Good Run

                                                

The sweet peaceful night was shattered by the scream of a little boy clutching at his crying mother. I jumped out of my rotting cot and my bare feet hit the freezing floor. Air raid sirens blared as I trudged through the filthy hallway. Goosebumps pocked the back of my neck as I splayed the curtains. The city burned in the distance. Fresh piles of bombs plummeted from the sky whistling devils riding them. Explosions and spines of sparks erupted from the helpless buildings below. In the moonlit cloudy sky high above, monstrous bombers followed by waves of fighters passed over, their bomb bays gaping mouths, the black pillars escaping them fiery saliva. People screamed in the conflagrations of streets. Flak shells were thrown up helplessly by stretching guns, manned by sick infants. Black plumes and fiery tails followed some of the bombers as they crashed into the furious inferno below. Searchlights raced through the sky, and the bombers twisted gracefully amongst the clouds and snorted fire in every direction at the angry mosquitos buzzing around them. Give them hell, boys. I heard an inhuman screaming and the building around me crumbled. A bomb incinerated the courtyard in front of the window I inhabited. I raced down to the hospital below. It was going to be a long night.

I woke up to a warm varnished room covered in blood and shit and piss. Boys lying in cots dead. Little girls and little boys scorched. Unrecognizable mangled faces. Torn bodies. Charred flesh. Legs and arms gone. I was so hungry. I looked at the nurses, their dresses splattered in blood and stained in bile. Young nuns deflowered by monsters, praying over the dead. I looked at a nun with blonde hair and dull green eyes clad in a peasant's dress nursing a bastard child. Her eyes shied away from mine. I had to get out of the hospital. I walked into the streets, soldiers disposing of the dead with gas cans and matches. No shovels to dig mass graves. Nameless children with their nameless children buried beside them. I fiddled with my uniform's torn pathetically tailored pockets. Sewn by toddlers probably. My hands shook as I tried to light a cigarette. A tank passed by me, its track pads squishing a dilapidated corpse lying in the muddy street. The tank pulled along a carriage cradling a mangled flak gun and a caravan of starving horses, three in the back, corpses being dragged along. The tank passed by, and a boy ran into the street and stole the boots off the corpse squished into nothing. I walked through the streets, children skipping around bodies and craters. I came to the solemnly whistling train station. Some of the streets were reduced to flaming rubble and others were untouched. They would get their turn. Soon. There would be another raid tonight. Another tomorrow night and another and another. I passed through the streets until I saw a little girl in a blood soaked baby blue dress. She had glistening blonde hair licked by ash. It was done up with a big sky blue bow. The bow wasn't blue anymore. It was grey. Everything was always grey. The girl's eyes were bloodshot. She didn't say anything. She was in shock. Rapists roamed the streets. Murderers and thieves that would strip this little thing naked without a second thought. Fabric was fabric. I picked her up. She wore cute shoes with little tassels and torn leggings. I came to the train station, and the screams of abandonment and separation struck me in the gut. I passed through the doors, guards ushering me through. I left the little girl next to a guard that I could trust enough. I reached the platform bursting at the seams with sobbing parents frantically pinning identification cards to their children. There were well-dressed children, their parents waving goodbye. The children's bags taking up space that could fit twenty more kids in the first car. There were the regular folks with cheap clothes and parents with trades. Their children slowly stacked themselves into place as their parents bawled. That was three cars of a fifty car train. The rest were set aside for the peasants, the factory workers, the homeless. The hordes of peasant children were only guided by their mothers, their fathers cannon fodder. The mothers would trade anything for the safety of their children. Anything. Soldiers took whatever they wished. Food. The rations were running dry for everyone. Life savings poured into cigarettes, liquor, and worn out whores. Sex. Sometimes on the platform. There was no dignity anymore. Some of them would even trade sicker pleasures of the flesh. Some of the soldiers were bored of leathery skin. Girls gave themselves up to protect the younger ones. I smoked four more cigarettes, my hands shaking. A train arrived. Full of brass from the front line. The doors opened and me and a few others grabbed brooms and swept the gleaming casings off the train and onto the platform. Some the shell casings were a foot long and others were smaller than a pinky toe. Peasants picked them up and put them in baskets. At first it was for money. That didn't work. Whoever filled a basket first was assured to have their child lifted from the tearing hands of the seething masses and put on to the train. Most of the brass was off the train and I stepped back onto the tearful screaming platform. Guards stood close buy. The peasants used to try us. They didn't anymore. Too many slaughters at too many train stations in too many newspapers. I pushed through the crowd and the ragged clothed bodies swayed and let me through begrudgingly. I was the one who held the loves of their lives at my whim. A sneer from me meant that they could wait another day. I looked into the guard's eyes and he blinked slowly. I picked up the little girl who was still deep in shock. I walked through the crowd carrying her and brought her into the train. I found her a seat in the back and carefully folded her pretty mud speckled blood painted blue dress beneath her like a proper lady and sat her down gently. She looked up at me and gave me a sad smile. She slowly undid her big blue bow and gave it to me. I tried to give it back to her, but she wouldn't let me. I told her she would be safe. I shoved the crumpled bow in my pocket. I came back out and pulled children from their parents one at a time and heaved them past the gap and onto the steps. Fucking military trains. I did it for twenty minutes before my car was full. Every car was full to the brim. Parents stared at me desperately. I croaked, "No more." A man screamed a blood-curdling scream and held his son tightly. He pushed past me.