I laid there in the ditch, dust in my eyes and my throat. I wanted to cough so much, it was maddening. But I knew that if I had, I would have met my end by the swift stab of a bayonet or a round of buckshot to the face. The reds walked among the dead, looking for any signs of movement, any noticeable trace of life in the vast sea of corpses. A gunshot would ring out once in a while. Either preceded by a cry for mercy or afterwards by the howls of pain and calls for mothers or father to comfort them, before a second shell finished the job. One or two souls went down with a fight, waiting for the opportune time to pull the pin of a grenade, and hug the nearest unsuspecting bastard. The gore spread wide, my face covered with hot matter, and the body of the Congolese soldier atop of me dripping blood onto my uniform. Distant sirens from the Zambezi base, the simultaneous splatters of mortar shells and anti-aircraft guns sent shivers down my spine. Three years of fighting down the drain, all because of one fuck up on the look-outs part. It had been a long night, and it was going to get longer it seemed.

  As one of them came towards me, I covered my mouth, hushing what little sound I was making. The heat of my breath on my dirt covered palm made it hard to draw air, but it was a small price to pay for survival. The soldier took his shotgun, bayonet on its end, and stabbed a few of the bodies with a quick downward jab. No noise, no screams, just a wounded corpse with little blood left to shed. He raised the blade to his victims fatigue pants, and wiped what little blood there was away. He turned, walked over another pile of the dead, and rejoined his fellow soldiers as they began towards our base. I could see the flames of the barracks rise high into the night, and the smoke reflecting the illusion of those higher still. The control tower by the airfield was in ruins, smoldering and lopsided, held up only by makeshift stabilizers we had put up earlier that day, when the fight had begun. The gunshots and the screams from nearby had fled it seemed, and now the yells came from the base itself, where the fighting had begun again. Gunshots sporadically called out in the night, drowning out the silence.

  I was a nobody compared to some of these men, men who had fought in wars around the globe. Major Leeroy for example, he was a tough sonofabitch, spent his youth as a child soldier out of Occupied Romania. He had killed his first communist at eleven, and lost his right eye to shrapnel at twelve. He was killed when the fighting started, and was in that control tower when it was hit with the first volley of artillery.

  Commissar Celeb, or as we used to call him, ‘judge’, was our squad's previous commissar before myself. He was a no nonsense, unrelenting force of nature, who would rather shoot you dead than receive any backtalk. He taught me the ropes of being a leader like himself, but that story would come later.

  I began to crawl flat on my stomach, the body on top of me still there, as both my shield and my camouflage. The dust and dirt coated my hands, cracking them and giving me a reason to grit my teeth, the dry texture made me seethe with every passing moment. The dirt got under my fingernails, and into my face, rocks scraped my knees, my legs and my arms, but I kept going. Inch by inch, slowly and carefully. I couldn't afford to be noticed then, lest I end up like all the others before me. The gunshots and explosions in the base behind me were quieter, I was gaining distance I thought, or that the battle was ending. Soon I came upon a body in front of me, I grabbed hold of it and began to carry myself over the poor bastard's chest and to the other side.

  But before I was halfway, the man, one of the Rhodesian soldiers we worked for, came to. He was alive, but disoriented, delirious, and vocal.

  “Hey, hey!” he yelled, or screamed really, “Get me out of here, I'm not dead, I'm not dead!”

  He thrashed about, trying to get me and the corpse I was lugging off of him. I couldn't risk him giving my position away, I couldn't, we would both have died. I tried covering his mouth, but he kept screaming, and began biting at me. I tried muffling him with his own shirt, leaning over in front of his face trying to calm him down.

  “Shh!” I put my hand over his mouth, now filled with fabric, and I placed one finger in front of my own lips, gesturing for him to stop his relentless howling.

  “If you don't shut up, we're both dead, do you hear me?”

  He wouldn't listen, he wouldn’t relent, he just kept flailing about, and eventually hit me in the head with something hard. It was his helmet, which I had not noticed him pick up, it must have been beside him.

  I reeled in pain from the blow, trying to bite back stinging tears and the pounding in my head. The man, now seeing his chance, pushed me off and sent me and my human shield down to the ground. He himself stood up, looked down at me and then at the base, back to me and then began to drag himself in the direction of where I came from.

  “Hey, hey I'm still alive out here!” he yelled again.

  His left foot was bent oddly, making lines in the sand and dirt as it went, limp and unmoving. It was broken, clearly. But the man paid no mind to the pain, if any he could feel. But I couldn't let him keep yelling like that, it would be the end for me. No longer caring about his own survival, I got to my feet, and ran towards him.

  As I drew closer, I unsheathed my combat knife from my belt, and held it by my side. I closed in on him, just as he was about to let loose another barrage of noise, I tackled the idiot to the ground. It took a while and a fierce fight to turn him over as he punched and kicked and scratched at my face, but eventually I pinned him. In one last vain attempt I tried to get him to shut up, but in his condition, it was no use. He was shell shocked beyond reason.

  “I’m still alive, they can't forget about me, I'm still alive out here!”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  he began to sob loudly, and I could hear distant voices, not in English either. I did what had to be done, though it pained me. He was just some poor kid in comparison to me; younger, obviously never had battle experience before that day, a new-blood. I had been fighting in that hellscape for the last three years. In my day, they trained with live fire and actual mortars, if you had survived day one, you were fit to actually train. Those days were where I lost my ability to care about the sound of artillery, gunshots as well. It sounded natural from then on, like heavy rain pattering on the ground during a storm. But that kid, he was just some Rhodesian infantryman, he hadn’t seen what I had seen, done the things I had done; did he really deserve to die, just so I could live? At that moment, I didn't care like I do now looking back on it.

  In what seemed like a split second I plunged my knife into his windpipe, and began relentlessly stabbing over and over. His sobs and screams became garbled gibberish, he sounded as if he was underwater, though it was not water he was drowning in. Slowly his resistance faded, and his voice stopped. The clawing and muttering ceased. I sat there on top of his chest, my hands still wrapped around the grip of my blade, fully lodged in his throat. Mine and his face were splattered with blood, his more so, but he was dead and I alive, which was what mattered at that moment.

  I looked down at my blood soaked fingers, the drenched sleeves of my own uniform, and felt nothing. I felt no pity, no remorse for what I had done, not even an inkling of regret. I was a monster, who had killed someone on his own side to save himself, yet couldn't care less. The adrenaline surged throughout my body, making me refocus on the task at hand. I unsheathed my knife from my victim, and replaced it in its proper pouch. I got up, and began to run, just as a group of men came clamoring my way. They were silhouettes to me, only black masses dancing in the brightness of the flames coming from our base.

  I could hear voices calling after me, but I did not dare turn to see who they belonged to, I just kept going in a mad sprint away to safety. No gunshots came, no strikes of artillery, no snipers. I kept going for what felt like hours, the road disappeared and was replaced with more dirt and grass. I eventually came upon a lone tree, sitting atop a small hill and cliff. It was a tiny outcropping, not even six feet, but perfect to rest under if it rained. I sat under the tree, and caught my breath. It was a singed thing, no leaves, the branches and trunk were charcoal, but I didn't care.

  The rays of the morning sun were just showing over the horizon, the sky turned a pinkish orange, and the clouds a familiar shade of pink, the breeze was cooling, though light with dust. I just sat there a long while watching the sunrise, compartmentalizing the events of the night before, trying to forget the hardships. Opening my breast pocket, I pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, a box of matches and looked down at both in front of me. The package of the smokes was standard yellow with black trim, two chevrons in the middle and the sign of the old American dollar in the very center, there underneath was the brand name, ‘Ragnar's Reserve limited’.

  It was some asshole from about twenty years prior who started making those, his funny little reference to Atlas Shrugged, they were also terrible quality. But since they were cheap, they were the norm to us mercs. We didn't complain often, our pay was all that mattered to us, so we kept our mouths shut even when we had to eat MRE’s and smoke bottom quality cigs. The alcohol was fine though, nobody complained about free drinks, one of the best perks of being part of the Sealand Contract Forces; free booze, meals and smokes.

  I took out one of the bent cigarettes and carefully placed it between my cracked and bloody lips, lit a match, and began to smoke. The burning sensation was soothing, a reminder that I was alive, could feel pain, and the coughing a reminder that I could still breathe. I sat there chain smoking, one after another until the last one was lit, and I looked out to the smoke behind me, far off from the ruins of what was once my home of almost four years in that shitshow. I laughed, silently at first but then the sound came, I was roaring like I had heard the funniest joke ever told. That's when the laughter turned to sobs, the tears never came, I had none left to shed, and no water to make any.

  I survived, but at that moment wished I had not, began thinking that I should have died back there with my men, with that Rhodesian. With a gun in my hand like a true warrior. But I had chosen life, chosen the easy way out by running to find a safe haven, an escape from the realities which I had signed up for.

  The sun rose higher, and the blue began to gradually fade into its natural place. As I sat there, worn out and tired, eyes swollen red from the dirt and the moment of weakness. I saw a cloud of dust rise on the horizon, and it grew bigger over the course of a few minutes. It was reinforcements, our reinforcements. The rest of the company had decided to come along after all.

  Tanks, Jeeps, and APC’s all heading in the direction of my exfiltration, and followed by several choppers dancing along the sky. All except one jeep, whose drivers had noticed me.

  They drove up, close to the cliff and stopped, the engine sputtering out as they shut it down and climbed out. The black colored eight person jeep radiated heat, giving off mirages. The driver, a young black man from the Rhodesian forces looked up at me, bemused by my appearance out here.

  “Hey old man,” he began. I looked down at him, expressionless, not giving a damn. “You ok?”

  I looked up at the sky for a moment, not in any purposeful rudeness, just to think of what to say, searching for the right words to use.

  “Yeah, yeah I'm fine. But could use a ride to the base, still plenty of reds to send to the grave.”

  He smiled, and waved me down, “come on then, lets go rack up some notches.”

  I got up, casually walking down the hill and sat in the back of the jeep, not saying a word. The other men all scooted around me, asking if I was injured or needed anything. There were good kids, inexperienced like the one I killed, I wondered what they would say or do if they had known. But I said nothing about it, only asking for water when offered.

  “Hey 'Whisper',” one of the few mercs present began, he was skinny and had messy red hair. We called him 'Curly', met him back when I formed up with alot of the others way before that war.

  “What is it 'Curly'? ” I replied nonchalantly.

  “How did you get out here, we're about three miles out from the base.”

  I smiled, grinned more accurately, and looked out in the direction of the smoke again.

  “Did what I had to do, son.” He stared at me as I turned back to look into his eyes.

  “What was that, run like a bitch?” he joked.

  Smiling still, I leaned back and rested against the cold steel of the vehicle, feeling the rumble of the jeep on the rough dirt path carved out by the tanks and the APC’s ahead of us.

  “Survive.”

  End of intermission.