How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land! - William Wordsworth
SHATTERED CITADEL: EMERALD CITY
27 Miles N of the Seattle Deadzone, United States Federal, Earth [Sol], Unknown, Unknown 2087
“You didn’t have to come here. You shouldn’t have come.”
“No, I had to come. He’s out there, somewhere in this God forsaken place.”
“I’m not gonna talk you out of this, but your all alone in there. Were not authorized to go into Seattle and I’m already putting my ass on the line letting you wonder off into a restricted zone.”
“Locarno, you’re a good friend, but I have to do this, I owe him that much.” He checked his rifle one last time and slung it on his back. He turned away from Locarno and began to walk away towards the ruined city far in the distance.
“Wait, Sanders!” Locarno called out to him. He stopped in his tracks and turned his head slightly towards Locarno. “I hope you find him. I really do.” Locarno sighed loudly and continued. “You have three days until we come back to collect the samples. After that there won’t be any more patrols anywhere near here. This is a dead zone and it’s gonna stay that way for a long long time.”
“I understand. Locarno, tell them I deserted. I don’t want you to get in trouble for me.”
“You’d get court-martialed. They could give you the firing squad if you come back.”
“If you come back without me they could kill you. They’ve killed men for less.”
Locarno said nothing as he boarded the Lumbee. It lifted off the ground, suspended itself in the air for a second then flew off hugging the ground as it went. Sanders continued down the broken road that was once Interstate 5, it would lead him into downtown Seattle. Every mile closer to the Emerald City meant a mile closer into Dante’s Inferno. The yellow skies of Earth soon turned black from the pillars of smoke that poured from the fires that still raged under the ruins. It had been more than a quarter of a century since the bombs hit the city, but the fires still burned unchecked. The heat from the fires had warped everything; the steel that had somehow stood up against the nuclear blast waves was now twisted and melted into forms of unspeakable horror. They resembled the shape of dying men, in steel form, with their arms stretched up to the sky. He had been in the outskirts of the city for only a few hours and it was already getting to his head.
Seattle was one of hundreds of places around the world that was beyond hope of every being reclaimed for the living. It was a dead zone. A place completely devastated by the war. Seattle was special among the dead zones in that it was one of the worst cases. Seattle had been nuked twice and fought over more times than he could count with both hands during the twenty-two year long war. Many of the cities that were razed to the ground like Kansas City have at least cleaning crews clearing out the bodies, but the Earth government refuses to do the same for Seattle. It is too dangerous. Hell, it’s so dangerous that even Anti-globalization Rebels don’t seem to venture into Seattle. Last he heard, the most optimistic estimates say that the fires under Seattle will probably burn for another hundred and fifty years.
Hiking through the ruins even in his environment suit was extremely tiring; to him it’s like walking around with a body encompassing weight vest on. He looked around for a place to sleep, someplace away from the raining burning ash that fell on Seattle like snow. It never stopped raining ash in Seattle, the constant ash fall covered everything in a thick layer of grayish ash that sometimes were as deep as six feet. He had to be extremely careful not to step on an ash trap, basically a hole in the ground covered up by a hardened layer of ash. The weight of a man was more than enough to break through one and result in a fall into the inferno burning under Seattle. The ash could also hide mines, booby-traps, anti-personnel robots, and most likely unexploded rounds.
He found a hospital and cautiously entered it. He silently moved though the dark corridors and carefully stepped over the dead still in line. He did his best not to step on them and found an empty room. He booby-trapped the door and sat with his back to the wall with a clear view of the door. Although he was in the middle of a dead zone, it didn't mean he shouldn't play it safe. He checked his rifle and his gear and went to sleep to the sound of his heavy labored breathing.
He opened his eyes and grabbed his chest trying to breathe; all around him were the sick waiting to see a doctor. The other patients looked at him with slight amusement until they became bored and returned to their ebooks and newspapers. His father rushed to him and grabbed his arm. As if he had done it a million times before he quickly took out a syringe from his coat pocket, prepped it and injected the boy with the life saving medicine he needed. The man embraced his son as his breathing steadied. “I'm so sorry; I shouldn't have left you alone, even for a second. They called daddy away to pick up more medicine.” His father looked around, clearly angry at the other patients for doing nothing but watch passively as his son almost died. He led his son by the hand out of the waiting room and back to the hospital's pickup and scheduling room.
“Children aren't allowed in here,” a small beetle-like man told him from behind the counter. He ignored him and pushed his way to the counter, while dozens of people cursed him for cutting. He glared at the bureaucrat behind the counter and the small man said meekly “Sir, I don't care if you left your place on the line, you need a new ticket.”
“You want my ticket? Here's my ticket.” His father slammed the empty syringe on the counter, shattering it in two. “My kid almost died out there in the waiting room. He needs a new heart, not more meds. He can't live like this, its hard enough to get the medicine he needs. There's never enough here!”
“A heart is impossible to get for a low priority case.”
“MY SON IS NOT LOW PRIORITY!”
The man behind the counter nervously rubbed his hands together and continued “It's too expensive. The government won't cover it. The medicine is all that's covered. You can get him on the waiting list for cloned hearts, and its only a fifteen year wait for low priority cases. Hes young, he can wait.”
“The doctors say he won't live nowhere near that long without a new heart.”
“In that case we can assign you a grief councilor.”
“For what?”
“Life termination is covered. Due to the severity of this cases condition, you will be entitled to a $25,000 tax rebate after early termination.”
His father stood silently for a moment with his mouth wide open, dumbfounded. “My son is not a dog! I will not put him down. You take half my paycheck for this shit. I would ask for a goddamn refund if I could, at least that way I could put a down payment on a heart at a private clinic.”
The boy began to cry, but felt a hand squeeze his arm. Pulling him away. He turned to see his smiling brother who just came back from outside. “Derek, lets go outside. I bought you some ice cream.” The small boy followed his older brother who led the way past the huge waiting crowds inside the hospital. Outside, his brother made good on the promise and handed him a ice cream sandwich. The boy accepted the frozen treat, but only stared at it as it slowly melted in the hot midday sun. “Whats wrong Derek?”
“Am I going to die?”
His brother straightened his back, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “Who told you that?”
“The doctors,” the boy replied.
“The doctors here don't know anything. Derek, you’re not going to die. You’re going to get better. You'll see.”
A blast of pressurized air lifted him off the floor and woke him up from his sleep. Someone had tried to get into his room and inadvertently set off his booby-trap. He grabbed his rifle and unleashed a volley of bullets through the wall. He stood up and cautiously approached the dark corridor. He heard a faint sound and took cover behind the overturned hospital bed in the room. The sound of something metallic rolling across the floor towards him from the dark corridor made him bolt towards the window. The object let off a loud beep as he leaped out of the window. He landed on the charred remains of a car and raised his arms to shield himself as bits of shrapnel raced past him. The blast kicked up all of the ash on the street into the air and made it impossible to see. He recovered and began to limp away in the dark shroud of ash just as bullets rained down on the car. The screen of ash had blinded the gunmen to his position so he shot randomly into the dense cloud of ash. Sanders ran as fast as he could away from the man or men trying to kill him, each stride he took sent a shot of pain coursing through his body. He was certain he had broken his foot. When he was far enough away he collapsed, landing on a car sized mound of ash. Kicking it up all around him.
His breathing was erratic, he felt like his heart was going to give out at any moment. He resisted the urge to remove his helmet, although that's all his brain starved brain could think of. Doing so would have filled his lungs up with toxic ash. He was as far from any doctor as he could be, he might as well have been on Pluto. He willed himself to stand up and placed his arms over his head, desperately trying to control his breathing.
“Derek, you can't come with us.”
“Why not?”
“Stay at camp.”
“I don't want too. I want to go hiking with you guys.”
“Stay at camp Derek, it’s too dangerous.”
“Let’s go Ben! He'll slow us down. I want to reach the summit by nightfall.” His friend said impatiently.
“Shut the hell up, my brother won't slow us down,” Ben said angrily.
“Then why can't I go?”
“Derek, I said no. I'll be back tomorrow. We can both go fishing then. Stay here with the other people, can you do that?”
His younger brother said nothing and looked down towards the dirt. He was silently crying and didn't want his big brother to see. Ben felt ashamed, but he turned towards his friends. He reached them and smacked the offender hard in the back of the head. It took them six hours of hard climbing to reach the summit. All along the way they had drank heavily, tossing the empty cans of beer aside as they progressed up the mountain, and at the summit drank even more in celebration. Ben and his friends completely intoxicated, placed their sleeping bags on the ground and fell asleep on the summit. The cool pacific breeze and soothing chirp of crickets quickly put them all to sleep.
Ben suddenly awoke in the middle of the night. His entire body was sore and his legs felt like mush from the hike. Stepping out of his sleeping bag, he stood up and went into a secluded spot away from his friends to answer nature's call. As he begun to dig a hole, he heard a whimper coming from the distance. He ignored it, but he heard it again and it sounded like a strangled scream. He cautiously approached the sound, expecting to find a dying animal he instead found a familiar outline in the dark.
“DEREK?!” He ran up to his younger brother who was face down in the dirt barely breathing. “What the hell are you doing up here?!” Ben reached inside his pocket, turning them inside out, trying desperately to find Derek's medicine. He now remembered leaving it at camp, he flipped Derek over and began to search his younger brother for the medicine, but found nothing. His younger brother was dying, desperately struggling to breathe, eventually he would exhaust himself and die. Ben screamed out to his friends for help, but they were sleeping the sleep of the drunk. “Don't worry bro.” He crouched down and scooped his little brother up into his arms. His brothers weight almost made his knees buckle, he had no strength left from the hike up. To make matters worst, his hangover from the alcohol was making it impossible for him to keep his balance or have the energy to keep himself up.
Ben mustered all of his stamina and moved forward through the darkness with his brother in his arms. His arms were screaming out to his brain in pain, let go, let go, relieve the pressure, but he ignored it. He dared not stop to rest, every minute that went by his brother's breathing became weaker and weaker. “Keep breathing Derek. We'll be home soon. Keep breathing.” Tears rolled down his eyes as he watched his brother slip out of consciousness in his arms. Ben broke out to a full sprint, dashing down the woods desperately trying to reach camp.
Ben ran into the camp screaming incoherently, he startled the people gathered around the camp fire and they leapt to their feet when they spotted Derek, limp in his arms. Ben laid his brother by the fire and cried out to the nearest person to retrieve the medical kit in his tent. Ben tried to perform CPR on his lifeless brother, but to no avail. The medical kit arrived and he extracted a large needle from the kit. Ben prepped it and thrusted it into his brothers chest. Injecting the lifesaving medicine directly into his heart. His brothers eyes blinked rapidly and he shot up into a sitting position gasping for air. He made an attempt to pull the needle out, but his older brother and another man held him down.
“What were you thinking?” Ben asked, not expecting an answer.
Derek's breathing slowed and he quietly responded, “I wanted to prove that I could reach the summit.”
Ben bent down and carefully hugged his brother. “I know you could.”
“Thank you.” Derek collapsed to the ground exhausted.
“Listen to me next time.”
He had wondered around aimlessly through the ruins of Seattle for hours. Searching fruitlessly through the rubble and ash. Every time he spotted the mangled armor of an American soldier he would stop to check their dog tags and moved on after extracting it. The cities center was a massive graveyard, millions of bones sticking out of the ash like a ghastly sugarcane field that stretched out in every direction. It was tiring work shifting through the bones, he noticed that all of the bones were from downed soldiers, Chinese and American. The civilians were literally wiped out by the first nuclear blast, all that remained of them was the ash and the occasional flash shadow permanently etched on the walls.
As he searched he noted that some of the soldiers died locked in mortal combat with their enemy, felled by some unknown force. Broken tanks and shattered walkers were everywhere. Much of the combat in Seattle was brutal urban combat, every block and every building was fought for over and over. Hundreds of thousands died in the inferno. To the Chinese and Americans, Seattle was an important symbol, the first city to fall to the Hegemony. It had no strategic value after it was decimated by the nuclear strike, but the Third War was full of battles over insignificant pieces of land. Many people compared the battle of Seattle to the battle of Stalingrad during the Second War, but that's like comparing a hot wheel to a semi-truck.
Although exhausted he kept searching through the ash until he couldn't physically continue any longer due to the pain in his foot. He hid inside of a nearby car, he cried himself to sleep. Seeing the graveyard of what was once his hometown greatly disturbed him. His parents had died in the first nuclear blast and he couldn't shake the feeling that all around him in the ash were the charred remains of his parents. In the dark he cried, until he finally went to sleep.
In the distance he could hear the sound of artillery smashing against the Earth, even though they were many miles from the front the ground still shook lightly from the exploding shells. The thought of going into combat scared him to death. He tried hard to control his breathing, but he couldn't. He never did get a new heart and he should have been excused, but they didn't care. They were all cannon fodder and doomed to die anyways. They took him from his mundane job in the rear, gave him two weeks of training and an antique rifle. He knew with his condition that he would most likely die in the first ten minutes of combat. Rush the Chinese outer defenses of Seattle and pave a way for the heavy stuff. That was their orders and he was waiting around anxiously with the other poor bastards to move to the front.
What looked like an endless column of soldiers approached them from the direction of the fighting. They were dirty and in a loose formation. The men all around him cheered as they passed by. They were returning from the front and many had earned the right to no longer fight. They had been fighting for more then four years and wore the black and gold ribbon on their armor that told the world that they had served and survived. Many took off their helmets and waved at the cheering troops. He caught his breath and took off his own helmet to breathe in the outside air, he wished he hadn't. The dense air reeked of burnt flesh and filled his lungs with smoke.
“Derek?!”
To his surprise a familiar voice called out from the column of veteran troops. “Ben! Where are you?!”
His brother pushed his way out of the formation and ran up to him and gave him a hug. “Your alive. Thank God, Thank God! How long has it been?”
“About six years.”
“That long? What are you doing here, I thought you were DQ'ed from military service?”
“I was, but now I'm with the 117th Volunteer Infantry Division.”
“Oh.” His brother immediately realized the severity of his brothers situation. Volunteer divisions were anything but that, they were usually made up of rejects, criminals, and deserters who were tasked with the most dangerous of missions. It wasn't all that common to have volunteer divisions clear a path through a mine field by forcing them to run thought it. “Derek, give me your weapon. Quickly.”
“What?”
“Your weapon. Give it to me.” Ben removed his ribbon and ejected a small disc from his armored combat suit. He pinned the ribbon on his brothers armor and placed the disc in his hand.
“I can do this Ben. You don't have to save me.”
“There was a time that you didn't listen to me, please, listen to me now.”
Derek sadly nodded and switched their weapons. Ben grasped his brothers shoulder and pushed him into the formation of passing troops. The soldiers surrounded him and he was safe within their ranks.
He awoke from a bad dream, in his dream it he had seen his parents leisurely talking in the yard of his childhood home as the blue sky turned into fire. He watched helplessly as the fire slowly reached out to them, they were totally oblivious to the flames grasping towards them. The fire engulfed them in mid sentence and in an instant were vaporized into ash. Shaking uncontrollably inside his suit he was caked in sweat and dried blood. His foot had worsened during the night, it was swollen and bleeding.
He slowed his breathing and stepped out into the ashy inferno of Seattle, his time was running out and he had decided to go to the place of his nightmares. He would go home and there. He was unsure if he would find anything in those ruins, but maybe some closure. After that he would have to turn back and start the long dangerous march out of the city to take the last flight out. He trekked through the ash as fast as he could, ignoring the painful swelling in his foot. All of his mind was focused on getting home, a place he had not seen in a generation. He recklessly pushed on, completely ignoring his prior precautions against booby traps and ash traps.
Time slowed in the ash as he trudged through and reached the intersection of his childhood home. All the buildings around the burnt shell of his former house were completely razed to the ground, only his home stood amongst the mounds of ash. He stood horrified and made the sign of the cross, it looked exactly as he had seen it in his dreams. He approached the door with his rifle up and smashed the door in with one swift kick. The kick sent pain shooting up his foot to his brain and he doubled over while he cursed his stupidity. He noticed dried blood on the floor and rushed into the house following it to his parents room. He tossed his rifle aside and ran to his brothers side. He dropped to his knees and caressed his brother in his arms. He screamed in anguish as he held his brothers lifeless body. He removed his brothers helmet with care and pressed his own helmet into his dead brother, kissing his forehead through the glass. His brothers body was well preserved in his armor, it appeared as if he had died yesterday, not two decades before. Derek stared at his dead brothers youthful face and cried. His eyes were shut and his face had a slight smile.
“Ben, I came back to find you, I love you. I love you so much. The last time I saw you alive, I never got the chance to tell you. I promised myself that one day I would find you and tell you.” Guilt washed over him as he lifted his brother off the floor. “I should be the one here on this floor.” Pain shoot through his body as he used all his might to carry him. Exhausted and badly wounded it was a taxing mental feat to just place one foot ahead of the other as he carried his brother across the ash. He collapsed from the pain, but quickly picked himself up. “Ben you carried me once and saved me. I will do the same for you, here in hell.” He pressed forward in the darkness for hours without rest and felt eyes on him the entire way. He didn't care. He had found his brother.
A loud hum filled the air and a spotlight centered on him in the middle of the broken highway. The sharp click of a large weapon getting ready to fire didn't make him flinch or stop moving forward. He held his brother tightly and whispered into his ear, “I'm coming home, I'll be with you soon.” Derek closed his eyes and smiled.
SHATTERED CITADEL: EMERALD CITY
27 Miles N of the Seattle Deadzone, United States Federal, Earth [Sol], Unknown, Unknown 2087
“You didn’t have to come here. You shouldn’t have come.”
“No, I had to come. He’s out there, somewhere in this God forsaken place.”
“I’m not gonna talk you out of this, but your all alone in there. Were not authorized to go into Seattle and I’m already putting my ass on the line letting you wonder off into a restricted zone.”
“Locarno, you’re a good friend, but I have to do this, I owe him that much.” He checked his rifle one last time and slung it on his back. He turned away from Locarno and began to walk away towards the ruined city far in the distance.
“Wait, Sanders!” Locarno called out to him. He stopped in his tracks and turned his head slightly towards Locarno. “I hope you find him. I really do.” Locarno sighed loudly and continued. “You have three days until we come back to collect the samples. After that there won’t be any more patrols anywhere near here. This is a dead zone and it’s gonna stay that way for a long long time.”
“I understand. Locarno, tell them I deserted. I don’t want you to get in trouble for me.”
“You’d get court-martialed. They could give you the firing squad if you come back.”
“If you come back without me they could kill you. They’ve killed men for less.”
Locarno said nothing as he boarded the Lumbee. It lifted off the ground, suspended itself in the air for a second then flew off hugging the ground as it went. Sanders continued down the broken road that was once Interstate 5, it would lead him into downtown Seattle. Every mile closer to the Emerald City meant a mile closer into Dante’s Inferno. The yellow skies of Earth soon turned black from the pillars of smoke that poured from the fires that still raged under the ruins. It had been more than a quarter of a century since the bombs hit the city, but the fires still burned unchecked. The heat from the fires had warped everything; the steel that had somehow stood up against the nuclear blast waves was now twisted and melted into forms of unspeakable horror. They resembled the shape of dying men, in steel form, with their arms stretched up to the sky. He had been in the outskirts of the city for only a few hours and it was already getting to his head.
Seattle was one of hundreds of places around the world that was beyond hope of every being reclaimed for the living. It was a dead zone. A place completely devastated by the war. Seattle was special among the dead zones in that it was one of the worst cases. Seattle had been nuked twice and fought over more times than he could count with both hands during the twenty-two year long war. Many of the cities that were razed to the ground like Kansas City have at least cleaning crews clearing out the bodies, but the Earth government refuses to do the same for Seattle. It is too dangerous. Hell, it’s so dangerous that even Anti-globalization Rebels don’t seem to venture into Seattle. Last he heard, the most optimistic estimates say that the fires under Seattle will probably burn for another hundred and fifty years.
Hiking through the ruins even in his environment suit was extremely tiring; to him it’s like walking around with a body encompassing weight vest on. He looked around for a place to sleep, someplace away from the raining burning ash that fell on Seattle like snow. It never stopped raining ash in Seattle, the constant ash fall covered everything in a thick layer of grayish ash that sometimes were as deep as six feet. He had to be extremely careful not to step on an ash trap, basically a hole in the ground covered up by a hardened layer of ash. The weight of a man was more than enough to break through one and result in a fall into the inferno burning under Seattle. The ash could also hide mines, booby-traps, anti-personnel robots, and most likely unexploded rounds.
He found a hospital and cautiously entered it. He silently moved though the dark corridors and carefully stepped over the dead still in line. He did his best not to step on them and found an empty room. He booby-trapped the door and sat with his back to the wall with a clear view of the door. Although he was in the middle of a dead zone, it didn't mean he shouldn't play it safe. He checked his rifle and his gear and went to sleep to the sound of his heavy labored breathing.
He opened his eyes and grabbed his chest trying to breathe; all around him were the sick waiting to see a doctor. The other patients looked at him with slight amusement until they became bored and returned to their ebooks and newspapers. His father rushed to him and grabbed his arm. As if he had done it a million times before he quickly took out a syringe from his coat pocket, prepped it and injected the boy with the life saving medicine he needed. The man embraced his son as his breathing steadied. “I'm so sorry; I shouldn't have left you alone, even for a second. They called daddy away to pick up more medicine.” His father looked around, clearly angry at the other patients for doing nothing but watch passively as his son almost died. He led his son by the hand out of the waiting room and back to the hospital's pickup and scheduling room.
“Children aren't allowed in here,” a small beetle-like man told him from behind the counter. He ignored him and pushed his way to the counter, while dozens of people cursed him for cutting. He glared at the bureaucrat behind the counter and the small man said meekly “Sir, I don't care if you left your place on the line, you need a new ticket.”
“You want my ticket? Here's my ticket.” His father slammed the empty syringe on the counter, shattering it in two. “My kid almost died out there in the waiting room. He needs a new heart, not more meds. He can't live like this, its hard enough to get the medicine he needs. There's never enough here!”
“A heart is impossible to get for a low priority case.”
“MY SON IS NOT LOW PRIORITY!”
The man behind the counter nervously rubbed his hands together and continued “It's too expensive. The government won't cover it. The medicine is all that's covered. You can get him on the waiting list for cloned hearts, and its only a fifteen year wait for low priority cases. Hes young, he can wait.”
“The doctors say he won't live nowhere near that long without a new heart.”
“In that case we can assign you a grief councilor.”
“For what?”
“Life termination is covered. Due to the severity of this cases condition, you will be entitled to a $25,000 tax rebate after early termination.”
His father stood silently for a moment with his mouth wide open, dumbfounded. “My son is not a dog! I will not put him down. You take half my paycheck for this shit. I would ask for a goddamn refund if I could, at least that way I could put a down payment on a heart at a private clinic.”
The boy began to cry, but felt a hand squeeze his arm. Pulling him away. He turned to see his smiling brother who just came back from outside. “Derek, lets go outside. I bought you some ice cream.” The small boy followed his older brother who led the way past the huge waiting crowds inside the hospital. Outside, his brother made good on the promise and handed him a ice cream sandwich. The boy accepted the frozen treat, but only stared at it as it slowly melted in the hot midday sun. “Whats wrong Derek?”
“Am I going to die?”
His brother straightened his back, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “Who told you that?”
“The doctors,” the boy replied.
“The doctors here don't know anything. Derek, you’re not going to die. You’re going to get better. You'll see.”
A blast of pressurized air lifted him off the floor and woke him up from his sleep. Someone had tried to get into his room and inadvertently set off his booby-trap. He grabbed his rifle and unleashed a volley of bullets through the wall. He stood up and cautiously approached the dark corridor. He heard a faint sound and took cover behind the overturned hospital bed in the room. The sound of something metallic rolling across the floor towards him from the dark corridor made him bolt towards the window. The object let off a loud beep as he leaped out of the window. He landed on the charred remains of a car and raised his arms to shield himself as bits of shrapnel raced past him. The blast kicked up all of the ash on the street into the air and made it impossible to see. He recovered and began to limp away in the dark shroud of ash just as bullets rained down on the car. The screen of ash had blinded the gunmen to his position so he shot randomly into the dense cloud of ash. Sanders ran as fast as he could away from the man or men trying to kill him, each stride he took sent a shot of pain coursing through his body. He was certain he had broken his foot. When he was far enough away he collapsed, landing on a car sized mound of ash. Kicking it up all around him.
His breathing was erratic, he felt like his heart was going to give out at any moment. He resisted the urge to remove his helmet, although that's all his brain starved brain could think of. Doing so would have filled his lungs up with toxic ash. He was as far from any doctor as he could be, he might as well have been on Pluto. He willed himself to stand up and placed his arms over his head, desperately trying to control his breathing.
“Derek, you can't come with us.”
“Why not?”
“Stay at camp.”
“I don't want too. I want to go hiking with you guys.”
“Stay at camp Derek, it’s too dangerous.”
“Let’s go Ben! He'll slow us down. I want to reach the summit by nightfall.” His friend said impatiently.
“Shut the hell up, my brother won't slow us down,” Ben said angrily.
“Then why can't I go?”
“Derek, I said no. I'll be back tomorrow. We can both go fishing then. Stay here with the other people, can you do that?”
His younger brother said nothing and looked down towards the dirt. He was silently crying and didn't want his big brother to see. Ben felt ashamed, but he turned towards his friends. He reached them and smacked the offender hard in the back of the head. It took them six hours of hard climbing to reach the summit. All along the way they had drank heavily, tossing the empty cans of beer aside as they progressed up the mountain, and at the summit drank even more in celebration. Ben and his friends completely intoxicated, placed their sleeping bags on the ground and fell asleep on the summit. The cool pacific breeze and soothing chirp of crickets quickly put them all to sleep.
Ben suddenly awoke in the middle of the night. His entire body was sore and his legs felt like mush from the hike. Stepping out of his sleeping bag, he stood up and went into a secluded spot away from his friends to answer nature's call. As he begun to dig a hole, he heard a whimper coming from the distance. He ignored it, but he heard it again and it sounded like a strangled scream. He cautiously approached the sound, expecting to find a dying animal he instead found a familiar outline in the dark.
“DEREK?!” He ran up to his younger brother who was face down in the dirt barely breathing. “What the hell are you doing up here?!” Ben reached inside his pocket, turning them inside out, trying desperately to find Derek's medicine. He now remembered leaving it at camp, he flipped Derek over and began to search his younger brother for the medicine, but found nothing. His younger brother was dying, desperately struggling to breathe, eventually he would exhaust himself and die. Ben screamed out to his friends for help, but they were sleeping the sleep of the drunk. “Don't worry bro.” He crouched down and scooped his little brother up into his arms. His brothers weight almost made his knees buckle, he had no strength left from the hike up. To make matters worst, his hangover from the alcohol was making it impossible for him to keep his balance or have the energy to keep himself up.
Ben mustered all of his stamina and moved forward through the darkness with his brother in his arms. His arms were screaming out to his brain in pain, let go, let go, relieve the pressure, but he ignored it. He dared not stop to rest, every minute that went by his brother's breathing became weaker and weaker. “Keep breathing Derek. We'll be home soon. Keep breathing.” Tears rolled down his eyes as he watched his brother slip out of consciousness in his arms. Ben broke out to a full sprint, dashing down the woods desperately trying to reach camp.
Ben ran into the camp screaming incoherently, he startled the people gathered around the camp fire and they leapt to their feet when they spotted Derek, limp in his arms. Ben laid his brother by the fire and cried out to the nearest person to retrieve the medical kit in his tent. Ben tried to perform CPR on his lifeless brother, but to no avail. The medical kit arrived and he extracted a large needle from the kit. Ben prepped it and thrusted it into his brothers chest. Injecting the lifesaving medicine directly into his heart. His brothers eyes blinked rapidly and he shot up into a sitting position gasping for air. He made an attempt to pull the needle out, but his older brother and another man held him down.
“What were you thinking?” Ben asked, not expecting an answer.
Derek's breathing slowed and he quietly responded, “I wanted to prove that I could reach the summit.”
Ben bent down and carefully hugged his brother. “I know you could.”
“Thank you.” Derek collapsed to the ground exhausted.
“Listen to me next time.”
He had wondered around aimlessly through the ruins of Seattle for hours. Searching fruitlessly through the rubble and ash. Every time he spotted the mangled armor of an American soldier he would stop to check their dog tags and moved on after extracting it. The cities center was a massive graveyard, millions of bones sticking out of the ash like a ghastly sugarcane field that stretched out in every direction. It was tiring work shifting through the bones, he noticed that all of the bones were from downed soldiers, Chinese and American. The civilians were literally wiped out by the first nuclear blast, all that remained of them was the ash and the occasional flash shadow permanently etched on the walls.
As he searched he noted that some of the soldiers died locked in mortal combat with their enemy, felled by some unknown force. Broken tanks and shattered walkers were everywhere. Much of the combat in Seattle was brutal urban combat, every block and every building was fought for over and over. Hundreds of thousands died in the inferno. To the Chinese and Americans, Seattle was an important symbol, the first city to fall to the Hegemony. It had no strategic value after it was decimated by the nuclear strike, but the Third War was full of battles over insignificant pieces of land. Many people compared the battle of Seattle to the battle of Stalingrad during the Second War, but that's like comparing a hot wheel to a semi-truck.
Although exhausted he kept searching through the ash until he couldn't physically continue any longer due to the pain in his foot. He hid inside of a nearby car, he cried himself to sleep. Seeing the graveyard of what was once his hometown greatly disturbed him. His parents had died in the first nuclear blast and he couldn't shake the feeling that all around him in the ash were the charred remains of his parents. In the dark he cried, until he finally went to sleep.
In the distance he could hear the sound of artillery smashing against the Earth, even though they were many miles from the front the ground still shook lightly from the exploding shells. The thought of going into combat scared him to death. He tried hard to control his breathing, but he couldn't. He never did get a new heart and he should have been excused, but they didn't care. They were all cannon fodder and doomed to die anyways. They took him from his mundane job in the rear, gave him two weeks of training and an antique rifle. He knew with his condition that he would most likely die in the first ten minutes of combat. Rush the Chinese outer defenses of Seattle and pave a way for the heavy stuff. That was their orders and he was waiting around anxiously with the other poor bastards to move to the front.
What looked like an endless column of soldiers approached them from the direction of the fighting. They were dirty and in a loose formation. The men all around him cheered as they passed by. They were returning from the front and many had earned the right to no longer fight. They had been fighting for more then four years and wore the black and gold ribbon on their armor that told the world that they had served and survived. Many took off their helmets and waved at the cheering troops. He caught his breath and took off his own helmet to breathe in the outside air, he wished he hadn't. The dense air reeked of burnt flesh and filled his lungs with smoke.
“Derek?!”
To his surprise a familiar voice called out from the column of veteran troops. “Ben! Where are you?!”
His brother pushed his way out of the formation and ran up to him and gave him a hug. “Your alive. Thank God, Thank God! How long has it been?”
“About six years.”
“That long? What are you doing here, I thought you were DQ'ed from military service?”
“I was, but now I'm with the 117th Volunteer Infantry Division.”
“Oh.” His brother immediately realized the severity of his brothers situation. Volunteer divisions were anything but that, they were usually made up of rejects, criminals, and deserters who were tasked with the most dangerous of missions. It wasn't all that common to have volunteer divisions clear a path through a mine field by forcing them to run thought it. “Derek, give me your weapon. Quickly.”
“What?”
“Your weapon. Give it to me.” Ben removed his ribbon and ejected a small disc from his armored combat suit. He pinned the ribbon on his brothers armor and placed the disc in his hand.
“I can do this Ben. You don't have to save me.”
“There was a time that you didn't listen to me, please, listen to me now.”
Derek sadly nodded and switched their weapons. Ben grasped his brothers shoulder and pushed him into the formation of passing troops. The soldiers surrounded him and he was safe within their ranks.
He awoke from a bad dream, in his dream it he had seen his parents leisurely talking in the yard of his childhood home as the blue sky turned into fire. He watched helplessly as the fire slowly reached out to them, they were totally oblivious to the flames grasping towards them. The fire engulfed them in mid sentence and in an instant were vaporized into ash. Shaking uncontrollably inside his suit he was caked in sweat and dried blood. His foot had worsened during the night, it was swollen and bleeding.
He slowed his breathing and stepped out into the ashy inferno of Seattle, his time was running out and he had decided to go to the place of his nightmares. He would go home and there. He was unsure if he would find anything in those ruins, but maybe some closure. After that he would have to turn back and start the long dangerous march out of the city to take the last flight out. He trekked through the ash as fast as he could, ignoring the painful swelling in his foot. All of his mind was focused on getting home, a place he had not seen in a generation. He recklessly pushed on, completely ignoring his prior precautions against booby traps and ash traps.
Time slowed in the ash as he trudged through and reached the intersection of his childhood home. All the buildings around the burnt shell of his former house were completely razed to the ground, only his home stood amongst the mounds of ash. He stood horrified and made the sign of the cross, it looked exactly as he had seen it in his dreams. He approached the door with his rifle up and smashed the door in with one swift kick. The kick sent pain shooting up his foot to his brain and he doubled over while he cursed his stupidity. He noticed dried blood on the floor and rushed into the house following it to his parents room. He tossed his rifle aside and ran to his brothers side. He dropped to his knees and caressed his brother in his arms. He screamed in anguish as he held his brothers lifeless body. He removed his brothers helmet with care and pressed his own helmet into his dead brother, kissing his forehead through the glass. His brothers body was well preserved in his armor, it appeared as if he had died yesterday, not two decades before. Derek stared at his dead brothers youthful face and cried. His eyes were shut and his face had a slight smile.
“Ben, I came back to find you, I love you. I love you so much. The last time I saw you alive, I never got the chance to tell you. I promised myself that one day I would find you and tell you.” Guilt washed over him as he lifted his brother off the floor. “I should be the one here on this floor.” Pain shoot through his body as he used all his might to carry him. Exhausted and badly wounded it was a taxing mental feat to just place one foot ahead of the other as he carried his brother across the ash. He collapsed from the pain, but quickly picked himself up. “Ben you carried me once and saved me. I will do the same for you, here in hell.” He pressed forward in the darkness for hours without rest and felt eyes on him the entire way. He didn't care. He had found his brother.
A loud hum filled the air and a spotlight centered on him in the middle of the broken highway. The sharp click of a large weapon getting ready to fire didn't make him flinch or stop moving forward. He held his brother tightly and whispered into his ear, “I'm coming home, I'll be with you soon.” Derek closed his eyes and smiled.
1
SC: Emerald City
Thu, 11th November, 2010
A man tries to fulfill a promise, by searching in the Seattle dead zone for his brothers remains.
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Comments Greatly Appreciated. Feel Free to Leave One Here.