Archie hurled himself the last five feet to the foxhole, airborne for a full beat, as enemy fire zipped by the  right side of his face, almost bristling the four day growth on his cheek,  till gravity weighed him back down to earth and he hit the crevice of the six foot deep foxhole with a teeth rattling thud. The rapid tat a tat tat of the machine gun fire now blessedly over head and out of range hailed over him with the same single minded veracity that a lioness has as she goes in for the kill of an infant wildebeest, there is no pity in the hunt, only a mission. The Captain crouched to make himself as small as the atoms he was comprised of would allow and then tried to drag oxygen through his nostrils soundlessly, though he was sure the Jerrys could hear the thunderous pounding of his petrified heart, even through the heavy layers of his army issue uniform and the insulation of muddy earthen walls around him.<br/><br/>The summer showers had been relentless, even now, as a band of murderous Nazi's tried to snuff the Captain and Privates Pierce, Jacobson, Valenti and Harding out of existence, the rain poured down pitilessly and neutral to the discomfort of allies and enemies alike in natures obligation to wash the earth of its grim.<br/><br/><br/>Here, in this living hell Archie had been suspended in for the past twenty four days, there was no right or wrong, up was down and down was up, the mission was survival, no matter what anyone told you. Assignments were doled out, which usually involved going from point A to point B any damn way you could without getting your head blown off.  The country side was littered with snipers, land minds and disenfranchised squads of Germans trying to maintain a strong hold or flee a battle they had already lost.  The air was thick with terror, a shroud that tore at the sanity of every soldier allied and enemy alike.<br/><br/><br/>Vacant sable colored eyes stared at the Captain who was frozen as he gaped back with a horrified cornflower blue gaze of his own at the dead private sharing his hiding place.  The soldier sharing safety with Archie was just a boy, a smattering of fawn colored peach fuzz grazed his chin and upper lip and no more and now with a hole in his chest the size of the Captain's fist, the boy was dead for all eternity.  The sallow hue of death covered the boy only vaguely, he'd likely only been dead a few hours.  According to Mr. Roosevelt and Congress, at eighteen, you were more than fit to die for your country. God bless America.  Archie was pondering the irony of how he'd missed the corpse of his brother in arms when he plunged to safety, when he realized that the machine gun that had been terrorizing him and his men was now silent.  Deathly quiet.  The rain was the only ambient sound about them, as though even the birds themselves had been hushed by the assault on their sanctuary.<br/><br/>He waited. One minute, then two, two turned into ten and ten to twenty as time slipped by as the solitude engulfed the Captain and soothed him all at the same time. Archie reached distractedly with his fingers for the locket that had dangled from a chain around his neck till the absence reminded him that cruelty of chance and war had snatched it from his possession some weeks before.  He pushed the pang of emptiness from his thoughts and cleared his mind of his fear and instead welcomed a much needed reverie of his wife, Faith. He summoned her from the place she occupied in his heart and mind, wrapping the memory of her around him, calming him, as only she could. His Faith.  Archie might have stayed there for days, remembering his life as it once was, if the halo of fog hadn't crept over the opening of his hiding place and seemed to beckon him from his hideaway.<br/><br/>The Captain pulled himself quietly from the dugout only to be encased by the fog. The ominous silence continued and enveloped him even further.  He could see nothing more than a few inches from his face, the fog thick and opaque to view, if any of his men were alive out there, the German's could be too, so he exercised caution, remembering Faith's last words to him, as he so often did, still echoing in his ears, “Just come home to me, Archie.”  He made a measured and quiet progress toward a break in the haze, it was like a portal from the mist.  As he stepped through he found himself standing in front of a ramshackle building that read TRADING in bold black letters on the awning over the porch that led to the weathered planked front door. Pushing his helmet back off his forehead, Archie pivoted his weary body to find the murky haze still behind him and then returned his curiosity to the tattered building before him.  He was dreaming, that's all it was, he reasoned, he was certain of it.  A faint smile played at the corner of his lips, sleep was often the only escape from the torture of war, if his mind had conjured this place up for him to have a respite from the day, so be it. And with that thought, Archie stepped onto the porch, his muddy tank boots testing the fitness of the boards under his feet with a creaking whine, and grabbed the smooth brass handle of the door with his dirty right hand and twisted, pushing the door ajar tentatively, he stepped over the threshold of what he was sure was nothing more than a pleasant slumbering hallucination.<br/><br/><br/><br/>