Vignette:Over the Top


 * This vignette takes place in the Foxhole universe.

Allie arose in an impact crater, her ears ringing. The shelling had ceased, and now the air was shrouded in a deep smoky fog. Around her lay the bodies of her comrades, some of them destroyed beyond recognition. Their pale hands clutched their guns after death, like toppled statues. The survivor surveyed the carnage about her. Miraculously, she felt nothing more than a little soreness. She wondered if anyone else had been as lucky as her. Her company was certainly larger than the number of bodies in this hole. Had they pressed on without her? Or had they retreated in a hurry? There was only one way to find out. Allie crested the rim of the crater to get a better view of the battlefield.

There was only fog all around, as far as the eye could see. The young woman felt disoriented. She stared straight ahead at the bleak horizon while a chilly breeze buffeted her olive drab uniform, and she tried to make sense of the featureless terrain. Her pocket compass read northeast. This, she remembered, was the direction of the enemy lines. Just as she considered turning back, she noticed several rows of tracks snaking off into the distance. The prints matched those of her own standard-issue boots. Perhaps the company had advanced after all.

The muddy fields were as still as death. The only sound was the rhythmic squelching of Allie's boots on the loose ground as she marched into the damp wastes, following the trail blazed by her fellow soldiers. Were it not for the steady humming in her ears, she would have heard a second, subtler set of footfalls approach and then come to a stop a few meters ahead. Instead, she only became aware of the other's presence when a gunshot cracked and sent a bullet whizzing by.

Instantly, Allie dove for the dirt. Her heart thumped like a piston as she lay there, frozen. A second shot rang out. She squinted her eyes and tried to make out the shape of her assailant, or even a muzzle flash or a puff of smoke, but the fog obscured all. It was then that she came up with a cunning, devious, and altogether risky idea. Allie cupped her hands over her mouth and began screaming.

It was not until Allie's shrill wails of pain transitioned into soft whimpers that the enemy soldier moved to investigate. As the dark, hazy silhouette gradually distinguished itself, she trained her sights on its center. Gripping her rifle tightly, she counted the figure's steps as it approached, all the while continuing her quiet cries, (which were not that hard to feign in her nervous, fearful state) to lure it closer. When the enemy made their tenth step, she paused, drew a sharp breath in, and squeezed the trigger.

The blast of her gun made Allie instinctively shut her eyes. When she opened them again, the silhouette had fallen into a heap and was now groaning. Wary of her own tricks being used against her, she slid back the bolt and fired another round. The body shook visibly from the impact, and made no more noise. Shakily, Allie rose to her feet and approached the lump with caution, rifle at the ready.

Lying prone and clawing at the ground before her was a man dressed in a blueish-gray coat and a steel helmet. Blood trickled up from a bullet hole on his shoulder, and pooled also from another source under his chest. A rifle lay by his left arm, but he seemed to have abandoned it in favor of grabbing fistfuls of dirt with both hands, as if clinging to the earth itself lest his spirit fall skyward. When he saw Allie's boots in front of his nose, he stopped what he was doing, turned, and made a feeble attempt to grab his rifle, which the woman swiftly countered, dragging it out of reach with her foot. She then shoved her own rifle barrel down into his face, saying, "Try anything else and you're dead."

The man craned his neck upwards to view his conqueror. Allie saw a dirty, sullen face staring up at her, its blue eyes and defined jaw pointing to a man that had once been handsome, before months of starved fighting sank his cheeks and ruined his skin. Even aged by agony as it was, that face could not have seen more than twenty-five years. With heavy breaths, the young man spoke, his accented voice masking an existential dread: "I am dead... already."

"Not if you tell me what I want to know," reassured Allie. This was, of course, a lie. By the amount of blood leaking out from under him, she could tell he would be dead within five minutes. She merely hoped to confirm that she was headed in the right direction, so she demanded to know, "Where did you come from?"

"Ogmaran," croaked the dying soldier, practically choking on the harshness of the word. Allie stroked her chin, remembering that her regiment had been moving to take the port of Ogmaran before being struck by an untimely barrage. "And who owns Ogmaran now?"

"I don't know," he said. Wrong answer. Allie pressed her boot to his wounded shoulder. A rasping scream escaped his lips. "Ah! Please! Please! I run! I run!" he cried in a desperate, broken version of her tongue. She rolled him over onto his back. "Yes...?" she inquired impatiently. The man drew in a pained breath. "I run from Ogmaran when your men come." So, Allie inferred, the others had definitely reached the city, and since soldiers would not conceivably flee a city unless the situation was truly dire, odds were that Ogmaran had fallen! Only, this poor fool had fled in the wrong direction.

Delighted by the news, and not wanting to waste another bullet, Allie left the poor soldier to die in the muck, but not before delivering a cheerful "thanks!" and treating his bleeding body as a rug on which to wipe her muddy boots.