Hater

he's dead…
    There's a round of gunfire behind me. I spin around and see that one of the other soldiers has opened fire into the crowd. Many have already fallen, the rest of us try and run for cover but there's nowhere to hide. In desperation I grab the beaten body of the soldier beneath me and haul it round in front of me like a shield, hoping that it will take the force of any shots which come in my direction.
    There are two soldiers firing now. One of them has climbed a metal ladder up onto a galley in the rafters of the building and is picking people out at will. Over the terrified confusion and carnage I can hear another sound now and I look up at the ceiling in terror. It's the chugging of machinery and the hissing of gas. Hanging in the four corners of the room are huge metal boxes with vented fronts which look like air conditioning units. The air in front of each one of the machines is distorted like a heat-haze and I know that it has begun. I throw the corpse off me and start to look around the floor for the mask I tore off its face seconds earlier. The floor in here is awash with blood and bodies and…
    The world around me explodes.
    I drop to the ground and cover my head as the entire far end of the room we're trapped in is ripped apart by a massive blast which sends shrapnel and dead flesh flying in every conceivable direction. Everything becomes black. The noise of the explosion begins to fade and is replaced by yells and screams of pain and fear and by the sounds of a full-scale conflict.
    'Run!' a muffled voice yells over the madness and hysteria.
    Instinct takes over. I clamber to my feet, tripping and stumbling over rubble and the remains of bodies, and then push my way forward through the clouds of dust and crowds of terrified figures. There is gunfire and confusion all around me. A woman immediately in front of me is shot. For a split second I see blood, flesh and bone explode from her shoulder and she falls to the ground like a limp rag doll. I can't do anything but run straight over her corpse. There's a tide of desperate people moving behind me and I can't stop, I have no option but to keep moving along with the wave of bodies. I look up and see that we're running towards more soldiers with their guns raised. But these soldiers aren't wearing masks. Their faces and eyes are unprotected and I know immediately that they're on our side. Thank God, these people are on our side.
    Still we continue to stumble through the carnage, the ground beneath our feet becoming more uneven and littered with debris. The remains of people like me mix freely with the remains of enemy soldiers. In this grotesque bloodbath they are impossible to separate. No explosion can differentiate between us and them. All around me I can see severed arms and legs, shattered bones and twisted pieces of razor sharp metal.
    'Keep moving,' another voice yells. I feel rain on my face and I realise that I'm outside again, although there are still low mounds of rubble on either side of me which used to be walls. Others have stopped but I keep moving. Another deafening noise distracts me and I look up to see a helicopter roaring low overhead. It unleashes a missile into a long line of trucks which stand idly alongside what's left of the now burning building I've just escaped from. Christ, this is a fucking full-scale war. I sprint across an area of uneven wasteland and throw myself to the ground as more munitions explode nearby. There's a brilliant flash of light to my left and I feel my body being shunted along the ground by the immense force of yet another blast. I'm deafened in one ear and I struggle to regain my balance as I pick myself up and try to move forward again. All around me are the bodies of those who have fallen. A young man's face has taken the full force of the explosion. His lifeless eyes stare up at me helplessly. The bottom of his face, everything below his top lip, has gone. At my feet is the body of a woman, face down in the rubble. Its back is blackened and charred and much of its clothing has been burned away. It could be Karin, the girl from the queue. For a fraction of a second I think about turning her over to see but I know that it's pointless. It doesn't matter.
    In the sky directly above me a second helicopter swoops down and fires into the building I've just escaped from, killing scores of unprotected people who continue to pick their way through the rubble. I manage to take a few more staggering steps