War Torn

• Emily Stevens, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2020

I was walking past the local sporting field near the airport I worked at. It was calm, birds chirping, leaves rustling on the trees. But then, all of a sudden, everything changed. The birds fell silent. The air was filled with suspense.

Suddenly there were sirens going off everwhere and it sounded as if the world was coming to an end. Well that’s what it sounded like to me. After my harrowing experiences in the army, any sirens made me think the world was about to end.

The sirens brought back the memories. They reminded me of the time there was a journalist in the war zone that was telling me what to do even though he wasn’t even an army sergeant. God forbid he wasn’t even a soldier. Or so we all thought.

He kept telling me to evacuate the area, whilst trying to yell into my radio, ‘We need to retreat, NOW!’

This proved to be a big problem because I had tuned my radio into the main channel which meant that all of my comrades could hear the commands this lunatic was screaming! Of course it also caused a major disruption because everyone knew we were trapped anyway. So we couldn't retreat. There was nowhere to go!

I ordered him to stop, but before I could even finish my sentence he reached for my gun! In doing so he revealed the army badges on the jacket under his coat. He wasn't a journalist! In fact not only was he one of our targets, one of the enemy, but I then recognised him to be the person who had started this terrible war.

Immediately following protocol, I shot at him. Not just once but 4 times.

All I heard was a bloodcurdling scream and then silence. It was so quiet. Just like the silence before the sirens went off today.

It later turned out that one of bullets I had shot had gone straight though one of his lungs and his spine. Another had gone straight through his heart.

After that it became a day of celebration across the land. The offending army surrendered due to the death of their leader.

But none of us celebrated. Instead we grieved. Both for the death of our fallen comrades and for the deaths of those we had killed. We wished the war had never happened and, on that day, we swore to never let it happen again.