As bullets and fiery bananas flew past me I simply forced my legs to charge towards the enemy bunker. I did not care about anything but surviving. All I knew was that I had a rifle with a single bullet in the chamber, a defective banana, a toothbrush and a very thick diary still secured to my clothes. Whoever was in that bunker, I couldn't care less. I just ran forward and kept praying that I would not come back in a casket, or worse, a shoebox.

I heard the bullets smash into my comrades' bodies and their screams of intense, immediate pain. The lucky ones had no time to scream. I felt a bullet hit my helmet, and my headgear fell off with a loud PING. The sound was deafening, and I was almost certain that my skull had cracked. It didn't. A miracle.

Somehow I made it close to the bunker, or at least a few yards away from it. I didn't realize how big it was until I was able to find a safe pile of bodies to hide behind. So many of us had already died, to the point that their mangled corpses could actually serve as cover. What was once a beautiful beach had become a very sandy graveyard. I peeked out of the very edge of someone's ruined fingers, doing my best not to think about who that 'someone' used to be.

The enemy's nest looked like the top half of a chicken egg with a tiny slit at the front for the machine gun barrel to poke out. Written right above the tiny horizontal hole were the words “DO NOT STAND IN FRONT OF GUN”. Either the enemy was trying to be helpful to us or there were actually people on the other side stupid enough to stand in front of a loaded machine gun.

The gunner inside noticed me, and turned his weapon towards my head. The rest of my team continued onward, hoping that my accidental distraction was enough. I could see Lifta holding onto a flaccid sacred flower, chanting prayers as she ran past the dead and broken bodies. Hilda was right behind her, and Drew was lying on the ground with a missing left foot, screaming curses in multiple languages I could not recognize.

As she ran, Hilda lit her banana and threw it at the bunker, then quickly dived behind one of the many corpse-piles. Lifta joined her swiftly, and then the banana exploded, creating a huge hole in the half-egg. Incredibly, the gunner inside was still alive and shooting.

Hilda then yelled at me, “SAM! SHOOT! SHOOT!”

It took a few seconds for me to register that she was actually talking to me. All the shock slowed down my brain to a crawl. When the message was finally processed by my mind, I raised my Fangbolt and took aim at our foe. He looked very skinny, malnourished maybe, but even at this distance one could see that he lacked any empathy whatsoever for his victims. Cold, dead eyes, complete with a blank expression. He was like a bored clerk at a retail store sorting someone's groceries. Maybe he was imagining himself doing just that, blocking out the horror his eyes and ears were showing him.

I opened fire, and my bullet hit him in the chest. His torso exploded, and a big red mist appeared. The machine gun stopped, but his partner inside the bunker was attempting to continue the onslaught. I tried to reload my gun, but somehow my fingers slipped and the rifle fell to the blood-covered sand. As I crouched to reach it, Hilda and Lifta shot the remaining soldier dead, with one bullet forcefully shoved into his liver and another into his neck. His head flew upwards and fell with a soft thud.

Lifta, Hilda and I, we were panting and staring at the damaged bunker. Our brains were just trying to sort out what the hell actually happened in the past five minutes. Was it really only five minutes? I could have sworn that machine gun had been firing for hours.

I then remembered that Drew had been hit. Her foot's gone. I ran right towards her, and when Hilda realized what had happened she came for Drew as well. Lifta was more concerned with making sure there were no more enemies watching us. We could still hear other bunkers firing their guns elsewhere on this giant beach, but none of them seemed to be paying attention to us.

Drew was still on the ground, slowly leaking blood out of her left ankle-stump. Hilda was fortunately an expert at bandaging wounds, and wasted no time in ripping off pieces of her uniform to create a kind of tourniquet. It was sweaty, but it was the best she could do. She asked me if we had any medics with us. I asked the other soldiers who came with us on this section of the beach, asked them if anyone was a medic, and they all answered no. Made sense. Why would they send a medic with us? After all, we were just bullet sponges.

However, we did have ONE doctor in our midst. She was a mouse-girl, had balls of cotton stuffed into her ears. We didn't bother to ask her for her name just yet, since Drew was crying for help and slowly bleeding to death.

The doc was able to patch her up, but Drew definitely needed rest and she wasn't fit to move. The best thing for her was a nap on the beach. At that point we still hadn't called the doctor by her name, calling her 'Puffy' on account of her cotton-stuffed ears.

Remembering the bullet that hit my helmet, I searched for my headgear. I found it in the sand and inspected it. There was a huge dent on the front, but somehow my skull remained unbroken. A few scratches on me, and that was the worst of my wounds. Dozens of other women were not so lucky, and Puffy went to work on the other wounded soldiers.

A few more explosions rang out. There was still more action on the blood-soaked beach. Hilda stayed with her sister Drew while me and Lifta decided to climb the hill past the bunker, in the hopes that we could flank the other bunkers guarding the beach. None of us had any binoculars but we could tell that our other comrades weren't doing so well.

From that distance, our compatriots looked like a bunch of ants rushing towards a giant angry egg, with none of them able to get close enough for a banana throw. Me and Lifta headed towards the egg-like bunker, slowly and carefully. A few other soldiers from our section followed, shaken but still eager to fight. About three minutes of sneaking later, we could see the back of the nearest bunker. It had some kind of crates stacked to the left and right of the entrance.

Lifta asked me, “Should we throw a banana there?”

“Yes”, I calmly answered.

I asked the other troopers if they had a spare banana. I got one from a dog-woman who vaguely smelled of pickled herring, and I thanked her. I lit the banana and threw it at the door, right in the middle between the crates. A few seconds later the fruit exploded and a huge hole was made in the bunker's rear. The machine gun inside fell silent.

Before I could do or say anything, a few other women in our group rushed ahead with their rifles drawn, aiming right into the hole. Something inside moved, and they all opened fire. After a few more volleys, we decided to actually take a closer look, taking care not to get ourselves exposed to the toxic banana-wave radiation.

There were four Zymogi soldiers inside the egg-bunker, all of them dead either from the heat of the banana-wave radiation or from some really ugly-looking gunshot wounds. One of them was holding a partially-burned photo of what must be his family. A smiling group of grey-furred rat-people, dressed in expensive-looking clothes. On the back of the photo were the words “With luck and good hope – Chatterburg”.

Chatterburg was the name of a town about a couple of miles away from here. A thought suggested to me that maybe I should take the photo and bring it to his family, but something else told me that the family would greet me with bombs and knives thrown at my face. I put the photo back into his hand, hoping that someone else would find him and bury him properly.

Lifta was busy sprinkling rice and wheat on the dead Zymogi. She said it was how a Bungaren showed respect to a worthy foe. For the Bungaren, this act would ensure that the ghosts of their dead enemies would not come after their children. I asked her if she did that for the ones in the previous bunker. She gasped and was distressed by the fact that she forgot to do so.

I tried to reassure her. “Don't worry about it Lifta. Maybe there's another Bungaren that came with us, doing the same thing you did.”

She calmed down. “Oh, that's right. I do recall a pair of other Bungaren with us. Maybe you're right. Yes, I shouldn't worry. They'll surely have done the proper rites.”

“How much rice and wheat did you bring with you?”

Lifta held up a small satchel. “Should be enough for ten or twenty more.”

“What happens if you run out?”

“Well, I suppose I should be praying really hard that their ghosts won't come after our families, unless I find more rice and wheat somewhere.”

I nodded with a tiny smile, and we walked further towards the west, where more of the enemy's bunkers were waiting.

It took an entire day before all of the enemy's bunkers were cleared out. Three enemy soldiers captured, 61 dead. Hundreds of us dead. No exact number. None of us felt like counting all the corpses and some of the body parts were mixed up. The stench was beyond terrible too.

A big argument started over what we should do with the three Zymogi troopers. I voted to take their weapons and let them run home in their underwear, but most of the others wanted them dead. However, thanks to extreme fatigue, everybody agreed that they should sleep on it first.

The sun vanished, and the Donut Moon took its place. I looked at the stars through the moon's hole, and thought of nothing as the waves crashed against the sand. I just wanted to sleep. I had enough excitement for two lifetimes.

I didn't dream that night. My brain was too tired to even come up with something boring, like a dream about staring at wood. Despite the stench of rotting bodies, I slept deeply and comfortably.

As I expected, the captured soldiers didn't live very long.

When dawn came, all three of them were torn to pieces. We figured a cat-person did it, judging by the claw and fang marks. I couldn't even guess. Everyone had blood and bits of people on their clothes. No witnesses. No cops. No trial. Just a bunch of dead people.

I had the bright idea of taking the enemy's machine guns, the ones that still worked. We found four of them, and I let Hilda take one. The other three were given to women who were able to prove they could carry the large and heavy weapons with enough grace not to trip when running.

Drew survived the night and her wound stayed clean, but required a wheelbarrow. We found one at an abandoned farm near the road. Hilda pushed her sister around, carrying the machine gun on her shoulder as well. I noticed Drew looking at the machine gun from time to time, getting ready to cover her ears if her sister decided to use it.

Somehow I ended up becoming the leader of our little band of bullet sponges. The Bullet Sponge Brigade.

We didn't get any new orders. Sure, we didn't have a single working radio (thanks to the seawater) but they could have sent a balloon here. The top brass probably thought none of us would survive that beach landing. I wanted to put on a clown costume and surprise everyone at the Great Potato, yelling “SURPRISE! I'M ALIVE YOU GREAT BIG COWARDS!”

We only had one plan: Survive and meet up with other Scarvinian soldiers, preferably those who weren't also meant to just be a distraction.

We couldn't bury everyone on that beach; there were just too many, and we couldn't risk some enemy patrol or something to show up while we were busy digging.

Thirty women, me included, walked towards Chatterburg, a town where most of our killers came from. I had no idea what we were going to do once we got there. We considered raiding it for supplies. Maybe set the whole place on fire to signal our compatriots. Maybe drag the entire town to the beach and make them bury our dead. Dig or die. A lot of dark thoughts.

The walk to Chatterburg was long and uncomfortable, but at least no one else was shooting at us. A curious wild goat decided to follow us. Filthy but friendly. We named it Burger, because everyone was hungry.

I hoped and prayed that my daughter Angel was doing better than me. I also hoped my dead husband had been blessed and transformed into a ghost powerful enough to give our daughter some badass ghost powers like walking through walls or something. Maybe float a bit to spook the enemy.