Attack

ATTACK I can still see their faces mouths open screaming silent screams silenced by the loud barking of weapons, theirs and ours; sudden explosions rendering moot intensity of automatic fire. They came out of the trees running across the stream, the dark forms bending grass, their feet splashing water; such detail of uniforms, wrinkles and straps, water spraying from their passage. The trees behind posed an almost pastoral backdrop of night shadows cast in the warm glow of collective detonations; Then the silence, sudden silence, ears overwhelmed by cruel technology, the breathless suffocation of adrenaline. Darkness grew as senses dimmed, the brightness of action fading; there were bodies in the grass, lying still in the water, under my muzzle, within touch. So natural in their motionless state rather than fading into darkness, the bodies, no longer men glowed illuminated by the floodlights of hate, fear, and remorse. Hand stretching to my muzzle, poised just mere inches away, while I kept pulling the trigger on a now dead weapon; willing the rounds to fire needing them for survival. I died but still breathed as a fickle moon glanced and showed its dismissive light; there was nothing but death, the dead, ours, theirs, scattered natural in their motionless state. As I looked, my friend, lay against the embankment, he unknowingly met my glance, while light faded from his eyes; his blue eyes kept watching and his face calmly smiled. The moon fluttered then gone, rain came in whispering, my sense of loss overwhelming; alone now I could only grieve their death and that of the living. Ever so gently the Monsoon whispers its condolence; the gentle fall of water cleansing my brutality forgiving me my hate. Gradually darkening my vision night regained control.