Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (35 page)

Like kindergarteners, we sat there passing the small packages to the n
ext person beside us until everyone had their own.  I was somewhere in the middle of the line, squeezed in between Vincent and Archer, and took a moment to inspect the small box held in my hands.  We’d run out of our emergency Meals-Ready-to-Eat long ago, but Archer’s team had brought hundreds of prepackaged packs of food along with them as well, but this was the first time we’d had the need to consume them.

I’d always found the MREs issued to us in the mil
itary to be quite tasty, with at least
one
exception.  After eighty years of trial and error, military food scientists – or who-the-fuck-ever – had managed to prepare a number of palatable and mostly nutritional meals that kept active service men and women energized when in the field.  Whether they were necessarily healthy was anyone’s guess, but they’d served their purpose.

Sadly,
those delicatessens were long gone, and I didn’t know what in the name of God Archer’s team had brought with them, but the only thing comparable to them that I could think of were K-rations. 

World War II era K-rations.

I turned the box over in my hand before opening it, looking at the ridiculously retro color palette and font that screamed something out of the 1950s, making me once again try to imagine what their world had looked like.  I failed completely, even with the images from Brewster’s textbook in my mind to help, but unfortunately, the textbook would never be able to help me again, since I’d pitched it into the water during our boat ride to Anglesey, and I hadn’t even thought twice about it.

I glanced at Vincent beside me, who also had yet to open his box of mystery food.  He seemed just as reluctant as I was
, and I could see that Wang, Santino, Bordeaux, and Helena were likewise skeptical about consuming such fare.

I glanced at Vincent. 
“Ever had one of these before?”

He looked at me,
but seemed unenthusiastic about his answer.  He stared with wide, open eyes before taking a quick breath while shaking his head.  “I’m not
that
old, Hunter,” he said, turning back to regard the K-ration before returning his eyes to mine again.  “But back when I was with the Swiss military thirty years ago they didn’t have much better…”

I grimaced
and looked away, and saw Stryker sloppily shoving some kind of sausage covered in a thick, dark sauce into his mouth.  Gnawing on it like a cow, he noticed my attention and gave me a sympathetic shrug. 

“You get used to them,” he said before swallowing.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to,” I heard Santino say as he opened a small, round can and hovered it below his nose.  It wrinkled in disgust and Helena beside him slapped a hand over her mouth and suppressed a gag reflex as she turned away from him.  He noticed her disproval and stuck the can closer to her face, but she recoiled again and smacked it out of his hand, sending it flying through the air.

“Hey!”  He
whined.  “I was gonna eat that!”

He stood and went scrambling for his lost meal, finding it a few feet behind him in the
snow.  He retrieved it and returned to his spot, looked at it reluctantly, and sighed.  He reached back into the box container and retrieved a set of plastic silverware, and then suddenly his eyes bugged open in surprise and I heard a sharp intake of breath come from him.  At first I thought he’d noticed something dangerous on the perimeter, but then I saw him hold up an eating utensil in one hand and point a finger at it with the other.

He turned to me
and opened his mouth to speak, but then he paused and seemed to think better of it, and turned to Stryker instead.  “TJ!  Look!  A spork!  I fucking
love
sporks!”

He
then reached behind Helena, who ignored him, and grabbed Brewster’s shoulder and shook her, causing her to spill her small cup of steaming coffee into her lap. She yelped and batted at her pants, but Santino hardly noticed as he continued to shake her.

“See
Brewster!”  He exclaimed.  “It’s like a fork and a spoon all at the same time.  See!”  Santino plunged the spork into his meal and pulled it out with a piece of meat on the tip and juice pooled in the spoon part.  “Oh man, I never thought I’d ever see a spork again!”

Archer glanced at me while
Stryker and Cuyler too shared a look as Santino continued to hold up his spork triumphantly.  Everyone from my timeline simply ignored him, knowing there was absolutely nothing to worry about.  Archer and his troops, however, hadn’t quite gotten used to him and his antics even after all this time.  Living with Santino was an experience, and it wasn’t something someone could get used to in a matter of months.

Understanding Santino took
a lifetime.

“He’s fine,” Helena managed around yet another gag, noticing their attention
.

Archer didn’t seem so convinced, but he went back to his meal anyway.

I, too, decided to open my K-ration and retrieve the hidden wonders within.  I found a small can of… something – it was unlabeled – but there were also a number of unwrapped crackers, some sweet others salty, a cheese spread package, a small bar of chocolate, coffee powder, lemon beverage powder, a mini pack of cigarettes, matches, floss, and a few other goodies.  I didn’t know if the contents I’d just discovered would have been historically accurate fare for American GIs in World War II, but I had to imagine it was close.

I turned to Archer.
  “I can’t believe they still put cigarettes in these things.”

“What do you mean
still
,” he asked.  “They only just developed these rations a few years ago.”

Only a few years
ago…
I mouthed silently, but shook my head to dislodge the thought, thinking of another instead.  “But you guys don’t even smoke.”

He nodded as he chewed one of his crackers.  “Most
of us in the Special Forces don’t.  We spend too much time behind enemy lines to rely on supply lines to fulfill nicotine addictions, but front line troops had grown addicted to them before these rations were even a thought in someone’s mind.  Generations of fighting will do that to even the most health conscious of us.”

I winced
, hating it when I heard tidbits like that.

“I see,” I said quietly a
s I fiddled with the canned entree.

Once I managed to tear th
e metal lid from the container like a can of tuna, I finally glanced inside but nearly threw up at what I saw.  Within was a gelatinous patty of meat floating lazily in a fatty, viscous fluid that reeked of bad body odor. 

I turned back to Archer again. 
“What the fuck is this?”

He peeked over the rim of my can and laughed.  “Tough luck, Hunter.”  He turned to look at Cuyler sitting off to his right
, and jerked his head at me.  “He got the beef patty substitute.”

Cuyler
laughed, perhaps for the first time since I’d met him, as did all the rest of Archer’s team.  Archer shook his head as his chuckles subsided, and went back to his meal, ignoring my discomfort, and I looked back at the beef patty substitute in disgust.  Even the fucking god of prepackaged military food seemed out to get me.  As if my old nemesis the beef patty hadn’t been bad enough, whatever deceitful, vengeful asshole who controlled such an industry had decided to provide me now with beef patty fucking
substitute
.

There was no way…

To my left, Vincent glanced over and pointed his spork at it.  “Are you going to eat that?”

I thrust it at him as quickly as I could.  “Knock yourself out.”

He accepted it thankfully, and dug in.  I looked at him like I would a man eating human feces.  It was like watching a train wreck, and I just couldn’t bring myself to look away.  I held a hand over my mouth, but inadvertently caught Helena’s eye.  It was the first time I’d seen those glowing green eyes in days, and I was mildly surprised that when she noticed my attention, she simply smirked and shook her head, obviously amused that the “plight of the dreaded meat patty” continued, but her look didn’t linger long as she went back to her meal.

She grimaced with every bite, and I had to smile
as well.

I
felt pretty good in that moment.

But happiness grown from good things didn’t last
long anymore.

Life just didn’t let
it.

When I looked away from Helena, I
randomly saw four individuals to my left standing behind Bordeaux, Wang, Stryker, and Santino.  Three males and one female.  I made eye contact with one of the males, noted his presence and appearance, but then looked away, thinking nothing of him.  A moment passed when something clicked in my mind and I shot them another look, but before my mind caught up with my suspicions, Brewster, Cuyler, and Archer were already rolling away to acquire their weapons and take up better firing positions.  I rose to my feet as well, my mind still playing catch up to my actions, and the four time travelers with their backs to these newcomers seemed confused at our behavior.  I was almost fully upright when all four strangers held up their hands innocently and the woman spoke.

“Wait
!”  She yelled in heavily accented Latin that was completely unfamiliar to me.

The
four time travelers who sat just below them finally reacted, but Archer, Cuyler, and Brewster already had rifles trained on the strangers while Vincent had moved off to my left with his pistol pointed in their direction as well.  I couldn’t tell if the intruders recognized what my friends held as weapons or not, but they didn’t make any sudden movements either, although they didn’t appear particularly hostile anyway.

Despite the cold climate, they wore little clothing.  Weakly constructed furs covered the men from the waist down to their knees and
they wore some kind of moccasins that rose to their skirts.  Over their shoulders they wore what looked like suspenders made from some kind of woodland creature.  The woman was dressed similarly from the waist down, but instead of the suspender like apparatuses coming over and down her shoulders like the men, she wore a type of furry tube top that covered her stomach and breasts, but leaving her shoulders and arms exposed.

Neither the men
nor the woman seemed particularly well dressed for the climate, but they weren’t shivering either.  At their feet, I noticed large fur coats pooled around their legs, and I assumed they must have shrugged out of them earlier to appear less threatening; however, the large blades they wore along their backs certainly were.  They were sheathed, but it was not difficult to see that they were large and pointy, perhaps some early iteration of the claymore so often seen in places like Scotland during its medieval years.

By now, even the legionnaires had become aware of the intruders, and moved to gather arms and call in the sentry units that had somehow let these four
individuals slip through their net, an impressive feat and one worth noting.  When our pickets arrived, they moved in on them aggressively, but Vincent held up his hand.

“Stop!”  He ordered.  “They do not seem belligerent.”

Archer beside me had his primitive looking distant cousin of the M-16 assault rifle shouldered and pointing in their direction.

“For now
…” he said, and I had to agree.

Every instinct inside me
screamed out to kill them and get the hell out of here before more of their friends arrived, but I beat back such thoughts.  It wasn’t easy, and the standoff continued, but Vincent distracted me when he took a step forward and looked over his shoulder at me.

“Want to step in, Hunter, or
should I question them?”

I nodded reluctantly and took a ste
p forward.  To my right, I noticed that Helena had joined the others and had her shotgun held in a hand and pointed toward the intruders, and I saw Artie hiding behind her shoulder.  It was reassuring to see that they were safe, but I thought little of it as I returned my attention to the quartet of individuals.

The men were forgettable, but clearly well suited for warfare.  They
all had light hair and eccentric mustaches that ranged from blond to red and each were tall and well built, especially when compared to the Romans, but their cold, light colored eyes indicated they didn’t want to be here anymore than the rest of us.  The woman, on the other hand, was far more noteworthy.  Not simply because there was a woman with a sword before us, but because she looked like she certainly knew how to use it.

She
appeared no older than nineteen or twenty, but she was already inches taller than Helena, which is where the similarities between the two ended.  While Helena’s skin always seemed perpetually bronze, this woman was as pale as a ghost.  Helena’s hair was jet black, while this woman’s was as red as a particularly colorful sunset.  Their eyes were more similar but while Helena’s were piercingly green, this woman’s were icily blue, almost silver in appearance.

And she was built.

Like Schwarzenegger built.

He
lena was as tough a woman as I’d ever known, but she’d always maintained her feminine curves and grace.  The redheaded woman on the other hand could have been an amateur body builder back home, a woman who spent far more time in the free weights section than the cardio area at the gym.  Although her feminine frame was still obvious, her muscle definition rivaled Wang’s but her build was more like Bordeaux’s, and she carried herself with immense confidence while simultaneously maintaining body language that made her seem like an official dignitary, diplomat, or ambassador.