The Sins of Angels - Chapter 2
The green was so thick that it was getting hard to breathe. It was strange, Soda had never noticed humidity like this until he’d been sent to Vietnam. Between the blood, the gunsmoke, and the burning leaves, his throat closed with each smattering choke of his ribcage.
“Curtis! Duck!” On instinct, he dove to the ground, tasting Earth. He thought of home, he thought of his brothers, he thought of his girlfriend. He’d never had this much time for thinking in his entire life. Normally that was a good thing, he couldn’t stand thinking, especially not lately. From the ground he did what he was supposed to. He fired his gun, ducked his head, and fired again.
“Curtis?” The smoke cleared and the gunshots stopped. He turns to find their little platoon. The abandoned factory they’d been clearing out seemed to materialize around him. “You okay?” He takes a deep breath and nods, wiping the dirt off of himself as he stands up.
“We should kill her, shouldn’t we?” One of the guys asks. It’s then that Soda realizes what they’re staring at. They’re standing in a circle around a little girl no older than twelve with a gun strapped to her. She has a gunshot in her stomach, the kind that will take hours to kill her if they leave now. Her fingers curl weakly around the barrel of the gun while her lips move slowly in a prayer of some sort. Her eyes are black and begging the soldiers for something as tears run down the sides of her face. It’s likely that she doesn’t speak any English, but Soda knows what she wants, despite the language barrier.
“My daddy used to have to do this to the horses on our farm.” One of the guys says, not taking his eyes off of the girl. “They’d break a leg or get sick with some disease and he’d put a bullet right between their eyes. He always said it was better to put ‘em outta their misery.”
“Shit…” Soda trails off. At a loss for words in this impossible situation.
“That’s what we gotta do. It’s the decent thing, right? If we don’t then she’ll suffer and if we get her to a hospital then she’ll kill some other GI’s down the line.”
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