December 30, 1939. 06:50 AM.
There was no need for an alarm clock, nor a morning bugle.
A dull, sustained low-frequency vibration acted like an invisible giant's hand, shaking the Taipale line from its slumber. Half a cup of cold water resting on an ammunition crate developed fine ripples; a moment later, the ripples turned into violent tremors, and the cup fell onto the permafrost with a sharp shatter.
"Thunder?"
Pekka Saarinen poked his head out from under his blanket, rubbing his bleary eyes. "Does it thunder in the winter?"
"It doesn't thunder in winter."
Walter Ilves was already standing on the firing step of the trench, his M28/30 gripped firmly in his hands. His voice was as cold as ice, devoid of any fluctuation. "That's heavy artillery. A lot of it."
He didn't need to check his watch to know that at this very moment, the Soviet Red Army's artillery groups were raining tons of steel onto the Finnish border. Simultaneously, in Helsinki, hundreds of kilometers away, the air-raid sirens would be piercing the sky.
The sky had not yet brightened, but the southeastern horizon glowed with a sickly, morbid dark red. It wasn't the dawn; it was the diffuse reflection of nearly a thousand muzzles flashing against the low-hanging clouds.
"Everyone to your posts!"
Simo Häyhä's voice cut through the morning chill. He didn't scream, but his cadence was twice its usual speed. The soldiers of the First Squad scrambled to their respective sentry positions. Even the usually sluggish brothers, Matti and Toivo, moved as if stung, lugging their heavy Maxim machine gun into the bunker.
Eero huddled in a corner, the chattering of his teeth loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. "Are... are they coming? Are they going to charge us right now?"
"Not that fast." Walter spared him a cold glance, adjusting the magnification on his scope. "We're on the second line. The border guards and cover units up front will hold them off for a while. But that barrage... sounds like they won't be holding for long."
The days that followed were a form of torture known as "waiting."
The thunder of the guns grew closer by the day, and the tremors of the earth intensified. The first to arrive weren't the Soviets, but the retreating Finnish cover units from the front. These soldiers were in a trance, their faces smeared with black soot and clotted blood. Some had lost their helmets; others leaned on each other for support; some even used sleds to drag stiffened corpses behind them.
As they passed through the 6th Company's sector, the look in their eyes, as if they had just returned from the bowels of hell, crushed the last lingering hopes of recruits like Pekka and Juha Terine.
"How is it up there?" Juha grabbed a passing wounded soldier, his voice urgent.
The soldier looked up with hollow eyes. "A sea of fire... nothing but fire. Tanks as thick as beetles, too many to count. Run, or bury yourselves deep."
Juha's hand froze in mid-air, his face turning ashen.
"Don't listen to his nonsense."
Simo walked over and handed Juha a piece of hard, dry bread. "A man who's lost his nerve sees demons everywhere. Get back to your position."
Despite Simo's words, everyone noticed that the frequency with which the squad leader chewed his tobacco had slowed significantly.
December 3.
In the forests across the Taipale River, the cacophony of mechanical engines was now clearly audible. The heavy snow paused for a moment on this day, and visibility improved. Walter lay against the snow-covered edge of the trench, draped in a white camouflage smock, nearly invisible against the landscape. Only the dark void of his muzzle and the faint glint of the scope's glass betrayed his lethal presence.
"I see them," Walter whispered.
"Where?" Antti lay beside him, nervously pushing up his glasses.
"Two o'clock. Edge of the dead woods. Distance: 800 meters."
Walter activated the Eye of Death.
In that instant, the blurred horizon was pulled right to his eyes. He saw it. It wasn't just a man or a squad. It was a slowly writhing, grey-brown serpent. Countless Soviet soldiers in earth-brown greatcoats were pouring out from the shadows of the forest. They wore no white camouflage; on this pristine snowy plain, they stood out like pepper flakes scattered on a cream cake.
Amidst the flood of infantry were the steel monsters. T-26 tanks. They belched black smoke, their treads crushing frozen brush as their turrets rotated, searching for prey.
"Dear God..." Pekka took one look through a gap in the trench and his legs went weak, nearly bringing him to his knees. "How are there so many? That's at least a battalion!"
"More," Walter's voice remained terrifyingly calm, as if he were taking inventory of warehouse stock. "More units are still filing out. This is just the vanguard. It looks like they want to cross the Suvanto River in one go."
Antti's hands were shaking, but he forced himself to pull out his small notebook. "So many tanks... we only have a few Molotov cocktails and those two anti-tank guns. It's not enough..."
"Then make sure the infantry doesn't get close."
Simo Häyhä had taken his firing position unnoticed. He cycled the bolt, sliding a cold round into the chamber. His expression held no fear, no excitement, only the singular focus of an old hunter watching the herd enter the kill zone.
"Everyone, check your sights," Simo gave the final command. "They aren't in range yet, so don't be eager to fire. Let them get close. Remember what I taught you—aim for the torso, ignore the head."
In the trench, the sound of metallic bolts clicking echoed as one. Juha swallowed hard, gripping his axe which had been polished to a shine; Matti and Toivo fed the ammunition belt into the Maxim; Eero, though still trembling, was forced to raise his rifle by the heavy, collective breathing of his comrades.
Walter pressed his eye to the scope. In this slowed-down world, the crosshairs gently settled on a Soviet officer leading the way. The officer was waving a pistol, seemingly directing the troops to deploy. Walter could see the red star on his collar tabs, and even the white puffs of breath from his mouth.
In those suffocating minutes, time seemed to congeal into a gel-like state. The Soviet troops across the river didn't launch a suicidal charge; instead, they moved in a skirmish line, advancing slowly behind the T-26 tanks. It was a standard probing attack designed to draw out Finnish fire positions.
But through the scope, the sense of oppression didn't lessen in the slightest.
"Steady..."
Simo lay on the frozen earth, his voice so low only those closest could hear. "Don't look at the tanks; that's for the anti-tank guns. Watch the infantry. Let them get closer."
600 meters. 500 meters.
The brown greatcoats became increasingly clear against the snow. Walter could even see the powder kicking up from their boots. The pistol-waving officer remained at the front, shouting orders, perhaps to bolster morale, or perhaps to curse the godforsaken weather.
Walter felt his throat go dry, a physiological response to tension. But his hands were unnaturally steady, as if they were not part of his flesh but supports forged from steel.
That's a commissar, Walter marked him mentally. The officer was dressed more warmly than the common soldiers, his expression arrogant and impatient.
Thump, thump, thump...
The familiar, magnified sound of his heartbeat filled his ears once more. Without a conscious effort, the Eye of Death activated automatically under his extreme focus. The howling wind receded instantly, and the swirling snowflakes hung suspended in mid-air.
The advancing Soviet officer became agonizingly slow; one lifted foot stayed frozen in the air, and the snarling expression on his face turned into a static, black-and-white photograph. The crosshairs moved as if they had a life of their own, sliding over the officer's belt, over the buttons of his chest, and finally coming to rest steadily just below the red star on his collar.
The heart.
There was no hesitation, no moral questioning, not even a thought. There was only the muscle memory of his finger's pressure on the trigger.
BANG!
The rifle kicked sharply, the buttstock slamming into the hollow of Walter's shoulder. The officer looked as if he had been struck head-on by an invisible sledgehammer. A mist of red blood erupted from his back, spraying a jagged, fan-shaped pattern onto the pristine white snow. He collapsed backward, hitting the ice like a sack of rotten potatoes, twitched once, and was still.
"Good shot!"
Juha let out a muffled, suppressed roar beside him. That single shot acted like a starting pistol.
"Fire!" Simo commanded.
Rat-tat-tat-tat—!
The Maxim heavy machine gun manned by Matti and Toivo roared to life. Once this old-fashioned water-cooled gun opened up, it became a literal scythe of the Reaper. A dense rain of bullets swept across the ice, mowing down the front-line Soviet soldiers like wheat. In the trench, a symphony of gunfire erupted.
Walter quickly worked the bolt, ejecting a scorching shell and chambering the next round. The moment of the kill replayed in his mind.
Strange. It was too strange. Walter had expected nausea, fear, or guilt. After all, across two lifetimes, this was the first time he had personally stripped a fellow human being of life.
But there was nothing. His heart felt empty, his mind calm to the point of indifference. To him, the dead officer was no different from the wine bottles he had shattered or the boar he had killed. Just a target. A red dot in the scope that needed to be erased.
Is this what killing feels like? A ridiculous thought flashed through Walter's mind as he re-acquired his aim. As simple as turning off a light.
However, in stark contrast to his mind's utter indifference, his body betrayed him. His heart hammered against his ribs as if trying to leap out of his throat. Adrenaline made his fingertips tingle, and his breathing was jagged and heavy. This disconnection between soul and flesh left him with a lingering sense of unease.
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