SuperPantherAnon

>I wake up to the smell of smoke and a popping sound like firecrackers. The room is unfamiliar. A low bed of dark-stained wood lies stands in a corner. Blankets and sheets have been stripped away. So have most of the clothes from a standing closet. The building starts to shake, and I head to a window and peer past the blinds. A red sun is setting on the horizon as the town burns. A tank starts to rumble past, angular like some German WW2 tank. The top is some sort of pinkish red and the bottom a light tan. It's followed by a stream of tan-clad soldiers like ants. They hold mostly old-style wooden rifles. It's like WW2 footage from class coming to life mixed with the news I used to see every night as a kid.

>The advance is slow; every soldier aims his rifle at every window and door they pass. From where I am, it looks like some sort of hedgehog around the tank. I freeze unable to do anything as a machinegunner stares down the window where I'm watching this procession. The soldier then takes the weapon from his shoulder and look down the street. The tank halts and twenty or so soldiers press against buildings on each side of the street. Another tank clanks around the corner followed by still more soldiers. This time, they come bringing the long tubes of bazookas.

>It takes less than a second. A concussive blast thumps through my chest. The lead tank seems to be shoved back a few feet. It belches smoke for a moment, and then explodes. I fall back, shielding my face from the flames as the windows shatter. But I cannot stop, I move to another window. It's like one of those silent movies or being underwater. The ground floor wall of a building across the street is nothing more than a mess of bricks. A long smoking barrel looms from the shadows, attached to a dust-covered tank. It's the spitting image of all those tanks from pictures of the Highway of Death. Flashes of erupt from concealed loopholes, catching the troops still stunned from the exploding tank. Their mouths erupt in screams I can't hear through my ringing ears.

>At once, a bunch of soldiers burst into the room. They grab me and drag me into a corner. One with a machine gun sets up at the window and starts spraying across the street. Another soldier is yelling at him, and then the machinegunner falls transfixed as a hail of bullets rips through the window and into the room. He clutches at his chest, writhing and soundlessly screaming until he stops moving altogether.

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.