Counting Corpses
by Karl El-Koura
Counting Corpses by Karl El-Koura is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Two old men drive around a battlefield, picking out dead bodies and loading them into their pickup trucks. The war has been so devastating that counting corpses is the only way to declare a winner.
"Young people," the northern man snorts, as they sort through the next pile of corpses. "You don't get to live to our age by shooting at each other."
"You can say that again, brother," the southern man says.
The sun sets before they're done loading the bodies.
"How many?" the southern man says.
"Seventy-six. You?"
"Also seventy-six." Actually, it was one less than that, but the southern man pulls out a gun and adds another point to his side.
"Counting Corpses" was published in the charitable anthology Shadow Box (Halloween 2005).