The Young and Stupid
Chapter 6 – Sarajevo
AN: As always, none of the Rockstar, GTA material is in my ownership.
As he had done with alternating frequency over the past several days, Niko Bellic sat at the edge of a personnel transport, back facing the cab of the truck, with his legs hanging over the edge. The canvas which covered the transport truck over a metal skeleton, had developed a rip which increased in size until they ripped it away entirely, leaving the back open. They had travelled along the same road since their departure from Bisrid, and had met with increasingly fewer settlements.
They had not been met with any opposition in a full three days, and had settled into an easy state of relaxation, despite the endless efforts of their captain to counteract this. Only the most dedicated or most insecure of the soldiers continued to remain alert, continually travelling with their rifles in a semi-ready position.
With the constant fear of ambush pushed away from Niko's mind, he found that he was able to appreciate the scenic ride through the Bosnian countryside. He was surprised by the fact that he now saw the beauty of the natural works of the Earth, where he had been previously oblivious and unimpressed. The gently rolling hills and farmlands gave way to jutting mountains on all sides, separated by various rivers, all of which seemed quite pure. The land was ideal to stage an ambush, but none had yet come, preserving Niko's perception of the area as profoundly tranquil.
The only thing which interrupted the peaceful scene at the moment was the amplified droning of a battery-powered stereo which Svijo had discovered in a previous town. He held it in his lap, sitting against the cab of the transport truck. For some odd reason, he had taken only two of the recordings he found with the stereo. The first was a scratchy Led Zeppelin album, to which they had listened to the entire time, though the repetition of the album had driven them all to hate it. The second however, was a noisy British punk band, which all agreed was too horrid to tolerate.
Dragan, sitting beside Niko in a similar fashion, offered him an opened tin of chewing tobacco. He gratefully took a pinch and stuffed it under his tongue. It was a bitter taste which he did not enjoy much, but it kept away the sickening taste of a mouth left uncleaned for several weeks.
Once the stereo died down, the group was both relieved and crushed to discover that Svijo had no remaining batteries. The silence was uncomfortable, allowing the boys to think, which was an invariably unpleasant experience as none of them had anything bright to think on. To break the silence, they began to talk of their own futures. Goran hoped to become a doctor, Mita had the sole desire of marrying a beautiful woman, and Florian had the peculiar desire to become a professional wrestler, an idea greeted by cheerful laughs from the entire unit, including the generally humorless captain.
They began to prod Josef for his views, excited at what their leader might have planned for himself.
"Josef," Mijo inquired. "What about you, tell us about your glamorous future." The unit chuckled a bit, but Josef did not respond.
"Come on Josef!" Mijo persisted. "How about it? Going to marry some-" he pursed his lips and rose his hands to his chest and imitated a woman squeezing her own breasts. Josef spit and remained silent.
"Ah, spit it out man!" Mita called. Josef burst out.
"What do you want me to say?!" Josef barked, remaining turned away and stepping aggressively. He gripped the rifle sling tightly.
"What future do any of us have?" he continued. "Alright, I'll humor you: I'm going to date some pretty girl, and one day, she'll ask 'why are you so strange?' What do I say? 'Maybe it's because I shot an old woman in the face. Maybe it's because I burned a man's crops and shot his cattle and left his family to starve to death, huh?!' What the fuck do you want me to say?! No matter where we go… this war is our future. We will always be the same soldiers, the killers… the murderers. Leave me the fuck alone." Josef walked ahead of them, out of sight in front of the slow-moving truck.
The unit was stunned into silence. The light mood evaporated, and nothing more was said. Automatically, they each turned to their own thoughts, which they dreaded. They were the same thoughts as Josef's. They continued on in silence, rotating spots on the truck as the sun slowly lowered herself down behind the jagged peaks of the landscape. The shadow of the mountains enveloped the road while the mountains to the East remained illuminated by the sun. They were caught in the shadow, unable to ever reach that place where the sun still shined.
It was then that they first heard a peculiar sound: a series of faint, tiny whip-like cracks, followed by a light thud. The boys each shouldered their rifles in frenzy when they first heard the sound, but became confused when the sound failed to produce a result. The sound repeated every several minutes, deepening its mystery. It was unlike gunfire, and similarly unlike bomb explosions. The sound grew in volume as they covered more ground and as the sun continued to die away, giving way to nighttime and a half-moon.
Walking to the right of the truck with his rifle now in the crook of his arm, Niko continued to look straight ahead, trying to ignore the discomforting sound. Once they rounded the base of a mountain and crossed yet another stone-bridge, Florian, beside him, got his attention.
"Niko!" he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. He pointed at an angle away from them, towards the faint horizon. "Look!" The horizon, where the mountain peaks met with the star-stricken sky, was flashing faintly. Some few seconds before the initial cracking noise, the sky ahead of them to the west flashed brightly for an instant. The disconnection between the peculiar sounds and the lightning-like flashes was disorienting to the boys, all of which who had taken notice. They watched, unable to make sense of the spectacle. After a few more minutes, the captain spoke.
"It's Sarajevo," he said simply. The boys looked to him, curious. "It's the city of Sarajevo. They're shelling it." Niko looked back to sight. Suddenly the war in which he fought grew exponentially. The shelling looked an entire world away. His conscious mind suddenly seemed too small, to limited to comprehend what he was seeing.
The spectacle had an almost drug-like effect on Niko. It was nothing short of surreal. He and the rest of his group watched in awe, struck stupid. Everything Niko thought he had learned about life and war seemed suddenly negated as the sheer mass of this conflict was laid before him. He, his unit, his entire battle-group, now seemed as small and insignificant as a bacterium in the ocean.
For that moment, bewildered and dazed, human life meant nothing to him.