Hearing

Hearing slowly returns.

A soldier crouches under the window and blindly fires his small submachinegun over the windowsill. One of the soldiers with a few shiny disks on the collar of his uniform starts shouting over the chaos. It’s now that I can get a better look at them. Their uniforms are covered in rust-red blobs and dark green flecks, almost like pictures from the Gulf War; but their jackboots and the shape of their helmets make them seem like a poor man’s Nazis.

“Get the dead and wounded to the kitchen. Find me Barbas and Constantin.”

A pair of soldiers with devices that look like tubes with a shovel handle attached at the base crawl under the window to their apparent leader.

“If we get you a table from downstairs, do you think you could lob grenades into that building we’re taking fire from across the street?”

“What?”

They must have also been partially deafened from the exploding tank.

“Can you blast the fuckers across the street if we get a table to shoot your fucking mortars off of?” he shouts this time.

“One of us could,” replies one of the two mortar guys.

“Good! And set up in the back of the room so they can’t really see you. Demetrios, let the kid go.”

The big guy restraining me backs off and grabs his rifle. He stands up quickly to take a shot through the window and ducks back down to work the bolt. I can’t stop my heart pounding under the cracks of rifle fire. The leader guy reaches into his jacket and lights a cigarette. More soldiers come up the stairs with a small table. One of the mortarmen sets his backpack on the table and braces his small mortar against it. He grabs what I assume is a grenade from his satchel and stuffs it down the barrel. He leans over the table like a pool player.

“Ears!” someone yells.

I instantly plug my ears as the blast of the mortar rattles my teeth.

“You get them?”

“Hit the wall! Trying to get it through one of the windows!” yells the mortar-man.

He loads another grenade and fires. Even braced as he is and with the backpack between him and the weapon, the fierce recoil shoves him back.

He ducks under the table as some bullet rip into the room.

“Got ‘em!”

The leader gives the mortar-man a quick hug and gets ready to run to another room to, I assume, issue orders. Before he leaves, he comes to me and ruffles my hair.

“You’re gonna be alright, kid. We’re gonna kick them back across the mountains.”

I feel the concussion as a tank fires its main gun outside followed by a piercing “Whang!” Then I feel a the thump of another cannon. A soldier looks outside and curses.

“They got our other tank!”

He leans out of the window to take a quick rifle shot and pulls back. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a clip and stuffs it into his rifle. A small trapdoor opens and an empty clip falls out the bottom of the rifle.

“Did the crew make it out?” asks another soldier with some chevrons on his collar.

He looks out the window again.

“Two of them. Wait, one more crawled out from underneath!”

I hear the chatter of a distant machinegun.

“They’re pinned down. Looks like one of them is hurt. Wait, someone is going out to try and get them out of there. Shit, he got shot!”

I don’t know why. I must be going mad, but I get up and rush down the stairs. I look around and find a door to the street. I hear the dentist’s drill zip of bullets, but all I need is to see the pained face of one of the tankers whose dark pants glisten with blood to know that I’m doing the right thing. I run out into the street.