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Enemy Mine[/size]
By Scottish Andy
I slowly come to and find myself alone. I lie still and allow my senses to come back to me, and I’m relieved to find I still have all my arms and legs. My hearing is also back to normal now the ringing has left it, and I notice the eerie silence that has settled over the battlefield. It’s occasionally disrupted by the
crump of distant explosions. The fighting seems to have moved on. I don’t know how long I’ve been out. Maybe my mates left me for dead.
I’m now sufficiently together that I roll over and grab my weapon. It was just lying on a pile of rubble so it escaped the clinging mud, but I check it out and make sure the action is clean.
The act of bending over almost makes me throw up. I fall back to my knees and reach behind me. I feel the back of my head and find a huge, soggy, egg-shaped bump that’s slowly oozing blood. I pull my fingers back before my swimming eyesight and see the red sticky mess covering them. It must have been a grenade that threw me back against that wall, and not even my helmet saved me from the collision.
I don't remember what actually happened.
I look around, find it, and plop it back on my head. I wince as the back of it bounces off my new egg, but it doesn’t make me physically ill this time, only nauseous.
Suitably protected and armed once again, I make my way carefully into the bombed-out house I was smashed against to gain some shelter so I can fully recover, stepping over loose shale and debris. There’s so much house-to-house fighting, the battle lines are so fluid that there could be enemy snipers or patrols all over the place—
I throw myself forward on pure instinct and the bullet misses me by millimetres. My lunge takes the enemy soldier by surprise and I barrel into him, knocking the wind from us both. He throws me off, swipes at me with the butt of his rifle. I roll away just in time, the butt smashing down where my throat used to be.
Still slightly dazed, I prop myself up on one arm and he kicks me full in the chest. The air leaves me again for what must be the third time since the attack began, however long ago, but I’m grateful for all that. His kick caught me square on the breastbone and though it hurts like living hell, all my ribs are still intact.
This time I roll with the kick and manage to gain some space and my feet. I stay low and swing my leg around in a sweeping kick that takes his legs from him just as he lines up on me with his rifle. His shot goes wild and he loses his grip on his weapon. It bounces out of his hands as he hits the ground. I stand up and kick it further away, but the enemy soldier pushes off the floor and pulls out a knife.
I swing my weapon around as he lunges. The blade slices along my knuckles and through the shoulder strap but the sight deflects it from going further. He grabs the barrel with his free hand and twists it away from him, managing to wrench it from my grasp. I grab and twist his knife hand in response. He drops it and pulls away, tugging my weapon as he goes and spinning it around in his hand to bring the barrel to bear on me.
I drop to the ground, snatch up the knife, and lunge with it.
Time, which had been whirling past, suddenly freezes. The enemy soldier looks down at me, eyes wide with shock. The desperate snarl that no doubt occupied both our faces has gone, drained away with the knowledge of victory—and defeat.
It’s a mortal wound. Of that, we are both sure. The knowledge is in both our eyes. If it hadn’t been, he would have managed to bring my own weapon around and kill me with it, just as I’ve killed him with his.
He drops my weapon, it having slipped from his nerveless fingers. It clatters to the rubble-strewn ground but doesn’t go off.
He drops to his knees before me, eyes coming level with my own. It forces me to alter my position. I was frozen in my extended upward lunge. I pull his blade out of him and he cries out.
I see my own sliced knuckles, covered in his blood, holding his knife.
Blood brothers in death. His.
I stare at him, and he at me. He’s clean-shaven with a strong jaw. His ice blue eyes and wispy blond hair speak to his Germanic, possibly Scandinavian ancestors, as does his strong, high cheekbones. Those eyes hold no hatred for me, and I know mine hold none for him.
He pushes words out, but they are meaningless gibberish to me. The tone isn’t really angry, but questioning. Maybe accusatory.
I don’t understand his dying words. It makes me ashamed.
“I’m sorry!” I tell him desperately. “I didn’t want this! Our leaders say go, and we go!”
He stares at me, his eyes uncomprehending. It seems my words are just meaningless gibberish to him, too.
He falls to one side. I catch him before he hits the floor.
I cradle him in my arms. My dying enemy. My opposite number. My blood brother.
“I’m sorry!” I tell him again.
The light in his eyes is fading, growing dim. I don’t know if he even sees me anymore, or knows that I’m the one who killed him. His voice is quiet, but he talks to me in a pleading tone.
I can almost hear what he is saying. “Tell my sweetheart I love her. Tell my mother and father I did my best. Tell them I’m sorry.”
I’ve heard it too many times before, holding my own countrymen in my arms as they slowly slipped away. I know that’s what he’s saying.
It’s what I’ll say when my time comes.
A bloodied, open hand reaches up to me. I grab it as if it’s my own lifeline and squeeze as hard as I can. He needs to know he’s not alone.
A few more incomprehensible words whisper out of his lips, then his body relaxes. I stare at his eyes, eyes that would cause my own sister to melt, as the light slowly drains away.
His body goes completely limp.
I kneel there and hold him, reading his nametag: SCHNEIDER, J.
He’s so far from home, away from everything he called familiar. Despite all I could do, he died alone. Apart from his friends, his countrymen. Not even hearing his own language as he died.
Such is the nature of the brutal house-to-house warfare we’re involved in.
I finally lay his body down and stand up. I walk over to where he dropped my weapon and pick it back up, knotting together the shoulder strap where he sliced it through. I’m still going to need it, because there is still a war on. Wars don’t stop because a single soldier dies.
They should.
I gaze down at the body of the American soldier as I loop my Schmeisser over my neck. I offer a short prayer for his soul, and head out to rejoin my unit.
Topic: OT: Enemy Mine (Read 3390 times)