Dishonorable

My heart throbs in my chest, with each beat of it being clear to hear through the haze of rapid machine gun fire. No longer do I hear the rounds slapping the open bolt system nor the fire of the shots over my head as I'm as low as possible to the slab of concrete in front of me. A shot zips by and ricochets off of my helmet as I hunch lower, barely able to see through the sights of the only thing keeping me alive. A big mass of green muscle appears in the cross hairs with a very big machine gun that a normal human wouldn't be able to handle standing up, and shooting so stably that he can hit a target three hundred meters away. Especially when that said target is inside a bunker shitting himself wondering if he'll ever be able to see the rising sun in the next morning. The green mass points his machine gun again, aiming straight at me, taking his time. I don't hear the shots ring from my machine gun or even notice that I squeezed the trigger. All I see are the blue shots that zip out and tear the huge piece of mass in half. Red mist clouds the air of where his torso used to be.

I throw up.

I bend over, ripping my helmet off as a I puke so much that I couldn't see a thing in it any more. My vision begins to blur as tears begin to flow, pure fear stabbing at me. With my forearm, I wipe away the tears, doing my best to stop the flow. As my vision comes back, so does the nightmare before my eyes and the undeniable reality of my situation. Two dead gunners lie on the cemented floor, one shot through the chest with a look of confusion on his face. The other clinging at his throat with a face of pure panic as he choked on his own blood.

"Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!" I scream, covering my head I begin to sob again as the bunker is lit up with red as the bolts begin to pepper against the concrete, some of them slipping through and hitting the walls.

A piece of rock hits my face, I look up to see if it came from the bunker wondering if they were that close already. Instead I see my friend, sitting up against the wall underneath the other gun, missing his right arm, and his pistol in his left hand. I can't tell if he's alive or dead from the full face helmet covering anything that could give a hint. Until I see him point to his ear, tapping it lightly against it with his finger. I nod, grabbing my helmet, wiping the rest of the puke out and put it on. I hear it seal then a hum as it reads my vitals and shows me a list of everyone else's. There's only one other than mine.

"Desmond, how you doing buddy?" I say over comms, though his vitals in the corner of my screen show that he's not doing well at all.  

"Well... I can say... that I'm doing... better than you were looking earlier huh?" he groans over comms.

"Yeah" I chuckle, taking a deep breath trying to make my voice not sound as shaky "Well I never thought I would have met my end here, or this soon."

"It's pretty fucked up," I finish and pull my knees into my chest, hugging them. The peppering gets more intense, the concrete getting smaller as the shots get closer, tearing bits and pieces of if off. Yet I don't hear it, all I hear is Desmond's shaky breath and voice.

"Yeah... I imagined that'd it be... more like... later on... with good booze in one hand..."

"...And a fat ass in the other," I finish for him, laughing dryly. The high of imminent death finally taking over. "Good man," he laughs, which then turns into painful coughs, I think I see blood splatter on his visor. We both sit there in silence as the shots increase in quantity and velocity. Both of us not wanting to be the one to end the conversation, or to ask what happens if they capture us, what to do to prevent that.

"You think... it's too late... to talk our way out of this?" he says with a humorless voice.

"Oh most definitely we are way past that point." I reply