No Regrets

They are closing in quickly, and the only protection from the outside world is the rickety shack that barely has a full four walls and a roof. The warm summer breeze whistles through the loose boards of the walls, which creates a kind of peaceful near-silent lullaby. Despite the warmth, a chill still ripples down my spine, and goose bumps peak all over my body.

The wind rustles my hair, which creates a tickling on my scalp that is oddly calming in the midst of the quiet chaos inside my head and body. It’s almost as if I am not about to die. It’s almost as if I am not looking my grim fate in the face. But I am, and if I wasn’t, there would be no story to tell.

I cannot help but to close my eyes and visualize what the news would say about our deaths. One by one, our faces would pop up on the screen and the newscasters would state our names and ages in a tone that was grim and fake. My picture would pop up: five o’clock shadow framing the lower half of my face, vibrant blue eyes and close-cut brown hair. The newscaster would go on about just another dead 23 year-old man.

As I lay here dying, I can only think back on the situation that got me and my only surviving comrade to this place. The place that would cause our families to grieve for us.

We were on a top secret mission: an infiltration of an enemy airbase, where we were to plant a bomb and blow it up. Only the plane hangar would be destroyed, but the harmless-looking tiny bomb would thwart the air raid that we’d got wind was supposed to happen on our camp the following day. It was a simple mission, but deadly all the same.

It all started out going smoothly: it was way too simple to break through their primitive security system and gain access to the map of the base we needed in order to find the hangar where we were to plant the bomb. The small yellow machine as well as its detonator were with our commander, who carefully tucked both into the folds of his fake uniform. So as not to attract attention, our small group of about seven men split up and approached our destination from different directions. We were to meet there at 1600 hours.

As I skirted a mountain of wooden cargo boxes all marked in fat red letters that said ‘fragile’, I glanced down at my watch which read 16:00 on the dot, and picked up my pace. It would take a few more minutes to get there. It was then that I heard the explosion. Immediately, I sprinted toward the sound, and was met with a sight so ghastly it was like hell had lurched up to earth through the giant hole that was now in the hangar floor. Body parts littered the ground, and I was unable to decipher who had lived and who had died.

It was not difficult to realize that we had encountered our worst case scenario: the bomb had gone off before it was originally supposed to be detonated, meaning that the commander was most definitely dead.

I began running, but refrained from looking at the mess of bodies on the floor: I could not stomach seeing all my comrades… my friends, dead.

I had quickly gone from hunter to prey, and needed to escape. However, when I sprinted toward the doors of the hangar, guards came rushing in, finally realizing our plans. It did not take long for this to turn to a shooting match for my life.

I had dove behind yet another mountain of boxes, which would temporarily shield me from the tornado of bullets pelting away. If only I could get to the hangar door where the planes usually went out. It was a mere twenty feet away, and twenty feet was something I could cover in just a couple of seconds.

I knelt in a running position, and waited for the perfect opportunity to run with everything I had to the door that was more the size of a wall than anything else.

For a split second they stopped shooting… but that was all I needed.

I rocket started, getting at least fifteen feet before the barrage of bullets once again began. Before I knew it, I was outside and sprinting toward the barbed wire fence two hundred feet from the hangar, bullets chasing me down all the way.

I did not look back: I scrambled up the fence as fast as I could, ignoring the barbed wire at the top tearing the calloused but still delicate flesh of my hands, and threw myself over it and into the thick forest on the other side.

Only when I was to safety did I realize that I had been shot twice, and was bleeding profusely. And as we all know, we don’t feel the pain until we notice the wound. I sunk to my knees, but saw something that caught my eye, and went to investigate.

It was him, and his arm was gone. He was still lucid, but groaning in pain and losing blood.

In our heavy combat boots and the camouflage uniforms of the enemy, we slowly fled, knowing it would not take long for them to come after us. I don’t know how long we’d been weaving through the seemingly endless expanse of pine trees and shrubbery, keeping our machine guns strapped to our backs: It could have been minutes or hours. I don’t know.

It was sheer chance that we came across the shack. Under any other circumstances, we would have bypassed it and continued on our way, but it wasn’t any other circumstance. We were both seriously wounded, moving slowly and leaving a clear trail of blood behind us since it was impossible for such injuries to stop bleeding without proper care. We saw it as a place to die. Whether we would die of blood loss or enemy fire was up to father time, but as soon as we entered, we’d collapsed inside.

I fade back into the present.

The shack is only about ten feet by ten feet, as I notice from my bloody bed on the floor. I turn myself over onto my back, and let little slivers of sunlight hit my face from the cracks in the ceiling. I observe the cabin, wanting to remember what it looks like in death. It seems like quite a cozy place to live with a small, bare bunk on the wall immediately next to the door, and a window on the wall across from the entrance, which lets soft ribbons of light rest on the floor. Shelves are occasionally scattered throughout the shack, with quaint little knick-knacks on them. It is definitely no longer occupied; had the person just up and left, or did they meet a fate much like ours?

I carefully turn myself over, gasping from the pain of the bullets lodged in my abdomen, and rise to my hands and knees. Blood continuously drips from my torn hands. Crawling very slowly, I turn to the left and immediately make my way to the far wall. When I arrive at my destination, I rest my back on the wall, letting a large breath that I seemed to be holding escape my tired lungs. When I look back to the place right inside the door where I had been lying just a moment ago, I see he is still in a heap on the floor, and there is a trail of blood leading from there to where I now sit.

After a moment, he rises to his one hand and his knees, clumsily moving his body to the opposite wall. He passes by the bed: we both know he does not have the energy to pull himself onto it. When his back finally touches the wall, he is gasping for air, and wobbling to and fro. Any time either of us move, the walls creak and threaten to cause the shack to topple onto our heads.

We sit in a position mirroring each other: crossed legged with the butt of our machine guns between our legs and the barrel resting on our shoulder.

We know that there isn’t much longer for us; escape is an impossibility. Despite that, he and I both face an eerie serenity. If anything, we could be grateful for a little bit of time to ponder over our lives and come to terms with our demises. We can thank everyone in our minds for the great lives we’d been given, and we can say our secret last goodbyes. A haze of fog falls over my vision, and I can tell that I am reaching the end of my tether. As I lift my head and see his hunched over position, I guess he is too.
The earth is so still in this moment… so peaceful. The silence and warmth are cradling me in their embrace, and lulling me off to sleep. I know that once I close my eyes, they will never again open. My heart will stop beating, and my lungs will stop bringing oxygen into my body. It will be as if I never existed when my body is moved.

We had always known that in our career, death is a very real possibility, and all we could hope for was if death came knocking at the door, he would take us quickly.

I hear a noise from outside.

I turn my head to peer out of a hole in the wall of the shack which looks as if it were made by centuries of termites or maybe carpenter ants. It takes me a moment of intense concentration to be able to get my vision clear enough to be able to make out the details of the scene before me. The moon reflecting its light off the blades of grass in the clearing is not the only thing that greets me when my vision finally improves: a battalion of soldiers is spread around the outskirts of the clearing with their guns at the ready.

I guess we don’t have enough time to peacefully die of blood loss. We, as soldiers… no, we as men will have to go and fight until we are relieved from our duties.

When I look back over to him, the fire in my eyes must tell him it is time. We both stand slowly and with purpose, and limp to the center of the shack to meet each other.

A sad smile is painted on his features, but it does not reach his eyes, which have no emotion. They are tired and empty. Blonde streaks of his hair fall into his brown eyes. He brushes them away from his face which is smudged in dirt, and wipes a trickle of blood off of his split lip in the process.

“Are you ready to go?” I almost whisper out.

“I’ve been ready. You’re the one who’s been holding up the party,” he jokes, but an unintentionally added tone creeps into his voice- a tone that says ‘this is it’.

I get the hint, and realize it is time to wrap this up. I voice, “It was good knowing you, bro. I hope that if there’s a next life, we’ll meet again someday.”

“Yes. It sounds so peaceful. Maybe we’ll see everyone else there too,” he pauses a short moment, and then continues with a thoughtful expression on his face, “As kids we wanted a big dramatic war scene so badly, but it’s a lot less fun now that we’ve got it.” More blood dribbles from his lip, but he ignores it. There is no point in wiping away a little blood when a whole lot more is momentarily about to replace it.

“I know,” I reply, then after a short moment of comfortable silence I finally say what neither of us wants to, “It’s time.” Our lucidity is fading, so it is now or never.

“We came into this world as boys, and now we leave as men,” he smiles, and holds his right fist up.

I put mine up as well. We touch fists and immediately bring our hands to our machine guns, tucking the butts in our underarms and resting our fingers on the triggers. A grin crawls onto my face as I say my last words: “No regrets.”

He returns my grin and nods, “No regrets.”