Reaper

First: One Can Never Escape Death...

"Do you remember?" The creature spoke from the darkness.

"Remember what?" I asked.

"How we met?"

"Of course I do. How could I forget?" I said, my voice melancholy as my memories rolled into the foreground before me.

July 3rd 2005

Considering the otherwise dry desert landscape, the rain had come as a relief. Falling from the azure sky, the water cooled my dry, cracked skin. It was another day of long patrols. Carrying the cargo in the trucks from one place to another. From base to base. Considering that my squad and I had been in this country for several weeks at that point, we had barely seen anything of it. Nothing but the bases, the desert and the occasional hating stare from the local populace. We were not wanted there. I didn't want to be there either.

The Sergeant ordered us to bed the moment we hit camp. We had been hiking through the desert heat for several days and we were exhausted. I was slightly saddened by the need to sleep, as standing in the rare downpour would have been a nice, refreshing change. It was as I entered the bunkhouse that I really felt how tired I was. The sudden bout of exhaustion threw me and I almost collapsed. One of my colleagues caught me mid slump, placing a hand under my arm and another round my shoulder, laughing at my lack of resolve. It was mocking, but a nice mocking. It made me feel like I was one of them. My colleagues. My crew. My squad. My family.

I was brutally awakened. The sound of gunfire and explosions caused me to shoot up out of bed and make my way to my equipment, grabbing my sidearm and my rifle heading out the door as I hastily donned my combat gear. Stepping outside I was narrowly missed by some shrapnel of a nearby grenade exploding. The scene was maddening. People were lying on the ground crying for help in a multitude of languages. I could pick out a couple of voices in the storm of sound, but the most prominent was the one yelling "Get down!" as one of my squad pulled me behind some makeshift cover consisting of a tipped over barrel and some rubble.

The sound of gunfire was relentless. It permeated my entire being. My bones felt like they were shaking as the warring continued. There was a shout I didn't understand and the gunfire stopped. A moments respite in the war zone felt amazing until the tense and ever ominous threat loomed over me forming the question that would stain my mind. A question arose. Why had the gunfire stopped? For a moment I was elated. Maybe it was over? Maybe I didn't have to pull a trigger today. The idea of ending someone's life had never appealed to me, it's why I had chosen to be a non-combatant, an engineer. But then it came back to me. It was a dull echo at first, the memory. Why was I having such difficulty remembering the orders that had been shouted? And then it hit me.

The force of the impact of the barrel shook me to my core. Every part of me ached. The barrel had smashed into my torso, knocking me off my feet. My ears rang with the white noise of my brain as it screamed in pain. I managed to stumble back and behind the bunkhouse before I heard the sound of the gunfire continuing. Everything around me sounded strange, like I was underwater. I turned to see if my friend, who had saved me only moments earlier, was okay. Their corpse lay motionless on the ground, rib caged crushed by the impacting barrel. I had been impossibly lucky to avoid the same fate.

I looked around me and saw that I stood alone in my inaction. I didn't belong on the front lines. I was an engineer. So I did what any civilian would do when faced with the inevitability of their death. I ran. My feet stumbled clumsily across the vast ocean of sand as I ran from the scene. I didn't look back but I could feel eyes on me. I knew they would find me eventually. I knew I was going to die. But I ran. The shouting from behind me made me sure they had noticed me. And if that hadn't, the sound of the gun being fired would have. The bullet caught me in the back. I tripped on my own feet and slid down a sand dune leaving a faint, but all too real streak of crimson on the golden sands.