There is noise beyond the doorway of the mess tent, a dull roar of vague origin. As they get closer the noise differentiates to something more specific. Screams and explosions and the rat-a-tat-tat of weapons fire.
Beyond the opening in the curtain is a place where shimmering waves of Stuff have changed the landscape, waives of Unreality sweeping over what was once an army camp that was far away from the front.
To be inside "war" as a concept is different than to be in a war, and yet in terms of the way it smells, the way it sounds, the horror piled upon horror, it’s a distinction without difference. You usually don’t know where your enemy is coming from in the middle of combat anyway; this time, the enemy is just everywhere and anywhere all at once.
It’s a battlefield, and a battalion of soldiers is pinned down under rains of bullet fire. They hunker behind tanks and supply trucks and dikes. An officer tries to yell commands at his soldiers, and is thrown to the ground dead as a half his body is torn to shreds by a grenade.
It’s hard to breathe. Chemical gas rams up against the acid stink of gunpowder and body odor and then gets steamrolled by the overwhelming, unique and impossible-to-mistake stench of death. Flecks of ash flit around in the air, riding plumes of smoke that would look majestic if they could just be mistaken for clouds instead of vehicles burning with shrieking people trapped inside. It’s hard to hear, too, with the cries of the wounded and the terrified, with radio reporter chatter and shouted orders and explosion and gunshot after gunshot, periodic rains of clumped earth and worse down.
The soldiers are wearing a confusing blend of uniforms. A good portion of them look like they're wearing the fatigues of soldiers from the early 21st century. But others wear uniforms from a variety of countries and time periods. Phantom soldiers wearing red coats clash with World War I doughboys in gas masks, pouring out of trenches in numbers that should be impossible. Members of a RAF regiment leans out from behind the wreckage of several downed Spitfires as they fire at Grande Armée chasseurs with muskets.
Soldiers drop as if hit by sniper-fire, but the bullets have simply appeared inside them. Limbs vanish, blown off by invisible grenades. Body parts stick up out of the ground in all stages of decay, from the freshly amputated to the remnants of unearthed mass graves. Puddles of blood soak into the soil more slowly than they can be filled by new deaths. A tank tips over sideways, but it’s no longer a tank but a tank-shaped mass of bodies melded together and melded with weapons, rifles where arms should be and landmines for heads.
A young dying man, missing both legs below the knee, looks at Kerrigan and Stacia and opens his mouth to scream, but all that comes out is the chak-chak-chak of artillery fire and a glob of blood and motor oil.
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Beyond the opening in the curtain is a place where shimmering waves of Stuff have changed the landscape, waives of Unreality sweeping over what was once an army camp that was far away from the front.
To be inside "war" as a concept is different than to be in a war, and yet in terms of the way it smells, the way it sounds, the horror piled upon horror, it’s a distinction without difference. You usually don’t know where your enemy is coming from in the middle of combat anyway; this time, the enemy is just everywhere and anywhere all at once.
It’s a battlefield, and a battalion of soldiers is pinned down under rains of bullet fire. They hunker behind tanks and supply trucks and dikes. An officer tries to yell commands at his soldiers, and is thrown to the ground dead as a half his body is torn to shreds by a grenade.
It’s hard to breathe. Chemical gas rams up against the acid stink of gunpowder and body odor and then gets steamrolled by the overwhelming, unique and impossible-to-mistake stench of death. Flecks of ash flit around in the air, riding plumes of smoke that would look majestic if they could just be mistaken for clouds instead of vehicles burning with shrieking people trapped inside. It’s hard to hear, too, with the cries of the wounded and the terrified, with radio reporter chatter and shouted orders and explosion and gunshot after gunshot, periodic rains of clumped earth and worse down.
The soldiers are wearing a confusing blend of uniforms. A good portion of them look like they're wearing the fatigues of soldiers from the early 21st century. But others wear uniforms from a variety of countries and time periods. Phantom soldiers wearing red coats clash with World War I doughboys in gas masks, pouring out of trenches in numbers that should be impossible. Members of a RAF regiment leans out from behind the wreckage of several downed Spitfires as they fire at Grande Armée chasseurs with muskets.
Soldiers drop as if hit by sniper-fire, but the bullets have simply appeared inside them. Limbs vanish, blown off by invisible grenades. Body parts stick up out of the ground in all stages of decay, from the freshly amputated to the remnants of unearthed mass graves. Puddles of blood soak into the soil more slowly than they can be filled by new deaths. A tank tips over sideways, but it’s no longer a tank but a tank-shaped mass of bodies melded together and melded with weapons, rifles where arms should be and landmines for heads.
A young dying man, missing both legs below the knee, looks at Kerrigan and Stacia and opens his mouth to scream, but all that comes out is the chak-chak-chak of artillery fire and a glob of blood and motor oil.