Sunlight

By Désirée Nordlund

Two hundred years ago the world was destroyed in what became known as the Great War.

Andrew is a young officer among those who consider themselves the winners of that war. He protects them from the losers, the desert rats, in a fort stationed in the middle of nowhere.

In his world, the social ranking is all that counts, and Andrew excels at that game. For five years his career has gone nowhere but upwards.

Then two things happen: Andrew catches a desert rat, and his disabled brother arrives at the fort. Two things that put his world in motion and for the first time he questions if they are the winners at all.

Soon he has not only lost his social rank. He has also put his and his brother's life at stake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Désirée Nordlund
• Release date: Aug 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005860738

Désirée Nordlund

I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen. It was more of a short story. Thirty-six pages. But I sent it to a novel contest nevertheless without a clue about its zero chances. Since then, I have learned a lot. I have even won a contest and have several short films based on my script produced. I'm not that best-selling world-famous writer I thought I would be when I was a teenager, but it is the writing that gives me joy.

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SUNLIGHT

by Désirée Nordlund

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Published by Désirée Nordlund at Smashwords.

Copyright © 2021 by Désirée Nordlund

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Third Edition, 2017

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

AUTHOR’S THANK YOU

Thank you to Barbro, Andreas and David Stauffer who all gave me valuable input to this book.

Chapter One

The fort

I stood straight like a spear firmly fixed to the gray concrete floor. A posture of authority and an unyielding mind. A soldier. From where I stood in the watchtower, I had a clear view of the sandy and deserted landscape outside the Fort. Nothing moved, and it felt like it never would. It was my job and my call to survey it. I was twenty-six and captain, which was something to be proud of. I had got that far so fast because I knew what my duty was and I worked hard to do my tasks impeccable. Our society was still fragile, and I was not to be the weak link that would let it crumble and fall. No way the rats living out there would get past me. Not a chance I would lose focus and miss them coming. I would spot them from the tower. Despicable rats in the wastelands of no good. Rodents who wanted nothing more than infest us and thrive on our riches of food and water. If I had the option, I would kill those vermin. We all knew they were out there, ready to invade us, spreading their diseases and filth. If they came in a hefty flock, they could overtake us. So, we surveyed the boonies every minute of the hour, day as night, two and two in each of the four towers.

My subordinate was Sergeant Thomas Mortar, a man who sought higher ranking, but was likely never to get there. He was a few years over thirty, yet he had only achieved sergeant's rank. It was not a glorious record, and he knew it. My stern pose up there in the tower was not so much for the desert rats, as for him, showing why someone almost ten years younger could have such high rank. Your rank had to be supported by your actions. What really counted out here on the brink of civilized life was your social status. Someone from the City may have promoted you and thought of you as able. In the City, there were no chances to show real bravery worthy of a promotion. When you left the safe bubble, and reached to your posting, your rank was nothing. If you could not prove your manhood and status out here, you became fodder for those who knew how to promote themselves and show their abilities.

I earned my first ranks already in school, the rest of them I earned out here. Naturally, some whispers claimed it was because of my father, but we did not have that kind of relationship. I had earned every one of my ranks on my own merits. And I was to let neither my military rank nor my social status move nothing but upwards.

My name is Andrew Sword. I was saving the World; or rather what was left of it. Much was lost in the Great War. Human life, yes. But also knowledge; How much we did not know. Generations later and there was no one left to remember. It was not considered important to write stories either, so our post-war history is for most part unknown. I hope to fill a few gaps.

Like everybody else, I was born in the City. My father came from a long line of distinguished soldiers all the way back to the Great War. And probably before then too, but nobody knows for sure. The choice of career was not an actual choice. Not that my father insisted. At the time, he no longer stayed with my mother, and he could not care less about my brother and me. No, I became a military because it was what I felt was the only right path to follow. It did not feel correct towards mom, Matthew, and dad too for that matter, to become anything less. It was a tradition I did not want to break. No matter my father’s aversion for his family, no one could ignore I came from a high background. He despised me, but I still belonged to his bloodline. Matthew would not be able to carry it on, so I had to, and I did so with a willing heart. When it is all you know of, the choice is easy. I knew I would not be able to change my father’s opinion of me, but I wanted to show him there was more to me than what he chose to see. I was loyal to my family tree and the City no matter what.

Most of the boys in school came from military families. A few had fathers who were sewer workers and garbage collectors, or accountants. At school, background did not matter so Sergeant Mortar could blame nobody but himself for his lack of progress. Maybe we who had been brought up in the environment had easier to live with the idea of blind obedience to the commanding officer and had an advantage. Why choose to be a military if you have a problem with that? You do not become a colonel or a general by executing your free will as a privateer. That ought to be obvious no matter background. You blend in and become one of many and do your duties the best you can. When you do, you listen and learn to the more experienced, without making a sound in protest. Then, when you have shown yourself loyal and trusted you get your first rank. A few, though, thought they were saviors and considered themselves to be better than others because they used their brain. Like we did not have one if we obeyed and followed the rules. I dare say their fathers were no soldiers. I thought of them as they thought of my peers and me: They lacked a functional brain. What was so difficult to understand? Do as you are told, and they did not manage that. Most of them returned to where they came from before exam.

If you kept that low profile, adding authority over those you got under your command over time, you succeeded. It was hard work, and there was no room for failure when it came to dominion and prestige. What you got, you fought to keep. That is what I did in school, and that is what I continued to do when I arrived at the fort that became my assigned post.

If I was sent to the same place my father commanded by accident, deliberate choice or if no one knew or cared, I am not sure. I had not seen him since I 9 was ten and a decade had passed since then. I was no longer a boy with a need of a father’s guidance. I was a young officer who needed an experienced, higher ranked officer as a mentor. We never addressed each other as father and son. He had left us, abandoning his family. He had rejected me, my brother, and mom. The cause for doing so was wrong, but dad was not leveled with me on that matter. We both had our reasons to keep the distance. Though I felt he treated me harsher than any of the other officers, he still did not deny me my right to rise in rank when I deserved it. For me, he was the Colonel, the highest authority in place. Mom and Matthew were my family. In a way, you can say I had abandoned them too, leaving home to become a military. But a son has other obligations than a father and a husband. I knew my mother and brother were proud of me and wanted me to go. I knew the Colonel appreciated my effort to be an officer of high standards. That was all I needed.

The fort’s foundation was buildings from the old days, before the Great War. They lay on the ground as massive blocks of concrete partly buried in the sand and dust. The windows were blocked by heavy blinders of course. I had been told you could be out in the sun before the war, but I have never been able to grasp it. Even if you could, why would you? Why would anybody want to have that merciless light within your home? Why not have blinders? Why have windows at all? Maybe it did not burn as it does now, but I still cannot understand how someone could enjoy it. I have seen images where they are outdoor seem to like the sunlight. Without a doubt things were different before the Great War. I prefer the soft hiss of gaslights with its gentle, sweet flame and a reasonable sphere of light. It does not expose or interfere, just helps and supports, as any light should.

The watchtowers were built after the war. They had open views in all directions with just narrow pillars keeping an extensive roof up. It protected us, the soldiers on duty, from being exposed to the sun. I remember the first time I went up there. Honest to say I was terrified, but I kept it to myself. Probably most men felt horror being outdoors like that. Soon I felt safe since I was completely protected from the sun up there. No sky was visible so the blasting light could only sneak in indirectly as a reflection from the ground. It could be hot up there, but sweat did not kill you.

Sometimes I wondered what the buildings had been used for before the war. I tried to figure out what of the inside that had been rebuilt to fit our military needs and what was left as it was. It was not that difficult to see what had been recently put up but harder to figure out from where the material came from. It was not that the bricks and broken concrete had to come from somewhere else. It was from somewhere inside the building. The watchtowers were one thing, they were a vital part of our defense. To build them you got material from other places. The comfort and practical issues of those manning the towers was an entirely different matter. We had to make do what was found on the premises. Not that we were treated poorly, but transportations were a problem. We were so far away from the City, and building materials tend to be heavy as well. Not to mention the risky business to extract concrete and other stuff from the ruins, being outdoors without a protecting roof. That was something you did for the important strategic buildings, like watchtowers. So, every brick and block of concrete inside had likely came from within the building itself and it was a puzzle I enjoyed.

On the whole, we had it better than in the City, since we had more space. But when it came to furniture we had to be creative. In the City, on the other hand, living area had been far more limited, and though you praised your furniture and took good care of it, you had hardly room for it in the apartment. From that point of view, mom and Matthew had it better without me. At least until I heard that they had been forced to move to a smaller home. Mom did not want to tell me if this was because of my brother, or because they simply had too much space for just the two of them. Anyway, apartments had a place to prepare food, a kitchen of some sort, and I figured that if people had been living in our fort once upon a time, there would have been at least some traces in our rooms, but I could not find any. On the other hand, much of the old stuff, like wires, had been taken down and reused somewhere else. Maybe there were not much of those things left. I never came to the point that I could tell what it once had been, our fort. Not that it mattered much. I was just curious. As soon as I understood that no one else was interested in the subject, and considered me strange being obsessed by it, I kept my thoughts about it to myself. One problem was that I could not examine the whole building. The entire third floor and a lot of the second were closed down. This was after all a building which had been close to bombings during the war, and it was not in its best shape. Those unused areas were probably left intact from before the war. But, I did not want to risk being considered an oddball, so I left locked areas alone as any soldier should. Which as a result left my puzzle unsolved.

The night the desert rat came, I had the watch with Sergeant Mortar, as usual. When you have watched at the same landscape for years, day as well as night, you know it well enough to draw a picture of it from memory. I knew the shape of every shadow, from the sun or the moon did not matter. I saw the shadow of the Fort on the ground and knew there was not supposed to be a hump where there now was one. When I moved towards the side of the tower to have a better look, the hump disappeared, and I heard the sound of pebbles rolling. Both Sergeant Mortar and I just stood there staring in disbelief into the darkness. I had been in that very spot for five years without being close to even see traces of a rat. When one actually arrived, it was not the right time to gawk. I grabbed the front of Mortar’s uniform and hissed to him to get his feet moving and wake the Colonel and sound the alarm. I almost shoved him down the stairs in front of me. As soon as we were down, I made sure he hurried in the right direction, and then I ran towards the supplies. That was where the rats always turned up first: by our food. And I was not about to let them have a single grain of it.

The store room was in the basement, covering the major part