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A Soldier's Journal,

Chapter One:

A Soldier's Thoughts on the Way to Boot Camp

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They gave me this journal to write in when I got on the recruitment bus. "It's healthy for you to let these things out," Jackson, my recruiter, told me before he handed a different journal and the same words to the guy in line behind me.

I am an orange furred fox with a grey streak that starts at my neck and ends at the very tip of my tail and jet black ears and paws. My eyes are swirls of blue and grey mixed together, a rarity for my species. I'm a fifteen year-old sophomore, who is afraid of spiders, loves Jensen Jackles ,and is a fresh recruit in the newly formed Micro Armed Forces. I'm writing to...to...in order to set my thoughts straight on the day which started it all: This war, my injuries, my decision to join; everything.

I...

I don't know what to make of it. Everything changed on that seemingly normal day seven months ago.

It was like any other ordinary day. I was running late for school, as I always did, because my friend, a black arctic fox named Ryan, slept in. We missed the bus for Pawford Academy, again, and were walking to school. We always though that running and getting exhausted when we were going to be late anyway was a waste of energy. When we arrived at the school, which served students in kindergarten through twelfth grade, the bell for first period had already rung, so the teacher called us out into the hall during class and fussed us out.

Time passed by like normal from then on. After Algebra II, I went to my keyboarding class and aced all the assignments for the day. I even had time to surf the net and chat on Furbook, without the teacher knowing of course. Then, Biology was a bore, and I struggled to stay awake through the teacher's monotone lecture. I had never been into science class, but I particularly disliked Biology. Next was my favorite period: Lunch, the time I got to see all my friends and gorge myself on government-approved, processed foods that were believed to be fit for teenage consumption.

I was waiting at my locker for my friends. Seeing them was really the main reason I actually enjoyed school. We met like always just before noon. Clark, a lion I've known since kithood and had a secret crush on, was always first to arrive. Ben and Tyler, a red wolf and a tiger, came next. Ty's fiery, golden stripes running down the hallway at top speed could be seen from a mile away. Then Danny, a wolf with fur as white as the dew on a cold winter morning, sauntered along next. He was one of the few gay students in school, and we were all privileged enough to know his secret. I wish I had his confidence in that regard. Finally, my best, well only, female friend--a brown jackal with green highlights in her long, flowing hair--joined the rest of us. She was late because a teacher held her after class to chide her for the florescent dye job.

I meant what I wrote earlier: it was a truly ordinary day full of the usual ups and downs that I experienced all the time. I wish now that nothing had changed.

We were on the way to the lunch room. We were idly chatting about this and that. Zera brought up a news report that had been in circulation the last few days. That pompous dickbag leader of the macro world, President Arder, was spouting his typical bullshit on how micros like me, my family, and friends are a drain on the rest of the world. That rat's entire speech was nothing sizist dreck that amounted up to nothing more accusations of controlling the world's finances, contaminating the macro gene pool, and other recycled myths that empowered the Nazis' Anti-Semitic march to power. The horrible thing is, just like the Nazis, that man had begun to gain some modicum of support and followers.

That conversation is the last recollection I have before the moment that changed everything. I remember a massive blur of grey crashing down from the white ceiling as soon as I walked through the double doors to the cafeteria, and I was thrown backwards into a nearby wall.

I awoke to the sound of ringing in my ears. My memory at this point is hazy. Unable to move my arms, I staggered through the halls, like a zombie, only observing what happened around me. I remember students and teachers running in all directions searching for a way out. I remember seeing, yet being unaffected by, the site of broken, mangled bodies; stepping through pools of fresh, flowing, red blood; and hearing the breaking of bones, tearing of muscles, and screams from every hallway. One thing that sticks in my mind is the severed, white furred limb of one unfortunate fur.

My next recollection is of being shaken while someone was calling to me. I felt a paw slapping me across the face. Coming out of the daze I was in, I realized that I was being carried through the halls by Ryan. He had mustered the strength pick me up and transported me to the opposite end of the school, where a micro-sized convoy was waiting on us. Ryan carried me into the armored truck, and I closed my eyes just as I felt the heavily armored vehicle drive away from the carnage.

*I opened my eyes to the blinding white walls of a hospital. Ryan, Danny, and Ben were asleep in chairs beside my bed. I opened my mouth to call to them, but nothing would come out. I looked around to see the state that I was in. Both arms were broken in three places and encased in casts. My left leg, twisted loose from its socket, was braced into place by a pair of metal splints. The four broken ribs in my chest were held firmly in place by bandaging around my upper torso. After seeing all this, I realized that my left eye was covered by another bandage around my head. *

As my mind caught up with my body, everything that I sensed during the attack came flooding back to me, so I relived horrors that I had witnessed but was unable to act upon due to my concussion-induced state. The first image, which still haunts my dreams, is that of an entire class of kindergarteners being crushed at once by a giant, red-furred foot. Along with that memory, their screams echoed in my ears, and the smell of blood burned in my nostrils.

In response, my body trembled, and I unconsciously screamed in delayed terror as other scenes replayed themselves. My Algebra teacher, an ox by the name of Mrs. Scall, was picked up by a macro polar bear. His face contorted into a malicious grin as he pulled her body in two, causing her effluence to spill upon the floor. A boy I knew from gym class, a hedgehog, had every bone in his body shattered when the hand of a grey macro clenched his entire being in the palm of his hand. If the pressure didn't kill him, the impact of falling five macro feet to the ground did.

Then I felt something putting pressure on my body. It was Ryan, Ben, and Danny trying to hold me down, though my traumatic memories kept me from realizing that. I continued to scream and shake violently. Their loud calls to me, faded to silence from the mental torrent in my mind, went unheard. The orderly came and injected a sedative into my IV, and the drug put me to sleep for hours. I was awake for less than two minutes.

The next time I woke up, I was groggy from the meds. Ryan was alone with me in the room. I tried to ask him what happened, but my words were muffled by his lips, which were locked with mine. He gave me gentle, loving rubs as his tongue explored my maw. After he broke the kiss, he confessed his love to me and held my head tightly to his chest. As my mind began to process what had just happened, I heard the quickening of his heartbeat. When he looked down upon me with his tear laden eyes, he said, "Everything is fine. You're safe now, so please, please be calm. I don't want to see you hurting anymore."

The next day, Ryan, Ben, and Danny told me that Clark, Zera, and Tyler were killed in the first strike on the school. All three of them held me tight as I shed tear after mournful tear for their tragically cut-short lives. Again, memories flooding back to me. This time they were all the ups and downs of our friendships...I can't even get myself to write about them now, I'm still so emotionally shaken...

I'll spare you the details of my long excruciating recovery for now. I will, however, explain what I learned about the people who caused everything I'm fighting against.

The three macros that attacked the school, I later found out, are part of an organization dedicated to eradicating micros from existence. My school was just the first of many targets that would be crushed by them. Their calling card is the trail of bloody, bare footprints they leave in their wake. Samuel Manchester, a grey wolf, is the bastard who made the initial stomp on Pawford Academy and put me in traction and concussion. The sadist that trampled the kindergartners is a red vixen named Sandra Cox. My Algebra teacher's executioner is a polar bear by the name of James Daxton. They all have wrap sheets as long as all six of their arms put together, but they are not smart enough to have coordinated this alone.

There is a leader. He goes by the code name "Heavy Set" when he appears on camera and hides his fat ass behind a cloak and hood as he has an interpreter speak for him. I don't know who he is, but so help me, when I find out, hell will not be enough to pay.

All four of us agreed that we couldn't sit around and let this continue to happen. Right now, Danny, Ben and I are heading to training camp for the Micro Armed Forces. I find myself looking upon them now, not only as friends but also as comrades in arms. We know that training is going to be rigorous, and the battles ahead will be fierce. However, we've also resolved to support each other in both body and spirit. Ryan, who is now my mate, stayed behind to train in emergency medical care and work with the Micro First Responders, the group that saved us at the school that day. He feels that he can be of better use by treating and supporting those on the home front. All of us had our tears, and Ryan and I took last night to embrace each other while we slept and gathered strength from one another for our ordeals ahead. I plan on writing him every day.

The bus is pulling into boot camp now.

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Write later,

Joseph Neil Lake