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herr_bookman) wrote2015-01-03 09:55 pm
herr_bookman) wrote2015-01-03 09:55 pm
WWI - Dylan
Dylan screamed, and my heart leapt into my throat. I caught my friend as he fell one night, holding him tight against my chest. Panting, I dragged him out of the line of fire, back down into the trench.
I laid Dylan down in the dirt, alarmed at how he was shaking. I moved down to his right thigh, where he had been hit, and pressed my hand over it, applying pressure to the wound. Blood seeped through my fingers. I lifted my friend’s leg, keeping it elevated above the heart. Dylan sobbed like a terrified child, tears leaking from his reddened eyes and his fists clenched near his mouth.
“Metzger!” I shouted, whipping my head up to look for the stretcher bearer that was assigned to us. Each infantry battalion was assigned six stretcher bearers, one doctor, and a few orderlies, who manned the first aid station in the very back of the support trenches.
“He’s dead,” Dylan snarled, gasping in short, sharp bursts. Gunfire rattled the air around us.
“What?” I said, turning my head back to my friend. I licked my chapped lips, thinking rapidly of our options. “All right, listen. I’ll... I can get you to the dressing station. It's only four hundred yards away, and after that, I can take you to that church to be collected--”
“I’m not gonna make it,” Dylan said mournfully. His voice was fuzzy in my ears, but I ignored that. He was paper white, and his pulse was weak when I checked it. “Just leave me behind.”
“Would you please be quiet?” I snapped. “You’re going to be fine, Dylan. Just fine.”
Dylan moaned, and I cast my eyes about for something I could use to fashion a pressure bandage, as I was all out. I ended up cutting the shirt off of a still warm corpse--Schuhmacher, the body's name was Schuhmacher, and I wished that I could have left him near Eberstark, where he would have wanted to be--and ripping it into long strips.
I watched for rapid swelling at the wound site, and was relieved to find that there were no signs of internal bleeding. After folding a strip of shirt, I pressed down on the wound with it, adding more strips once the blood soaked through. With my other hand, I pressed a pressure point high on his thigh. The blood eventually petered out, as far as I could tell. Oh, this is going to get infected.
Shivering, I took Schuhmacher's jacket and draped it over Dylan, praying he wasn’t going into shock. I knew Dylan secretly pined after Schuhmacher, so I could at least give him his coat.
Next, I managed to find a tarp resting in the mud a little ways away from where I’d laid him. I carted the tarp back to him, and carefully spread it out at the top of the trench, ducking my head against the sounds of rifles firing. I ditched my hundred pound pack, reasoning that I needed to drag Dylan more than I needed supplies.
I jumped back into the trench, landing in a crouch. “All right,” I said to Dylan. “I’m going to drag you out of here and lay you on a tarp. Then I’ll get you to the field hospital. Affirmative?”
Dylan bit his lip as sweat rolled down his pale face. He nodded, and I looped my arms under him, hauling him up and over the edge of the trench and onto the tarp. Dylan screamed again as his leg bounced off a rock, and I tried to make him comfortable, adjusting the jacket. “It’s only four hundred yards,” I assured my friend. “We’ll be there in no time.”
“Krueger,” Dylan gasped, grabbing me by the wrist. “Thanks.”
I nodded. I patted my friend on the shoulder and seized the tarp, my strong muscles buoyed by adrenaline. Rae's ward buzzed me, but I didn't have time to react. Just as I started running, something struck my shoulder with the force of a sledgehammer. I toppled onto my stomach, dropping the tarp. Shiva wept! I've been shot!
For the first thirty seconds or so, my arm just shut down; I couldn't move or feel my fingers, and I was afraid that I'd lost them. Warm blood flowed over my arm, and dripped down over my fingers. Pain kicked in, then, and the heat; it was like a hot nail being hammered into my flesh. I drew a ragged breath, clutching the wound--which was a bad idea. Gasping, I tore my fingers away from the hole in my shirt, skin burning.
But I had to grab it again, to control the bleeding. I shivered and sniffled as I clutched my shoulder, and rested my head against the muddy ground. Eventually, the warm blood turned sluggish under my fingers. It wasn't bright, so I didn't think they'd hit an artery, but the bone...
I heard the loud crackle-pop of more gunfire, and Dylan groaning underneath that, which reminded me of my mission--and the threat still around us. I clenched a fist to see if I still could--and I couldn't. I could barely flex my arm--which made me cry out. I was clumsy and my movements were slow. Skin still burning and vision swimming with pain, I staggered to my feet--which burned. I desperately wrapped my good arm under Dylan's, and started dragging him behind me. He held on.
A shell burst yards away, making my teeth chatter beyond my normal chills. I set off towards the east, towards the dressing station.
Then the pain in my shoulder lessened a little. My heart pounded a loud staccato in my chest. I used the adrenaline to cover more ground, despite feeling light-headed. After about three minutes, the blessed shock wore off, and the real pain set in. What used to be pressure was now a tremendous, gnawing ache, as if someone had bitten a chunk out of my back and set fire to the wound.
I kept going for another minute and a half. There was nothing more I could do, and Dylan needed me. We zig-zagged around the trenches, which looked like the edge of a stamp. My feet burned, my teeth chattered, and my shoulder screamed with pain. Soon, the dressing station was in view, and I dragged Dylan into the tent. "Wounded men!" I called, and an orderly came rushing over. It was Färber, a man with a terrible bedside manner who was excellent with a needle and thread.
"Where--" he started.
"My left shoulder, here, and his leg," I explained, shivering despite the way my shoulder throbbed. I was woozy, and if I moved my head too quickly, my vision blurred.
"Sit down before you fall on your pale rump," Färber snapped, and I gratefully sank down onto a stool, feeling nauseated. He had another orderly come to attend to Dylan. They couldn't do much for us here but stop the bleeding and send us on our way to the collection point a mile and a half away for the field hospital. There, the doctors would dig the bullets out of us and send us even further away from the front to recover.
Färber and his aide were efficient, and had us cleaned and bandaged up before I finished processing that they'd cut a great deal of my shirt off. Then he did something which endeared him to me immensely: gave me a shot of morphia.
"This'll start working in fifteen minutes, and hit its peak around forty-five minutes," Färber said, and double-checked my bandages. "You think you can hoof it to the church if I give you a stretcher bearer for him?"
I glanced back at Dylan, getting his own shot of blessed morphia. "Yes."
"Good. Stick around until the drugs kick in, and then get out of here," Färber said gruffly. He strung me up with a sling and patted me on my good arm.
I nodded and stood--my legs feeling like jelly and my feet prickling--and went to sit on the ground next to Dylan. He clutched the coat spread over him in his bloody fingers.
"Schumacher's dead?" he choked out. Dylan started crying for reasons other than fear and pain, and I turned my head, leaving him to his grief.
“But you’re going to make it,” I said softly.
He nodded at me, and I kept my good hand on his pulse for ten minutes or so, shivering with pain. When the morphia kicked in, I choked out a relieved sob. My shoulder still felt like someone had shoved a hot coal under my flesh, but the pain killers took enough of an edge off of it that I didn't care anymore. It also helped my feet. But I was tired. So tired. I wondered if Dylan would mind if I closed my eyes.
Then a big, older man came over with the stretcher. His nametag read Klein, and he was all business. "You boys going to the church?"
"Yeah," I said, raising my head woozily.
Klein grunted as he lifted Dylan--who cried out--from the ground onto the stretcher. The first half mile or so running across the support trenches was a blur. Dylan groaned, Klein remained stoic and silent, and I pumped my legs as fast as they would go. I stopped, once, panting and dizzy as I clung to a tree with my good arm. Then I heard rifle fire again, saw the muzzles flash to the west.
I pushed off from the tree, shaking from chills and soaked in sweat. I cleared my throat, and nodded at my two brothers who'd waited for me. My arms and feet and hands ached, and Klein dragged my friend across the muck. I tried to dodge the corpses, tried not to think of them as people.
After that, I had to stop more and more frequently to rest. Once, when I glanced over my wounded shoulder, I saw that Dylan had his eyes closed and his mouth open. Blood pooled under his thigh.
I panicked.
“Dylan!” I called, dropping to my shaky knees. With blood-stained fingers, I felt his neck for his pulse. “Dylan, wake up!”
“Jeez,” Dylan groaned eventually, shaking his head. “The hell is wrong with you. I was jus’ sleepin’.”
"Let him sleep," Klein snapped.
I sagged in place, exhausted myself. You lucky--! I wanted to punch him, wanted to scream, wanted to turn the stretcher over and just leave him to die in a ditch. Then relief rushed in, cooling the frustration, and I hung my tired head.
We kept running. In the middle of the night, a British soldier leapt out from behind a bush, pointing his gun at me. I was so terrified, I couldn't think on how he got there.
Klien pulled up short, eliciting a grunt from Dylan, and swore under his breath. I gasped and thrust my good hand up--biting back a sob from the brief stabbing sensation in my shoulder. Oh, no, please, no, no, no… God, no! Don’t let me die here!
“Wounded?” the enemy said, in accented German. He flicked the barrel of his gun towards Dylan. Our enemy was young, possibly younger than I was. The boy’s fingers were white as they gripped his rifle, and he almost looked like he’d cut himself shaving that morning.
“Yes,” I said, in English. My legs trembled, and my vision blurred from pain and fear. Sweat trickled down my spine, and I felt dizzy again.
The soldier regarded us with a steely eye, and I swallowed. I choked back a sob, wishing once more that I’d said goodbye to my friends properly, that I could see my mother again. I wanted to scream again. I'm not ready to die!
“Carry on, then,” the Brit said in English, gesturing with his weapon, and I inhaled a great gulp of air.
We kept walking. I stopped well afterwards, crumpling into a heap at the foot of a tree to shiver and sob and vomit. Dizzy and feverish, I bit down on a knuckle as tears rolled down my cheeks. I gasped repeatedly; I couldn’t get enough air.
Klein said nothing. He simply looked away.
“You all right?” Dylan said weakly. I was alarmed once again that I could barely hear him, but quickly chalked that fuzziness, that buzzing in my ears, up to Dylan’s not speaking loudly.
My breath hitched twice as I tried to compose myself. “Y-Yes, I’m f-fine.”
“No, you ain't, Krueger,” Dylan said, and I smiled, however brief. “But this place is awful. It’s awright to cry.”
I removed my dirty glasses to scrub at my eyes with a filthy, blood-stained palm. My good hand. “My name isn’t Krueger. It’s Autor.”
Dylan paused for a moment. I could hear him moving his head on the stretcher. "That's a crappy name, Krueger. No wonder you didn't tell me."
“Pfft!” I said, replacing my glasses. "What kind of name is Dylan?"
“You can kiss my butt once you're done dragging it."
I barked out a broken, raspy laugh. "Forget you, Krause."
I hauled myself to my feet and walked. The last half mile was torture. Each step was hard and heavy, and I sank into the mud. I shuddered at the distant sounds of shells and gunfire, and my head throbbed. My shoulder burned; it was all I could do to keep from focusing on the hot poker pressing there. I staggered forward, wheezing. My ankle turned, and I fell, landing chest first.
“Krueger,” Klein barked, and I almost heard Oberleutnant Nadel in it. “Krueger! Get up!”
“Can’t,” I said, the air from my rasping breaths making small bubbles in the mud. Blood-tinged sputum pooled in my mouth; blood caked over my fingers. My shoulder and feet ached as sharply as ever. Chills rocked my body, and sweat clung to my neck and back. A tight band of fire circled my chest, and I was nauseated again.
I closed my eyes, and wanted to fall asleep there more than anything else in the world.
“You have to!” Dylan hissed. “You don’t want to die out here, do you? Autor, tell me you don’t want to die.”
I wanted to. Death would be easier than drawing breath, than dragging that sorry, wounded Dylan halfway through hell. It wouldn’t be quick, but it would be sweet.
But then I thought of my friends. What kind of man would I be if I left them behind? Katya would get up, I thought, drowsy. So would Rae.
“I don’t… I don’t want to die,” I said, pressing my aching, bloody palm on the ground. Tears cut trails in the mud on my face as I slowly--painfully--pushed myself up. I swayed on my tingling feet for a moment, drawing as deep a breath as I could take. Then I moved on, step after painful, plodding step.
I laid Dylan down in the dirt, alarmed at how he was shaking. I moved down to his right thigh, where he had been hit, and pressed my hand over it, applying pressure to the wound. Blood seeped through my fingers. I lifted my friend’s leg, keeping it elevated above the heart. Dylan sobbed like a terrified child, tears leaking from his reddened eyes and his fists clenched near his mouth.
“Metzger!” I shouted, whipping my head up to look for the stretcher bearer that was assigned to us. Each infantry battalion was assigned six stretcher bearers, one doctor, and a few orderlies, who manned the first aid station in the very back of the support trenches.
“He’s dead,” Dylan snarled, gasping in short, sharp bursts. Gunfire rattled the air around us.
“What?” I said, turning my head back to my friend. I licked my chapped lips, thinking rapidly of our options. “All right, listen. I’ll... I can get you to the dressing station. It's only four hundred yards away, and after that, I can take you to that church to be collected--”
“I’m not gonna make it,” Dylan said mournfully. His voice was fuzzy in my ears, but I ignored that. He was paper white, and his pulse was weak when I checked it. “Just leave me behind.”
“Would you please be quiet?” I snapped. “You’re going to be fine, Dylan. Just fine.”
Dylan moaned, and I cast my eyes about for something I could use to fashion a pressure bandage, as I was all out. I ended up cutting the shirt off of a still warm corpse--Schuhmacher, the body's name was Schuhmacher, and I wished that I could have left him near Eberstark, where he would have wanted to be--and ripping it into long strips.
I watched for rapid swelling at the wound site, and was relieved to find that there were no signs of internal bleeding. After folding a strip of shirt, I pressed down on the wound with it, adding more strips once the blood soaked through. With my other hand, I pressed a pressure point high on his thigh. The blood eventually petered out, as far as I could tell. Oh, this is going to get infected.
Shivering, I took Schuhmacher's jacket and draped it over Dylan, praying he wasn’t going into shock. I knew Dylan secretly pined after Schuhmacher, so I could at least give him his coat.
Next, I managed to find a tarp resting in the mud a little ways away from where I’d laid him. I carted the tarp back to him, and carefully spread it out at the top of the trench, ducking my head against the sounds of rifles firing. I ditched my hundred pound pack, reasoning that I needed to drag Dylan more than I needed supplies.
I jumped back into the trench, landing in a crouch. “All right,” I said to Dylan. “I’m going to drag you out of here and lay you on a tarp. Then I’ll get you to the field hospital. Affirmative?”
Dylan bit his lip as sweat rolled down his pale face. He nodded, and I looped my arms under him, hauling him up and over the edge of the trench and onto the tarp. Dylan screamed again as his leg bounced off a rock, and I tried to make him comfortable, adjusting the jacket. “It’s only four hundred yards,” I assured my friend. “We’ll be there in no time.”
“Krueger,” Dylan gasped, grabbing me by the wrist. “Thanks.”
I nodded. I patted my friend on the shoulder and seized the tarp, my strong muscles buoyed by adrenaline. Rae's ward buzzed me, but I didn't have time to react. Just as I started running, something struck my shoulder with the force of a sledgehammer. I toppled onto my stomach, dropping the tarp. Shiva wept! I've been shot!
For the first thirty seconds or so, my arm just shut down; I couldn't move or feel my fingers, and I was afraid that I'd lost them. Warm blood flowed over my arm, and dripped down over my fingers. Pain kicked in, then, and the heat; it was like a hot nail being hammered into my flesh. I drew a ragged breath, clutching the wound--which was a bad idea. Gasping, I tore my fingers away from the hole in my shirt, skin burning.
But I had to grab it again, to control the bleeding. I shivered and sniffled as I clutched my shoulder, and rested my head against the muddy ground. Eventually, the warm blood turned sluggish under my fingers. It wasn't bright, so I didn't think they'd hit an artery, but the bone...
I heard the loud crackle-pop of more gunfire, and Dylan groaning underneath that, which reminded me of my mission--and the threat still around us. I clenched a fist to see if I still could--and I couldn't. I could barely flex my arm--which made me cry out. I was clumsy and my movements were slow. Skin still burning and vision swimming with pain, I staggered to my feet--which burned. I desperately wrapped my good arm under Dylan's, and started dragging him behind me. He held on.
A shell burst yards away, making my teeth chatter beyond my normal chills. I set off towards the east, towards the dressing station.
Then the pain in my shoulder lessened a little. My heart pounded a loud staccato in my chest. I used the adrenaline to cover more ground, despite feeling light-headed. After about three minutes, the blessed shock wore off, and the real pain set in. What used to be pressure was now a tremendous, gnawing ache, as if someone had bitten a chunk out of my back and set fire to the wound.
I kept going for another minute and a half. There was nothing more I could do, and Dylan needed me. We zig-zagged around the trenches, which looked like the edge of a stamp. My feet burned, my teeth chattered, and my shoulder screamed with pain. Soon, the dressing station was in view, and I dragged Dylan into the tent. "Wounded men!" I called, and an orderly came rushing over. It was Färber, a man with a terrible bedside manner who was excellent with a needle and thread.
"Where--" he started.
"My left shoulder, here, and his leg," I explained, shivering despite the way my shoulder throbbed. I was woozy, and if I moved my head too quickly, my vision blurred.
"Sit down before you fall on your pale rump," Färber snapped, and I gratefully sank down onto a stool, feeling nauseated. He had another orderly come to attend to Dylan. They couldn't do much for us here but stop the bleeding and send us on our way to the collection point a mile and a half away for the field hospital. There, the doctors would dig the bullets out of us and send us even further away from the front to recover.
Färber and his aide were efficient, and had us cleaned and bandaged up before I finished processing that they'd cut a great deal of my shirt off. Then he did something which endeared him to me immensely: gave me a shot of morphia.
"This'll start working in fifteen minutes, and hit its peak around forty-five minutes," Färber said, and double-checked my bandages. "You think you can hoof it to the church if I give you a stretcher bearer for him?"
I glanced back at Dylan, getting his own shot of blessed morphia. "Yes."
"Good. Stick around until the drugs kick in, and then get out of here," Färber said gruffly. He strung me up with a sling and patted me on my good arm.
I nodded and stood--my legs feeling like jelly and my feet prickling--and went to sit on the ground next to Dylan. He clutched the coat spread over him in his bloody fingers.
"Schumacher's dead?" he choked out. Dylan started crying for reasons other than fear and pain, and I turned my head, leaving him to his grief.
“But you’re going to make it,” I said softly.
He nodded at me, and I kept my good hand on his pulse for ten minutes or so, shivering with pain. When the morphia kicked in, I choked out a relieved sob. My shoulder still felt like someone had shoved a hot coal under my flesh, but the pain killers took enough of an edge off of it that I didn't care anymore. It also helped my feet. But I was tired. So tired. I wondered if Dylan would mind if I closed my eyes.
Then a big, older man came over with the stretcher. His nametag read Klein, and he was all business. "You boys going to the church?"
"Yeah," I said, raising my head woozily.
Klein grunted as he lifted Dylan--who cried out--from the ground onto the stretcher. The first half mile or so running across the support trenches was a blur. Dylan groaned, Klein remained stoic and silent, and I pumped my legs as fast as they would go. I stopped, once, panting and dizzy as I clung to a tree with my good arm. Then I heard rifle fire again, saw the muzzles flash to the west.
I pushed off from the tree, shaking from chills and soaked in sweat. I cleared my throat, and nodded at my two brothers who'd waited for me. My arms and feet and hands ached, and Klein dragged my friend across the muck. I tried to dodge the corpses, tried not to think of them as people.
After that, I had to stop more and more frequently to rest. Once, when I glanced over my wounded shoulder, I saw that Dylan had his eyes closed and his mouth open. Blood pooled under his thigh.
I panicked.
“Dylan!” I called, dropping to my shaky knees. With blood-stained fingers, I felt his neck for his pulse. “Dylan, wake up!”
“Jeez,” Dylan groaned eventually, shaking his head. “The hell is wrong with you. I was jus’ sleepin’.”
"Let him sleep," Klein snapped.
I sagged in place, exhausted myself. You lucky--! I wanted to punch him, wanted to scream, wanted to turn the stretcher over and just leave him to die in a ditch. Then relief rushed in, cooling the frustration, and I hung my tired head.
We kept running. In the middle of the night, a British soldier leapt out from behind a bush, pointing his gun at me. I was so terrified, I couldn't think on how he got there.
Klien pulled up short, eliciting a grunt from Dylan, and swore under his breath. I gasped and thrust my good hand up--biting back a sob from the brief stabbing sensation in my shoulder. Oh, no, please, no, no, no… God, no! Don’t let me die here!
“Wounded?” the enemy said, in accented German. He flicked the barrel of his gun towards Dylan. Our enemy was young, possibly younger than I was. The boy’s fingers were white as they gripped his rifle, and he almost looked like he’d cut himself shaving that morning.
“Yes,” I said, in English. My legs trembled, and my vision blurred from pain and fear. Sweat trickled down my spine, and I felt dizzy again.
The soldier regarded us with a steely eye, and I swallowed. I choked back a sob, wishing once more that I’d said goodbye to my friends properly, that I could see my mother again. I wanted to scream again. I'm not ready to die!
“Carry on, then,” the Brit said in English, gesturing with his weapon, and I inhaled a great gulp of air.
We kept walking. I stopped well afterwards, crumpling into a heap at the foot of a tree to shiver and sob and vomit. Dizzy and feverish, I bit down on a knuckle as tears rolled down my cheeks. I gasped repeatedly; I couldn’t get enough air.
Klein said nothing. He simply looked away.
“You all right?” Dylan said weakly. I was alarmed once again that I could barely hear him, but quickly chalked that fuzziness, that buzzing in my ears, up to Dylan’s not speaking loudly.
My breath hitched twice as I tried to compose myself. “Y-Yes, I’m f-fine.”
“No, you ain't, Krueger,” Dylan said, and I smiled, however brief. “But this place is awful. It’s awright to cry.”
I removed my dirty glasses to scrub at my eyes with a filthy, blood-stained palm. My good hand. “My name isn’t Krueger. It’s Autor.”
Dylan paused for a moment. I could hear him moving his head on the stretcher. "That's a crappy name, Krueger. No wonder you didn't tell me."
“Pfft!” I said, replacing my glasses. "What kind of name is Dylan?"
“You can kiss my butt once you're done dragging it."
I barked out a broken, raspy laugh. "Forget you, Krause."
I hauled myself to my feet and walked. The last half mile was torture. Each step was hard and heavy, and I sank into the mud. I shuddered at the distant sounds of shells and gunfire, and my head throbbed. My shoulder burned; it was all I could do to keep from focusing on the hot poker pressing there. I staggered forward, wheezing. My ankle turned, and I fell, landing chest first.
“Krueger,” Klein barked, and I almost heard Oberleutnant Nadel in it. “Krueger! Get up!”
“Can’t,” I said, the air from my rasping breaths making small bubbles in the mud. Blood-tinged sputum pooled in my mouth; blood caked over my fingers. My shoulder and feet ached as sharply as ever. Chills rocked my body, and sweat clung to my neck and back. A tight band of fire circled my chest, and I was nauseated again.
I closed my eyes, and wanted to fall asleep there more than anything else in the world.
“You have to!” Dylan hissed. “You don’t want to die out here, do you? Autor, tell me you don’t want to die.”
I wanted to. Death would be easier than drawing breath, than dragging that sorry, wounded Dylan halfway through hell. It wouldn’t be quick, but it would be sweet.
But then I thought of my friends. What kind of man would I be if I left them behind? Katya would get up, I thought, drowsy. So would Rae.
“I don’t… I don’t want to die,” I said, pressing my aching, bloody palm on the ground. Tears cut trails in the mud on my face as I slowly--painfully--pushed myself up. I swayed on my tingling feet for a moment, drawing as deep a breath as I could take. Then I moved on, step after painful, plodding step.