A Country Divided : Through Blood United

The Battle of Antietam: Bloody Lane

I threw her hat backward, and I quickly hugged her tightly but not enough to make her feel any pain.

    I ripped off my hat from my head and smiled. "It's me, Evangeline. I go as Angel right now, but I missed you, Patience!" I used her spy nickname to make her smile.

    Amber chuckled a bit, but then coughed from using too much energy. "I have missed you too, Dauntless." She smiled after saying my spy nickname, her eyelids drooping then opening again. "I'm sorry I couldn't join the Northern militia, I felt that joining the Southern army would give me more information."

    That actually is a good idea, I thought before nodding and replying "It's okay, Amber. At least you don't actually support slavery."

    She chuckled again, a weak smile plastered to her lips. "I know. Hey, can you ask Milo to get a doctor? My brain is kind of swelling here."

    My eyes widened in surprise. "Oh! I'm so sorry." I turned toward Milo and we exchanged nervous glances.

    "Milo, please get a doctor!" I shouted angrily. I didn't mean for it to come out as an angry snap.

    "Mkay," He replied as he got up, clearly offended. "I'll try and get one as fast as I can."

    As Milo ran through the dense cornfield, I held my friend's hand consolingly as she struggled to remain alive until a doctor arrived.

***

    The doctor and Milo shoved their way through the last stalk of corn before coming upon Amber and I.

    "Please help," I begged as I glanced over Amber's motionless body.

    The doctor examined Amber and placed two fingers on the inside of her wrist. "On a good note, he's alive, but he's struggling quite a bit."

I sighed in relief when the doctor referred to Amber as a man.

"Lucky for you two," the doctor continued, "We just invented the perfect trick to cure him."

The doctor whipped a strange tool out of his pocket. The top was circle-shaped, probably for holding. The tool was a straight metal bar that ended in some sort of an L shape. It somehow looked like a corkscrew for opening a bottle of wine.

"Um, doctor?" I asked, obviously confused about the tool in front of me. "What's that thing for?"

The doctor chuckled, almost manically. A wave of chills ran down my back, causing me to twitch. "Boy, I'll show you what we doctors do with this type of thing."

He shoved the L-shaped end into the bullet hole in Amber's forehead and twisted it just like how someone would open a bottle of wine.

Amber gasped loudly, her eyes shooting open. She lurched forward once she gained full consciousness, and the doctor quickly yanked his new tool out of her forehead.

"You're all fixed up now, boy," He laughed as he wrapped a gauze around her bloodied head.

"Th-" Amber tried to reply before the doctor quickly left.

***

After Amber was hauled off to a safe house, Milo and I proceeded through the cornfield to accomplish our first mission:

As Milo and I reached the end of the cornfield, I managed to see two lines of soldiers in blue and brown uniforms, each color behind one side of a fence. In between the two lines of fences lay an old dirt road that looked like a dried up riverbed due to the dip in the middle.

    One the side closest to Milo and I, navy blue-dressed Union soldiers sat behind the fence, loading their guns while even less Confederate soldiers joined the few troops that were already stationed on the other side of the fence.

    "Fire, now!" I heard one of the Northern soldiers command as he shot his own rifle.

    I did as I was told, and I shot at the other side of the fence, which was only a few yards away from our side of the fence. Many Northern soldiers exchanged gazes with the Confederate troops, most of them not being happy ones.

    I angrily glared at the soldier directly across from me, his lavender eyes piercing directly into my white eye that wasn't covered with my eyepatch.

    It was Evan again.

    I didn't let my emotions control me again, and I fired my rifle. I didn't fire it directly at my twin brother, of course, but I shot it at the men at his side to scare him a bit.

    Evan leaped in surprise. My little gag worked. I chuckled to myself as I reloaded my rifle.

    My twin brother groaned in anger, and he blew a stray strand of golden hair out of his face. Evan's angry glare pierced into my heart, and a part of me regretted scaring my brother like that.

    For what seemed like hours, the two sides of the road shot brutally shot at each other. We were all within sight of each other, adding to the growing tension of the battle. Whenever someone was shot and killed, their dead body rolled into the road, their blood oozing out into the dip in the middle.

    After many soldiers on both sides of the fence were killed, the dip in the road began to fill, and the old dirt road looked more like a river of blood. The blood was actually flowing down the road.

    Throughout the various waves of gunshots that rang in the air, a gunshot that was even louder than the others boomed in my ear, making my ears ring loudly.

    As if time seemed to freeze, I felt a sharp pain explode in my leg. Like little bolts of lightning, the pain began to shoot through my lower left leg. As I collapsed to the ground, I caught the site of Evan smirking maliciously, his lavender eyes practically glowing with insanity.

    Did Evan shoot me? I asked myself as the word started to spin around me.

    My vision became blurry. I absent-mindedly glanced upward at the now blue sky above, and a fuzzy yet familiar face popped in my vision. I could remember that dark chocolatey skin and dark-brown eyes anywhere.

    Johnathan.

    "Jon?" I asked weakly before my world went black.