For Emma, Forever Ago

"Wolves incoming!"

The man's words are a roar in Iver's ears, risen only slightly over the constant buzzing of the war beyond. The sound of shells screaming and then the slight rocking of the earth as they met their target. The screaming of men in life, and the all-consuming silence in death. The sound of dust and debris, of buried thoughts and tiny acts of goodness buried amongst the cruelty. The sound had come from outside the door - and then silence. The silence that Iver knew too well.

His eyes snap open instantly. The room around him is small - too confined for the amount of bodies sleeping inside of it. Most of them, like himself, lie on moth-eaten green canvas sheets, drawn across rickety bunkbeds lashed together with wooden planks and string. The strings creaked constantly during the night; drove a few men insane, but he found it comforting. Something - a single thing - that was constant. The room was lit by a lantern, hanging from a large wooden pillar in the middle of the room. The walls were dirt, the floor and ceiling cemented-construction. The lantern cast warm, flickering light around the room that failed to reach the corners no matter how they moved it about. A few men sat around the bottom of the pillar, smoking cigarettes and shuffling cards back and forth. The ceiling, as a result of those cigarettes and the lantern exhaust, was writhed in smoke. The air had become thick; sickly sweet with the smell of oil and sweat. Iver breathed it in deeply as he woke, raising one boot and kicking off the wall at his side. As he entered a controlled tumble from the lower part of the three-story bunkbed, he grabbed his rifle off the floor. Even as the weapon rose, he slammed the knuckle of his thumb into the safety and wrenched back the hammer. One eye closed instinctively, sighting at the doorway.

Around him, men were reacting similarly. One man let out a shout as he woke, another toppling from his bunk and landing on the floor with a thud. Iver ignored them, his entire focus on the doorway.

Don't shoot at brown. Only shoot at grey. Don't shoot at brown. Only shoot at...

The first man came through the doorway, weapon raised. He was wearing a metal cap, with a raised spike slightly skewed to the back. His brown hair was a close-cut tangle beneath it, and his uniform was streaked in lines of brown and red. Iver wished he could be sure that it was dirt. The man had dark blue eyes, fair skin, and a birthmark just to the left of his nose. Iver ignored all of it, froze his breathing, and fired. The man's face disappeared, replaced by red, and he was flung to the ground outside the door.

"Samuels - right! Denver - left!" Iver roared, jerking the hammer forward and feeling the click as the empty bullet casing was discharged from his weapon. Twisting it up and slamming it forward, he fired against as the second figure came thundering through the wood-framed doorway from the trench beyond. This time, there was three explosions of red from the man's body; two in the chest, one in the head. He fell without a noise. Not that Iver would have noticed if he screamed, buried in the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears and the fire of adrenaline racing through his veins. Around him, men were shouting and reaching for their weapons. Another man came through the doorway, already firing as he spun around the wooden beam to the right. A bullet took him in the shoulder, and there was a cracking sound as his own bullet ricochetted into the ceiling with an explosion of cement and smoke.

"Bed over!" a man's voice roared, and there was a sound of wood splintering as one of the bunkbeds fell behind Iver. Turning, he grabbed the bannister and slid behind the make-shift fortificiation.

As he did, a man already crouching there saluted him. Beneath the man's green cap and black-smudged face, Iver could just make out the features of Benson.

"Two down from injuries, no casualties, nobody seriously injured. Marksman fell out of bed, Joad hit in the head by flying concrete! Orders, sir!"

Iver's thoughts were a whirlwind in his ears, cracking his skull but refusing to come out of his mouth. Finally, he managed to push them free from between his teeth. He couldn't hear his own voice, he realized. His words were lost, only the sound of his chest vibrating and his mouth moving telling him that he was speaking.

"We don't know how hard they're hitting! Get the men together and follow me!"

Rising to one knee, Iver lay his rifle between two wooden slats in the bed and focused down it. A grey-cloaked figure came through the door, a pistol in one hand and pale blue eyes wide as he fired wildly. Iver caught a glimpse of silver glinting orange as he fired, and them man was thrown backward into a wall. He struck it and collapsed, unmoving. Reloading, Iver watched doorway carefully. After a moment of waiting, nobody else came through. The room had faded to silence except for each mans' frantic breathing and the slight creaking of metal and wood. For once, the strings seemed to have faded to silence.

"Come on." Iver said in a whisper which easily travelled around the room. "We're going out to provide reinforcement. We don't know if any other bunkers were hit."

Grasping the grainy wood in his hand - toughly calloused and worn - Iver pulled himself out of safety and into the dim light of the bunker. Men watched him with wide eyes of all different colours; brown, blue, green, grey, and a single pair of gold. He made his way toward the door, paused at the edge, and then crouched to move the first soldier he had shot. Wrapping his hands in the soldiers pants, he put a foot on the wall and heaved him into the room. Kicking him to one side of the door, Iver stood once more and tried to press himself into the wall. His lungs burned, and his eyes were watering from the combination of smoke and gunpowder.

"We're going out?" a figure behind him asked, and Iver turned his gaze slightly over one shoulder. John Siemon. The man was tall and broad, with a mouth full of pearly white teeth framed in a thick brown beard. His deep brown eyes watched Iver wearily. "It's a good call. Think fast and move faster, brother."

Nodding slightly, Iver turned back toward the doorway. "And to you." he whispered, and then moved out into the trench. The air was thick and grey, not allowing even the briefest glimpse of the sky. The trench spread out for a half-mile in each direction, curving slightly toward the east, with tall dirt walls and water-logged wooden planks underfoot. The air smelled light and tinny; blood.

"Clear!" he barked quickly. At the same moment, something peeling itself off the wall and was on top of him. The weight of the invisible figure struck Iver and flung him to the ground. The shadows hands were around his neck, squeezing. Twisting, Iver tried to throw the figure off of him, but it held on doggedly.

"Die!" the soldier's face was red, his eyes too large for his boyish, bucktoothed face. His accent was harsh and lilting. "Die, American scum! Die! Die!"

Iver tried to reach for his pistol, but the soldier's foot stomped down on his hand. There was a brief flare of pain, and then numbness.

"Die!" the soldier grinned insanely, grip tightening. The world spun, blackness beginning to close around Iver's vision. He remembered, in the moment, having read something about the human body being able to survive without air for three minutes.

Liars.

The blackness folded over his eyes, blanketing everything to fuzzy shapes. His lungs were on fire, screaming desperately for air. His body kicked slightly without his consent. And then the weight lifted. As the man was torn away, his hand caught around Iver's necklace. The thin tin beads pulled, strained, and then shattered. Iver watched as his nametag was thrown over the edge of the trench by the momentum of the soldier's departure. The young man hung, as if in midair, for a brief moment - and then his throat became a streak of red, and he went limp. A moment after his body collapsed doll-like to the wooden boards, Iver felt his head lifted onto someone's lap.

"Don't die, Bell!" a man's voice whispered, "Fuck! Don't die!"

Iver coughed violently, and then gasped. His lungs seemed to tremble as they filled with air, his body shaking like the string of a violin. Pain lanced from his hand to his heart as feeling returned, sharp and magnified by his adrenaline-filled veins.

"Thank God." Officer John grinned wanly as Iver struggled to regain his feet. "Welcome back, Officer Bell."