Take Aim by Thomas Wood

Author:Thomas Wood [Wood, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BoleynBennett Publishing
Published: 2019-03-21T23:00:00+00:00

12

12.

The more that I tried to ignore the words that fluttered through my mind, the louder they grew, the more forceful they became. Slowly, they morphed from words that rang at the back of my mind, to a convicting order, an order that was compelling me to take action.

“Shoot! Come on, pull the trigger! Open fire!”

I had not yet got used to the fact that Bob was still living in my mind, and I frequently found myself looking about me, to see if any of the others had heard the spectral voice that tormented me at my most vulnerable of moments. The more I listened to him though, the more that I realised that there was something different to his voice, and not just in the sense that he was finally talking to me again. It was ever so slightly strained, with an almost whinge like quality to it, the kind of noise that a young child makes when they first fall out of a tree.

Somehow, somewhere, Bob’s voice was indicating to me how in pain he truly was. He didn’t want to be there, he didn’t want to be watching over me for the rest of my life, he simply wanted me to take action on the one thing that I had promised him, shortly before he had died.

It took almost every ounce of my energy to attempt to ignore him, but I threw myself into trying to spot the approaching figures, which I was certain would eventually accompany the scraping noises that screamed throughout No Man’s Land.

At one point, I was almost certain that I’d seen them, four hunched over and crouching figures, their heads so close to the ground that I was certain that they would eventually lose their balance, and crash headfirst into the mud. But, just as I was about to point them out to the Captain and Sergeant Lawrence, Bob began screaming in my head once again.

“The trigger!” He bellowed, “go on, squeeze it! That’s your job!”

I blinked furiously, trying in earnest to separate the thoughts that I knew were merely hallucinations, from the ones that I knew were rational, the ones that I knew that I could trust.

Once Bob was out of the way I knew that I would be back up to my most effective. My finger, however, continued to twitch around the curved steel of the trigger and I thought about moving my hand away completely, in case the jerk of nerves suddenly caused me to eject a round.

Just as I thought that I had relinquished all pressure on the trigger, an almighty eruption sounded from the end of my rifle. I felt no rifle kick, no pummelling rifle butt into the shoulder, just a never-ending ringing in my ears that felt like it would go on forever.

I began to rebuke myself for being the one that once again managed to get some members of his team killed. For a moment, I even considered calling myself even more effective than a German soldier, as I had managed to get that many of my own men killed.

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