Schrödinger's War Hero

They were ambushed, here in this wretched jungle.

A storm of fire and lead had exploded towards them through the splintered trees.

Some of his squad had fallen right away. He knows he'll never forget that new sound. Not the sound of gunfire-- that's not new-- but the dull meaty thud of hot metal slamming through flesh.

That sound took his friends and transformed them into so much nothing.

Others of his squad have fallen to the make-shift traps that block the path of their panicked retreat.

One of his buddies seems to trip and tumble directly into the earth itself. He was there but now he's gone. Erased. With only his frantic, muffled shrieks to declare that he used to exist... or that he might still exist down there in the dark, impaled on punjis and dangling in a limbo of bamboo and poison. Both dead and alive, until the enemy peeks down to clarify his condition.

The living man knows they are being herded. Their retreat was plotted out and handed down like a decree-- a decree voiced by the punctuated thunder of machine guns and war cries.

Is this all they've been trained for?

Dying in a green and tangled wilderness?

They are only boys and they are being shot to pieces in a strange land very far from home.

But he hasn't been hit.

So he runs.

He leaves his friends, leaves them shrieking in the ferns, where their tears and agonies water the wild earth.

He hears the enemy.

Their cries are not pained, not broken, but exuberant. Their voices are pierced with the thrill of the chase.

He'd never hated these people before. This was just a job he'd never wanted and couldn't dodge.

Now, his heart is in it. He wants to butcher them himself. He wants to burn them to ash-- to cut their women and their children to pieces. He wants to make their whole race suffer.

But he is scared.

They'll catch him first.

Though he hides on his belly under a blanket of wet leaves, they will find him.

He knows it like a memory.

They will peel away his fingernails and they will rape him.

He trembles under his blanket.

He holds his breath.

One of those bastards draws close....

The young man strikes first. In a rabid fury, he clasps his calloused hands over the soft throat of his enemy.

They will not take him.

Not.

This.

Time.

Not again!

He squeezes.

And he laughs.

Revenge for what they did to his friends.

Revenge for what they did to him.

Victory at last! .

When the old man wakes there are tears in his beard.

His body is knotted up in sheets and the whole bed stinks of sweat and piss.

He sees his wife, her eyes are wide and blank.

"No, no, no!"

He pulls her close, but her body is growing cold.