War Torn Streets and the Unyielding Spirit of a Young Rebel

Drywall and wood chippings rained on the soldiers helmet, as the sound of far off artillery shook the dilapidated building. For a brief moment, the soldier froze under the doorway, not so much from the knowledge that the doorway was the most sturdy part of what was left of this building, as from primal instinct, some superstitious fear that any movement on his part, no matter how subtle, might somehow cause the building to buckle, and finally come crashing down.

The blast sound echoed into the distance, and the soldier regained his composure. Tightening his grip on his gun, he stepped out into the rubble filled street.

The city around him was dead, broken and beaten from weeks of continuous shelling. Where there were once businesses, homes, and people, now there were only skeletons. Skeletons of businesses, their windows broken by looters, their insides gutted by fire damage, bones of rebar jutting out of steel, wood, and concrete. Corpses of homes, once idyllic, peaceful sanctuaries from the outside world, now torn open and laid bare by the continuous bombing the city had sustained for the past several weeks. And the corpses. Rotting, bloated corpses, twisted in disgusting, impossible entanglements, some incomplete, most in pieces. A lot of the fragmentation bombs the army had shelled the city with didn't hit their targets precisely; rather they landed in close proximity to their targets. People who happened to be hiding in basements, or scampering through the streets scurrying for food, shelter, or anything else needed to survive. When the blasts "missed" them, the concussive force from the shells were enough to rip the life from them, rending their bodies like rag dolls, tossing and twisting them in morbid, impossible configurations. More than one body the soldier had seen, with torso rotated 180 degrees, or with a back broken in two like a splintered stick, the torso only connected to the legs by a string of torn muscle, skin, and nerves.

As the soldier patrolled the lifeless, cratered street, he wondered exactly what the point of this whole exercise was. He looked around at the rubbish and bodies around him: it was mostly broken niceties which had no part in a war, things like broken furniture, damaged electronics, discarded toys. The bodies were mostly female; women and young girls who tried to escape the advance of the oncoming army by hiding in basements and shelters. The men and boys, for their part, had mostly come out to die on the front lines. To die and kill his comrades.

He heard a loud bang, and a window in front of him broke. Instantly he spun around, pulling on the trigger of his rifle, unleashing a torrent of steel tipped rage into the mound of rubbish behind him. He held the trigger down until the percussion of exploding rounds quiet and the kicking of the rifle butt ceased. The street was deathly quiet, with not even the sound of the wind being heard.

Reloading his rifle, the soldier advanced, searching for the whoever or whatever had lain in wait and fired at him. Even though most of the males had gone up to the front lines, there were still pockets of resistance in the city, young teenage boys, not officially old enough to go into the army, but still old enough to hold a gun, and pose a threat to invaders like him.

He stepped over a small pile of rubble, and peered behind the large mound he had just fired into, gun at the ready.

Lying on the ground, freshly bloodied, he saw three bodies, young boys, reduced to meat by the rounds from his rifle. He walked up to the closest one, and kicked him over onto his back. His eyes were frozen open, and he stared unmoving up into the gray sky. His bullet wounds were fresh, and still pouring blood: no doubt about it, this was the one who had tried to shoot at him.

He checked the other two, kicking their mutilated bodies over. One of them had his hand tightly clenched around something. The soldier bent down, and pried his small hand open. Two rocks rolled out of the dead boy's palm.

The soldier stood up, disgusted and angered by his new discovery. Rocks. These boys had gotten themselves filled full of steel and lead to throw rocks at him. Didn't they know, this war was over, their army had surrendered, almost all of their soldiers were dead. Why couldn't they just give up, and surrender, or at least stay hidden. Stupid animals, he thought to himself. He stood up, and fired a burst into the nearest boy.

He heard a gasp, and then a scampering above him. He looked up, and saw pebbles falling from the ledge above. Quickly, he ran around to the side, hoping to be able to head off whoever it was who was now watching him.

The ledge sloped down, and the soldier saw a pink and white flash scampering down the incline of the ledge. "Hey you, stop!" he shouted. He fired into the air, and for a moment, the figure stopped. The soldier lunged to catch up to it, but just as quickly as the figure froze, it began running again, its smallish figure ducking into another mound of rubbish.

The soldier was angry now: before when he thought it was some teenage boys shooting at him, he had been angry enough. Somehow, the thought of being pestered and maligned by little kids incensed him, and made the anger which he had carried inside him this entire battle boil over: he didn't want to be here, shooting at nameless faceless vagrants who were just too greedy to be happy with their own land, and too stupid to know when to quit. It seemed that these animals would never leave him alone, whether he was minding his own business on his farm, or running recon missions in unoccupied territory. Now their home city was broken, defeated. Why didn't they just give up and admit defeat?

He fired randomly into the pile of rubble, hoping partly to flush the quarry out, but also partly to kill it. He circled the pile methodically, every so often firing one or two bursts into the pile. After every shot, he heard scampering, as the quarry repositioned itself in the maze of fallen rebar, concrete, and building fragments.

The soldier tripped and stumbled as he stepped over a broken brick. "Damnit," he swore, as he began firing full blast into the rubble. For a second, he was sure that he had his target. The drum of the bullets thundered into the rubble, and then ceased. The soldier pulled on his trigger, the gun clicking as it tried to fire from the empty magazine. After a few moments, he realized that he had emptied his magazine. For a brief moment he glance down, to retrieve another magazine. He heard a loud rustling, and he looked up to see the figure scampering out of its hiding place. He locked his new magazine into his rifle and ran off after it.

Before the soldier could even get a good start, the figure had already cleared a good 15 yards, and had darted into an old gutted building which remained fairly intact as compared to the other buildings.

Enraged, the soldier followed her, darting after her into the building. As he dashed through the doorway, he slipped, and fell, losing control of his balance and his gun.

The rifle hit the ground, butt first, and went off, firing a sporadic burst above the fallen soldier's head.

For a moment the soldier froze, believing he was being shot at. Anger quickly reoriented him, and he scrambled to his feet, angered even more by the humiliating spill that he had just taken, and the fact that he had nearly just killed himself.

He grabbed his rifle, and took a quick inventory of where he was. This looked like an old security building, an apartment before the war. The hallway was filled with debris shaken loose from the ceiling from the recent shellings. The soldier hesitated for a moment: the hallway was lined with doors, doors to old, long uninhabited apartments. At least that's what he believed. It occurred to him that perhaps other mercenaries or occupants might still be in the apartments, and he didn't want to risk leaving his back exposed to a group of rooms which could contain anything.

He looked at the girl as she ran down the hallway, her slim legs scampering over the debris and rubbish like a monkey. Anger filled him once again, and he began to pursue her down the hallway, his long legs easily navigating the cluttered hallway.

When the girl got to

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THE END