Chapter III
3:47 am
"WIRF DIE GRANATE!"
"In deckung gehen"
"Bleiben sie dran!"
"Bleiben sie dran!"
"Bleiben sie dran!"
Quickly I opened my eyes, vision---a blur but slowly clearing up. Everything up to this point was hell, suddenly vomit came out as I took off my goggles. Everything wasn't just hell, it was entirely chaotic in every single way---slowly turning, absorbing, doubting, disbelief.
My gun was nowhere to be seen and even my flares, I must've lost it somehow, I wonder even my whereabouts. Nothing but my clothes were left, not a single gear could be seen through this mad scene.
Granade flew from left to right and from right to left. Frags of different kinds, a much older version compared to what was now. warplanes fell from the sky embedding a nazi insignia on both wings as the other an American sigil.
My eyes scattered around as if I was a kid lost in a supermarket, I trembled, and I weakened losing all my sense of sanity while gunshots and massive explosions colored in the background.
"CAPTAIN! CAPTAIN!"
I was drowning in the sound of war, I got deeper---touching, feeling, and almost liking, the breathless bottom of entirety. Someone grabbed me by the shoulder---someone pulled me up, depriving me of the discovery beneath it all.
"CAPTAIN! CAPTAIN!"
A firm grip continues to clasp on my shoulder,
"Schneider? w..where are we?"
He carried my arm on one shoulder and went behind one of the sandbags to take cover from the mayhem that was rampaging through this wicked place. "I..I don't know. Reins and Xiao...where are they?"
We exchanged glances as the heavy gunfire that reverberated across the battlefield filled our earholes making us scream at each other while Molotovs had set the dazzling flames dancing through the streets, houses, and even on the barricades.
"I haven't seen them yet. We need to know where we are. I've tried contacting command before we got here---but the radio's dead and so is the signal." This makes our earpiece useless too.
Suddenly a squad of soldiers in grey uniform and red cross insignia's strapped in their arms---pointed rifles at us, they started talking in German tongue.
"HANDE HOCH! HANDE HOCH!"
One of the soldiers yelled, I got lost in the scene, they were---fueled by anger, sweat dripping from their foreheads, hand quivering, and voice shaking, but underneath those facades were fear, fear from their own nation---not of the enemies.
Suddenly just about everything was going bad Schneider raised his brow and yelled back standing proud and tall as gunfire still painted the background. "Ich bin Leutnant Schneider, dieser Amerikaner ist in sehr wertvolles gut."
He dictated as if he knew each and every one of them. The German soldiers now bowed in shame and replied back an apology to Schneider as they saluted then went off towards the front line.
"What the hell did you just say back there?" Schneider replied with a smirk then offered his hand to me who was laying back on a sandbag for a while now. "Hurry up before my luck runs out Cap."
The chaotic background now sank in entirely. Houses burning, streets set aflame, tanks destroyed and left scattered in the streets, planes shooting each other down from the sky, soldiers scattered, and gunfire run ablaze across the dark battlefield for the night was dark and smoke thickens as gunfire went on. But what caught both of our attention was the massive Eifel tower of Paris, it was polluted in a nazi banner.
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3:47 am
cautiously, I took off my helmet as the words roughly departed from my lips. "Where on God's name are we..." Schneider was baffled as much as I am too, no words came of him for this is definitely something that no man of a sort can explain nor comprehend.
His expression says it all, during a shooting training our target are usually far ahead with a red dot at the middle, this session trains our accuracy, the way Schneider's face expresses shows a shooting training but the target is at point-blank range and every part of it is a big red dot, but no matter how you shoot, it absolutely shows no sense at all at why it's that close nor explains the target itself. Everything at this predicament makes no sense.
my head shifted from left to right, I noticed the phase of the breeze suddenly changed. There's something up ahead---a stir from the wind at our six. "Schneider! cover my rear!" Bit by bit he regained composure but never the less he remains on edge as I was too.
The ground shook as the very earth shivered, then everything collapsed. The ground blasted out dust and debris---everything with it flung sky high releasing a dark mist engulfing everything as if a nuke just exploded in front of us.
It was fast---rapid---I seemingly watched as everything unfolded in front of my very eyes, whispers crowded my mind as the debris took me away and so did Schneider.
Everything that it ate was covered in what seems as a pitch-black mist as if the tantrum of chaos wasn't chaotic enough. Time passed by I wasn't sure how long, and I didn't even notice that my watch stopped working by the time 3:47 strikes.
My head felt cold and so did my leg. slowly I managed to make it on my feet, but at that moment my head suddenly felt a hurricane of madness covered with immense pain as if this hurricane was strong enough to lift a house.
I fell colliding against the floor the pain kept me busy, it kept me companied over this place full of heresy. "I wonder where Schneider is...I hope he's alive" my last thought as my vision once more faded in a blur.
Time passed again---my body felt cold, every part of it shivered as if I was buried in a pile of snow while lying in a bed of ice.
I can't see, I can't speak, I feel the crackling heat of the desert on my lips, my fingers---I can't feel them either, I fear the veins that were there were no more, I hear the pump of my heart, it hammers its way home---but I don't know which home will it lead, I hope it leads to the right one, so I can finally take a long deserving sleep.
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3:47 am
Lieutenant Schneider,
I woke up to a horrifying night but it wasn't, it was a darker and dreadful eclipse. Everything is black---there was only havoc yet it couldn't be---it was more. I felt the heavens crumbled down on my soul---everything, was falling apart. My mind was bewildered, it was feeling these multiple chains of catastrophic illness---everything is a plague, even I.
The dark mist was thick but now the worst had passed or so it seems. The relentless gust passed away and now left a sea of tenebrous floating mist-like entity, it was dense---I can feel it every time it collides with my skin. My eyes wandered in the obscurity and aimlessly my body followed.
German soldiers polluted the streets as did sandbags, metal debris, and the unparalleled fiery that shined greatest in a dark sunken place such as this. My feet scrambled over the countless bodies---some even left unrecognizable, a strong crackle thundered from above and completely shattered away a house that barely stood.
The void that ate everything away in its path slowly crawled from above-reeking hell---everlasting turmoil with its red hammer pounding with an enormous crackle and blinding everything and anything that it could. This is the impenetrable shadow of the sky---a total blackout and its red thunder but definitely something beyond---frightening.
Structures crumbled and the ground hovered, whispers coming from the mists moaned in disdain. I didn't understand anything that was happening around me, it felt like I went back 4 years ago when I was still a private, an expandable, and it all happened quickly at the battlefront. I was in the middle of it all---in the middle of absolute carnage.
Street lamps float as the tiles, bit and pieces of debris, and the mere ground levitated defying all laws of sciences and reality itself. My body pressed on still aimlessly but in complete caution, for craters now decorate the field as if the moon's surface became the earth's. Amidst the mayhem, in a far distance, I saw someone completely collapsing to the ground and at that moment I knew, that hope still burns even in a place like this.
The wholesome of my body moved with haste as if the predator and the prey were on a chase and the predator was me. I scrambled through the bodies and moved from crater to crater remaining low and vigilant as I possibly could.
My eyes widened as my spine shivered but not out of fear---but of hope and relief, finally something to keep my sanity intact. It was captain Rio's body there lay dead and cold, unconsciously my fingers maneuvered through his wrist, then at the side of his neck checking for any sign of life.
Palm sweating, and chest hammering, then a weak single beat from the side of his neck made its way through my cheeks as a smirk now clearly shows. I tried to somehow wake him up, then there I saw a small pool of blood which he bathed in.
"NO!NO!NO!NO!" I didn't know what to do, questions now spiral its way down through my thoughts adding up to the vortex that hailed inside my head. I removed my long sleeve uniform and wrapped it over his head, as I searched him for other wounds that also helped in making a small pool of his own blood other than blisters and small cuts, I found his right leg bleeding still while a metal scrap attaches itself from his skin.
I took off my inner shirt which was a tank top and wrapped it on his leg right after pulling out the metal scrap. With that, I became an easy target if there was still a soldier alive left on the wreckage, I was rendered topless with no vest---just a handgun with two mags to spare each containing 12 bullets per round.
As I was about to carry him on my shoulder another tremendous crackled came from above and red thunder rained down---smiting a tower that now glowed in red light. I was mesmerizing at the sight, where the sky of black slowly moved in a circular motion and at its epicenter, lies the red glowing tower, while the wrath of the red hammer continues to smite it down---but it never could.
The dark mist screamed in agony as it slowly crawled its way towards the tower, their screams flooded my eyes with sorrow and pain. I who seemed lifeless as did my captain suddenly felt magnetized, "AAARRHHHHH" a sharp high peached wail pierced through my eardrums.
The ground started to shake again but there was no strong wind this time around, instead, there was a loud reverberating crackling sound from the sky and the piercing wails coming from the mist like entities.
I covered my ears from left to right and closed my eyes to somewhat lessen the pain but obviously it didn't, and neither did the cover from my ears for this sound is yet to be told, it was a cry, a plea, a demand, I didn't know nor understood for it is unknown.
Reality, time, and space, pause, bended, and all coiled back, I fell off my feet and now understood why they were screaming. While everything was being called by the red tower including us, a tear from a fraction of space rippled through the background of the red glowing tower, the ground continued to tremble as more debris levitated off the ground.
This...things, were sucking everything into that tower. I bit my lip as hard as I could to prevent it from trembling. I worked my way back on my feet and carried Rio on my shoulder, I began to slowly venture off the field towards the tower that stood mighty high, and as I began to move closer I started to realize---that the glowing mountain was surely the Eiffel Tower.
"This all makes sense now, those Nazis and a battlefield like this in Paris...old war tanks, and old firepower from both sides including the outdated infrastructures. No, no-no-no. This can't be! What the hell is going on here! Keep it together!"