And he didn't even succeed. I doubt he would try again, even if he somehow found out."

Tristan nodded and licked her ear, making it flick and causing her to elbow him lightly with a grin.

"So if things don't go smooth at the checkups, we'll do the delivery there? Can we afford that? Private hospitals can't be cheap."

Tasha chewed her lip at the mention of money, and glanced to their side at the Spartan accommodations they'd been using the last year or so. When Tristan kissed her cheek again, she craned her neck to look back at him over her shoulder.

"We'll figure something out. This is only a contingency plan anyway. I'm sure our doctor can handle this."

Tristan nodded, meeting her eyes, his own reflecting some worry. The wolf had never thought seriously about having children, and now it was being thrust upon them both. Still, he figured, thinking about whether or not to have kids was no longer pointful. This was happening, he realized, and there was no sense lamenting it or worrying overmuch.

"We take it a day at a time."

"One speed bump at a time, Rene," the Captain said with the slightest touch of annoyance to his steely tone. The damn hare had been asking him over and over how they were going to get this bus full of refugees out of the war zone.

"Now shut up about it. They don't understand you, but you're scaring them with your tone of voice and posture."

The hare scowled, but knew the Captain was being sensible, and sat back in his seat with the two wolves now on either side of him. The one with a pistol had insisted, in firm pantomime, and the hare hadn't seen a good reason to disagree. Besides, he figured, there were worse things than sitting between two pretty wolves even if they were paws-off-city thanks to their age.

Then again, one had a pistol and a damn mean look in her eyes as she stared out the now-glassless window, and the other had a fire ax in her lap. Also, their clothes made them look male, probably on purpose, hiding most of their features in the bagginess. It reminded him of the tomboy flight instructor he'd had early in his career, and that thought stiffened his tail for sure, and lightened his mood too.

Buck, for his part, shifted in his seat trying not to get too comfortable and start getting dozey. A quick check of his watch told the stag that they were only an hour or so from safety, and long experience told him that meant they were in the worst danger. Darkest before the dawn, after all.

Ahead of him, Zebra managed to somehow navigate the war-ravaged roads, dodging wrecked and abandoned vehicles with the monstrous dinosaur he'd commandeered. Buck started to understand the wisdom in it; the thing was solid steel, if rusted all to hell, and if needed they could probably plow through some kinds of road blocks.

In his lap, the mouse girl Lamia had dozed off, her paw still wrapped loosely around the stock of her rifle, keeping it in a careful safe position with the barrel pointed at the wall and not at anyfur. It was braced, and the touch wasn't necessary, but all the same he could appreciate the level of intelligence and professionalism she'd picked up apparently just on experience.

Goddamnit old man. They won't let you get these kids through the roadblock, nevermind out of the country. Think. Think of a solution.

He growled under his breath in frustration, and glared at the landscape like it'd done him some kind of personal offense.

In the rear of the bus, Arlen was slowly moving around the mostly-resting children, careful not to step on anyone as he slid like silence and watched their six. Just as he'd moved again, he lifted his eyes off the sleeping kid he was standing on either side of in time to see a flash in the distance. He peered that way, then saw two more distant flashes. Something instinctive, primal, told him what was going on.

"INCOMING!"

His bellow had the kids startling awake, Zebra jerking the bus to the side, Rene grabbing onto the two girls near him as one of them fell on him thanks to the vehicle swerving, and Buck grabbing his rifle as Lamia startled awake.

The tiger had just enough time to doubt himself and feel like a fool for half a second before the shrieks of incoming artillery left him no time to worry about it. He grabbed the nearest kids his big arms could reach and forced their heads down as he himself ducked.

Zebra cursed loudly in some mix of languages, jerking the wheel to the side and raising his arm to shield his eyes as the road blew apart just in front of them, blasting the windshield out and sending shards of glass flying every which way. The sudden jerk to the side knocked Arlen flat, landing him atop some poor fur who lost his breath from the hit, as a second shell blew somewhere to the bus's left, shattering the windows on that side and nearly deafening the lot of them.

Arlen blinked, staring back into the dark, where the horizon sat placid in stark counterpoint to the mayhem of flying glass and swerving bus.

Where the hell is the third shel-

Coughing. Mine. Sounds wet, not good...Who turned out the lights?

Arlen stirred, and for a moment thought he was seven years old again, back at home in hick-ville. He felt a shot of fear at the thought of having wet the bed again, and the beating he'd get for it...

Then someone moved underneath him and let out a weak cry, and he snapped back to reality. Something heavy was holding him down, pinning his body just above the waist, and the liquid he was wet with wasn't urine.

He couldn't see. With a grunt of effort, he managed to free his arm and slowly crawl it over to his other wrist. The light on his watch lit up, though the faceplate of it was cracked, and he knew both that he wasn't blinded permanently and that things had just gone entirely sideways.

Staring sightlessly at him as soon as the light was on was the ruined face of one of the poor children. The roof of the bus had crushed down somehow, and the near-unidentifiable child's head had been crushed between a row of seats dislodged from the floor and the bowed-in roof. He stared, seeing the blood and fleshy bits dripping, and realized he wasn't going to feel disgusted at himself for hours for using that drip to figure out which way was down.

With another grunt of effort, he started clenching and unclenching muscles, looking away from the kid and closing his eyes as he checked to make sure his body still worked.

Arms are fine...Legs...Whew, I can feel them both. Knees don't feel so good, neither does my back.

"B...Buck...Captain..." He managed to choke out those words, as he heard other movement starting to happen around him. A thrill of fear and irrationality told him the kids might start coming back to life any moment now. He knew it was shock, and brushed it down with force of will, reminding himself he was in Bosnia, that these were orphanage kids he was trying to protect, and that the Serb army was on their tail.

Up in the front of the bus, Buck had a paw to his face, pressed over his left eye. The urge to fall down and scream until unconscious was strong, and he knew there was glass jutting out of where his eye should be. His right eye told him Lamia was okay and already starting to get free of the tangle of limbs and bus parts. It also told him Zebra didn't look too good, though he was moving, crawling and trying to get the door open. He also noticed that they'd crashed into a hillside, and were lucky enough that the front windshield wasn't pressed up against it.

"Zebra...Can you stand?"

The burro smiled at him, and he saw blood on those wide yellow teeth.

"Sure, boss...Just...Enjoying lying down is all..."

Bullshit, your legs are broken, I can see it from here.

He heard Arlen calling out then, and twisted around...The carnage behind him didn't phase the stag, though he was sure he'd be dreaming about it later. With a wince of pain, he moved, and knew by the grinding sensation that his splint would need to be re-done. The pain was intense enough that he could just ignore it, with the proviso that he be careful not to let himself get shocky.

Rene groaned in the seat behind him, and pushed one of the two wolf girls, trying to get her off of him. The one up against the wall was clearly at best unconscious, her head bloody from impact and glass. The other wolf was stunned and woozily trying to move off the hare.

"Sitrep!" Buck dug out his field officer roar, the best one he could, and was happy it instilled him with discipline. Good to know, he supposed, he still had the voice of authority he'd relied on all those years ago.

Arlen's voice came back, though it was muffled.

"Pinned...Nfh...Gimme a sec..." A groan of metal sounded from back there, as the big muscular beast of a warrior flexed himself and heaved, forcing his body against the collapsed bus pieces all around and above him.

"A...Alive...Th-thnk I'm fine..." Rene sounded hurt, but Buck knew better than to think he'd be a problem. The hare was a pro, even if he was a bit bi-polar sometimes. If his wounds were bad, he'd say so.

Lamia was calling out what he assumed were similar orders, and receiving far fewer responses than he'd like. The mouse started calling out names, sounding more and more upset with each one, as she pulled herself upright in the tipped bus, standing partly on the floor and partly on the side of a bloody seat cushion.

Zebra joined her in calling out, in Bosnian, and managed to slowly lever himself upright with muscular arms bearing most of his weight braced against the boarding stair's rail. Buck, meanwhile, tested his leg by putting it against the crumpled divider in front of him and pushing.

Stars shot through his vision and he grunted in pain, gritting his teeth.

Shit.

He heard a groan of fatigued metal, and a squeal of tearing aluminum, then heard the tiger talk again, sounding labored and winded.

"I'm...Mmf...Free. Got a lotta...Uhf...Casualties back here..."

Buck winced inwardly and grabbed Lamia's arm hard to get her attention. The mouse turned her head towards him, and he spoke slowly in the hopes she'd understand him.

"We can't stay. Serbian soldiers will be here soon to check for us. Gather up the ones who can walk and have them carry the ones who can't. Understand?"

The girl stared into his one open eye for a long few seconds. Hers looked glassy, a little shocky, but after that pause they hardened up, she nodded, and then started barking commands.

Arlen limped up to them then, carrying a wounded child over each shoulder. When he saw Buck's face, he grit his jaw but made no comment.

"Boss, you should try to get the kids out of here. I'll stay back and slow pursuit down."

Buck glared up at him, and thrust his big paw out, grabbing the unbalanced tiger by his Kevlar and yanking him down till they were snout to snout, the blood from his wounded eye dripping between them.

"Fuck you and your heroics, I need you carrying kids!"

The tiger's stare wasn't angry at his words. There was no rage there at all, and in that instant Buck knew the tiger was probably the only one of them thinking close to straight. Arlen spoke back in a low tone so others couldn't hear over the groaning of the bus's door being broken open and the cries of injured children coming back to consciousness.

"Don't worry, Captain. You didn't give me orders to get killed, so I won't." The tiger smirked and hefted one of the hurt kids onto Buck's lap. "Besides...I owe these motherfuckers for hurting my friends."