HEROES DIE.
It had been raining bullets in Sambisa that day…
Cossy and I had been holed up together behind sandbags that swallowed the bullets on impact but the screams of our dying brothers seemed to be coming in amplified wavelengths that I could not shut out, I still have not been able to …
The hostiles advanced upon us in rapid progressions after they had caught us with our pants down celebrating a successful routing a night ago and with each scream of death, they inched ever forward to wiping our entire unit out.
Then it had happened in a blur, between death and panic, valor.
A second before I could swear I could feel his breath on my face, he had been praying to Mary, Jesus and Amadioha all in jumbled up mantras and then there he was screaming like a mad man…
He rolled to an Uzi a dead soldier had dropped and kept firing as he made directly for the middle of the horde, they faltered and then he had started to drip, he dripped hand grenades with every step he took toward them and the explosions began in chain reactions, each boom! The harbinger of another boom!
It is raining again now.
I look at Cossy’s pregnant widow as she flings herself to the ground repeatedly.
“Why did you not come back with them like you used to?!” She sobs.
I wish I could tell her that true heroes of wars don’t tell their own stories.
It will never stop raining.
I turn attention to the parade and shoot his last shot into the air like I had shot him, when he had lain there without a limb and a blown open stomach and a weak smile.
Tomorrow we return to where it rains bullets.
Flash Fiction written by Onwuasoanya Obinna.
‘I turn attention to the parade and shoot his last shot into the air like I had shot him, when he had lain there without a limb and a blown open stomach and a weak smile.’
Was the story teller the person that killed Cossy? I don’t quite understand this last part.