Three white silhouettes hugged the snow, ghosting back toward the edge of the lost defensive line.
This wasn't the original sector held by the First Squad, but a neighboring flank. No living Finns remained in these trenches. Several bodies lay scattered across the ground; some had been ripped open by bayonets, their entrails spilling onto the earth, while others still gripped empty rifles, fingers frozen stiff against the triggers.
A small detachment of Soviet troops was scavenging through the trench. Some were prying boots off the dead; others rifled through pockets, hunting for watches or any small trinkets of value.
"That's Antti."
Walter lay prone behind a berm, pointing his scope toward the far end of the trench. Near a collapsed dugout, a few Soviet soldiers surrounded a figure half-buried in the dirt. Only the upper half of Antti's body was visible. His gold-rimmed glasses hung precariously askew on his face; it was impossible to tell if he was alive.
"Don't rush." Simo held back Juha, who looked ready to charge. His voice was low and clinical. "Walter, the five on the left. I'll take the six on the right. Juha, watch our six."
No wasted words.
Bang! Bang!
Two shots cracked simultaneously. The Soviet soldier who had been kicking snow into Antti's face had his head snapped back, spraying red and white across the pristine snow. Another soldier, who had been tilting a vodka bottle back, was punched through the chest and tumbled backward, the bottle shattering against the permafrost.
"Over there!"
The remaining Soviets reacted swiftly. Someone shouted and pointed toward the scouts' position, and two machine gunners dropped low to set up their weapons.
Bang!
Walter gave them no opening. His breathing was remarkably steady, even after the frantic sprint. The crosshairs locked onto a gunner's helmet in an instant. He squeezed. The Soviet's head jerked, and his helmet went flying.
Immediately, a second shot. A soldier attempting to spray them with a PPD submachine gun was struck in the neck. Blood erupted like a fountain; he clutched his throat, making gurgling noises as he spasmed in the trench.
Simo was equally efficient. The vintage Mosin-Nagant in his hands was like a precision scalpel, each shot claiming a life with surgical certainty. A soldier trying to prime a grenade was hit in the wrist before he could pull the pin, rolling into the pit with a howl of agony.
In less than thirty seconds, every Soviet left standing at the trench's edge had fallen.
"Go."
Simo broke cover, rifle in hand. The three leaped into the trench, only to collide head-on with two Soviet soldiers lunging out of a dugout. At this range, there was no time to aim.
"Die!"
A hulking Soviet soldier roared, thrusting his bayonet at the lead man, Juha. Though Juha had lost his trusty axe, his monstrous strength remained. Instead of retreating, he leaned into the attack. Gritting his teeth, he sidestepped the blade and swung his rifle like a sledgehammer, bringing the heavy stock down with everything he had.
Crack!
The sound of splintering bone was sickening. The heavy wood slammed flush into the soldier's neck; the man's head lolled at a grotesque angle, and he crumpled without even a whimper.
Seeing this, the other Soviet tried to raise his weapon, but Walter was already upon him. Eschewing a blunt strike, Walter drew the Tokarev pistol from his waist and pressed the muzzle directly into the man's gut, firing three times in rapid succession. The soldier's body jerked violently before sliding limp to the floor.
"Finish them! No survivors!"
Simo coldly put a few rounds into the wounded men still moaning on the ground. Once he confirmed the immediate threat was neutralized, he lunged toward the dirt pit. He tossed aside his rifle and began frantically clawing away the frozen earth and snow covering Antti.
The boy was alive, uninjured, even, merely knocked unconscious by the concussion of a shell.
"Wake up." Simo slapped Antti's face. No response.
"If he won't wake, we carry him," Juha urged. Every second spent here was a gamble with death.
"Can't carry him; he needs to run on his own." Simo didn't argue. He simply wound up and delivered a stinging backhand.
Slap! Slap!
After a dozen strikes, Antti's pale face swelled rapidly. Finally, he groaned and blearily opened his eyes.
"S-Squad Leader?" Antti's gaze was vacant, as if he were still trapped in a dream.
"Can you walk?"
"Legs... legs are like jelly..."
"Heave him up." Simo draped one of Antti's arms over Juha's shoulder and the other over his own. "Walter, you're rear guard."
The four of them evacuated swiftly, hauling a semi-conscious Antti up the slopes to the staging area behind the Suvanto Heights. This was the temporary rally point for the 6th Company, a place swarming with frantic medics and wounded men groaning on stretchers.
….
"We're back!" Juha gasped, collapsing onto an ammo crate. "Hell, that was close. Almost left the four-eyes buried back there."
But they weren't met with cheers or relief.
Matti and Toivo stood beneath a pine tree like two silent statues, heads bowed low. Eero crouched at their feet, head in his hands, his body still trembling slightly.
"What is it?" Simo's instincts flared. He let go of Antti and strode over. "Where's Pekka? I told you to get him to the aid station!"
Matti looked up. His eyes, usually as placid as a lake, were now a roadmap of broken red veins. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He simply stepped aside, revealing a white canvas tarp draped over something on the snow.
The tarp was too short to cover the young body beneath. A single foot in a worn military boot poked out, the sole caked with frozen mud.
Simo froze in his tracks.
Walter walked over, knelt down, and gently lifted a corner of the canvas. Pekka's face had turned a dull leaden-grey. Those eyes, always filled with a touch of naive, clumsy excitement, were half-open, but the light was gone. At his upper thigh, the bandage meant to stop the bleeding was saturated, turned a jarring blackish-red.
"We... we tried..." Eero blubbered, his explanation borderline incoherent. "We kept pressure on it the whole way, but the blood just wouldn't stop... he... he stopped breathing before we could find a doctor..."
Juha stared blankly at Pekka's corpse. His rifle hit the ground with a heavy clatter.
Antti finally came to his senses. Looking at the comrade who used to get scolded by Simo right alongside him for being too weak to carry ammo crates, now lying cold in the snow, his relief at surviving evaporated into a void of grief. He adjusted his bent, swollen glasses as tears began to leak through his fingers.
Simo Häyhä did not speak, nor did he weep. He simply walked over, closed Pekka's unseeing eyes, and carefully smoothed the canvas over the boy's face. He turned to face his grieving subordinates, his gaze hardening into iron.
"This is war," Simo said coldly. "It doesn't spare you because you're young, or kind, or because you don't want to die. Pekka is gone. We are still here."
He pointed toward the front line, where the artillery still thundered in the distance.
"Dry your eyes. If you want to avenge him, then grip your rifles. As long as we aren't dead, this fight isn't over."
…
Walter leaned against the rough bark of a pine tree, his hand shaking slightly as he pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He didn't really smoke; in fact, he found the acrid taste revolting. But in this moment, he desperately needed something to suppress the churning storm inside him.
A flame flickered, and the tobacco caught. Walter took a deep drag. The harsh smoke hit his lungs, triggering a violent coughing fit that brought tears to his eyes. He coughed, yet his gaze remained fixed on the lonely corpse.
A sense of reality unlike anything he had ever felt shattered his last psychological defenses. All his foreknowledge of history, all the sense of superiority granted by the Eye of Death, it was all meaningless here. This wasn't a cold statistic in a textbook or a game on a screen.
This was a life.
A comrade who had been laughing and talking with him yesterday had become a frozen slab of meat today. Death was so close he could smell the copper tang of blood beneath the canvas. Perhaps Juha would be next, or Antti, or himself.
"Dammit..." Walter cursed under his breath, unsure if he was cursing the war or his own helplessness.
He jammed the cigarette he hated back into his mouth and took another fierce drag, letting the nicotine tear through his bloodstream. He welcomed the sting, using it to maintain the last shred of sanity, and the necessary spark of madness, to survive this frozen hell.
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