The Immortal: Prologue

“Get down, Keiling!”

An intense cloud of raging fire tore through the trench, snaking along through the stagnant puddles of putrid mud. The wooden walls splintered as the brimstone and ash ripped across in a chain of spiralling shroom-clouds. Shrapnel and debris ricocheted off the tight walls as four men, ragged and weary, raced along the collapsing trench which had been relied on just moments ago as a way to avoid harm. No more.

Two of the men, a Lt. Theodore Keiling and Major Matthew Shaw, feeling the chain of flame gaining ground, buried themselves face first into a thick puddle of mud. The flames rolled over the two, searing their backs and burning their hair. Shaw risked glancing up into the raging heat to see his two unfortunate allies, who had decided to keep running, get carried up into the flames and incinerated.

“No, not again,” he whispered to himself. He rose within the ash-filled smoke and fumbled for the necklace which still remained around his neck. He pulled out the cross, now tarnished from days of trudging through the mud and wiped away some of the tarnish. He looked to the sky and wiped the soot away from his face, fumbling for his pistol and drawing it in time to fire upon a German who had cleared the barbwire. The german splattered in the mud with a hollow sound and moved no more. Shaw turned and hauled Lt. Keiling to his feet. “Get up! They’re charging! We have to fall back!”

“What about the others?” Keiling was a young man, still too young to be adequately afraid of the danger the two were in.

“They’re dead or if not yet, soon,” replied Shaw with a resolute tone that leaved no room to argue. He clamped his hand down on Keiling’s wrist and hauled him along the trenches. “Shoot anything coming behind us,” Shaw yelled firing two rounds into a German standing in his way and marching straight across the still shocked corpse.

“I thought these trenches were gone!!” It seemed to Shaw that no matter how dire the situation, no matter the consequences of a bad decision or action, people always seemed to focus on the trivial. Keiling was no exception. Several shots rang out directly behind Shaw and a muffled scream came from a little further back. “Though, he isn’t so distracted as to not keep my ass covered,” Shaw thought.

“We will never see the complete eradication of everything that symbolizes the last World War!” Shaw reflected for but a moment and shuddered at the fleeting images. “C’mon!” Shaw released Keiling’s hand and was now scrambling up out of the trench, gunfire whizzing all around him. A bullet careened off a corpse’s helmet as Shaw turned and fired on a German barely seen through the foggy ash still floating across the battlefield.

“Are we going to make it?” Keiling hauled himself free of the trench with some difficulty, the wet mud making even walking an olympic feat.

“How the hell should I know!? Our forces are gone! Who knows if the military is even sending reinforcements to get us the hell out of here or not!?”

“Didn’t we radio for reinforcements three days ago?”

“It takes a hell of a lot longer than one would think to get forces moved to a new position. It just doesn’t happen! Now stop talking and keep running!” Shaw peered through the foggy smoke, he knew that there was a town that they had passed only hours ago, before all hell had broken loose and the company he was in was blown apart by an advancing German assault force. Now there was nothing he could do but run, and that’s exactly what he did.

A small boom rippled through the fog and Shaw gritted his teeth as an explosion shredded the ground all around him. He felt the shrapnel tear at his back and propel him through the air. He sailed for minutes, the world rolling around in dizzying circles. He could see the sun trying to break through the smoke. He could see an embankment ahead. He could see Keiling laying in the mud now a good distance behind him. He felt himself hit the mud and his head crash against the mud. As fate always does, where he landed a rock of considerable girth lay lodged in the mud. His head cracked across it and his helmet rolled away as he tumbled through the remnants of grass and bracken and crested the embankment. And then he was gone. He rolled down the embankment with some speed and crashed into the deep mud, a second explosion hit the embankment’s crest a few seconds late and buried Shaw in mud and rock.

Shaw’s mind blurred, consciousness failing. The world began to fade from vision as he heard the anguished screams of Keiling, calling for help. The screams began to be mixed with the babble of German soldiers, faint but still audible to his ears. And then all was dark. The last sound that reached his ears before he blacked out, gunshots from just a little way back from the embankment. “No, not again,” murmured Shaw.