Red Dawn

Shiela screamed as another mortar shell blew against the bunker walls, sending debri spraying all over. Beside her, Alan lay, only barely conscious, clutching the bloody mess that used to be his arm. He wasn't going to make it, he knew only too well, but he wasnt going to lie around trapped in this hell hole, waiting for it to collapse and crush them to death.

"Hey lady!" Alan called out through the rising dust cloud. "Can you help me tie up my arm?"

It wasn't so much a question, more of a plea for help. He removed his right hand, revealing the ivory white of bone admist burnt flesh and skin. He grit his teeth as he tore of a piece of shrapnel still stuck in the smoking flesh. But the searing pain he had expected did not come, instead it was just a dull ache now; he was dying.

Shiela tied up his arm as best as she could with a strap of cloth ripped from the bottom of her tank top. If this was any other day, she'd have found herself pretty sexy with her well defined midriff exposed. But this was not, she winced as the soldier she barely knew half-stumbled onto his feet and slung his rifle over his good arm.

"Hey, I know I look good babe, but you can stare later," Alan flirted, giddy from the lost of blood. "C'mon, let's get you out of here."

If the bunker was a hell hole, outside it would be hell itself. Gunfire stang the air- a symphony with the shouted battle orders and the cries of the dying. They ran for the cover of the trees with bullets peppering just inches around them, so fast that Alan almost ran straight into one of the camoflaged gunmen. Both men saw each other at the same time, but Alan was faster. He swung the rifle up, firing off a neat burst of three rounds. sending red erupting out from square of the man's chest as he flew back into a tree, dead.

Alan would've thought he could survive it after all. He would have. If not for the 5.56mm shell that penetrated his skull, sending his brains spraying over the foilage.