He had to go. This had been a mistake. Just like signing up with the BEF. Just like transferring to the infantry after Hooge chateau. Just like the whole stupid war.
Alex stumbled through the crowd-rudely, but if the fools didn’t know by now to keep their heads down, it was their own stupid fault. Served them right if a sniper took them out. Several protested, a couple even shoved back at him, but he had to get out.
His body shook with fear. He had to get out.
“Stay here, ye daft bastard!”
“Sergeant, it’s a mess out there,” Alex grunted.
“Man, get the fuck off me!”
“Help me! Someone help me!”
“Ow! Watch it, asshole!”
“My leg… I need help…”
“I can’t move. Don’t leave me here!”
“Don’t even think about it, Shanahan!”
Alex broke free into the aisle, stumbling to his hands and knees in the darkness. Everything was wet from the rain, but at least he could move. He hustled to his feet and ran.
Sergeant Tinney called after him, telling him to get back under cover, but he’d never liked Tinney, anyway. He stayed low as he rushed out of the auditorium. He didn’t ask where the door came from. He just pushed his way through it.
Neither the bright lights nor open, welcoming space of the lobby registered in his mind. He saw only darkness and mud, felt only the rain on his skin and the weary ache of his muscles, and heard the silence shattered by an artillery shell as the door behind him slammed shut again.
He flung himself to the ground and covered up. It was just a single shell. He waited, heard nothing more, and rose into a crouching position to continue toward the voices.
Everything was mud and darkness and more mud. There was precious little light to see by, as the flares never stayed in the air long. Back in ’14, all this artillery would have left more than a few things burning. Three years later, there was nothing left to burn.
Aidan crept and crawled along, heading out to the closest cry for help. At the bottom of a watery crater he found a fellow trooper lying in the mud. The man must’ve been wounded, though in this light Aidan couldn’t see how. The water was already up to his shoulders. It seemed all the man could do to sit mostly upright. “Can you move?” hissed Aidan.
“I’ve one leg shot, but the other’s fine… just stuck in the mud to the knee,” the man said. “Trapped.” His words came out haltingly as he fought through pain. “I can move if I get unstuck.”
A flare went into the sky, offering Aidan a clearer look at the crater. He thought better of rolling in. A man could easily sink both legs into that sort of bog. Jumping straight in would only leave two men trapped in the mud. “Half a moment,” Aidan warned, and crept away looking for wiser of options.
Soon, he found a couple planks of wood amid the remains of a wagon. Aidan crawled back over with them, wishing there was more in the way of cover or shadow out here as he waited out the flickering light of another flare.
The fellow in the crater stared down at something white and grey in his hands. “Hey, I’m back,” Aidan hissed. “Hey! Chum!” Aidan wondered how rattled the man was. He seemed absorbed with his little photograph. “Look here! I’m going to get you out!”
The man looked up. Aidan saw another flare go overhead, cursed at their frequency, and hugged the ground. That was when he recognized his company commander. “Captain Westerbrook?”
The captain just shrugged and looked down at his photo. “Captain,” Aidan whispered urgently, “snap out of it, sir! I’ve got these boards. Put them by your leg so I’ll have something to stand on. We’ll dig you out.”
No response. Aidan fumed, then tossed the boards down into the crater and slipped inside after them. Several times the mud threatened to envelop his foot or his hand, but Aidan trudged through it.
“Captain?” he asked.
“Shouldn’t have come,” the other man mumbled.
“Aye, you and me both, sir,” Aidan agreed, his cheerful Irish accent contrasting with the captain’s morose tones.
“I was married before I left,” Westerbrook continued. “Should’ve stayed.”
“That her?” Aidan asked, not bothering to look as he fished out the boards and set them around Westerbrook’s trapped leg.
The captain sniffed. He nodded, though Aidan didn’t see. “Chelsea.”
“Huh. That’s funny. I’ve a girl named Chelsea, too,” Aidan grinned, probing for the captain’s leg with his shovel. “Londoner like yourself, actually. Met before the war. Alright, sir, I’m gonna give this a shove and try to get your foot some slack, y’see?” He heard the hiss of a flare above them.
“Got to stay quiet, sir,” Aidan warned, glancing up at the flare as it soared overhead, then down at the captain, and the captain’s wedding picture.
It was dark and wet. Shadows and light danced across the photograph as the flare carried on into the night, but Aidan would have known that smile anywhere.
“Son of a bitch,” Aidan murmured. He stared down into the blackness that followed when the light disappeared from the crater. The captain sniffled.
You can’t leave him here, said a voice in his head. He’s too important. More important than you.
Aidan fumed and fought with himself, but he didn’t lash out. He didn’t strike the other man in the head with his shovel, or unsling his rifle and shoot him, or accuse him of stealing Aidan’s girl while he was off to war and Westerbrook was still in school. He thought about doing all those things, of course, but the voice in his head was half right. Westerbrook wasn’t more important than Aidan; he was just another stupid officer. But Aidan couldn’t leave him here. Despite his sins against Aidan-and hell, knowing Chelsea, Westerbrook probably hadn’t a clue-the man didn’t deserve to die out here like this. No one deserved to die alone in a muddy pit.
He leaned in on his shovel, dug into the ground along the side of Westerbrook’s calf and ankle, and fought to give him some space to pry out his foot.
The rain kept falling. Another flare went up. “Move, damn you, sir,” Aidan grunted and shoved. He put his shoulder into the other man’s ribs just to snap him out of it. “Move, for Christ’s sake! You want to see her again or drown out here?”
Westerbrook regained his wits. He put his free foot on Aidan’s other board, leaned over Aidan’s shoulders and struggled to pull his leg out of the mud. Together, they felt him come loose.
“Alright, I’ll give you a boost up and out,” Aidan huffed. He staggered over to the edge of the crater with Westerbrook, wondering absently where he’d find the strength to do this for the next man in the next crater. He put his hands together to give the captain’s mud-soaked good foot a boost and heaved upward. Westerbrook pulled himself up and over, flopping down onto the ground outside.
The rain had picked up. Even standing at the edge, it was almost waist high. Aidan dug his hands into the mud, working to climb his way out as another flare passed overhead.
Aidan didn’t hear the sniper shot that struck him in the small of the back. The pain overrode his other senses. It was more as if he’d remembered hearing the rifle shot rather than actually registering it as it happened. His eyes, squeezing shut in the instant of impact, opened to see Westerbrook shuffling away into the night, looking back once but not stopping to help.