Authors Note: Hello guys, this is my first story on Nairaland and i intend to make it the shortest ever. I am not an Author or anything related to it so dont expect the huge, crafty and sneaky tricks seasoned Authors use to manipulate the minds of their readers. But i promise you that i will make your experience as a reader look similar to living a heavenly life on Nairaland's literature section.

All i need from you is just your critiques, pinpoint and tell me were i am making mistakes as a writer and if possible, correct me on that. One love

IMAGINE, FIGHTING A WAR WITH AN ENEMY THAT IS IN LOVE WITH DEATH!!!!!!!!

Episode 1

I had this feeling right from my childhood days that joining the army will be the most fantastic experience in my life and immediately after my high school I took the vault, got myself into depor and after training for 9 months, here I am; under this hot sun inside a forest that the name sounds like latin to me, walking slowly and steady as a corporal alongside other members of my squad. We are on the verge to close up on a suspected bokoharam camp. The tension within me and my squad members was very high, right from my position I could feel the heart of the soldier beside me beating heavily, almost jumping out from his chest. With our rifles handy and ready, ears wide open to pick up any sound signal that flies by our ear. Our brains were fully active, working on its highest capacity to access the sound signals picked up by our ears. We also have one objective, to move into the camp unnoticed and take them down unawares. So we walked like cats, I can barely feel the ground below my feet.

I walked like a ghost, along the bushy path which was filled with dried up leaves that have fallen from the water starved trees that made up the forest. As we advanced into the enemy territory, my nerve’s sensitivity reduced drastically, I can hardly feel anything just my fingers wrapped up tightly around my rifle. The second finger of my right hand; the finger beside my index finger was slightly holding the trigger reading to receive any impulse from my brain to pull.

My name is Raymond, but the rugged soldiers down here with me call me Ray, that is the short form of my name and I hate to be addressed by that name, I prefer my original name. I am 22 years old, 6.5ft tall, I am not that muscular but I have the type of body built in such a way that the females I hang out with are okay and feel attracted to when I UnCloth in front of them. I am chocolate in complexion, with a thick dark hair that attracts attention when tendered properly. On the average, I am a handsome young guy, full of life, and also, full of death.

My squad was among the fresh, rugged men that were pushed into Maidugri to replace a previous squad. I have never had any experience of combat, meanwhile, I just left depor, and just after my one month leave I was flinged down here to practice what I have learnt during training.
I am here to fight for my country, any terrorist that am to gun down today and the days to come, I am not killing them because am a soldier or that I’ve being commanded to kill, I am killing because I am a Nigerian and the tears of my people is still my own tears to cry.

Back to reality, I found myself stop my movement, following orders from my squad leader, by name Sergeant Oliver who just raised his right hand up with the hand tightly clenched, he has signaled every one of us to pause. I was standing right behind him and I noticed him moving his eyes slowly ahead of him, he was staring into an area in front of him densely populated with heavy and thick vegetation. Another soldier moved his head upwards to peruse whatever signal Oliver has picked up. We all joined and let loose our instincts to judge the signals we’ve picked up.

Everywhere remained calm for some time, Sergeant Oliver was about to break the 30 seconds silence when something else more faster and louder than his voice broke it, a blast from a rifle, the sound coming from no direction, the bullet pushed through various dried up grasses, leaves and tress from a distance and rested on Sergeant Oliver’s left eye, followed by this heavy bloody splash that bolted out from his orbit immediately as bullet has crushed his eyeballs. He slumped to the ground, yelling out for help, holding his bleeding left eye, and striking his legs to the ground in pain.

“Everybody get down!” the soldier standing next to the blown up Sergeant yelled out and threw himself to the ground, crawling backwards towards where I was already taking cover.
We all spread out, took our strategic positions and as we perused the situation, in no time we’ve pinpointed the exact location the slugs of bullets were coming, we started returning shots back to the positions our instincts have told us that the enemies are. It was a hell of fire exchange.

After shooting several rounds into an empty space, several shots were returned back to us from that same empty space. We just have to duck down, thanks be to God that at least I found something like a stud to take cover. With time, the fighting intensified, we were recording more casualties, and something just have to be done, a change of tactics and co-ordination.
I turned over to face the soldiers behind me, “who is in charge now?” I yelled on the top of my lungs so that I could be heard over the noisy staccato sound of raging and barking rifles.
"shut the Bleep up and continue shooting" a deep angry voice yelled back at me from a distance. The voice was coming from Ahmed, an hausa soldier who i knew was fond of making jest of other soldiers. He is so troublesome and tries to ride over other unfortunate soldiers more when he is around his similar joker friends.

I ignored him and turned back to face my business with my rifle when i looked beside him and saw the lifeless body of one of his best friends. I understood the source of his fury.

I pulled my trigger severally and felt the recoils on my rifle after bullets departed from the barrel of my rifle. Dust and thick smoke made our vision poor and i couldn't even see the dried leaves and grasses i was shooting at.

IKJ66:
ur title too long now !!!!

The other sentence after Death trivon is just a description. The title is just Death Trivon

CONTINUED

Hell broke loose when they started hauling grenades at us. The first and second landed on a position where me and my comrades were far away from, the third landed just a few distance beside a soldier but he was fast enough to role away from the bomb’s explosion range. The fourth was quick to action and landed just in front of the soldier taking cover in front of me. He stood up quickly to move away from the bomb but incoming slugs of bullets rained down on his chest. His flash jacket could have at least reduced the impact of the bullets but when the exploded, even the flash jacket exploded with it.


After the blast, I was deaf, blind and I loosed my sense of taste and stimulus. It was after some seconds that I started seeing pieces of human flesh rain down on us like the first heavy rain during the beginning of raining season. I noticed that I was covered with blood, and when I finally regained my whole senses I realized that the bomb have flinged me backwards from my previous cover (the shrub) and I was now lying on the foot of a huge tree which I must have crashed on.
My ribs aches real bad because I have landed heavily on the thick roots which were partially on the surface of the ground. I spotted my rifle lying helplessly just a few distance away from me, I crawled over and picked it up. I raised it to shoot but still no figure visible. The smoke and dust has now increased and made our vision worst. The remnants of my comrades were still shooting aimlessly into the space in front of them. That’s the much they can do at least to stay alive and avoid the enemy from closing up on them.


I lowered my eyes over my rifle again to aim and shoot and suddenly my eyes caught up on a figure which was quite blur, it tried to switch cover. I pulled on my trigger hard and the figure gave out a loud cry from the other end where the enemy was shooting us from. I saw the body that i have shot fall to the ground and never rose again. After the shot, it was like my eyes were now clear, to my greatest surprise, I could see so many of them hiding behind the trees, most of them wearing black and it-was-white Caftan, some were putting on camouflage uniform similar to the ones we were wearing but looks too dirty. I can see more than the eagle now.

The enemy was advancing slowly because they are now outnumbering us. I left my position from beside the tree and crawled forward to were my comrades were all lying down, the dead ones remained dead, the wounded kept yelling and crying the pain and the ones alive never stopped pulling on their triggers. I started returning fire immediately and the enemy started recording casualties.

"I got one! I got them! They are scattered all over the horizon" A soldier shouted as he crawled over to join me.

" I got them right here too!" I replied, keep focused.

" light them up!!!!!!!!!!!" Ahmed shouted, shooting vigorously from his end.

To be Continued.

Your opinion and critiques are required and will be highly appreciated in form of comments. Remember i am not a writer,just a story teller. Pls take it easy with me.