But not really. It's just a metaphore. Something to sound like it is almost real. But is not. 

You can't really forget. 

Not really. 

But it is something nice to ponder, that maybe we could If we hadn't lost so much already. Lost our families and everything that made any sense in the world. 

But we try.  

To make sense of the pain and the deafening roar of bombs exploding over Orlando. 

Of the senseless wreckage. 

And the way we all change. 

Mike promised he'd take care of Carolyn and the boys while I went out and tried to find some food. He wound up running when a gang of outsiders came in. 

Carolyn was killed. 

Raped and killed. 

I told myself I was a good and just man. That I was fair. That I believed in the kindness and redeemability of humanity. 

But I was wrong. 

I killed Mike anyway. 

I haven't found Ev or Dyl. 

But it has only been twenty four hours. 

I sit here in the bowl of this burned out tree that used to sit in someone's yard. Except the yard isn't here anymore. And watch the smoke push out in slow swirls, out over the ocean. 

Sit and feel the faint breeze push against my burnt face and think of all the ways I am going to kill the gang that took my boys. 

It is not very humanistic of me, I know. 

But I am beyond caring. 

The moon pushes in slow degrees up over the arc of the horizon towards it's zenith, and then down the crescent of the silent night toward another god-awful hot day, where the heat beats the water and patience and hope and endurance out of a person.   

It is only the third week of the war. 

A strategic incision that was designed to maximize the ROI of certain countries. A quick, dirty in-and-out campaign that has gone beyond its limits. 

Ruin buildings stretch away, out to the overpass and the freeway that is the edge of the city, where the under brush of burnt-back vegatation and trees give way to the deeper and blacker burnt forest beyond. Somewhere out there fragments of concrete roadways still lay on the ground in shattered pieces of concrete with steel rods poking through. But they don't go anywhere anymore, those roadways. 

It is a once-was horror that is now reality. A Dali-esque surreal landscape painted on the insides of our eyes. Artistic land-mine style that is too bloody to be real. But it is. 

And there is the smell. 

The smell of death and decay. 

That you think you can never forget, never get out of your nose and your head. The stench that lies over everything that you don't think you can ever learn to live with. 

But you do. 

Everyday you go on. 

Fighting to eat. 

Fighting to find a place to sleep where you can sleep a night, wondering if you will ever see morning after you close your eyes. 

And you do wake up, suprising yourself that you are really alive. 

And if you've lost everything, or close to everything you wonder how that can be. That you are still going on. That you haven't found some reason to pull a gun out of a holster somewhere and end it all. 

I think it is the hate. 

At least it is what I hold on to. 

The next day I am in a building when it gets hit. One of the concrete walls collapse over on top of me. 

Slamming me into the hard packed ground and breaking my arm. I guess I'm lucky it didn't break my neck. 

It's a nasty break. Snapped in two places, with the bone pushing through the skin at the lower break just above my right wrist. 

I lie on the ground for over an hour after the collapse, waiting for the strength and the courage to push past the pain and drag myself up off the ground. When I finally do, I tell myself that I can go on. That I can find the gang, that I can live through this.  

That I can fulfill my purpose in life which has dwindled down to simply finding my boys and killing everyone else that stands between me and them. 

It takes over an hour to stand. 

I grit my teeth and start to move forward and then pass out. 

* * * The smoke from the fires is getting heavier. It is hard to see and my eyes sting. I cover them with a damp cloth that I spit into and then press against my eyes. There is no surface water anymore. 

I tried to wrap up my arm, but I guess it really doesn't matter. When I bent it, the bone just pushed further through the skin, so I stopped. 

The arm is dead anyway. There is no real chance at saving it, and so the effort is really just an exercise in wasted energy. 

Eventually the arm will take the rest of me, but by that time I am hoping I will have done what I need to do. 

I pick up the gangs trail at the edge of the building where I found Carolyn. 

I buried her in a clearing and covered her with a blue tarp that I found in the warehouse across the street. 

I kneel in the dust and try to pray, but I feel like it really isn't being fair to God to simply have my faith when it's convenient for me. I feel like a hypocrite. 

So I recite a poem over her grave instead. 

A song really. 

Her's and my song, of when we had met all those years ago.  

'Knight in Shining Armor'. 

I had tried to be. 

But I didn't turn out to be much of a knight. 

I just don't have the heart to tell her that over her grave though. 

I simply sing our song and tell her that I love her. That it is going to get better. That the boys are fine and that I will find them. That the world will vercome it's insanity and everything will return to normal eventually. 

That I will try to get a job in the west again. 

That we can get a farm out in the country away from the city and we'll pay the mortgage off early and we'll grow sunflowers in the garden if she wants. 

I don't have the heart to tell her I am lying. 

I want to tell myself I will last the day and find my boys. That I will kill the idiots that took them. 

But even that seems like it will never happen. 

But I don't want to admit that. 

Even to myself. 

Not if I can help it. 

* * * Out past the overpass where the countryside begins, I find tracks in the ash-dirt and two wolves. And the remains of two of the hoodalums in garish shirts, with stylized symbols impressed into their forheads. 

The wolves hold their ground until I let loose with the flame thrower.  

Even left handed it is very persausive. 

I don't find any traces of Ev or Dyl. 

I follow the wolves trail deeper into the brush and the trees.  

* * * The day gives way to night. Darkness falling quickly as the trees grow thicker. I follow with my eyes trying to adjust to the dim light. Sounds move in that faint haze. Sounds and destiny and anger and hope and whatever else you care to call it.  

  I slip along the trail, listening for sounds. Following and waiting for the sounds to become movements in the dark. 

When the sounds of growls become pointed muzzles that run through the thick smokey air and scream just before they strike. 

* * * And they do. 

I cut loose with the flamer. I kill three wolves before two of them hit me. 

One hits me low in the chest, his muzzle smacking into me and knocking me down. Pushing the air out of me. His teeth flashing as he tries for my throat. I throw up my good arm, then feel the other wolf hit me in the side. His teeth closing down on the soft shirt and tissue and flesh and the quick sudden fresh smell of blood that is my own. 

I hit the one at my arm with the back of my fist and several of its teeth break away. My hand swells up in a sudden screaming pain. 

It takes forever to find the trigger to the flamer and then to pull it. To hear the sound of oxygen and gas mixing together at the nozzle. The quick roar of the ignition and the brilliant burst of light and heat and quick screaming animals as they scatter over the shattered ground.  

I try to sit up, but can't support myself on my broken arm. I blast the flamer until the heating element threatens to melt and the quick temperature disconnect shuts down the gun. 

Until there is only the silence and the heat, and the sound of the gun pinging as the metal slowly cools down. 

* * * The smoke pushing out to sea finally gives way to fire and I pull back into the city. Crossing over the burnt ground to the overpass to wait in the damp darkness underneath the concrete braces. 

Waiting and watching the fire move in towards the buildings again. 

The wind changes and a flank breaks out from the first. Marching in an inverted V across the open trees and brush, pushing me back as it moves toward the sea. 

A third flank breaks off from the second, the intensity of the fires increasing tremendously. The heat is a physical thing now that claws at the air if you try to get too close. 

I retreat into a broken building and lean my back against the wall and slide down and settle onto the ground.  

The gun is cool in my fist, the afternoon is hot. There is no sound except the rush of fire across wood and my own breathing in the half shade. 

I don't think I'm going to find the boys.  

My arm hurts like hell, but that is not what worries me. I don't think I can outwit the flanks that have closed me into a corner and left me with my thoughts and my undone purpose. 

I am not supposed to fail. I am not supposed to fail! 

I could curse and maybe it would do some good, but probably not. 

I know there are lots of reasons for being here in this moment in time. For the world to be the way it is. Reasons for the war and for losing Carolyn and for not finding the boys. 

I can feel the flames of the fires closing in and the sound of it is a high humming as the oxygen is burnt out of the air. 

I know there are reasons. 

It is just that none of them are good enough anymore. 

// 

fade to black 
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end