Scorched Earth
The rain had kept falling as evening turned into night. It had started as a light drizzle 
around midday but as afternoon passed the gates of heaven had opened more and more 
revealing what was inside the heavy black clouds hanging heavy all around the horizon. By 
now a steady rain fell from an unforgiving sky, the few patches of solid ground had since 
long turned into treacherous mud holes, consuming men and equipment alike in a stinking 
dark brown tar. Rain splashed against corrugated iron that constituted the roof of the 
improvised shelter, a sharp continuous smatter sounding like machinegun-fire, and poured in 
tiny rivers down the sides of the trench, slowly eroding it and turning into a small lake 
on the floor. The rain also slowly ate its way through his heavy woollen coat and his thick 
army-issue boots. He risked a quick peek across the summit of the trench like a frightened 
rabbit would peek out of its hole, clutching the wet wood of his rifle in both hands, ready 
to take cover or fire at a moments notice. A flicker at the edge of vision and he had the 
butt to his shoulder aiming out into the chilly darkness outside the dubious safety of his 
shelter, but seconds passed and nothing else appeared out of the night, it must have been 
the rain, painting illusions in thin air right before him, and his senses exhausted and 
over strained as they were took the bait, hook, line and sink. He reluctantly relaxed his 
fingers clutching the trigger and stock like a drowning man would clutch a lifeline thrown 
to him, and sank back, deep into the mud, damp cold touched his chest with fingers of ice. 
He shuddered involuntarily, tremors cursing through him. He longed more than anything for a 
warm bath, a good meal and gentle hands. He hadnít had any of those in a time that seemed 
like eternity. How long would this madness continue? Both the great empires had poured both 
men and arms into this conflict now for years and still the stalemate held up, neither side 
gaining more than a couple of inches of soggy, thrashed ground, ony to once again lose it 
at the next enemy offensive. It was like watching giants wrestle, their bodies built of 
millions of soldiers, their arms locked around each othersí necks in a deadly embrace. 
Insanity repeated itself over and over again, atrocities beyond description. But heíd seen. 
Heíd seen the things that governments and rulers neither knew nor cared about. The things 
that never reached the media, war correspondents or the outside. The insanity of the war 
had seeped into the men fighting in muddy trenches. He had tried to stop them, oh yes, he 
had tried, but to what avail? What could He, one lone man do against that? The fear and 
blood thirst had more than once manifested itself, a great demonic beast on silent wings, 
sweeping across the battlefield and through the souls of the men, twisting them, turning 
them into something else, consuming them and at the same time filling them with a blinding 
white rage, a blood lust that made them charge the enemy strongholds, not for some 
patriotic calling or for some higher oath, but only because the alternative was even worse, 
another day in the foul, cold trenches and tunnels.

By now most of the soldiers were sick, typhoid fever, tuberculosis and trench fever walked 
among them during the night carrying their pleauge-ridden scythes, taking almost as many 
lives as the bullets. Piles of dead or dying littering the floors of abandoned blockhouses 
and machine gun nests. Everything was so dark now, as if a great shadow had fallen upon 
him, vaguely he remembered brighter times, in a place far far away from here, a place were 
sun shone from blue heavens, smooth touch on his skin, laughter, clear and tinkling in the 
moonlit night, loving words exchanged in confidence with the full moon as the only witness. 
Aeons had passed making the memory feel dreamlike, distant like a jittery film playing over 
and over at the back of his mind. And then, the calling, reluctantly he remembered the cry 
to take arms in the defence of the motherland, it had struck true deep within him, filling 
him with a sort of warm pride at the notion of that he, would stand up in the defence of 
his country. He would stand firm in the great battles to come not yielding an inch, 
defending his heritage and that soft touch and bright smile. He had to fight back a smile 
of his own, threatening to split his face in two, irony seeming like as good a refuge as 
any. If heíd only knew, if he had only seized the moments and contemplated his actions 
before rushing headlong into something like this everything may had turned out differently. 
He would still be living in the bright dream, ignorant of the darkness of war.

The moon had risen and suddenly broke through the heavy black clouds, bathing the quiet, 
ravaged land in a flood of silver light. Slowly he sank back into the deep stinking mud 
like one of those submarines the press was so lyrical about, the silent weapon it was said, 
one of the most ingenious and prodigious discoveries ever made. Another engine of war, like 
they had not enough of those already. The mud sheltered him, he was already wet to the 
bone, fighting of sneezes and coughs as best as he could. A faint rumble to the north told 
a tale of an oncoming storm, natural or man-made was anybodyís guess, one could only wish 
it was natural, and less deadly. Shells screamed past overhead, bound for some distant 
hidden target.

The pale light of the silver moon and the screams of the iron death overhead signalled the 
awakening of the beasts. The monsters lurking in the darkness, feasting on the fallen men, 
tearing at human flesh with yellow, fang-like teeth, mad bloodshot eyes under furrowed 
brows, half hopping, half limping gait through the barbed wire fences of no-mans land, 
upturned faces sniffing in the wind. But he was still alive, his rifle firm in his hands 
ensuring that he would not be an easy prey to catch. 

They were calling him now, calling him to them, a song of friendship, of running wild with 
the pack. He shuddered, he would never give in, not to the song, to the calling, to the 
voices, to the ones he had once called friends and comrades in arms.

Per Sikora 2000