Hands of the Enemy

Her hand grips mine. Our fingers intertwine, hers, pale, delicate, slender, laced between my dark, gnarled, broken joints, and I am reminded of the day we died.

It was not a romantic death. We had suspected it was coming. Known it was coming. But there were no whispered good-byes. No slender fingers tracing a line down tear-stained cheeks. No brave looks and false promises to meet again when it was over.

Instead we had whimpered, trembled and pressed our bodies into the frozen ground as the world erupted around us. Sleet pelted our backs with needle-like stabs only to melt in the heat of exploding artillery fire, and flowed as icy water into the bottom of our shallow scrapes where it soaked the front our uniforms. We were young, in love, and had enlisted together to in a grand and naive scheme to establish ourselves in the corporation. It was then, as we lay together, surrounded by mud and cold and smoke and flames, my left arm thrown protectively, uselessly, over her shoulders, that we understood what we had done to ourselves. And, yes, we whimpered and we trembled.

And then we died.

It had been rather quicker than I expected it would be. The dying part itself. The anticipation of it and, as it turns out, what would come after, were far worse, far more horrifying, than the actual dying. There was a scream. A roar. A shriek of pain in my ears. Then silence as I was lifted into the air, flying through the acrid, burning clouds of smoke and haze. I landed on my knees, as if praying, head back, arms -- arm -- outstretched, the bones of my thighs jammed with excruciating force into my pelvis.

I could hear nothing and, for a time, could see nothing. I had simply remained in that position, mouth open in a piercing, silent scream. The world around me had continued to shake while the smoke shifted, danced, thinned, cleared. And she was gone. To my left I could see only the ragged stump of my arm as blood pulsed steadily from it to bounce on the frozen ground. Finally the pain stopped. I fell forward, splashing into the frozen water gathering in the crater which had replaced my shallow fighting hole, and I died.

I can remember that.

I cannot not remember it.

The orders come to advance and her hand releases mine. I grab my rifle and rise unsteadily to my feet, limping forward, my own leg and another shorter, thicker limb struggling to propel me forward. My fingers wrap around the pistol grip of my weapon, her hand seizes the charging handle, pulls, chambers a round in the rifle, and settles on the forward hand-guard. And I advance, killing those I can and chasing the others away before they can burn the bodies of their fallen comrades. Before they can destroy them, to protect them, as they failed to protect me.