We are a troop or troupe of us, progressing to a destination, stomping along in that direction

While we are exposed it is with that well-being feeling of being nestled in a space of utmost safety. After all, while marching along on a slightly raised light path bisecting an immediate field, we are, in a larger perspective, roughly circled by the looming lords of a forest evergreen. Cloaked in the weave of a coat cut from the fabric of the most densely woven needles.

Surrounded we are by air that is brisk, clear and bright. The smells are thick with dampness lingering from the dew. Were we to traipse off through the grasses, our pants legs would soon be soaked to the knees. Heady, the green scent of plant life going about its business. The production of chlorophyll, and the exhalation of oxygen, these things cover us as a vast bubble.

Our approach does not go undetected. As with a storm on the horizon, we hear the crack, the booming of thunders too distant to bring any strange light to the sky. Then, slowly, more closely, the whistling and pops, matter swishing through the branches, the tops of trees snapping off.

And we had thought ourselves tucked away in enclave, moving through a corridor of pastoral sanctuary! Thus is shown the falseness wrought by any sense of security.

They have their cannons well-trained on us, bearing down on our position with increasing precision. We are somehow observed; we have been pinpointed by barrels the width of the oldest pines to our sides.

We cannot flee, there is no avenue of escape, nowhere to hide. A dispersal to the woods would be the height of lunacy. The vast stands are being decimated, the air roaring with the last groans as the ranks of firs fall under the peripheral barrage.

The unusual thing is that instead of boulders of lead they are shooting corpses at us, two or three at a time rolled loosely into balls. These tend to begin unraveling as they fly through the air. They splatter on contact, the bodies rolling apart, limbs flung about as shrapnel, heads bouncing balls. Those landing from a steeper trajectory just sort of flop to the ground.

It's like a barrage of spoiled fruit, gigantic leggy melons, but the pulp of the matter is putrid human flesh. The odor is unbearable and omniscient, rot rising from the grotesque lumps and puddles all around us. We are encompassed by the stench, with no option but to continue forward to the source of the onslaught.