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The boy jerks, disappears into the mist, as if he has fallen miles down to earth. The captain was right, the warrior thinks, they are coming from below. He sees the imperialist soldier who has just fired his weapon, and he is aiming at him now. He sprints forward, taking the direct path, even as the man fires again, and the bullet hits him, of that there is no doubt, but he feels nothing. Perhaps it ricocheted off some extraneous bit of metal on his flak jacket, perhaps he is now invincible. Took long enough, he thinks wearily, and he is upon the soldier, seeing only the man's wide white eyes, and he dispatches him with a compassionate thrust to the heart, death instantaneous -- he is familiar enough with killing that he knows when a man is dead, even as the body still jerks as if connected to electrodes.  |
The name of the seaside town the boy has given him is familiar. Yes, his memory still holds -- battlefields blur together and towns are united in their unremitting horror, and yet the name of a town in his home province has a sweet tang to it, a word that is not a word. He will finally have a chance to return, after how many decades? He quickens his pace, imagining that this town is just over the bend, although for all he knows he may be running in the opposite direction. Planes soar overhead. He cannot see them, but their subsonic roar is quite close, and even this feels like it is emanating from the ground. Ride, cloud, ride! He runs forward, nothing left but forward, as the ground slopes upwards, shrubs giving way to pristine rocks and gravel. The planes are releasing objects, and they are hitting  |
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