"Spores" The skirmish game by Wonky Goblin Miniatures and Games

The Low Number

Private Morrick stood at attention in the command
tent, which was to say he stood at something
approximating attention, in the manner of a man
whose knees had recently discovered they disagreed
with each other.
“Report,” said Sergeant Boletrik, not looking up from
his ledger.
“Sir. Yes sir. So — we were on the eastern picket, sir,
doing the thing where you look at trees for six hours,
when Number Forty-One says he sees movement by
the old grain silo—”
“Forty-One is dead.”
“That’s — sir, that’s rather the report, sir.”
Boletrik looked up.
“He wasn’t dead dead when we saw him,” Morrick
clarified, in the tone of a man who understood, even
as he said it, that this sentence would haunt him. “He
was up and about. Walking. Sort of a lurch-shuffle, sir,
like a man trying to walk normally while also being
extremely disappointed in himself.”
“You’re certain it was Forty-One.”
“Positive, sir. Boots were his. Coat was his. Name
stitched inside the collar still said ‘Truffwick,’ from
before he redesignated, sir — I saw it flap open when
he turned, which — the turning was the second worst
part.”
“What was the first worst part?”
“The reasoning, sir.”
“The what?”
“We tried to reason with him, sir. Standard procedure,
per the Reckonings — ‘a fallen brother is owed the
courtesy of a challenge before he is owed a shovel.’
Corporal Chanterick stepped up, very respectful, said,
‘Forty-One, mate, it’s us, stand down,’ and Forty-One
replied with — sir, I don’t know how to render this in a
report — a sort of wet, hollow moan, followed by a
grunt that I can only describe as deeply personal.”
“Personal?”
“Like he had a grievance, sir. Possibly several. He did
not stand down. He did, however, start walking
considerably faster, which we had not accounted for,
doctrinally, as an option available to the dead.”
Boletrik set down his pen. “And your response?”
“We ran, sir.”
“Toward the enemy or away from him?”
“Statistically indistinguishable at that point, sir, but I’d
like the record to show it was tactical retreat and not,
as Chanterick is currently telling anyone who’ll listen,
‘screaming.’ I collapsed the loose wall of the old waste
treatment building on top of him — the one Corporal
Puffwick has been meaning to shore up since spring,
sir, and frankly I feel this vindicates the decision to
never shore it up — and we made the tree line while he
was still working out how to be a person again under
about three tons of pre-Bloom masonry.”
“Is he dead now?”
“He was already dead, sir. He is now additionally
buried, which we are hoping is an improvement,
though the Reclaimed do have a reputation for
viewing ‘buried’ as more of a suggestion.”
Boletrik was quiet for a long moment. Then he pulled
out the roster — the great, sacred, numbered roster,
the one every soldier in Die Gezählten had memorized
down to the footnotes, the one that told a man exactly
where he stood in the order of things that mattered.
“Morrick. What was Forty-One’s number before he
redesignated?”
“Sir?”
“His original number. When he enlisted.”
Morrick swallowed. “Four, sir.”
The tent went very quiet.
“Four,” Boletrik repeated, the way a man repeats a
word he is hoping will sound less alarming the second
time. It did not.
“Yes sir. Practically scripture, sir. Man had a low
number. Man had standing. By every doctrine we hold
sacred, Number Four should be sitting comfortably in
whatever afterlife the Reckonings promise the
deserving, being fanned with palm fronds by lesser
numbers, not — not lurching about a derelict waste
treatment building moaning at Corporal Chanterick.”
“You’re certain there’s no mistake.”
“His collar said Forty-One, sir, but that was just his
most recent number, after the — the incident with the
requisitions ledger. I recognized the boots first. Then
the face. Then, regrettably, the moan, which I will be
recognizing in my sleep for some time.”
Boletrik stared at the ledger as though it might, if
glared at hard enough, produce an explanation that
didn’t undermine the entire numerical cosmology of
the regiment.
“So what you’re telling me,” he said slowly, “is that a
man who was practically guaranteed, by every sacred
text we own, a peaceful and dignified afterlife — has
instead come back as a shambling, moaning corpse
who chased two grown soldiers into a treeline.”
“That is the report, sir. Yes.”
“And your solution to this theological crisis was to
drop a wall on him.”
“It was the only thing in reach not trying to kill me, sir.”
Boletrik closed the ledger the way you’d close a door
on something you weren’t sure had finished moving.
“Get some sleep, Morrick. And tell Puffwick he’s fixing
that wall after we confirm Forty-One’s staying under
it.”
“Yes sir.” Morrick paused at the tent flap. “Sir — for the
report. Should I write down ‘reanimated’ or
‘redesignated’?”
“Write down ‘complicated,'” said Boletrik, “and go find
out if Four has any next of kin who’d like an
explanation, because I certainly don’t have one.”