Another afterlife themed one, just the sort of frame my mind is in at the moment.
Valhalla. In the old times men spoke of leaving this life for one of eternal war, where they would fight enemies so indisputably evil that the gods themselves fought by your side. Then, these men were lost to the dust of history, left behind as new gods filled the void in men?s hearts but Valhalla remained. The Vikings left, the gods fell. But Valhalla remembers and Valhalla waits.
Hans held to his rifle, looking nervously at the men with whom he had retreated this far. So many were lost to Russian snow or Russian soldiers or Russian artillery, so many of the boys with whom he had paraded in ?41 had become frozen corpses by the side of the road. Now, he thought to himself, only the historians will care who we were. Otto was on the other side of the hole so charitably designated as a trench by Sergeant Heartling. Somehow, through all that they had seen, Otto remained optimistic, still cracking jokes, still confident that Dr. Goebbels told him the truth. The smile had been a rock they could all depend on from Leningrad to the Ukraine to Seelow and now in the inner blocks of Berlin.
The Russians were just across the square from Hans? squad, waiting for that one moment to strike. Somewhere, a rifle cracked. Otto?s head snapped back, spraying Karl with a mist of blood. The next round found its way into Hans? throat and he died, gurgling, in front of the steps of the Reichstag.
Hans looked around, shocked. His rifle was still in his hands, he was still alive, Otto unharmed. There was still hope. He must have slipped into another of the nightmares that had followed him home from the snow. Heartling had always insisted that defeatism would lead to nowhere but depression. He remembered how innocent Otto had been in 42, hoping for an Iron cross by 43. They all knew that he had lied about his age to enter the army, but that did not really seem such an issue when Hitler youth were being conscripted alongside Great War veterans. He was so deep in his relief that he actually failed to notice the sound at first, a low howling, like the wind; but when the Russian war cry reached its zenith, all hope drained from his face. They came like ghosts from the smoke and Hans died standing in front of Otto, bayoneted by a soviet soldier while a cry of ?URRA! URRA!? seemed to shake the very ground he stood on.
Hans blinked, crouching back in the hole that had pretensions of being a trench. Something was wrong here; he could still feel the pain of the bayonet in his gut. He turned to Otto, to seek some comfort in the smile that the Russians had yet to crush, but failed to set eyes on his friend before the artillery began to land. He tried to huddle deeper into the hole, but to no avail, for one of Stalin?s organs took life from all his friends in less time for it had taken them all to light a cigarette at breakfast.
Hans leapt from the trench, running towards the Reichstag as fast as his legs would carry him. He only managed a few steps before Sergeant Heartling him shot him for cowardice in the face of the enemy.
Hans waited, and wondered whether he was in hell. He had always felt that his service for the fatherland had been pure, but now he began to wonder. There had been that family in the Ukraine, but orders had been clear and the son had shot Heinrich. For Christ?s sake, he just wanted it to end, to not have to see the look in Otto?s eyes as pieces of metal , somehow both cold and impersonal and blazing hot, tore his life from him. The Russians were not here yet, but somehow, he knew they would come. He turned away from Otto, so the boy would not have to see the fear in his eyes as he put the rifle to his chin. Jerking the trigger, Hans sent a burning piece of cold, impersonal metal through his brain, bringing merciful darkness.
Hans screamed, a heart tearing sound that sent his friends recoiling away from him in fear.? Let me go?, he begged, ?I?m sorry!? he insisted and for a moment, another scene was imposed over the stage that no man?s land provided. The Ukrainian family knelt in front of the squad, begging in their incomprehensible barbarian language. Sergeant Heartland dragged the corpse of corporal Weiss in front of them, demanding that they look. Hans, Karl and Otto took positions behind the family and shot them, trying as hard as possible to focus on anything but what they were doing. Otto even cracked a joke afterwards, sad that there were no medals for work such as this. That smile, that now seemed more sinister than comforting, only cracked when the rifles did, and was back before the next round was chambered. Hans was so focused on the scene that he failed to see the bullet that ended his life.
Hans could not bear to look at his friends anymore, instead he hid from their gaze in the hole that had been called a trench and waited to die. Every once in a while, he could see the family watching his personal hell. They never appeared joyous, never vengeful, only a frozen of fear and submission. Other faces came and went, all silent, but all from the places the squad had been, that girl sniper from Leningrad, the deserter and his family in Breslau, the old Jew from the outskirts of Moscow and that family, that goddamn fucking family...
Hans began to hate his friends, for living oblivious while he suffered. He began to see visions of his family, raped and murdered by red army soldiers; he saw his home, burnt to a cinder because his younger brother had been caught hiding some bread when the soviets searched it. Every time he closed his eyes to shield himself from the horrors of the pit he died anew, blinking afresh in the same damned hole. How long had he been here? Did the war continue? Where the visions of his family true?
In time, he noticed something new, something that had always been there, hidden by self pity and fear. There were only four Germans visible from the pit which was not a trench. Sergeant Heartling looked out across no man?s land, scanning for Russians. Karl slumped against the earthen wall of the hole, as depressed as he had been on the first day that Hans had died and Otto... Otto hugged his rifle as if it could actually protect him against the hell that was now his home. There were no voices exhorting loyalty to the fatherland or hatred for the Ivan, only a slight muttering coming from Otto. For the first time in his memory of death and rebirth, Hans looked into his friend?s eyes. What he saw was no longer a man, but an animal, afraid of the snare. Hans saw this, as the boy?s mutterings became comprehensible for one brief moment before the Russians charged again,
?Bitte, Bittie, Nien, Bitte...?
Because even when the men who spoke of her are dust, even when the gods have fallen and their replacements faded; even when the stars have winked out and the wars that feed her are forgotten, Valhalla will remember, Valhalla will wait and with the cries of the fallen innocents ringing in her ears, Valhalla will never, ever forgive.