Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

The explosion of a German 88 that lands just a hundred fifty yards to their right between Bravo battery and Charlie battery. A fountain of dirt erupts into the air.

As the dust settles, men and women scramble, running and diving into the nearest foxhole, because if there’s one thing artillery men know, it’s that a ranging shot will be followed by total devastation.

It’s not long in coming.

Frangie has already located the nearest hole and dives into it just seconds before Doon Acey.

“See,” Doon says. “I told you the army was fun.”

“You said no such thing,” Frangie manages to say before the whole world explodes. The impacts are so powerful that the ground around them, the dirt and rock walls of their foxhole, punishes them, hammering their feet, their arms, their behinds when they fall to the bottom of the hole.

The noise is catastrophic. Frangie’s ears scream in pain from the noise but more from the sucking away and rushing in of air following each explosion. Her mind is scattered, unable to form a thought. Just a series of flashes, segments of thought. Scared. Tears. Terror. Like some mythical thunder god is beating the earth with a hammer the size of a house, hammering on her, her personally. A flash of flying dirt. Flash of foxhole collapsing. An incongruous image of her room back home. A flash of Doon’s terrified face, looking almost green.

She and Doon hold each other like frightened children in a thunderstorm, but this thunderstorm is unlike anything they’ve ever experienced. This thunderstorm has malice behind it. This thunder and lightning are bent on murder.

Spent shrapnel rains down into the foxhole, burning hot, singeing clothing and exposed flesh. Frangie screams now, screams unheard, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

There’s an enormous metallic clang that’s almost musical and the twisted, smoking barrel of a howitzer lands across the top of the foxhole, cutting off any escape, hissing hot.

A burning smell flows down into the foxhole, a toxic, chemical smell. Frangie is suddenly afraid that she’s on fire, slaps at her uniform, checking, Where’s that smell coming from, am I burning?

It’s never going to stop.

Round after round. It’s never going to stop until she’s dead. She’s going to die. Right now she’s going to die.

And then, slowly, she realizes it has stopped. It’s stopped. Silence. She can’t hear anything but a loud ringing sound that’s no sound at all. She feels her own heart but surely no heart can beat that fast and go on beating?

Her body trembles. Every cell of every

muscle shakes, shakes like she’s freezing, like she’s going to die, Oh, Jesus, take me, take me to heaven.

“Are you hurt?” She can’t hear Doon, just see his mouth moving, a sort of unreal hole just inches from her face. He leans in, brings his head into contact with hers, and now she can hear through the skull, through the bones of their bodies. “Are you hurt?”

Hurt? She’s destroyed. But she shakes her head no.

The side of the foxhole has collapsed in one quadrant, opening up a space through which they might just crawl past the barrel of the destroyed artillery piece. Doon loses all self-control now and begins clawing at the dirt, tearing his fingernails as he yells, “Hey! Hey! We’re down here!”

Frangie joins him, shouldering in beside him, tearing at clods of loose dirt that fall and cover their boots. Doon decides enough is enough and pushes his way up, kicking at the dirt, frantic, reaching up to grab the red-hot metal of the barrel, yelling soundlessly in pain, to be replaced by Frangie, who digs and scrambles, and panic feeds panic now, fear swallows fear and grows more desperate.

All at once Frangie’s head is up and out in the air, the blessed air, the air filled with fire-lit nightmare images of twisted cannon and running soldiers and smoke. She crawls up the rest of the way and lies for a while, flat on her belly in the dirt. Then she turns and offers a hand to Doon, who takes it weakly.

She pulls, and he loses his grip.

She grabs his wrist with both her hands and pulls, but there’s something wrong. He can’t hold on. He’s crying now, she can see the tears, and she can feel the weakness in his grip. Sobbing, big wracking sobs.

“Help me, someone! Help!”

But no one can hear; it’s a landscape with no sound but the droning tone in her ears.

She releases her grip on Doon and stands up, amazed she still can. It’s wreckage and destruction everywhere. Trucks and cannon lie like some failed attempt at sculpture, twisted, blown into pieces, jagged edged, smoking. The water truck drips the last of its water. Men and women wander lost and confused, looking for nothing, looking for something, around in circles. The young lieutenant stares down at a twisted hunk of steel and cries.

“I’ll get help,” Frangie tells Doon. She grabs the lieutenant and jerks her head toward the foxhole. “Help me.”

The lieutenant doesn’t understand, but he’s willing to be led. Together the two of them kneel by Doon’s foxhole. They reach down, each taking an arm, and pull Doon up.

His intestines remain behind.

He sits on the edge of the hole looking at the horrifying mess that slips down his lap. With limp hands he tries to reel his intestines back up, but they’re slippery and he’s crying, tears rolling down his cheeks. Frangie tries to help, tries to pull the pulsating wormlike tube up, but she’s crying and making sounds that are not words.