Red White and Blues

"You alright there, mister?"

The soldier's eyes snap open to reveal a tilted landscape. All around, the world has turned to ruin, a vision of black ash rain and chaos. A young boy hovers above him uncertainly, clutching a vivid red soccer ball.

"You shouldn't be here," he tries to muster up a sense of authority, but the warning comes out in a huff of broken air. He's been knocked down, and his weapon lies stranded on the road next to him. Somewhere in the distance, a howitzer explodes, shaking the earth.

"You shouldn't be here!" He repeats with more urgency, finding his feet at last. He swipes up the gun and takes a defensive stance in front of the boy before doing a quick sweep of their immediate field. They're on some kind of street, cut through the middle of several civilian houses. To his left, comrades in familiar green and brown uniforms filter past, evacuating families and directing them into the utility vans waiting by the horizon line.

The solider curses. Who ordered them to congregate in such an open position?

"Hey!" He fists the shirt of a private running by. The man stops, his face etched with a startled concern. With his gelled down hair and round face, he looks wholly out of place here. He can't be older than twenty-five, yet to be tainted by the reality of war. That would change soon. Faster, if they couldn't get those people off the streets and away from this kill box.

"They're sitting ducks out here. We need to move them, now!"

"...I'm sorry?"

"Here. Take the boy." He thrust the young boy towards the private, already rushing towards the fire line. "I'm going to help the captain!"

The solider had fought alongside Captain Avery since the day he himself had been a bright-eyed trooper. He'd barely known which way to point a barrel, but Avery had whipped him into shape awful-fast. When he'd been stranded in no man's land and his entire unit had fallen, it was Avery who'd braved the gunfire and dragged him to safety. So when he finally spots the Captain hauled up behind one of the houses barking commands at the men around him, it's second nature to run towards them.

"Huxley," Avery nods at him as he joins the group. "Good to have you here solider. We could use your help."

In the thick of the storm, Captain Avery is perfectly in his element, relaying orders and inspiring them with the ease of wind and confidence of thunder.

"At your command, Captain."

"I've positioned Bennett and Stone at the west flank to keep eyes on the treeline. I need you to move up to the ridge- there's a bottleneck up the road. Civilians are piling up, and it's looking like a massacre. The only way out is through the old maintenance tunnel under c sec. Get in there and clear it for the civilians."

Huxley hesitates. He'd follow his Captain anywhere, but a half-collapsed tunnel hardly seems like the best use of his skills. "I'm not a sapper, sir. Isn't that more your area of expertise?"

Captain Avery gives him a grim expression. "You know why I can't do it, Huxley."

Behind them in the streets, the civilian population seems to be thickening, with more and more people pouring out of their houses by the minute. The strange thing is, instead of heading towards the utility vans and to their safety, they stay exactly where they are. It almost feels like they're looking... at him? Are they waiting for him to clear the tunnel up the road? Their faces bear the expected disturbed and fearful expressions, but no sense of urgency. No crazed panic.

"Captain?" Huxley's frown deepens as he turns back towards Avery. There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

That's when he sees it.

The blood. It pours not just from Avery's head, but his chest, too, as if he's been shot several times. Liquid the viscosity of syrup drips down his abdomen, staining his uniform a sticky black colour. His green eyes are glazed over, and tiny honey ants eat at his eyes, his nose, his sallow sunken cheeks. And he knows it then, knows it in the way the body has slumped over and been covered in a light layer of ash. Knows it as sure as the wind, come to carry pieces of ash and debris away from the battlefield and into the distance.

He has been lying there for a very long time.

Huxley staggers backwards as the world in front of him shifts into a new scene. He's on a street, cut through the middle of several civilian houses. To his left, people in bright, trendy clothing watch on with pitiful- if not slightly judgmental- eyes.

He reaches for his gun, but it's gone, it's gone, and he's clutching onto a bruised aubergine and muttering obscenities as he stumbles around the picturesque little street in his nightgown. It's a horrible thing, feeling it unfold, because deep within his bones Huxley knows that if his squad mates could see him now, they'd pity him, too. Of course, they never would see him now. Back then, Huxley thought himself lucky to have left those weeping fields with his life. Perhaps he hadn't been.

A blood red ball rolls past as a young man approaches.

"Sir?" The man gives him a sympathetic smile. "Let's get you some help, huh?"

He doesn't bother answering. What more can he say- that he's failed, that he's lost the only fight he ever thought mattered? Was it lost before the trenches, before the gunfire obliterated, the explosives disintegrated- twisting, raining, limbs racing down the sky as if they were still running, just the wrong way, like they'd only taken a wrong turn and not been knocked clean-off? Perhaps the fight had truly been lost when he'd ceased fighting in all other aspects of his life, too. Greta always said his pride would be the death of him.

It's her he thinks about now, when all else remains as clear as mangroves in a dark foreign jungle. Most of the voices in his head shout as he forces one foot in front of the other, but hers speaks. Sings, really, accompanied by the soft giggles of his firstborn child and the sound of a dog yapping happily beside them.

So no, he says nothing as he lets the stranger lead him away, nightgown flapping in the wind, vegetable in hand, a broken parody of the man he used to be.