Quickly and quietly the two soldiers stepped away from their friend.

“Why?” he screamed his voice tinged with desperation. Life in the the muddy hell of the trenches, the insufferable silence, the smell of death and dying. His sanity was broken. Anything was better than this hell.

He ran. The trenches were muddy. They twisted and turned unpredicatably. The passages familar only to the war-wearing denizens who inhabited it.

Three rows of trenches dug into the rich dark soil. Only the first row within range of the enemies weapons. Desperatly he searched through the muddied trenches, a mouse lost in a maze.

He could almost hear Death stalking him, searching him out, flying through the stillness, seeking out his breath, his heartbeat. He imagined it flowing across the battlefield a beam, moving effortlessley through the electrified barbed wire and over the row the trenches.

He ran on his feet keeping rythem with the beat of his heart. His lungs burst, but he dare not gasp for air. He saw it.