Downtime

The young soldier grips her rifle, heart pounding in terror. The cries and moans of the wounded and dying are drowned out by the thunder and crack of gunfire and artillery. The CO walks along the trench, shouting. The girl doesn't hear the exact words, but knows that it will lead to her death. She hears a sudden silence, a break in the fighting.

Then the whistle pierces the air, commanding her to leave the safety of her trench, to expose her young body to the enemy. Despite her immense fear, she feels her body reacting on autopilot, pulling herself up top then breaking into a sprint alongside her brothers and sisters. The enemy opens fire, cutting them down. The girl winces at the crack-crack-crack of supersonic rifle rounds flinging past her, but her run never ceases. She yells, a battle cry for her country.

Something rocks the world, turning it upside down. The girl is left weightless and the ground leaves her. She glimpses (in brief flashes) the yellow-red ground, the bright blue sky, and a blossoming flower of dust and fire. Then gravity catches up to her, bringing her down. She sees the ground rushing up to meet her and then nothing.

The young man (boy really, having reached his 18th year last week), advances cautiously through the pockmarked landscape of no man's land. Fellow soldiers walk alongside, rifles at low ready, bayonets attached. Bodies lay scattered amongst the craters and debris, twisted and torn. Most are months old, nothing more than skeletons with tattered pieces of leathery flesh, picked apart by the packs of wild dogs and swarms of rats grown fat off of the slaughter.

His commanding officer signals the platoon to halt for a break, and the soldiers sigh and begin to sit down. What was once waist deep mud in the spring had turned to dry soil and dust in the summer. The boy sat down, and places his rifle beside him. He feels his hand brush against something soft. He looks, and gasps in shock.
The face of a young girl about his age stares back, blue eyes half lidded, lips parted slightly. The boy recoils back. His gaze wanders down the rest of the body. The uniform was of the enemy, although this one seemed a size too small for the girl, hugging her curvy form tightly.

The boy, having gotten over his initial shock, crawls back. He looks over his shoulder, and sees the rest of his platoon scattered amongst the craters, napping or playing cards. He grabs the girl by the feet, and drags her down into a nearby crater. Once concealed, he begins to satisfy his curiosity. From the paleness of the skin, and general lack of rot, he surmised that the girl must not have been dead for more than 4 hours, coinciding with the time the enemy had last attempted an attack. Strangely, the body was intact, and didn't appear to have any gunshot wounds. He looked at the unnatural angle of her head. Must've broken her neck somehow, he thought.

The more he looked at the body, the more he felt a strange stirring. The girl was quite attractive, despite the circumstances, and he hadn't been with a member of the fairer sex in months. He reached towards the body, and began to open the buttons on her uniform. Opening up the top revealed a large bust held by a white cotton tank top. A pair of dog tags glinted, resting within her ample cleavage. He took his pocket knife, and cut open the front of the tank top. Her breasts seemed to bounce as they were freed, then gravity pulls them to her sides. The boy squeezes the breasts, feeling their firmness in his hands.

His attention wanders, one finger tracing along her toned abdomen towards her pelvic region. He undoes her belt, then roughly drags her trousers down to her ankles. Grey sports panties cover her feminine parts. He grabs the elastic band, and with a slash from the knife, cuts open the underwear. A patch of black pubes points towards her slit. The boy teases apart her sex folds, and sticks a finger in. He whistles. This one hadn't had her V card punched yet.
He pulls his finger out, and wipes the residue off on her pants.

The boy comes back to her face. With one hand, he gently grabs her chin and turns her head towards him. At this angle, he can easily see the wrenched neck, the imprint of the shattered spinal cord pressing up against the skin of her throat. The girl had her black hair cut short, although it had begun to grow back. He is especially entranced by her distant eyes, and her mouth. Her lips are full, but chapped by the summer heat. He opens her mouth, and wonders at how immaculate and white her teeth are. She must have come from a well off family, he thinks.

He begins to pick through her uniform pockets. The boy finds a photograph, well worn. Folded up, opened, folded, opened many times, he imagines. He opens it, and sees the girl in a domestic setting. She is wearing her dress uniform while sitting on a couch, a wide grin on her face. A rotund older man and woman flank her, both beaming with pride. The boy turns the photo over and sees handwriting on the back. The language is foreign, but he can guess its meaning. He looks back at the broken body on the ground. He slowly folds the photo, crouches down, and places it in the girl's hand. Tenderly, he closes the hand around it. Then he places the girls hands together on her chest. The distant sound of orders being barked snaps him back to reality. In a final gesture of respect, he closes the eyes of the girl before running off to rejoin his platoon.