The sounds of guns rumbling in the distance was not an uncommon thing in the trenches, but there was an ominous quality to the artillery tonight that Falco Metz did not like. With a grunt, he rubbed his waking eyes with grimy hands, trying to bring the world back into focus. There was a moment of disorientation as he looked around. He didn’t recognize the section of trench he was sitting in. Stepping up and up off the firing step, Falco looked around, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. Rats scattered into the darkness of the trench in a flurry of chitters and squeaks. He ignored them as he had learned to do. But it was harder to ignore the guns. They pounded out an ceaseless drumbeat. That was a lot of shells landing somewhere. He winced at the thought. Someone was catching hell tonight, but at least it wasn’t him.

There was a pain in his neck, a crick from sleeping awkwardly no doubt, and he tried his best to massage the tension away while he got his bearings. It was night along the line And aside from the distant pounding of the guns this section of the front seemed quiet. There were men around him, hunched, shadowed shapes balled up against muddy walls, clinging tightly to mother earth for warmth in the darkness even as rats scampered across their feet. They reminded him of charred bodies, curled up and blackened inside a burned out house in Belgium. There had been rats there too, feasting on the dead. He swallowed subconsciously at the memory and pushed it aside. 

If a man spent his time here thinking of all the horrible things he’d seen, he would go mad. Falco had seen it happen. He began to move slowly down the trench, stepping carefully to avoid disturbing any of the men. He didn’t peer too closely at the huddled up soldiers surrounding him; it was considered rude at the front. Each man bore this hell privately in the black of evening, when only the fiery breath of artillery lit the distant skyline with wicked flashes of orange and red. As the weight of sleep slid away from him, he realised that he must have nodded off on his way to deliver a message. He grunted with annoyance at himself. A moment’s rest often turned into an hour’s sleep for the frazzled runners that carried communications up and down the line. Falco was no less susceptible to the exhaustion wrought in the trenches. Unfortunately, Oberstleutnant Reitter had given him something to deliver to some fussy general that wasn’t picking up the phone. The young private hoped dearly that he had not been asleep too long or there would be hell to pay when he got back to his section. Fatigue overtook all men in the trenches from time to time, but he had picked a bad time to let it catch up to him.

Muttering curses to himself, he felt around the pockets of his muddy uniform for a second, trying to ignore the feeling of lice crawling along his skin as he disturbed their resting places. After a moment, he found the missive, folded and sealed with wax. The Oberstleutnant was a junker, one of the old breed of pompous aristos that had gotten them all into this mess. Of course, his lordship sealed his missives with wax.

Falco could have opened it if he’d wanted to, but knowing Reitter, he’d be shot for espionage if it came to light. He gave up trying to work the pain out of his neck. A pain in the neck for a pain in the neck job. In the days before the war, he might have even laughed at his own little joke. But it was nighttime on the frontline and nobody wanted to hear a man laughing. 

He stuck the letter back in his breast pocket and continued carefully on his way, maintaining the apish, half-crouched walk that all soldiers learned quickly here. The posture did little too make his neck feel any better. No wonder there were so many damn rats, Falco thought as he hustled as best he could, the damned beasts probably sensed a kinship in the skulking, scuttling men that made their way through these dugout warrens.

Duckboards squelched under his boots as they sank slightly into the damp earth of the trench bottom with every step. His old watch buddy Kurt, a cheerful university boy, had once told him that the guns firing all the time did funny things to the weather along the front. He didn’t know if that was true. All sorts of weird myths and stories emerged along the line. Some of his more religious comrades had even claimed to have seen angels and demons floating through no man’s land, claiming souls both wicked and pure.. At the time, he’d scoffed, but in the dark night with the guns rumbling and shells wailing like the damned, it was easier to let such superstitions creep in.

A message, shakily drawn onto a duckboard in red paint and nailed to a trench post, loomed out of the darkness. Mostly these signs gave directions, but this one had a little warning added under the trench marker number. 

Lasst, die ihr eintretet, alle Hoffnung fahren! 

Abandon hope, all who enter here. 

Charming, Falco thought. He dimly recalled it as a phrase from some text or other that he’d had to churn through in school. The Inferno, that was it. Someone’s idea of a joke, no doubt. That said, the word inferno conjured some unpleasant thoughts in his mind. Leiber had quoted it, that day in Belgium when they’d torched the village. Damned Leiber with his holier-than-thou crap. He died not long after at Festubert. A British rifle round opened up his head like a ripe grapefruit. All his terse disapproval and Bible-thumping had done him no good then.

Falco was getting distracted again. What was wrong with him this evening? Falling asleep, getting lost in memories. A bad night all around. But at least from the number he knew he’d made it. Of course, now he had to find the general. Unthinkingly, he rubbed his neck again.

Slowly he made his way into the new section, overriding his learned sense of propriety to whisper to them, something he absolutely hated to do, but he just wanted to get the job done.

“Anyone know where I can find the general? I must deliver a missive. Brothers?” He moved slowly down the line, whispering loud enough to be heard over the guns, but not so loud as to attract undue attention. His voice sounded hollow and weak, like a child. In the cauldron of chaos and misery that he was in, one man’s voice alone always felt like such a small, sad thing. 

It hadn’t been that way at the start, he knew. They’d all left home singing and chanting on the march. After Lemaire though, it had all changed. The unit hadn’t sung much after that. 

“Brothers,” he hissed again, ignoring the painful memories that threatened to rise up once more, “your help please, I have a missive for the general.”

“You’d best not go see the general,” a figure wheezed. To his left, a man stared up at him, his face peering out of a blanket that was folded over his body like a shroud. His skin was pale, his features gaunt to the extreme. Falco almost recoiled, but held his nerve out of a sense of propriety. On the line, you did not judge others on their appearance. You never knew what they had been through. And furthermore, he recognized the voice, though it was much raspier than when he had known it.

“Kurt?” Falco asked tentatively, “Kurt Schnell?” The man blinked at him with dark eyes, as if he couldn’t quite see what was before him, then he nodded slowly.

“Falco,” he groaned, “Falco Metz.” There was no smile on the man’s gaunt features, no comradery illuminating his weary gaze. The horrors of war had clearly worn away whatever was left of the smiling student he’d once known. Falco gave a tentative smile anyway and nodded as enthusiastically as he could.

“Kurt, it is you. I thought they sent you to Verdun.”

“They did,” the man said softly, not quite meeting Falco’s gaze. It made sense then why he looked the way he did, Falco thought. He’d heard the horror stories coming out of the unforgiving fortresses and blighted fields of Verdun. Eight hundred men had died in one second, they claimed, all blown to pieces in some crumbling fort. It was enough to wither the spirit of any man.

“It seems you survived,” he finally spat out with as much cheer as he could muster.
“I am here.” Kurt grunted.

The two men stared at one another for another long moment. The guns rumbled in the distance. Somewhere nearby, a shell wailed overhead. It reminded Falco of the sound that mother made.

“Look Kurt, I need to see your general.” Falco patted his breast pocket. “I have a message to deliver and I’m already running late. My officer’s an aristo too, he’ll have my hide if I don’t get this turned in. Can you lead me to the command bunker?” Kurt looked at him with something that might have been pity. Slowly, unsteadily, he rose to his feet.

“I will take you,” Kurt said drearily, “but you will not want to go in when we get there.” Falco shook his head.
“Orders are orders, friend.”
“You always were a good soldier,” Kurt sighed. “Follow me.” 

Without another word, Kurt rose and led Falco farther down the trench. More men looked up now, perhaps because Falco was with someone they knew. They all had similar faces to his former comrade, paper white and emaciated, infinitely weary. Their large, dark eyes watched with placid detachment as the two men stoop-walked past. Eventually, Falco stopped looking at them, fixing his gaze on the back of Kurt’s helmet. It felt better that way. 

One of the sergeants in his section had told him that they were reconstituting the scattered remnants of chewed up regiments into new units. Perhaps that was what had happened to Kurt. It would certainly explain the hollowed out stares. Half-whispering in the dark, he tried to broach the subject.

“This is your new unit, Kurt? No offence, brother, but you look ragged.” Even soft, his voice felt transgressive in the stilted silence of the trench. Despite the ever present sound of the distant cannonade, it was oddly quiet between the earthen walls.

“We suffer as we have to,” Kurt morosely replied, his gaze stuck straight ahead down the trench line. With a shake of his head, Falco tried another tack.

“Have you seen any of the others? Fritz? Peachy? That old fusspot Ruyter?” That brought Kurt to a stop so abrupt that Falco nearly crashed into the back of him. Instead he bumped into a sleeping man on the firestep. The pitiful figure glanced up at him with one good eye and one milky orb. Falco flinched back a little and felt an immediate sense of embarrassment. You didn’t judge men on the line. He furtively looked back at Kurt standing stock still. There was a long moment of quiet, as if the soldier in front of him was dredging up some ancient memory.

“Some, yes,” Kurt finally said, “but not all. I imagine I will one day.” There was a sense of finality in his old comrade’s statement that set Falco on edge. Flaco cursed his damned luck to wind up in this trench full of cracked men on an evening where he was already feeling morose. It was an uncharitable judgement, but he knew it was the truth. 

The rumours that the war was going poorly must be true, he thought, if we’re sending the broken men back into the fray. He wondered what kind of hell Kurt had been in at Verdun to end up here. Then his quick appraisal turned into an odd realisation.

“You have no sentries on the firestep?” He asked. Standard practice was that some men always stood guard in the night, no matter who was awake or asleep. This time Kurt did not pause his crouch-walk to respond.
“We already know an attack is coming,” the man said, “there is no need.”
“An attack?” Falco raised his voice in shock. Tired men groaned at the noise that disturbed their rest and rats skittered and squeaked anxiously across the trench.
“Every night we fend off an attack,” Kurt replied as calmly as if he was talking about the weather.

“You do?” Falco tried to suppress the feeling of anxiety that washed over him. He wanted to be out of here as quickly as possible. “I had no idea this section was so active! Hopefully I’m gone before they hit.”
“Here,” Kurt intoned, his voice like a funeral bell. Falco heard some fear in it as well. The general must be a real ball buster, he thought. Old Kurt had been a real rogue back at the start of all this, always carrying an air of casual indifference when talking to the officers. Well, except at Lemaire, he’d been happy to follow orders then. Regardless, if he sounded and looked so meek now, he must finally have met his match with this section commander. With these thoughts swirling in his head, Falco looked at the bunker entrance and was hit by his own wave of fear.

There was something distinctly wrong with the darkness leading down to the command bunker. Falco did not know what, but it repelled him in a way few spaces had ever done. When he had been a boy back in Dortmund, he had volunteered at the local church. His mother had insisted on that. One day, the priest told him to head into the vaults below the knave and sweep up the dirt. Falco had taken one look at the dark, dank stairs descending into that place of corpses and decay and he had refused. Even after the priest beat him and his mother berated him, he had never, ever gone down those stone steps into the cold, lonely basement. The very sight of it had made his hair stand on end and his knees weak. He felt the same way now, staring at the dark entrance of the bunker carved into the dirt and wood of the trench wall. Every inch of his being cried out against going down those steps and into shadow. Something terrible awaited him there. Absent-mindedly, he reached up and massaged his filthy neck. 

For a moment, Falco smelled the scent of the old vault, of death, of decay. He thought of hastily buried bodies in a farm field, dumped together in a pile of tangled limbs and charred flesh, and he tried not to retch. 

Alongside him, Kurt noticed his hesitation. “You don’t want to upset the general when he’s busy. Or ever.” 

Falco nodded, then straightened up in an attempt to appear confident. “The missive can wait a moment,” he said, trying his best to act unintimidated despite the fact that every hair on his body seemed to be on end. “I’m sure he will understand, being that he’s busy and all?” 

Kurt said nothing, just looked at him with his hooded eyes and sat down in the trench. There was some room across from Kurt so he settled  down as well. He hadn’t realised how bone-tired he was. 

The two men sat in shadow silenced, listening to the rumble of the guns. It was so very still in the evening. Normally, even at this hour, there would be men speaking in low tones or writing letters or doing anything really. Not so in this place. To be expected, Falco thought, if these were all broken men. 

After a few minutes though, the silence started to settle like a weight on Falco’s shoulders. Kurt barely moved, save for picking up a discarded blanket from the muck and drawing it up to hide most of his face. Only his blank eyes, dark and large, stared into the night. Falco felt like talking – he had to speak – had to say something to break the horrid monotony. With a sigh, he turned to Kurt, who sat corpse-like in the gloom, and said the first thing that came to his mind.

“Kurt, do you ever think about Belgium? About that village, Lemaire?” Falco stopped talking abruptly. Why had he mentioned that of all things? He surprised even himself. The words hung heavy and unwelcome in the chill air.
“That is all I think about,” Kurt sighed sadly.
“It’s been on my mind all night,” Falco muttered nervously, as if trying to justify broaching the subject, “I don’t know why. I try not to think about it much.”. 

“We didn’t do anything wrong, you know,” Falco continued, more to himself than anyone else, “That’s the thing. Just did what we were told.” He waited a moment for Kurt to say something but the man sat unspeaking. He could not tell if it was disgust, shame, or fear that kept his friend so quiet. It could have been all three. What had happened in Lemaire, Falco acknowledged to himself, had involved all three. He spoke up again in a voice that sounded uncomfortably like a plea.
“There were partisans in that place. We found the guns.”
Kurt still did not look at Falco. He sat silently, his dark eyes staring at the opposite wall of the trench as if he could bore a hole into it and escape this whole thing. The thought of escape sent Falco’s eyes flicking back towards that horrible, yawning portal to the command bunker. He wanted out of this place but he dreaded the inevitable descent to deliver this damned note. Maybe the general would emerge and he could hand the message off and be on his way. For some reason, the thought did not comfort him.

“We thought someone killed Schmidt with a shotgun because we found it next to him,” Kurt finally said quietly. He paused for a moment, as if carrying the weight of his next words like a physical burden. 
“What if he killed himself?”
“What?” Falco’s jaw dropped slightly in disbelief.
“What if he killed himself?” Kurt continued morosely, “And then we slaughtered that village because of it.”
“No, we were hunting down the enemy.” Falco denied the thought vigorously. “We were good soldiers.”

But the thought was there now, seeded into his mind. Schmidt had been a morose bastard, always railing bitterly against the Kaiser and the war. He had said more than once he’d rather die than fight. Falco turned the idea over in his mind and despaired. Their officers had been so eager to set them to hunt those partisans. To get them to focus on violence, on anything but the dead man and his treasonous ramblings. It made sense, a sick, twisted sense. The sense that dictated the madness of this war and the men who suffered in it. And if it was true, it made all of them, Kurt, Leiber, even himself, nothing but murderers. Good soldiers be damned. Falco began to look around nervously, as if someone would suddenly appear to accuse him of the crimes he had committed. He decided then that he hated this place. He should have just gone down into that damned bunker, delivered his message and got the hell out of here. Now Kurt, addled, broken Kurt, was making him think all sorts of horrible things. As he glanced to see who might be listening, he got a glimpse of the man next to him.
His blood froze.

“Freddy? Frederick Leiber?” His voice was tentative and disbelieving. Another man he recognized. But that was wrong.

“Hello Falco,” the man wheezed sadly. Like Kurt his features were drawn and wan, more like a corpse than a man, which made a twisted sense, given the circumstances. Slowly, carefully, as if staring down a wild animal, Falco leaned towards Kurt and whispered.
“Kurt,” his voice was insistent and afraid. He never took his eyes off the wasted face in front of him. “Freddy’s here.” Kurt nodded slowly.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Kurt,” Falco continued shakily, “Freddy died at Festubert. You’re dead,” he said directly to Leiber, who looked at him despondent, “I saw you die.”
“Yes,” Leiber said, “I did die. I remember it. So much blood.”
“Kurt,” Falco whispered urgently, “Kurt, I’m hallucinating. It’s the trench madness.”
“They buried me alive in Verdun,” Kurt replied, “I was still breathing when they shovelled the stinking mud over me. They just didn’t know.”
No no no no, Kurt thought, feeling a sense of horror threatening to overwhelm him. This cannot be. I am dreaming. I am hallucinating. But he felt the moist mud of the trench wall seeping against his back and the passing weight of the rats skittering across his boots and he knew it was real. Adrenaline surged through his body in a cold wash as he started to panic.
“What is this place?” He asked desperately. “Where am I? Kurt? Freddy? Tell me where I am!”
“I cannot say” Leiber moaned, his face filled with suffering., 

“I cannot say,” Kurt mumbled, his eyes downcast.
The pain in Falco’s neck was overwhelming. He reached up and felt blood, hot and thick in the chill night air. A ragged piece of shrapnel the size of a hand mirror was jammed into the back of his neck like a nail into wood. For a moment, he was stunned. Then panic overwhelmed him. With a cry, he jumped up to his feet and began to look around wildly. Perhaps if he started running, he would wake. Or maybe he could reason his way back to consciousness.

“This can’t be… that place. It can’t. You went to church, Leiber. You read the Bible every night.”
“Just so,” the man nodded. His death-pale face looked tragic.

“But Leiber, you didn’t do anything at Lemaire. You didn’t participate.”
“I did nothing. And that was enough.”
“No no no,” Falco sputtered desperately, “good soldiers don’t stay here. This isn’t for me, isn’t for us!” His tone became frantic. Around him, the corpse-men started to move and wake like maggots writhing in a wound. Leiber and Kurt stared at him as if they were oxen standing in the field. His hysterical tone meant nothing to them. Then they recoiled visibly, crushing themselves into the dirt of the trench walls like whipped curs. Around them, the squirming men moaned and hid their faces with their blanket-shrouds.
“The general,” Kurt hissed, averting his eyes from where Falco stood.
“The general,” Leiber moaned, pressing his face into the dirt of the trench wall.
Falco started to turn. There was a slaughterhouse stench in the air that overwhelmed the already disgusting scent of no-man’s land. Rats brushed past his boots as they fled up the trench, their squeaking and squealing was like a shrill mockery of the fanfare that would precede a barbarian potentate of old. A deep, horrible voice cut through the noise, rolling over Falco like an avalanche.
“Who is disturbing the line?” It rasped. Images exploded in Falco’s reeling mind. A pig’s head swarmed with flies. Burning thatch and screams. Pus oozing from a gangrenous wound. A child’s chest exploding in a welter of gore as smoke drifted from the barrel of his gun. Falco completed his turn. 

He could not look at the general’s face. Could not. Would not. There was a darkness there that was like the commander bunker. One look and he would be lost entirely. Instead, he stared at the worn and threadbare uniform the general wore, focusing on the dull brass buttons and dirty, indecipherable medals on his puffed out chest. The abattoir stink was overwhelming.
“Ah, a messenger.” The voice grinded like sandpaper over stone. The scent of death was overwhelming. “Let’s see it then.” Slowly, shakily, Falco reached up and unbuttoned his breast pocket. He handed over the message and the general reached out and grabbed it with black-gloved hands that looked more like claws in the trench’s darkness. The gloved fingers brushed his hand for a moment and Falco trembled as scales rasped against his dirty skin.

“Metz,” the general said, “Corporal Falco Metz. Yes, I’ve heard of your good service record. At Lemaire were you? I have a few of your lot here, you know?” The dark figure’s tone was complimentary. Almost jovial.
“Says here you’re part of my section now. That’s grand, just grand. We could use some more good soldiers here. Stiffen this lot up.” Falco felt, rather than saw, the general gaze around the trench. Men cowered and shook. He said nothing. The sinking sense of realisation was crashing over him in waves dragging him into the deep. He was dead. He was damned. A shrill alarm bell started to sound, reverberating down the trench line with a shrill energy that tore at his ears. The cowering men began scrambling to their feet, grabbing at old weapons and rising onto the firing step.

“Ah good,” the general growled, “an attack. You arrived just in time, Corporal Metz.” A gloved hand reached out. This time, it grasped a rifle. Despondently, Falco recognized it. It was his rifle, the one he had used in Lemaire. For the first time since waking, he realised he had no weapon on him. That should have been a sign. “Go on and take it, there’s a good soldier.” The voice dripped with praise and scorn in equal measure. Falco felt both stinging his soul. He reached out and grasped the rifle. It had been years since he carried it, but it felt cold and natural in his hands.
“Get on up to the step and show them how it’s done now.” 

Soundlessly, Falco followed the orders. He settled into the step alongside the ghouls Kurt and Leiber, the two men looking at him with eyes that oozed pity and terror in equal measure. Silently, inevitably, they raised their rifles. Figures emerged from the dull haze of no man’s land. Broken, charred figures. He recognized them. A little boy was in his sights. No more than ten. He knew the terrified eyes. The tear and ash-streaked face. He knew how the kick of his rifle would feel when he pulled the trigger. He knew how the blood would blossom, how the broken body would tumble over. He knew what Kurt meant. Attacked every day. His future of torment lay before him. Falco began to cry silent tears of anguish. 

“Ready now, boys!” The general called from behind him, malicious relish in his voice, “Prepare to fire. Especially you, Corporal Falco. There’s a good soldier. Now, fire!” 

Falco squeezed the trigger, his mouth opening to let loose a shriek of despair. Kurt and Leiber did the same. All along the section line, they did the same. The general laughed like a maniacal child behind them.

There would be no escape. They were cursed to languish in the hell of war, weighed down in the knowledge of their sins, trapped in trenches that by their very nature bred nothing but torturous inaction and sedentary suffering. A prison of their own making. In the distance, the sound of the guns rumbled on forever, drowning out the endless cries of the dead and the damned.