“Dismissed! Not you, Madsen. Somebody take Madsen's toy and put it away for him so he doesn't get lost looking for the rack.”
Mikkel silently passed his rifle to the recruit next to him and resigned himself to being shouted at by the riflery instructor. Again.
“Are you a coward, Madsen?” the instructor, Sergeant Sørensen, demanded. Without giving him a chance to answer, “Are you malingering? Trying to avoid fighting? Wanting to let the other soldiers risk their lives while you stay here in safety? Trying to get out of your commitment to the Army? Because I can have you discharged right now as unfit!”
“No! No, sir, none of that,” Mikkel broke in urgently. “I want to fight. I just can't, can't aim very well. Sir.”
“I've looked at your medical records. There's nothing wrong with your eyes. There's no excuse for you not to improve in three weeks of training.”
“It's not my eyes, sir,” Mikkel agreed, taking a hard breath before continuing. He had never admitted this out loud, not even to his twin brother. “The problem is in my brain.”
“Oh, there's a problem in your brain, all right.”
Mikkel winced internally — he'd set himself up for that — but went on steadily. “There's nothing wrong with my eyes but I have trouble with seeing distances. My depth perception is very poor. People have tried to improve my marksmanship ever since I was a child but I just can't aim. I can do fairly well at short range with a shotgun and I'm good at fighting hand to, well, whatever.”
Sergeant Sørensen regarded him narrow-eyed, finally shrugging. “All right. I suppose that's possible. I can't recommend a combat position for you, though.” Mikkel couldn't quite conceal his disappointment. He wanted to hit back against the monsters. “There will be a lot of construction and repairs — lighthouses, supply outposts, the bridge, the tunnel — and I think you can do that. It's not fighting, but it's essential for the reconquest.
“All right, dismissed. No reason for you to come back for training. I will arrange for you to be transferred to the engineers.”
“Mikkel, put it down. Quick!” As the two strongest men on the construction team, Mikkel and Christer Olsson were tapped to carry heavy objects when a forklift was unavailable or wouldn't fit. They were carrying a heavy beam between them to the lighthouse under construction when Christer, looking off to his right, spoke up suddenly.
Without questioning his friend, Mikkel joined him in setting down the beam and turning to look at events to their right. Rifles and shotguns had been firing all afternoon as the heavy overcast and intermittent rain had brought out the more sun-resistant grosslings in the area to attack the barricade at the end of the causeway. The noise had faded into part of the background, but now something new was going on over there.
“Look at that swarm,” Christer said grimly, “they're firing as fast as they can and the grosslings are still moving in. I think they may break through.”
As construction workers, they were armed only with their regular daggers. Mixing it up with grosslings at dagger-point didn't appeal to Mikkel at all, but what other weapons did they have? Mikkel looked around the construction site.
“Rebar.” He pointed to the materials piled off to their left. No further explanation being necessary, they raced together to grab meter-long lengths of rebar and then sprinted past other construction workers just beginning to take alarm and placed themselves behind the gunmen, weapons ready.
They had scarcely taken their places when the first grosslings flowed over the barricade, clambering over their dead, pushed by the rest of the swarm behind them. The gunmen, too hard-pressed to reload their firearms, backed away, defending themselves with their daggers. Without consultation, Mikkel and Christer waded in together, shielding the gunmen as they retreated along the narrow causeway, smashing grosslings with rebar, kicking and stomping with their steel-shanked boots.
Behind them, the gunmen regrouped, reloaded, and moved into position to pick off grosslings passing out of reach of the two big men. The battle continued for almost an hour. Mikkel and Christer were joined by half a dozen more rebar-armed workmen, being pushed further and further back along the causeway, the gunmen still working behind them. The swarm was slowly whittled down more and more until the last grossling finally collapsed. The gunmen and the rest of the construction crew raced forward, workmen dragging corpses out of the way so that they could bring in reinforcing materials to the barricade, some gunmen shooting any grossling that twitched, others ready to defend the workmen if any others approached.
Mikkel and Christer retreated out of everyone's way to sit tiredly on the beam they'd been moving. The grosslings had been very numerous but most had had relatively feeble natural weapons; so long as humans avoided being knocked down and buried in attacking monsters, they could avoid serious injury. The men's heavy work clothes had protected them from anything worse than bruises and scratches. After a while, having caught his breath, Mikkel said, “That was fun. We should do that again.”
Christer looked at him in disbelief. Mikkel grinned wearily at his friend.