Animosity

Prologue

Photo: Lone American soldier traipses through a field as a squadron of US helicopters fly overhead.

—

Bullets hit the ground beside me, spraying dirt against the sides of my legs as I sprinted through the street, breath coming in short, labored gasps. Stumbling, my hands shot outwards as I willed myself to regain balance, chest heaving as a fresh wave of panic jolted through my mind. My legs worked harder, faster, arms pumping at my side, feet pounding against the scorched earth.

I could hear another round fired to my right, then my left; a bullet whizzed by my ear, the sound setting my senses on high alert. Struggling to regulate my breathing, I instinctively ran faster, lungs crying out for air.

The city had been beautiful once. Lieutenant Hiro had showed me elaborate pictures of it, the red-roofed chapels and white-painted buildings sprouting of the ground in wild, untamed masses. His hands had shook slightly, but his voice was steady as he went through the photos, shots of women smiling as they showed off their dresses on the streets, children cheering each other on while wrestling in the grass, groups of people gathered together with metal pots of food in their hands. I agreed. The city had been breathtaking.

My head snapped to the side as I surveyed the scorched buildings rising around me, casting depressive shadows on the ground, the darkness blanketing my path. It was now only a ghost of what it used to be, a center of beauty complimenting the sparkling, sprawling countryside that neighbored it. A completely ravaged corpse of a church was collapsed to my left, the outside charred and blackened, roof caved in and windows shot through. The interior floor was covered in a thick layer of soot and rubble, serving as distant memories of a once-intact, once-functional hall, decorated with birch wood pews and a homely, tacked together altar. The inside was now empty and desolate, the trunks at the entrance of the building ransacked and blown to bits long before I even reached the city. My mind raced as I imagined the throngs of people that used to crowd inside, singing songs of worship, gathering to pray, to laugh. Half of them were probably dead by now.

The shout came from my right, snapping me out of my thoughts with a sickening speed, the tone frantic, the voice desperate. "Incoming!"

A shell hit the ground instantly afterwards, and a loud explosion sounded behind me, the force of it shaking the floor and knocking me off of my feet. The heat of the flames rushed like a wave past my head, and I scrambled on my hands and knees away from the source, coughing weakly. My arms shook as I rolled into a nearby ditch in the dirt, limbs weak from exertion, nose running and filled with smoke. My ears were ringing, blocking out most of the noise, but my eyes were wide as I watched the soldier that had tried to give me the harrowing warning become engulfed in wild, blinding fire.

"HELP!" He screamed, throat raw as he collapsed onto the ground, setting grass aflame, convulsing violently. "HELP ME..!"

I looked on in horror, frozen in place, unable to do anything as my eyes locked onto his and watched them slowly melt. His spasms slowed, voice silent, and he twitched once before growing still.

Swallowing the vomit that rose in my throat, I gasped for air as I dragged myself out of the pit, frantically stomping out the fire that had sparked up on my pant leg. It was extinguished with a hiss, and I struggled to get back up to my feet, panting, hands curling around the handle of my rifle. My stare scraped over the street, bombed buildings collapsing on sight, and I ducked down with a jolt as another shell exploded on the dirt, sending a huge spray of dirt and upturned grass falling onto my shoulders.

I screwed my eyes shut tightly, sinking back into the brush, breathing erratic as my ears searched for sound in the now-darkened world. Shots rang out through the city, incessant and unceasing as they sailed through the air. Yelling echoed past the buildings, in English and Vietnamese, orders and warnings and screams of pain, but my rapidly numbing brain wasn't able to decipher any of it. Another explosion sounded, then two more, then a bigger one. The air was rife with the smell of burnt flesh and the flames crackled behind me. We were losing the battle.