CS: Dead

I remember the nights clearly. Those bitter nights filled with the barking of the dogs, the screaming of the women and children, and the cacophony of gunfire and rockets going off on all sides. Clouds of debris floated through the cities like fog, there wasn’t a single sign of anything, anywhere. Burning ash, embers choking you half to death. Rubble rained down after a moment’s whistle warned you of incoming rockets, the debris fog barely lighting up. The flames would burn you through, tell you which side the rubble would be coming from, but it didn’t prepare you. Nothing could prepare you for that.

There was a night where I was running through the filthy sand, kicking up clouds of it behind me as my breathless burning lungs tried to push me on. You’d swear there was a hundred pounds of crap strapped all over you: helmet, backpack, gun, ammo, grenades, flak jacket, uniform, even the dogtags felt heavy. Pushing on was all you could do, complaining would get you no where. There was no where else to go anyway. I remember the running though, my eyes blurry behind my goggles as I fought to keep myself from falling down. Two snipers were raining gunfire somewhere in the city and me and a few of my men were being called in to do something about it. Welcome to the Gulf, I thought. This wasn’t even where the war was, this was just some other shithole full of flaming debris and angry citizens who hated you because the sun had burned you far less as harsh. Being white got you killed.

Ten men rushing through the streets, the racket our supplies were making enough to wake the dead if it wasn’t for the fact that there was gunfire raining down all over the place. Bombers flew over head and we could hear them rip up some other unfortunate section of the city, somewhere where our buddies weren’t, we hoped. That was a short-lived thought. The snipers were right on top of us, having moved several buildings to the East, the way we were coming in. They knew what we would try to do and they were just counting on it, notching our names into the sides of their rifles before anything happened. They were sitting on the rooftops of opposite buildings, their fingers twitching at the very thought of pulling the trigger and sending a few more white devils packing back out of their country. That’s all we wanted to do, get out of their country, but not that way. We don’t get to make our choices, however.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Three shots from the first building and one catching my second in command right through the helmet. Blood spattered across my fatigues and all over the sand–brains, blood, bone, it was all plastered across the tight walls of the street we were racing through. He went down wordlessly, though six other shouts came up as two more men were already on the ground. Gutshot to the first, he wouldn’t make it, the bullet had torn through more circulatory system then most humans know they have. The third took one to the ankle, lucky bastard. He was screaming bloody murder in that cloud of debris, as if it would do him any good to scream in pain. All it did was tell the snipers that he was alive. Three more shots and he was dead, so was another man.

“Head for the buildings!” I screamed it. My voice was the rough of a leader, the rough of a man desperate and already dying. We broke in a run, four for one building, two for the other, and three more men would not make it.

Blam! Blam! Blam! It made no sense to fire in bursts of three, because there were only two reported and damn it if they were just toying with some of us. Their guns were automatics, but they were taking their time on this one. Suffering always gets the message across when death does not; it’s far worse to lay in pain and anguish for two minutes then it is to die, don’t ever think otherwise. Two of my men made it into the building with me, the two who had broken for the other building had found it locked shut but had already no need to worry, their breath long cut from their lungs. My last man outside was howling, two steps from the door and damn if both my men turned to save him.

I couldn’t do such a thing. I ordered the two to turn around, they told me to fuck myself and then only one came back, nursing a gut wound so bad that it was repainting the floor of the shitty, bombed out husk of a house that the place we were hiding in had stood for. I gagged him immediately and told him to shut the hell up as three more shots came from the neighboring building, two ripping right through the plaster walls and the third catching my shoulder. I screamed and hit the floor, crawling out of the way of the automatic gunfire that ripped through the wall.