I Follow My Training

This story was originally published on Medium.

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I set the proximity mine down next to the bush. It's fairly hidden by the overhang of the long leaves. I don't tell anyone that it is there because everyone on my side will be left unharmed.

This proximity mine will only go off when the enemy nears it. Not if a friendly is nearby. Don't ask me how it does it, but it does it. It senses a similar smell all of us have perhaps. We all eat many of the same meals, maybe it detects a certain spice. A spice that is only used by our cooks, common in our cooking, not the cooking of other armies. The spice is pungent, it comes through our pores. If the mine detects that scent it will not go off, if it doesn't detect the scent, it will go off. Maybe. Or perhaps it can see, it can see details to our clothing, our uniform.

However it does it, it does it.

But we don't need to explain where we set our proximity mines. That is something we know.

We move along farther through the rugged terrain. We split up. One by one, we separate from the group, we are all alone. I move along more and more, even farther from the rest of my troop I am sure.

I finally come up on the enemy… I am unaware if others in my troop know the enemy is here. But I do.

I open fire. I hardly aim, I just let shots ring free. Shots shower back towards me. I am hit once, twice, in the midsection. I duck for cover. I follow my training. Allow time to pass, do not allow more bullets to hit you. It hurts… but I count it out… all the way to five seconds… then the redness surrounding my peripheral vision vanishes… the pain is gone… the bullets have expunged from my body.

I feel healthy again. I pop up and ring out more shots. Enemies fall. I am hit several more times. Too much for my body. I fall. I am motionless.

I awaken in a completely different spot… hundreds of feet away. I repeat the process. I let bullets fly from my cannon… bullets fly from other cannons and towards me. I collapse again.

I am awake again, a different spot. I run through the rugged terrain. It looks familiar. I come across enemies, trying to be more careful now. Letting shots fly, ducking for cover, repeating over and over. Eventually, I run out of bullets as I am outnumbered by the enemy. I hide behind a wall for cover. I look at the dead body beside me. It is me… me that died several minutes ago… with the same gun I am using now. Lucky me.

I unload the bullets from the dead me's gun and put them into mine. I'm reloaded. I pop back up and let shots ring out at the enemy. After a few seconds of this, everything freezes. Someone shouts about a bad internet connection. A 10-year old boy complains that his mom is making him clean his room. Everything goes dark. I am told to wait… I am told to wait until the kids are ready to play with me again.

I wait. I follow my training. I wait.

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