Sunday, February 13, 2005

Excerpt From New Story I Am Writing.

Good afternoon. Among other things, I, DSDunlap, also write stories... none as yet published. I want to share an excerpt from a new one I'm working on now. There is no title for the story as yet.

Here we go.....

Berlin, Germany 22 June 2010 0947

As the dust rises over the street, a lone soldier crawls back toward his comrades. The sillhouette of the Brandenburg Gate is barely visible in the background, and the sound of shellfire rumbles in the distance. It is a scene right out of Dante's Inferno, with putrefying corpses and dying men moaning for help, water, or simply to be put out of their misery.

As he makes his way back to his position, his only thought is "What would grandfather think of this irony...?" The irony of him crawling back to his comrades, some of whom are Russians. Crawling through the same rubble-strewn streets where his grandfather and the grandfathers of his buddies were trying to kill each other more than six decades ago.

Finally, he makes it back to friendly lines. As he slithers back into the crater, he is greeted with thickly accented German. "What did you find out?" the Russian asks.

"My Arabic isn't all that good," he explains, "but it seems like they're going to try again."

"Well, we'd better get ready. Those goat-fuckers won't be coming with Christmas presents, that's certain."

As the Russian, Zhukolevsky by name, looks out through infrared binoculars, he sees the slowly approaching mass of enemy soldiers. Silently, he signals down the line for everyone to wait for the order to fire. Looking again, he sees a large, terrifying shape looming behind the approaching enemy. He instantly recognizes it as a BT-71, an Islamic Imperial battle tank.

"Here, Klaus, take a look!" Zhukolevsky orders.

The German takes a look, and then mutters something extremely uncomplimentary in German. His blood freezes for a moment, but he soon regains his composure. "Well," Klaus answers, "there's nothing for it but to kill it."

"With what?!" Zhukolevsky interrogates heatedly. "We have no antitank weapons!"

"Give me three grenades and a couple of shoelaces. I'll kill it or die trying."

Having gotten the grenades, he carefully laces one shoelace around the grenades, and then takes the other and laces it through the pin loops and around his left hand. Klaus then disappears into the haze.

Zhukolevsky waits until the first line of enemy infantry emerges from the dust cloud. Two seconds later, he yells, "FIRE!"

As he and his platoon open up, screams of surprise and pain emerge from the attacking infantry. Moments later, the tank fires, and immediately six of his platoon are blasted into eternity. A second shot falls short. So short, in fact, that it sends several Islamofascists to "meet Allah."

The tank turret hatch opens as the tank commander looks to see what went wrong. Seeing his chance, Klaus dashes out from his hiding place and springs atop the turret. He grabs the commander's head and slams it onto the steel surface. In one swift motion he pulls on the shoelace and yanks out the pins on the grenades. He drops them in, shoves the unconscious man in, and kicks the hatch shut as he leaps away. Seconds later, they explode, killing everyone inside and causing a fire inside the tank. The steel beast rumbles to a halt, leaving the supporting infantry to die in a storm of bullets.

The attack halted, klause emerges from the smoke, reaches the trench, and falls in exhausted. As the others celebrate, Klaus looks around. Suddenly, the celebrating ceases. Zhukolevsky looks again, and sees three more BT-71s.

"They're coming again!" he shouts.

This time he has no recourse, and he says a short prayer. He is certaint that Death comes for them all. Steeling himself for the inevitable, he gives the order for a suicide attack. Quietly, each soldire prays and then loads up for a final charge.

While they ready themselves, the roar of jet engines drowns out all else. In the sky above, all see the outlines of two monstrous-looking aircraft. As they fly over, explosions fill the scene in front of the defenders. They all hunker down below the lip of the crater trench as the blast waves clear the air. When they look up again, they can see three tanks burning. A wall of fire engulfs howling men and creaking metal.

Scanning the sky, Klaus recognizes the savior aircraft. "Varthogs!" he proclaims as they fly away. "The Amerikaners!"

The radio crackles,"Thought you might need some help down there." The voices are British, but the markings on the aircraft were clearly American.

"We thought you were Americans," Zhukolevsky proclaims.

"We just got these in this morning and didn't have time to re-mark them."

"Your name, please."

"Flight Captain Ronald Wareham, Royal Air Force. Edward Longshanks Squadron."

"Major Vladimir Zhukolevsky, Eighth Platoon, Special Guards Regiment, Euro-Russian Army."

"Well, Major, we'd best be off. Good luck."

End of Excerpt.

So, what do ya think?

1 Comments:

Blogger Alex said...

That was great!

Nice job DS! More installments in the future, I hope?

8:41 PM  

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