The snapping crackle of a swath of bullets flicking past overhead drove his cheek down to the cold, wet receiver of the anti-tank rifle. His heart lurching in his chest as black, ice talons tried to snatch his heart and leave him paralyzed in fear. It took effort. A force of will he wasn't sure he had, to blink, and focus. He had practiced this. Slow things down. Round is chambered. Safety is off. Acquire a target. Each step slowed his heart rate, each step helping him focus, push aside fear and terror, and do what needed to be done. The enemy had half-tracks, and he was the only one in immediate position to slow them down, to stop them.
The nose of one of the machines lined up with the front post of the rifle's sight, it was between six and five hundred yards. He exhaled his breath and squeezed the trigger. The rapid fire of the machine guns, the piercing crackle of rifles, and the staccato of the sub-machineguns died in the drowning roar of the G1939. The blast deflected by the muzzle brake rippled perpendicular to his position through the grass, as Halliger was shoved in the shoulder by a force few would ever experience. He reset, and fired again, driving another hardened steel projectile down range, through a second hole in the half track's radiator, punching through the cylinder bores and snapping connecting rods like twigs, before the steel projectile shoved its way through the firewall of the vehicle, scattering steel and cast iron shards before the projectile made itself home the spare ammunition storage.
The world was mute, except for the high pitched squealing hiss in his ears as acquired the lead half track. He could feel the snapping of rounds flashing past him like angry hornets, clods of dirt were being chewed up in front of him as machineguns and rifles refocused their aim on the cannon's report. One more squeeze of the trigger sent a round on its way as he ducked out of the hair of fire that threatened to find him. He pulled the G1939 back with him, out of harms way for the moment. He could see flashes of white down, and then the deep thumping rumbling of something very loud occurring. As wet black soil stopped spraying onto him, sound started to come back, and the first words he heard, "---LL BACK! FALL BACK!" muted and hardly intelligible if it weren't for the pattern to the command. He looked for the carrying straps to load a pair of ten round magazines for the anti-tank rifle, "Scheisse!" He had forgotten the carrying pouch, either of them. Rather than dwell, he ripped the magazine out of the rifle, and rocked in a second fresh magazine. That, with the already chambered cartridge, would give him eleven to work with. Crudely swinging the G34 over his right shoulder by its strap, waited for a moment, before gathering himself and the ATR, and leaving the death pit. Three magazines forced to be left behind as he ran, rushing past the barn which now belted out heat like a furnace.
Legs like pistons, driving him forwards to the treeline, and past Balalika as he slid down the embankment, away from the bullets that sought to destroy them, he then scrambled back to the ridge, shoving the barrel of the 1939 through the base of a bush as he flopped down behind it himself. He saw a half track, about to be concealed by the inferno that was a barn. The rifle barrel swung about, he held over for range, and then fired, another thunderous pair. Hoping to slow them down with one more damaged or destroyed vehicle. The first shot he saw punching through the upper sheetmetal of the body, the second he fired through the barn itself, knowing that the burning wood would provide no protection from his gun, but the effects could not be observed. Rudolph recoiled from the slope, pulling himself, and the rifle back to his arms, to continue the retreat.
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Mixtape Ghost N