Upon the war torn field, blood and viscera lay scattered. Painting the landscape red, a deep burning crimson alighting the night sky as the hellfire of napalm continued to burn on and on. That choking heat, awakening my lungs as gasp for air, choking on the smoke of still burning flesh. A sweet acrid odor that I had not once noticed before. The toxic fumes sting and burn my throat and lungs, driving needles into me as I go back into shock.

Every cell in my body screaming at me, burning with pain as I could feel the slow trickling blood escape my already clotting wound. A sharp sensation, the torn nerve endings still howling with pain, demanding for relief as the knife wound continues to throb. The muscles in my body spasm, and twist and contort, until that little bit of air inside me was forced out in one powerful gasp.

I could feel my lungs briefly collapse, and even as I choked for air...nothing would come. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be alone...to be dying with not a single comfort near me. No squad mate to keep me calm, no doctor applying antiseptic and morphine, no cries from the battlefield, not even my own voice could escape me, nothing to disturb the still sounds of the smoldering fire.

The seconds feeling like hours as I fought on, machines and tools of war had always been so easy to me. Point, click, bang, recoil and move on. The sound of rushing bullets, of defeating grenades silencing all but the ringing in my ears, the feeling of dirt and blood spray on my face...all of those were familiar to me. They were my home, I had been shot, I had been stabbed, but when the adrenaline kicked in, it was the battlefield that saved me, that kept me going. But this struggle, there was no comfort from the need to move on, there was no force for me to fight, no enemy to kill...just me, and me alone.

Summoning my will, and whatever strength I had inside me I craw up on the bleeding landscape. My hand digging into the soaked earth as blood rised and spread through my fingers. And finally with a painful gasp I could finally feel my salvation. The necrotic air rushed in, and even as it twisted my insides, and churned my stomach, the air was a sweet to me as the spring breeze on my home world.

My heart thumped on, restored to it's vigor with this fresh air, and I heave for more as I can finally begin to take in my surroundings. It's then when I feel it, my hand and arms across the body of a young boy, or whatever was left of him. His legs where no longer attached, the exposed pearly bone and viscera laid bare. His chest riddled with fragmented metal, and singed from the fires of a mortar shell and his face...his white eyes were starting at me as I felt his chest begin to move. Adrenaline poured through my body, as my muscles charged with fear and launched from him skirting across the ground as his eyes followed me...and it was there they would stay forever more.

The light in his eyes finally snuffed out. Whatever potential he had, whatever accomplishments he could have made, were gone. And I don't know why, but...I could feel the tears stream down and burn my face. Never had I considered the lives of those I was fighting before, they were targets, subhuman. To think otherwise would only destroy a man, and yet...I couldn't help but feel a kinship to this child, my own enemy...two creatures barely alive...and yet still I remained. Why? Why was it, that we were fighting? And why did we need to die? For what cause?

My mind and heart race, as the silent tears continue to fall. Reaching to wipe them away I finally begin to know why they burned, and my heart dropped in utter hopelessness. Gone was my hand, and in it's place a mangled soup of burned flesh. Beating a pulling with blood, the muscles exposed along with the blisters of heat burns. Burning! Every burned, the clothes melted a fused to my body, the tears up on my face... I was not alive, there is no way I could be. This...this unmistakable heat, the burned flesh...this was hell...this was my torment.

But even my panic, I could feel my training begin to kick in as I heard gunshots the distance. The familiar echo of mk60 rifles... The standard issue of my army...and I knew their tactics...they were cleaning off the dead...making sure that not even the medics would have anyone to save. My pain suppressed as the raw need to survive, kicked alive. Shocking muscles I never even know I had into action, as I lept to my feet and started to run. The only light in this abyssal sky from the glow of hellfire, there was no thought there was no plan, and even as the knife wound continued to scream in agony, my burnt flesh couldn't to move.

A forest lied a head, and just between it and me a river...if I could cross it...get away from this battlefield...I might survive. And that was my only instinct, survival. It didn't matter anymore what my training told me, it didn't matter what my brain was screaming at me...my consciousness couldn't even register the cries out in the distance. Or the alarm of the troops as shots buzzed and whipped past me. Striking the dead bodies around me with meaty pops, slapping them around as impact drove deep into their flesh. And I continued to run, to stride... Like a feral animal, trapped in a cage I sacrificed my own body just for the chance of survival.

And with my body almost at the river, I could see the glow of spotlight illuminating me, and I dove down grabbing the nearest body and turning it over me. Not a moment too soon as the machine gun fire roared and screamed through the otherwise silent night. Each bullet making the body behind me pop and white striking at me and at the last remains of our armored plates.

I waited, until I could hear the rounds start as I made a leap of faith. Driving myself toward the river, but it was all of it a ruse, a trap I was too shocked to even notice as I felt the bullet piercing my skin. Burning as it burrows through my chest and exits out the front and soon...I felt nothing as my body submitted itself to cold abyss of the river...being swept away by the current.

(Part 2 in the comments)