by Brent Reilly
CHAPTER 52
Benes the Brave came out of retirement to avenge the friends who died at the Summer Slaughter several years ago. Now nearing his one hundredth birthday, the pressure to empty his bladder got him up in the freezing cold. He cursed himself for drinking so much again, but he kept bumping into old war buddies who wanted to celebrate. Otherwise he’d have waited until dawn. Or, better yet, noon. As it was, he had to maneuver past countless obstacles to find the damn sanitation trench, his old bones absorbing the cold as he stumbled in the dark.
As he stood peeing over the edge, something drew his eye up. He looked at the sky for the longest time before he shook himself awake enough to really focus. It looked like a shadow falling. Yet even as some stars twinkled, others shined uninterrupted. It made no damn sense, and again he cursed his weakness for fermented horse milk.
No self-respecting quad goes anywhere without wands, so he took one out to record whatever the hell was happening because otherwise no one would believe him.
Finally he thought he saw men. His gut reaction went from bad to worse. He tried to pee faster, but his bladder took forever to empty.
So he still had a hand on his freezing penis when someone screamed and flashed four wands right above him. The sight was so unexpected that he’d have peed himself if he were not already urinating. It couldn’t be the Red Baron, here in Kiev -- but, then, it couldn’t be anyone else. He turned to continue recording the Baron and fell into the narrow trench.
As he splashed into urine-soaked feces, an enormous explosion shook the world. A brilliant light illuminated every detail of the crap he fell into. His hands covered his ears even as his ear drums painfully burst. He couldn’t imagine what could produce something so loud. Maybe Father Sky wanted to punish Mother Earth with a thousand rounds of thunder. A pressure wave swept over the “shit slit” and sucked out all of the oxygen. He buried his face in mud, then discovered the mud tasted like dung.
After the terrifying moment passed, his chest heaved, desperate for air. He stood on the lip of the trench. Although his ears heard nothing but ringing, his brain would not accept what his eyes saw. He got out his second wand to record both sides.
He had never seen so many fireballs! Thousands flying up and shooting down. He turned slowly to capture everything around him because if he didn’t believe it, why would anyone else?
He stood there like a shitty statue rotating with outstretched arms. Numb by more than the freezing temperature, a desperate need to tell someone gripped him. The sanitation trench emptied into the Dnieper River, so he flew within the slit, the excrement of a million warriors fouling his senses and traumatizing his appetite. Once across the river, he hid behind some bushes and recorded the unbelievable scene behind him. Apparently, the sky really was punishing the ground. Only now he could make out thousands of quads firing upon his comrades. He stayed as long as he dared before an obsessive need to share the news compelled him to flee.
