Left for Dead is a Warhammer 40,000 short story by Steve Lyons about a soldier in the Death Korps of Krieg, and his escape from the eternal war of the 41st millennium. This is the Red Badge of Courage of 40k, and it's written very much as an almost universal story that almost doesn't depend on any Warhammer knowledge. Like Red Badge of Courage, I imagine that the story of Left for Dead is interpreted many different ways, with some reading it as a bittersweet affirmation of the necessity of war, and others reading it as a condemnation of senseless destruction and death. For me, it's the latter, with an extra-special grim dark twist at the end to reassure the reader that there truly is no hope in a future where there is only war. You should read this story for yourself, and you ought to recommend it to people who are curious about Warhammer 40,000 but don't know where to start. Left for Dead doesn't mess around: It introduces the reader to war and hopelessness right up front.
This is my review of the story, with lots of spoilers.
The short story's description on Black Library:
After the horrors of war and the devastation of a world, one unnamed trooper from the Death Korps of Krieg – vat-born, grown to be a soldier – has had enough. Removing his uniform, he takes the identity of a fallen civilian and joins the workforce on the world he fought to liberate. But can this soldier overcome his conditioning and training and serve the Imperium in a new way, or will he forever be a warrior of the Astra Militarum?
The main character is called Arvo, but only because he took the name from a dead civilian. Arvo is supposed to be a Kriegsman, a soldier within the Astra Militarum fighting for the glory of the Emperor. When he awakens on a battlefield that used to be a hab block on Parius Monumentus, he quickly realises he's been left for dead. His company has left the planet, the Chaos cultists having been defeated, so Arvo arguably has little to do but pretend to be a normal everyday Imperial citizen.
He's promptly herded into a medical facility, and then into a work detail. All citizens have been drafted into restorative service to help clean up the decimated city. And just like that, Arvo is free, living in a time of peace for the first time in his life.
When Arvo realises that he's living in a city that's not an active war zone, he calls it "peace". Of course, most readers recognise that his version of peace is really just the lull between wars, which may also inspire you to have a momentary existential crisis about whether that's also true in the real world. What kind of universe is this 40k place, that war is normal and peace is the aberration? Welcome to Warhammer!
The other topsy-turvy epiphany Arvo has is his acquisition of "freedom." For most of the story, he's really happy to be experiencing freedom. He's living the good life, working in a work gang clearing out rubble from fallen buildings, reclaiming useful items, and if you stop working to catch your breath you get lashed by servitors with whips for hands. Nobody likes Arvo on his crew, because he's strong and obedient, and enjoys his work. In his own words: "It's better to build than destroy." That throws his workmate for a loop.
The one friend Arvo does make during his time on the work crew is Zanne, an 11-year old girl who lost her parents in the war. Her parents were killed by soldiers, who obviously had no choice but to kill civilians along with the cultists. It's just part of the cost of cleansing a world for the Emperor.
Unsurprisingly for the 40k setting, it turns out that the Chaos cultists weren't as purged as the Imperial Guard thought. A cultist warband attacks Arvo's work crew, and to defend his one friend Arvo is forced to take up arms again. He fights, killing several cultists, but he's unable to keep Zanne safe. He finds her body in the fresh ruins of the battle.
In the final scene of the story, Arvo enlists in the Astra Militarum. When he's asked why he's there, he says, "I shall do my duty. For what else is there, after all?" His sergeant repeats his answer ponderously, and provides the last line of the story: "...what else is there, after all?" It's the killing blow of a plot that we'd been tricked into thinking might be a story of a man's transcendence beyond eternal war. It's a reminder that this is Warhammer 40,000, and in the grim darkness of that future, there is only war.
I suppose some people play wargames because they're interested in war or the history of war. Humanity constantly reinforces its love of war in real life, so it makes sense that people would seek to understand it and study it and, ironically, come to some kind of peace with war through games. But I'm not personally interested in war, and I play wargames just for the fantasy. In a wargame, you can be as violent and gruesome and heartless as you want to be, and nobody gets hurt.
This story understands the fantasy, and it does nothing to disrupt it. The hero of this story experiences a moment of cowardice and deserts his army. For a short while, he becomes a contentious objector to war and violence. But he learns his lesson, in the end. Peace isn't what this fantasy is about. This is a war fantasy, and only the deplorable and depraved is virtuous.
You don't really need any knowledge of the Warhammer setting for this story to make an impact. As long as you have a twisted mind that sees darkness in your fantasies as beacons, this story is enjoyable. It's secretly a horror story, where humanity has fallen into such darkness that only going deeper into darkness dulls the mounting misery. In many ways, this is the grimmest and darkest of 40k stories. It only gets better after this one.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.