I remember as a child how war was presented to me. Like most children my first experience of war was through film. Those scripted pieces of supposed art that were as naïve as I was. Where the hero vanquished scores of enemies without so much as a scratch before setting off into the sunset. Oh how I admired those heroes when I was young and ignorant to the real nature of war.
In reality, war was a different beast. Unceasing in its power to turn everything beautiful into ruin and decay. The movies didn't teach you of how someone's insides look when they're ripped apart. How they scream as their legs are blown off. How grown men piss themselves in fear of that final agonizing breath.
War is a dirty, brutal business where fairness and morality is a dream. It's a cut throat realm that turns the best of men into savages and cold blooded psychopaths. It brings out the worst in people and yet also the best of those rare few. I wasn't one of those, after an hour in this forsaken land I already felt myself being broken, piece by piece until something I didn't recognize remained.
I couldn't physically show my despair any more. My throat was ripped apart from the violent bouts of vomiting until all that was left were agonizing dry retches. Every effort to breathe was filled with these ripping wails that I had no control over. I struggled to even open my bloodshot eyes. Behind thin veils of skin, the orbs pulsed with each heartbeat as it ascended to panicking heights. We were drawing ever closer to the Wall.
From my position in the rear of the armored vehicle I couldn't physically see the deserted streets outside. The unsettling quiet, the roads barren of their former vitality when the city's residents hurried along in their daily struggle to make ends meet.
Yet something within me, some primal instinct from aeons of evolution sent dread flooding through my body. Screaming at me to turn away from this path, to run as fast and as far as I could from my destination. Yet there was no way back, my journey was taking me forward towards a darkness I could never imagine. I was a passenger in this mechanized procession down the river Styx. So I lay there, my body weightless against the chassis, feeling every inch of terrain the wheels rolled over inside my weakened gut.
The vehicle eventually rolled to an abrupt stop and the squad lazily made their way out the exit hatch, but Takashi sat beside me for a moment. He stared at me with something akin to pity, or at least an attempt at pity. It felt almost soulless bar the merit behind it.
"We're here Civvie, it's time to go." He said as a firm hand rested on my shoulder. I looked up to him, the shock of what I had seen laid bare on my face. "I know you're no stranger to warzones, you've seen death before, you'll see it again. Now get up before I drag you out of this vehicle."
"What I saw wasn't war!" I shouted, tendrils of saliva straining outward from my lips. "That boy wasn't a combatant! You murdered him and burnt the body like it was nothing but meat!" I shouted at him with some misplaced sense of righteousness, I still couldn't wrap my head around what I saw bursting forth from the child's burning body. That screaming serpent.
"Yes I murdered him, I'd have done it sooner if I knew he was a carrier." He paused for a moment, itching the stubble around his dirt-smeared face. He looked to his hands before picking up his rifle and I could see them trembling just like my own. "What you saw was nothing compared to what's happened here over the past two weeks. You're right, this isn't war, this is something else. Everyone here has innocent blood on their hands and we're all well aware of it. I only ask that you don't judge us until you know what's going on here."
He slung his arm under my own and raised me up on unsteady legs before reaching for the handgun left ownerless on the seat beside mine. Picking up the pistol he wiped the slide against his trouser leg, leaving a bloody smear on his camouflaged fatigue. Takashi then held it forward towards me. "You ready to do what you came here to do?" He asked me. All I could do was nod as I reached for the gun.
He made the effort to lock his eyes onto mine before letting go of the weapon. "Remember what I told you. There's fifteen rounds in the magazine, leave one for yourself just in case. Suicide is better than ending up like that boy."
I didn't nod but still he patted me on the shoulder. "You got a headcam?"
I had completely forgotten my original purpose in being here. Rummaging through my pack, I found the small device attached to a head-strap and pulled it on. The first images it recorded were of the where I had just been sitting. The floor around it covered with bloodied vomit and spent bullet cases. I had decided already that none of this footage was getting edited out, I wanted it as raw as I felt it.
Without another word, we exited the APC and the first thing that hit me was the smell. Initially, the scent made me think of cooking meat and then I thought of the boy's body burning. The smell of skin, muscle and fat being burned off the bone. It was more than a scent: it was an ambient, greasy aroma that clung to my clothes, sinking into the fibers. No amount of washing would ever erase it. I couldn't yet see the source, but I saw the billowing smoke rising up into the sky, overshadowed by the Wall.
Standing over fifty feet tall, it towered over the buildings underneath its shadow like a tidal wave frozen in steel. It was a crude black monolith that rebelled against the bright sky. It looked more like a medieval construction than anything fabricated in the current age of energy weapons and space travel. Its smooth surface was spattered with dried blood trails that had originated from the walkway above.
Makeshift stairs were welded onto the side of the monstrosity and I could see figures patrolling along the top. Objects were hung from the battlements, dangling from thick ropes, but I couldn't make out what they were quite yet. From what I could see though, there were no barriers whatsoever on the walkways so if anyone was to fall, they would barely have time to scream before their bodies struck the concrete below.
"It took only two days for the engineers to build it, not to mention the fleet of terrestrial haulers that flew it all in. Any longer and we would've all died trying to hold them off. The Captain said it was one of the greatest feats of human engineering ever accomplished. Damn thing goes all the way south to Jinshan up to northern Jiading. It's over a hundred kilometers of solid steel, twelve feet thick. Don't ask me how they did it, we we're all too busy fighting for our lives, slipping in each other's blood to look back."
It was indeed an incredible feat, but all the while I was thinking what could possibly be inside the quarantine zone to warrant such a structure. Then I finally focused on what lay below it. We exited the vehicle a couple blocks away from the Wall. We couldn't have made it any further without running over the dozens of portable structures that littered the streets, covering every piece of ground that they could. Tents, containers, vehicles and other shelters were erected around a singular building; a hospital.
I couldn't make out any more of the area due to the crowds of soldiers that stood in formation under the shadow of the Wall. These were the new arrivals that I had flown in with and they looked just as nervous as I felt. Every head was turned high towards a singular figure standing on a balcony resting on the upper floors of the hospital. The figure's distorted voice rang out through the quiet streets as Takashi led me past the crowds of unblooded youth listening to their commanding officer. I could only catch the ending of his speech but it was enough for me to grasp the magnitude and desperation of what was going on here.
"Make no mistake. We are under siege by a horrific and monstrous enemy. That fear you feel is natural but you will have to fight it as hard as you fight these abominations! Because they will both most assuredly usher you into the grave! Those who run will be shot on sight, those who run further will be tracked down and hanged."
It was then that I recognized what was hanging from those ropes. The bodies were hung sequentially so as to spread the message as far as possible. I'd come to find out later that being hung wasn't the worst of it: the executed deserters were called by the older surviving soldiers either Breakers or Swingers. The Breakers were the lucky ones whose necks snapped instantly as the rope reached its length. The Swingers survived the drop and suffered through suffocation and cerebral hypoxia until their eyes bulged out of their sockets from the noose around their necks. The sight of their purple bloated faces and unnaturally distended tongues seemed to add to the stench of rot in unsettling ways.
It horrified me more that I didn't feel the disgust that I knew I should've felt at the time, it seemed that the boy had driven the weakness out of me. His death allowed me to continue on without being inconvenienced by shock. For now at least. It wouldn't last long.
The commander's speech continued: "I look at all of you and I feel an immense pride that I've been blessed to command you brave young souls. Now show me that pride isn't unjustified and let's take back this city from the enemy!"
The new troops responded in a unified roar of confidence that echoed through the empty streets that surrounded the makeshift base. They seemed so confident, each one trusting in their own destiny that they'd survive this.
I knew that feeling all too well from my times in conflict zones, that no bullet would have my name on it, that no step I took would trigger a mine. That death would stay his hand from my form. I didn't get that feeling here, death was in every atom of air I breathed.
As we drew further away from the recruits Takashi spoke in a low voice. "Most of those kids haven't even completed basic training yet. Most of them won't survive the night." There he was again with that almost careless voice, surely he couldn't be so cold.
