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Xirminator -> Other Stories by Xirminator (5/17/2010 8:58:41)
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Didn't have anywhere to put this one, so I made this thread for all my stories that don't involve science fiction and fantasy.
Shattered
There never is one war, Sullivan thought, as he clambered over the jagged slabs of concrete and the twisted iron posts jutting out of them. There is the soldier’s war and another war for men like me. One war began when a man in a suit gave orders, the other began when a man’s world dropped like a chandelier and shattered into a billion shards and he had to find the pieces that mattered most.
Luckily, all the pieces were the same for Sullivan. But to the boy, some of them mattered.
“Are you sure this is it?” he called, looking down at the hunched figure near the base of the mountain of rubble.
The boy pointed at two gigantic metal letters, half hidden in the rubble. Dust and scratches had spoilt their silver sheen. They were not familiar to Sullivan. “Those were part of the name, I’m sure of it!”
“Why would he be here?”
“We’ve already been home and he wasn’t there. The school is gone. This is the only place left! He knows I used to work here; I brought him once and he liked it! He has to be here.”
No, he doesn’t, thought Sullivan. He could be anywhere, lying under the rubble or blown to bits with the rest of the children when the school went up in flame.
He didn’t tell the boy that, of course. He still looked around, hoping to see a figure shambling among the ruins or someone waving at them. He ignored the distant sounds of bombs and the dim flashes that threatened to break the horizon. “I can’t see anyone! Look, kid, if he’s still alive, he’s going to be looking for food, not hanging out here.”
He scrambled down the pile of rubble and came to rest shakily next to the boy. “It’s what we should doing. We need to eat. Look at you son, you’re all bone. Stop worrying and take care of yourself first. How are you going to find him if you starve?” He took the boy by the elbow, not unkindly. “Come on, kid. We can look afterwards.”
The boy followed quietly, and Sullivan was free to wonder where the hell they were going to find food in this husk of a city. “We’ll go to where Codgeries used to be,” he said. “They packaged food. Some crates might still be one piece.”
They walked in silence, following a street that looked like a riverbed without water, the mounds of destruction on either side acting as banks. They hadn’t seen anything alive since the fires had stopped burning. Sullivan estimated that that was about seven days ago.
“Look,” the boy said, after a while, “I know you think it’s just a false hope, me trying to find Billy. But he wasn’t one for staying in school, you know what I mean? He used to come visit me all the time. There’s a chance that he was out went they bombed the school. That’s why I’m looking. My mam would kill me if I just forgot about him.”
But your mom is dead too, son.
“We’ll look,” Sullivan promised. “What else can we do? Codgeries is up ahead… or was up ahead.” The silence threatened to fall again, and Sullivan couldn’t take it anymore. They had to talk, act as if they were still alive, not walk around like lost, shambling creatures. No one got anything done that way. “What did you use to do, son, back at that workplace?”
“Coffee,” the boy said. “It was headquarters of the Times. That’s how Billy could stay with me there, because no one cared what I did in the basement as long as I brought them coffee. It wasn’t a big job,” he said, shrugging. “But I thought I ought to start somewhere. What about you?”
“Cop,” Sullivan said.
“I thought all the officers were killed when the tanks rolled in.”
“I ran.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t think of me as a coward,” Sullivan said. “They all should have run. No point in dying like a hero.” He ignored the twinge of guilt that accompanied these words. Regretting that he was the only one alive, the only one that ran, was not something a sane man ought to feel.
The boy suddenly stopped. “Look!”
Ahead of them, hanging through the window of a bus, was a small body. They both ran towards it. It was a little boy, no more than six. Blood caked one side of his head. He wasn’t breathing. He was still wearing a small satchel. Sullivan bit his lip, and helped lift the body out of the bus. They took off its satchel and put it on the ground beside its feet. “I told him not to use the bus,” the boy whispered. “I told him there were going to be bombs. I told him.”
Sullivan put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. He could feel the prickles of hot tears at the corner of his eyes. But he did not let them out. There was nothing he could say or do that would make it better, but at least, he would remain strong.
“My mam’s going to kill me,” the boy whispered. “Why didn’t I tell him to stay at school? It’s my all my fault.” And he put his face on little Billy’s chest and sobbed.
He’d have died anyway, son, there was nothing you could have done. But Sullivan didn’t say anything.
They buried Billy in a scorched park. There was no rubble there, and the ground was softer, so it was easier to dig. They scrounged food and lived as they could in the ruined city until relief forces passed through, looking for survivors. They came in the nick of time, perhaps, because both of them were close to starving, and Sullivan was ill. He didn’t know what he had caught or where he had got it from. Probably the rotten food they were forced to eat.
The doctors did what they could with Sullivan, but he would be stuck in a wheelchair all his life. He didn’t complain. He was alive. The boy, young as he was, quickly recovered and gained strength. He went off to be a soldier and fight his own personal war against the people who took Billy and his mam and took a bullet to the head.
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