“They’ve already hit the south part of town! And the fire’s expanding fast!”
“We’ll have to escape to the north… Either get to high ground or take cover by the river…”
The sound of wooden buildings crackling and burning all around us only served to heighten the pandemonium. Everyone was panicking, their eyes bloodshot, as they scrambled to get to higher ground. But this wasn’t the direction I wanted to go, so I turned against the current and pushed my way backward through the crowd.
Before I could properly evacuate, I needed to go back home first.
Something told me this might be the last opportunity I’d get.
The bombs fell ceaselessly, with no end in sight.
I looked up and saw a plane zip right over my head at a shockingly low altitude, pelting the next street over with a hail of machine gun fire.
The firebombing left gaping holes in the walls of just about every building nearby, and I could see the flames reaching up to the wooden rafters within.
If even one of those bombs landed anywhere near me, I’d be done for.
Shuddering, I picked up the pace. At one point, I glanced back over my shoulder to see another rain of machine gun fire coming toward me just a hundred meters or so down the street, and I had to duck into a nearby alleyway.
I was so scared, I couldn’t even scream. It felt like I was an NPC in a video game, running helplessly in circles as the player ran around the map shooting at any moving target they could find, just for the fun of it. Eventually, though, I could hear the sound of plane engines growing more distant, and I could feel the tension in my nerves lowering ever so slightly.
But just as I was beginning to let my guard down, the eaves of one of the houses nearby suddenly burst in flames and smoke, and a gust of hot wind enveloped my entire body. With the sleeve of my shirt, I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop sweating; there were so many fires all around me, large and small, that it felt like I was walking through a raging furnace. I could feel my throat being scalded from smoke inhalation, and my eyes began to water. I held my hand towel up to cover my mouth and nose so as not to breathe in any more smoke as I ran down the street.
A little way further off, I spotted a young girl collapsed by the roadside.
“Are you okay?!” I cried out as I rushed over and knelt down beside her.
But the moment I placed my hand on her shoulder, a chill ran down my spine.
Her body had gone completely and utterly limp. Fearfully, I leaned down to bring my ear close to her lips—but she was no longer breathing. I looked over at her face as she lay there on her side. Her cheeks were covered in soot. Her eyes halfway open. Her pupils hollow and lifeless, despite the flicker of dancing flames reflecting brightly within them.
I closed her eyelids and wiped her cheeks, then staggered back to my feet.
No sooner had I started walking away than I felt a sudden tightness in my stomach, followed by the taste of bile in the back of my throat. With a groan, I keeled over and vomited by the roadside, before wiping my tears and running off as fast as I could—though it was really more like stumbling, with how unsteady my legs were.
Shortly thereafter, I saw a mother and child standing in disbelief outside the smoldering wreckage of their home. There was nothing I could do for them, so I simply moved on. I could already feel myself growing numb to the tragedy of it all.
Perhaps this was the nature of war.
All this pain and suffering—so many innocent people losing their lives, their homes, their loved ones—all because two countries’ governments decided they couldn’t settle their differences through any means but violence. Only now that I was seeing it with my own two eyes did I understand the true horror and stupidity of it all.
Another rain of machine-gun fire came blazing down the street. I knew if I stayed out here in the open, I’d be a sitting duck—so I hid myself briefly inside a nearby building, peeking out through a crack in the doorway until the plane had passed. As it flew directly overhead, the loud hum of its engine combined with the sound of gunfire made my ears ring so sharply that, for a moment, I feared I might have gone deaf.
And it was in those few soundless seconds that, out of nowhere, I could see an old man burst out from the house across the street, right into the middle of the road.
I tried to cry out to him, but my voice didn’t reach.
He was running for cover to a bunker in the yard.
But the rain of bullets arrived before he could make it there.
I was powerless to do anything but watch it happen.
The bullets pierced right through the old man’s body, sending spurts of blood bursting from every exit wound. Then, after he fell to his knees on the ground, the plane dropped a parting gift right in the man’s yard, which exploded mere inches from his lifeless body, splattering his remains across the outer walls of his home.
It all happened so fast—in the span of a split second, as the plane zipped right by.
I waited until I couldn’t hear its engine anymore, then stumbled back outside.
Bits and pieces of the man were scattered all over his front doorstep.
I stood there in stupefied horror, right in the middle of the road, as the bright red flames and pillars of jet-black smoke grew higher and higher all around me.
…Why was this happening?
What had any of these people done to deserve this?