history is full of wars fought for a hundred reasons— dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (how sweet and honourable it is to die for one's country)
BANG
Rrrrattattat
BANG
RRRATTATAT
click-click-click
"Dammit!"
I shake my gun hard, hoping that somehow the laws of reality will distort and it'll be refilled. They don't. "I'm out! Jen, cover me?"
"Get your ass back here!" Jenny yells, and pokes her head up over the side of the trench. "You got a tail, two gunners from the rear. I can buy you ten seconds!"
BANG
"Run, idiot!"
I tear across the mud on all fours, feeling flecks of swamp and disgusting water spray onto my face and arms. Unspeakable substances squelch under my hands and feet, threatening to pull me down.
Jenny pops up where I was a second ago. "Hey you!"
The two Capitol soldiers shift their aim to her.
BANG
One down.
click
She's out.
The remaining Capitolite looks down at his dead comrade in shock, sees at the blood speckled on his own uniform, then realizes no more shots are coming. He raises his own rifle, and even with shaking hands and a screwed-up face showing he's about to cry and panic, he can't miss the tall girl with blonde hair that shines like the sun.
"JEN!"
BANG
Pip lowers his pistol. "Over here, Jen, Zane," he calls. "Reload 'n rest for a minute. No more Caps are here yet, those were scouts."
I leap over the ditch and offer a slimy hand to Jen. She looks down at it in distaste, grabs my wrist to wipe it on my shirt, and runs back to our makeshift blind.
We simultaneously collapse behind the rubble heap. Pip surveys the swampy battleground, finds no enemies near, and ducks back into our shelter.
Holly bounces over with the medical kit, cheerful as ever despite the fighting around her and the slimy mud she's covered in, like a banana dipped into a chocolate pot.
"Hey, you're back! Hi Zane, hi Jen! Do you need a medic?" she says brightly. Her filth-laden dark curls swing with her speed and eagerness to help. "I ain't even gotten anything to do yet, pity for missin' pay! But don't neither of you get hurt or anything. I didn't mean that. You're okay, right?"
"We're fine, Holly," I assure her. "We didn't get hurt."
"Yeah, well, dumbass here almost got two bullets in the brainpan," Jen says. She punches me in the shoulder. "I had to pull off a mighty fine rescue."
"And get your own mighty fine rescue from Pip," I add.
"No, she was great. She would've done them up somehow," Pip says. He smiles dreamily. "You're so smart, Jen."
Jen obliviously reloads her gun without casting a glance to Pip, and I hear him repress a sigh.
I hold back a snort. Poor Pip. As if it isn't obvious Jen has no interest in boys under six feet tall and without any adornments. After all, on leave and on a date, she wouldn't be able to wear her dagger-tipped high heels or her razor-sharp jewelry with him. She'd probably die if she couldn't be a walking arsenal as usual.
"So how's Red?" asks Jen, and I feel a twinge of pity for Pip. Short guy, drafted for the Rebellion at eighteen, taken from his home and large family in District Eleven, and now set aside by the girl he idolizes for a barbarian.
"Red's doin' okay," Holly informs her. "Relying on the bud, at any rate." She taps her earbud. "Hearin' plenty of screams and fighting and stuff, but we know Red."
We do. Despite his being so doggoned bloodthirsty and a mite temperamental at times, he's part of the family, and that's where we aim to keep him.
"Awful lonely out here in the war," Holly says in a glum tone, her natural cheeriness flickering in the face of so much death. "Feels like every day you got to push harder and fight longer, just to keep from losin' completely. Maybe there's no point."
"Don't think that, little Holly," I tell her firmly. "We're fighting for freedom, aren't we?" I look around at tiny Holly, steadfast Pip, fierce Jen, all in here for the good of the districts, as the propaganda would have it. "There's no way we're giving up or going back till the sun don't shine no more. We're fighting for our country. And if that ain't honor, nothing is. We're a family and we stick together for a better life."
"OH YEAH!"
I hear Red's triumphant yell from nearby, and my inspiring speech is ruined as machine gun fire rattles around us.
"YAHH!"
"What in the hell? Red, get behind cover!" Jen shouts.
He howls and sends another round of bullets toward the approaching squad. "But this is great!"
"We're not telling you twice!"
"Red, please don't get hurt!" Holly squeals, practically dancing up and down in agitation, as she's too short to see over the rest of us. "What's goin' on? Is he okay?"
chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka
Two Caps go down, and Red laughs maniacally, flicking his wrists forward as he shoots like it'll make the bullets go faster.
chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka
"I'm going in!" I grab my rifle, remember it's empty, and toss it aside with a well-placed round of cussing. I duck out under our cover with only my flare gun. "I'm gonna drag him back here before he gets shot."
chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka
BANG
Red cries out, and I see part of his left arm hit the ground with a bloody, wet thunk. "DAMMIT! I'M HIT!"
"Holly!" I bawl. "Get your tools!"
"I'm comin', Red, I'm comin', don't worry!" she screams hysterically. She grabs her kit and crawls out on shaking hands, while Jen and Pip are already sprinting to my side.
"There are three Caps. Jen, Pip, flank them, don't try for headshots, we don't have the ammo. Reinforcements are comin' in any minute now, so hang on till then. I'll get Red to Holly. BREAK!"
We scatter, and I run-stumble across treacherous swamp, trying to reach Red.
"I've got it, I'm still goin'," he yells. He props his gun up on his disabled arm for extra support, and fires off another round. "Don't let 'em take me, Zane!"
"Get down!"
"I ain't gettin' down till every stinking Cap's got a hole in his head, just get me a DAMN MEDIC!"
chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka
He mows down one, but the slippery, blood-soaked gun falls out of his functional hand and sticks in the swamp. "DAMNIT!"
"Holly!" I see her just standing there, in plain sight for any shooter, wide-eyed in the middle of the carnage. Lost lamb. She's tranced. And when any soldier's tranced, as we uncivilized folks call shell-shock, they're done for.
"Holly, dive!"
Tears are pouring down her poor, tired, hopeless face, and the medical kit falls from her listless hands. "I can't," she sobs. "I'm scared."
BANG
Another soldier goes down by Jen, but there are two left. I'm stuck with Red, Pip and Jen are cornered, and Holly's shut down.
"We're kids, damn it," I mutter, and feel hot tears on my own grimy face. "We're eighteen. They put us in this war and they ain't doin' a thing to help us."
We're fighting for our country. How noble. How honorable. How suicidal.
Pip locks terror-filled eyes with me.
"I can't do this anymore!" he shouts. He throws his gun aside. "Holly's down, and Red's down, and I don't want to be here anymore, and I want to go home!"
"Pip, don't you dare!"
There's not a single thing in hell I can do when the shots ring out and, like a magician's trick, two red dots appear on his shirt. He spasms, almost dancing a jig, like what he told me he'd wanted to teach Jen, and hits the swamp. First member of our team to die. Hell, no, that didn't happen, that didn't damn happen, they can't have just killed a lovesick puppyish kid like that, sick bastards-
He died for his country.
No he didn't.
He died for freedom.
He died for ruttin' statistics in a Cap's book that'll say how many little kids they murdered.
I hear a rumbling sound, the sound of aircraft, which could mean reinforcements or death. But I'm too damn tired to care. I'm done with this crap.
"They're comin' to save us!" Jen shouts. "We have a man down and a man wounded, do you copy?"
She doesn't think he's dead. She thinks she's safe enough to wave her arms around, trying to flag down help, and I just can't tell her what's gonna happen.
There's a pleasant popping noise. Maybe like the noise of a balloon pierced with a pin. A shell is ejected out of the good friendly aircraft, and the last thing Jen ever sees is the body of the boy who went moony over her.
Two down. Two of my people. My family.
I can't take this anymore, I can't, it hurts too damn much.
BOOM
The Capitol soldiers fire again, once, twice.
BANG
BANG
I'm hit hard in the chest, my lung, and white-hot pain like nothing I've ever felt before sears through me, like a poker being rammed a thousand times in my body compressed into a moment. But my screams can't drown out Holly's crying when the bullet goes through her chest, fatal, almost on the heart. She falls, and cries, and for the remaining twenty seconds of her life I hear her crying softly, afraid, broken.
"For the country," I gasp, clutching at Red's gore-stained hand like an anchor to life. Blood bubbles rise up in my mouth, my punctured lung. "Th-the damned freedom we can't have."
"See you in hell," Red manages through his pain. We're the last ones standing. The last of the family. Maybe we're the very last rebel soldiers. But all I know is that Red and I are alive, still fighting for our country, and with every last second I have I will spit in the Capitol's face, red bloody revenge for their murder of five kids.
So we stand, and we live, and when the final plume of fire rushes across us we fall, and the swamp known as Heroes' Stand runs red with blood and screams, and we die honorably for our country.
If you are a sci-fi fan, you can tell what I based this off of. Yeah. Hmm. In my first story on the sight, Close Your Eyes, it was about war, but this is the grittier part. I may have to change this to M, let me know...
Damnit, I depress myself. Scuse me while I cry over killing the equivalents of my favorite characters of all time.
Rest in peace, Serenity Valley and Heroes' Stand.