B O M B S H E L L
This is a story that will eventually center around loss- if I ever finish writing it. It’s a war story set in around the 1860s, based on the American Civil War.
If the first BOOM is loud, the second is deafening.
The world is completely silent until I hear a faint ringing. It gets louder and louder and I cover my ears, but the ringing is not dampened in the slightest. Its volume increases still; my head is throbbing and it feels like my brain is going to combust. I reach for my head and curl up beside my discarded musket, but the ringing doesn’t stop for what seems like hours.
So I wait there.
I can’t think; I can barely remind myself to breathe.
Until finally, finally, the ringing begins to fade away. My migraine is the worst I’ve ever had, but still I wrack my injured brain for a possible source of such loud sounds…
I look up and I see men running towards me, weapons raised, and I can just barely hear their battle cry over the intense silence in my head. I spin around and I realize now what must’ve happened: the barricade has fallen. They’ve bombed it, and now they’re filtering through the wreckage. It is a menacing sea of angry, determined faces atop an indistinguishable mass of green fabric.
Well, shit.
I’ve no time to think anything else. I drop to the ground in search of my gun, running my hands through the tall, dead grass. The moment I lay my hands on it, I feel an intense warmth in my foot, one I’ve felt too many times before. I know I’ve been shot before I see the wound, and I know I can do nothing about it. I secure my musket in my hands and turn quickly on my knees, scanning the battlefield for my shooter. When I do not find an imminent threat, I jump to my feet and sprint into the woods, doing my best to ignore the growing ache in my foot.
Having been shot a good sixteen times, I’ve gotten quite used to the feeling of a bullet entering and exiting my body. The first time I was hit, the pain was much greater and affected me much more than it does now. It felt like I’d been stabbed in the shoulder with a hot nail, and then hit repeatedly with a bat. It was not a fun experience. Perhaps I’ve grown stronger since, or perhaps the foot is a less sensitive area, but now it feels like my foot has suffered only a bee sting.
That is, until my foot is caught on an exposed root and I find myself flat on the ground with a mouthful of dirt and dead leaves. I come to notice, however, as I rise to a sitting position and clutch my throbbing foot, that I did not trip on a tree root, but a human leg. For a reason that I can not devise, I reach my hand towards it. Before my hand makes contact, the rest of its body bursts out from under the layer of leaves laid over the forest floor. Its face, though smeared with mud, was slightly recognizable-
“Eddie? Oh thank god you’re here! I been out here for hours because I can’t really move and there weren’t no one around to gimme a hand. Damn, I must’ve fallen asleep after making my disguise! Genius, innit?”
“Joseph? Are you all right, there?” is all I say to the man on the ground, who happens to be a very good friend of mine, more a brother. He’s the only family I’ll have left after the war is over. Which is why I need to make sure he lives through it.
“Oh, I’m feeling quite fine, brother. I just got plugged a few in the back, y’know how it is.”
“Plugged? You were shot in the back?! You could be paralyzed! We have to get you to the doc’s tent, c’mon!” I grab him by the shoulders, disregarding my own wound completely. He groans in pain, but I lift him to his feet and lead him swiftly towards the medic’s tent. The location of which, I soon realize, I’m not quite sure of. I don’t even know which direction we’re heading in. North? East? Hold on, where is the sun..?
“Eddie? Edward!” the man in my arms raises his voice, interrupting my thoughts, “I’m fine. Go back to your station.” At my skeptical expression, he sighs. “I really am okay. I can walk, look!” he says, pushing away from me and hobbling slowly a few feet ahead of me.
“No. I’m taking you to the medic; we’re almost there,” I say, putting his arm around my shoulder once more.
“You don’t even know where the tent is! I can get there myself, and you’d be much more useful out there winning the battle for us,” he argues.
“But-”
“Pipe down, man.” Joseph interrupts, pushing me away once more. “You’re one of the best soldiers we’ve got, and you wasting your time on little ol’ me will certainly not help us win this battle.”
His argument is good enough, but the decision I must make is this: Do I care more for life of my best friend, or aiding in my country’s victory over the south? I am completely sure that, however selfish, I’d choose the former. How much help would one more person be? In Joseph’s case, a butt ton, but in the case of the battle, we’ve tens of thousands of soldiers fighting out there. I’d be merely one more man.
My mind made, I say nothing and lead Joseph along at a slightly quicker pace, to which he emits a sigh of either defeat or exasperation -perhaps a combination of the two- but he does not argue. I’ve won this round.
We walk only half a mile before we reach the medic’s tent. I drop him off in a rush, and I am promptly shoved out of the marquee by a nurse when she decides I am not majorly injured. I guess she didn’t notice my bloody footprints.