The Charge

Just a short I wrote to try to get myself writing. I wrote down the first sentence that came to mind and took it from there.

The darkness came quickly.  He had expected it to be different.  Around him men tensed their muscles, preparing for the inevitable onslaught.  Further down the line, he heard a low whimpering.  The battle had taken its first victim before it had begun.  In truth, he knew the majority of the men that night were no different.  Their whimpering was done on the inside.

His eyes began to adjust to the lack of light and the outlines of those around him crept into view at ever further distances.  The few men he could see on either side of him in the trench took turns peering over the edge into the black.  Others sat with the rifles between their legs, heads resting on the barrel either in prayer or in silent defiance of their predicament.  He was caught in one of those moments of delusion when it began.

There was a hiss in the darkness, low and sinister, it sounded to be about thirty or forty meters out from his position.  The quality of the sound was such that distance, or direction, was difficult to judge.  As he listened the volume of the hiss rose and fell, like the wind blowing across your ears.  He steeled himself against what was to come, and after pushing himself into a squat, peered out into the night in the direction of the sound.

At first he saw nothing, but the hiss grew louder.  He squinted against the black, willing his eyes to drink up what little light could be found and help in the fight to keep him breathing, to keep him alive.  Just when he thought it was futile he caught a movement in the shadows before him.  Trickery perhaps, an illusion.  But then there it was again, maybe twenty meters out now, low and edging closer.  He strained his eyes more, and just when his temples began to hurt from the force of it, he saw its eyes; and it saw him.

The night exploded with light as the man beside him screamed in terror and fired his rifle.  A wall of hot metal shards sprayed in the direction of the thing and what the light revealed sucked all hope out from the depths of his soul.

They were legion, a mass of creeping death visible in the strobe of the gun fire.  He felt his mind search through a million possibilities in a moment’s time, scanning for a proper response to the madness before him.  It found none, and when it rendered its final result he realized that he had but two choices before him.  The same choice made by living things of all kinds in countless numbers over countless millennia:  fight, or run.

An ancient anger roared up inside of him, mixing with the terror to form a shield of adrenalin coursing through his veins.  He began firing his rifle and heard someone let loose a fierce war cry.  As round after round poured forth from his weapon, he realized that someone was himself.

Screams filled the cool night air and mingled with the sounds of gunfire.   The smells of smoke and blood and sweat filled his nostrils.  Amidst it all, he raged on.  Clip after clip sprayed into the darkness and still the enemy advanced, over the bodies of their dead and towards the living ones they wished to tear asunder.  Toward him.

Then a click.  Another clip spent.  A hand reaching from pocket to pocket, but there is nothing left for his pockets to give.   The adrenalin courses renewed into his blood stream and he slips his knife from its sheath, rising out of the trench with a roar and charges toward the lines of the enemy.  For a moment, just long enough to be seen, the predators before him take pause.  It is then he sees it.  A glimpse of what they have given to him, his fellow fighters, his family, his species in spades for months:  fear.

And as he closes the gap between them he drinks it from their eyes and feels more and more the beast and they the prey, until he is upon the first.  His knife tearing through its eye socket and into its brain before it can fully grasp the turn of events that has befallen it.  Wrenching it out quickly he turns to hack and slash as another advances upon him, and it quickly becomes a grappling match.

Sharp talons slash at his arms and jaws full of razors and drool clack open and shut.  His grunting and heaving mixing with the unearthly hissing and screeching of his combatant, until the knife finds home, sliding through bits of armored carapace and into soft tissue.  The hissing mixes with gurgling and the creature’s life and strength slip from it at an alarming speed.  He throws it aside before the process is complete and scrambles to his feet.

His arms are slashed in many places, bleeding freely, and he begins to feel weak.  He hears a sound to his right and turns in time to see a larger one of the creatures impale him, piercing what appears to be a foot and a half long extruded bone appendage through his shoulder just under the collar bone.  It lifts him slowly off the ground, staring into his eyes.  Slowly, it appears to grin. 

Just as the serenity of deaths acceptance settles upon him, the creatures head deforms and body trembles as round after round pummel it mercilessly.  It sags as its strength fades and he is lowered to the ground.  Dropping first to his knees, and then twisting down to his side, unable to disengage himself from the talon that protrudes from his back.

As he hits the ground, men storm past him on all sides.  Where terror began the night ferocity has ended it, and death is dealt to the enemy as evenly as it is to his own.

They can die…

He watches the carnage as his vision begins to blur.  He has been shivering, he notices now, as the blood has been slowly pumped out of his body.  There isn’t much time left for him.

But we can win.  We can WIN.

As his heart begins to fail him, a smile creeps onto his face and peace comes as quickly as the darkness had.

Author's Note

To anyone who took the time to read this, thanks! I appreciate any feedback. I'm really striving to improve, so any pointers are appreciated.