The Trumpets

There he stood in the broken town, his ears deaf to the parade of gunfire that sounded there. Shrouds of charcoal gray ash covered more than the roofs and the streets. It covered the faces of the men around him firing their guns and screaming words he could not hear. It covered the clothes and skin of the women and children who hid away from the fight, hoping that stray bullets would not find them.
He could not hear, but he could see the pain in the faces of the soldiers around him and the enemy ahead of him. The mangled expressions of fear on their faces torn into a distant gloom; hidden by the instinct of survival. Their teeth mashed into a visage of war masks, taunting one another with death.
They pushed on wielding their weapons, killing anything in sight, some falling in the wake of battle. Men from his platoon who yesterday were smiling, lay dying, eyes staring wide into the sky, as if to search for heaven. Davidson had lost his legs, and all that remained were bloody stumps at the hip with scraggly lines of flesh hanging off, like spaghetti. His eyes were empty; void of the pain that has body could no longer feel. Colleti’s guts hung out over the gaping hole in his stomach. He shook violently, trying speak the words he could not find the breath for. In his hand he held a picture of a young brunette woman, her hand on a visible bump at her stomach. The words he could not speak could be seen in his eyes. Past the tears he could see it was not the thought of death that scared Colleti; that had brought the tears. It was the fact that he would never see his wife again nor the birth of his first and now only child. He took the picture and nodded his head. In his eyes flashed an understanding, and then they closed. He would suffer no longer.
He pushed on through the gray, past the burning buildings, through the smoke that blinded him. His helmet kept most of the ash out of his eyes as he held his gun firmly in his grasp. He came across one of the enemy, injured, dying. The same empathy that he had felt for his fallen brothers burdened him now. In front of him was man whose language he could not understand. But the grimace of fear in his face was all too familiar. He raised his gun to shoot, but stopped himself. This man like him was fighting for his country. He thought of the picture in his pocket. Did this man have a family? Did he have a wife and kid waiting for him? Did this man deserve to die? Did he? The man held his hands in front of him, cowering, begging for his life. Like the so many others he had killed, this man was not shooting at him; this man was not armed.
Decisiveness crippling him, he weighed his choices. His unit flanked around him, done with their killing. They stared at him and the man before him, waiting for the inevitable. He stared back at the men who nodded their heads, and he turned and pulled out his handgun. He emptied the clip and put one bullet back in the chamber. He dropped the gun at the man’s feet and moved on. This man would die one way or the other. He would not put more blood on his hands. The man would die either by his wound or his own hand, but surely he would die. His unit kept an eye on the man as they moved to the end of the town towards the waiting helicopter; its propellers whisking the dusty gray into the air. The man picked up the gun in his hand, and stared at it, then back at the unit who were now boarding the helicopter.
He stepped inside without looking back, and the helicopter lifted into the air. Bam! A single shot echoed through the fading day. As they circled over what was left of the city, he stared down into the abyss. From the street a small boy stared back at him, not in fear or hate, but in confusion. The helicopter swept into the coming night, towards the next round of death.