The shaking of his hands caused the rifle to vibrate rapidly.
He never volunteered to fight. The captain had said to get ready; the enemy
would be through the first line of defense soon. Sitting in the trench,
Charles wondered why there even was a war; he was not a political man,
not a highly intelligent one at that. He was a carpenter. He could not
be much else, he told himself, having passed high school with a low D average.
Except a soldier. The army did not seem to care about his grades.
Things had been going well until 2040, when the draft was called
up for what the world predicted to be World War 3. His father had always
told him such a war would be nuclear, it would destroy the Earth, and so
Charles had rejoiced when the U.N. started systematically destroying every
nuclear weapon on the globe. Now they were back to trench fighting. Dumb
law, he thought, gritting his teeth.
"They're advancing!" someone yelled. The sound of gun fire and
screaming unnerved him. Some men dared to look above the trench wall, but
were quickly reprimanded by a superior. Twenty minutes ago his section
had been proud, charged. Now Charles' energy was gone, turned to fear at
the realization that he would soon have to kill another man, someone as
afraid as him. He swallowed hard, placing his quivering finger on the trigger
of his warm, sweat-covered gun.
"Kill or be killed," he whispered to himself. He definitely did
not want to die before his twenty first birthday.
"Ready?" someone asked him. He could not respond.
"Just shoot. Just shoot," he chanted. He had received orders,
the government had placed him in this position; his actions were no longer
his own. "Ours is not to reason why," he mumbled an almost forgotten, ancient
war poem. "Ours is but to do and..."
He did not hear the next order the captain shouted, but the men
turned and began firing. Charles turned slowly in the trench towards the
sounds of battle, rousing yells could now be heard among the screams and
rounds of fire. His stomach churned at the scent of the war, a smell not
unlike smoked meat. He mouthed a prayer when someone pushed him forward,
yelling words he was not paying attention to. He stood up and aimed his
gun. Through the scope he saw the enemy, a woman.
For a split second a thought ran through his mind: Dad said never
his a girl. That was all the time the enemy needed.