You were to move at a slow and steady pace that allowed the artillery behind you to fire over your head and clear the way for you. Of course, when the ground at your feet exploded it was impossible to tell whether the barrage was coming from in front of you or behind you, so you forgot about slowly advancing and you ran, you ran right into the gun barrels of whoever was there in front of you. When the order was given, the men climbed the lip of the trench and were soon running across the field. There was always much screaming when this happened, and even Bright would find his mouth hanging open and releasing sounds that he could never quite catch up with and that he could never quite remember afterward. He never looked down no matter what he felt himself stepping on. The fields in between the trenches were wind-whipped ponds of bodies, and even though the bodies were dead they could still pull you down with them; the dead were hungry that way. This morning, with the white beacon of the church in the distance marking the location of the village toward which they were to advance, he climbed out from behind the bags and ran keening and lurching across the dead world of cold limbs and helmets and faces with forgotten names.
What do You think about Bright's Passage: A Novel?
