Part I
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Manoel Carvalho sat on the boards just above the mud in the trench. He would not be one of those who would get trenchfoot. He'd seen some of the horrors of men pulling off their boots to see that their foot was still in it, and he didn't plan to be one of them. The rainforest was perhaps the worst place to be sitting in a trench. Dryer North America would have been more hospitable, but the war in North America was over--for the SUSA, at least--so he didn't have that luck.
Had he been lucky, he'd be back working on the Ordenz Project. Or better yet, he would never have joined the Ordenz Project because there would not have been a war with the potential of a draft, and he'd still be at home on the piano, practicing a piece by Beethoven before the next concert. But of course, no such luck for him. The Venezuelans decided to attack the SUSA, and he, just as every other man in the trench, was left to be stomped on in the war between the giants.
But it wasn't all bad, right? After all, Manoel now had a soldiers training. When a shell fell, this time he instinctively fell to the ground to avoid the shrapnel, rather than getting some in the back. He still had the scar from that unfortunate incident. He no longer depended on other soldiers to protect him. He protected himself. Of course, with greater skill comes greater responsibility. He had a soldier's skill. That skill would be exercised quite frequently up here.
"Attack!" The call was heard throughout the trenches, but it didn't mean that they were to rise to attack. What it ment was that the Venezuelans were coming across the field between the trenches, and Manoel was charged with killing as many of them as he could. Manoel kept his head low, then rose quickly to see Venezuelans coming at him, running across the land between the trenches. Manoel raised his gun to his shoulder and started firing. Men all along the trench did the same. The poor Venezuelan soldiers had poor cover, and they shot at random, though it didn't do them much good. Venezuelan after Venezuelan fell to fire.
Manoel didn't think about the lives he was ending with each twitch of the trigger finger. He'd thought about that prior to this instant; thought about it quite often, actually. Men undoubtedly much like him were coming across the field to meet his bullet. He'd tried to rationalize it; someone else was pulling the trigger, not him. He was not responsible at all for this massacre. And the Socialists could just as easily sent
him out of the trenches and to his own impending doom. He was just lucky enough that he was on the right side of the war, the side that didn't want to send men futilely to the other side to be shot. And after all, the Venezuelans he was shooting were responsible for their own deaths. They were a democracy, after all. Their government was chosen by them. They could have stopped it. It's their choice, really.
Nonetheless, he started to feel pain in the trigger finger. It didn't like to twitch any more. His eyes glazed over men's blood, and rather than looking at the product of what they had done they looked for someone else to do it to again. Avoiding it was much easier than facing it. Thus his eyes flickered all over the battle field, darting again and again to look for and to look away from. He didn't count how many he had killed. His orders were to kill as many as he could in as short a time as possible. He knew he was killing a lot; knowing you killed a lot is better than knowing you killed 42. "A lot" is vague; sometimes, two is a lot. "42" was specific, and he'd have to live with 42 ghosts asking him why he gets to live and why they don't.
The Venezuelans had taken heavy casualties, and their blood made more mud: red mud. Seeing them turn and run did not stop Manoel from shooting. He knew his orders. Kill as many as you could. He was not being a coward for shooting a man in the back. The officer was. He was just the appendage of the officer's orders. He was no more guilty than, say, his arm. So he kept shooting.
The "all clear" was sounded, and Manoel sunk back into the trench. He was hungry. He reached into his bag and pulled out a banana. One thing that was nice about bananas was that the skin could get wet without the meat getting wet. They were one of the safest foods to eat in the trench; he didn't have to worry about disease too much from one of them. Therefore they consisted most of his diet in the trenches. He peeled it and took a bite.
Aircraft started to rumble above. He knew the sound of the engine, and was glad that it was a friendly sound. They were Wasps, coming from the south to pound the Venezuelan trenches. He again was glad he was on the right side of the war: the planes attacked the trenches, not himself. If he went against the trench himself, he was as good as dead; a Wasp, on the other hand, did damage, even more than he did. Plus this was not blood on his hands. There was no doubt that someone else would be responsible for that.
He continued to eat his banana as the Wasps dived down on the Venezuelans, dropping their payloads. The explosions went on in the background as he threw the peel over the trench and reached into his bag for another banana. Let the giants wrestle, for a while. He was content to sit back, for now.