Free One Day In Budapest by J.F. Penn

of Serb nationalists, surrounding a woman who was sprawled, weeping, across the body of a dead man. One of the men said something, nodding at the woman and began to unbuckle his belt.  
    Zoltan felt his heart beating hard in his chest. In some way, this tiny scene represented a microcosm of this conflict, and of every injustice against the vulnerable. Zoltan had heard the stories of Budapest under the fascists, then the Communists, how friends had given each other up in exchange for another day of freedom. He couldn’t alter his own country’s past, but perhaps he could change this woman’s future.  
    He stepped out from behind the fence, his gun relaxed by his side. Knowing that he and László were outnumbered, it would be better to reason with them.  
    “You’re a long way from your camp, guys,” Zoltan said as the men swung round to look at him. Their faces were hostile, and they raised their guns as they formed a phalanx around the woman, claiming their prize. Her sobs filled the air before one of the men spoke, his English halting.  
    “You … go. This,” he gestured at the woman. “Ours.”  
    Zoltan stepped forward, his left hand outstretched in a gesture of placation. His heart was hammering, but he knew that if he walked away now, the woman would be brutally violated. He still had a chance to stop it.  
    “This woman is under UN protection,” he said. “So I think you had better leave.”  
    One of the group laughed and turned away, saying a few words and reaching down to pull the woman off the body of her husband by her hair. She screamed again. Zoltan raised his gun and immediately, the other men had their weapons readied. Zoltan’s senses were heightened, the metallic smell of weapons overlaid with the stink of the soldiers’ sweat thick in his nostrils.  
    He felt rather than heard László emerge from behind. A surge of gratitude washed over him at his friend’s belated backup. But then he heard a click near his ear, and realized that Laszlo’s gun was pointed at his own head. A flush of betrayal rocked him.  
    “We’re sorry for the intrusion,” László said, his voice smooth, as if they were at a gentlemen’s club, not on the broken streets of Srebenica. “My friend here was just leaving.”  
    The Serbs laughed and lowered their weapons. Zoltan felt László pulling him backwards as the six men turned to their prize, two men of them now unbuckling their pants, as the woman wept at their feet.  
    Zoltan felt as if the world slowed in that moment, his brain frantically searching for a solution. His eyes fell on a pile of weaponry that the Serbs had left discarded to one side.  
    A grenade. It was the only way.  
    He felt almost manic, desperate to get to the woman and stop the soldiers. László wouldn’t shoot him, he knew that, but he also knew that his friend would always choose the easy way out. There would be no back up.  
    The Serbs had their backs turned and as two men held the woman down, another bent to pull off her lower garments as she sobbed in desperation.  
    “Just walk away, Zol. You can’t help her.” László ’s voice was honey, tempting him with the easy path, but the words of Simon Wiesenthal, the persecutor of Nazi criminals, echoed in Zoltan’s mind. For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing .  
    Zoltan broke away from László ’s grip, running for the pile of weaponry, his eyes fixed on a grenade. He heard swearing and then a gunshot but didn’t flinch, steeling his body and flinging himself down behind the pile as he grabbed a grenade from the top. Looking back briefly, he could see Laz ducking back behind the wall, his face turned away. Zoltan knew that he had mere seconds before the men advanced to kill him, so he pulled the pin from the grenade and launched it, throwing it far enough away that it would explode against a nearby building.  
    The soldiers shouted and ducked as the grenade landed and then exploded,