Showdown

 

 

I am fighting in a nameless war. It is high noon and the sky is cloudless. The sun blinds us from above and below as it reflects off the turning water. The gunner on the 50 cal hydro cooled machine gun behind me just had his chest opened up by a D- Bird as it passed overhead. D- Birds are a single engine prop plane that used to be used for things like crop dusting or light civilian air travel. Now because of the lack of resources like metal, fuel and people or places to do the manufacturing, the few remaining civilian air craft have been modified into murder machines..Just like everything and everyone else…. I am not sure what the D stands for…maybe Devil, or Demon, or Death or Detroit….No way to know for sure. No one is alive long enough to ask….All I know for certain is the sound they make when they fly by and kill a man.

One of the nameless soldiers from the front of the small water craft we are riding in leaps into the back to man the blood stained gun. The captain looks at me with bloodshot eyes and yells out " I can’t smell them any more!! CAN YOU?"

I stare at him without expression. I cant tell if he has lost it or not….it has been happening more and more lately. Suicide is trending.

"The Fish!!" The captain screams above the engine. "When the war started, we were not sure if those sons of bitch’s had poisoned the water, or if it was just all the waste flowing through the streets and into the sewers that tainted it… Either way it didn’t take long to kill all the fish in the river! You should have seen it man!!! Thousands upon thousands of them lining the bank day after day! they just kept piling up on each other!!! A million Fish eyes staring down the Gods!!! You could smell it for miles in every direction, regardless of the wind. Soon after came the starving scavengers. Cats, rats, coons, Birds, dogs… Even a few desperate people who were to weak to be excepted into the force…. Can you imagine how hungry you would have to be? AhhahaAHA…..Most of these scavengers died quickly after consumption….Others you could hear screaming in pain for days just off the banks…. Howling like radiated ghosts!!…HAAWWOOOO!!!! AhahahaAHAHaa….. Those desperate fucking creatures rotted and turned the banks into a thick pasty black sludge! …Then some weeks later this shit started growing!"

The captain takes one hand off the wheel and points to the 12 foot high, 4 inch thick, black grass that grows beneath dead and petrified trees along the river.

"The Blades!" The captain screamed with madness… "You cant get through it man! Look at all those bones! Those are the cowards who tried to run!!!….In high wind that shit will cut you damn near in half!…Not to mention its poisonous! Will eat through your skin in a weeks time!…..It makes a good barrier to keep those slimy fucks from coming over the banks though….. but on the other hand. WE CANT GET OUT!!! AHAHAHHahahaAHAh!" The captain laughed hysterically.

I turned silently and looked up river.

This is it I thought to myself. The only things that haven’t been killed off by war are the things that will kill you first. Humans are the only things that produce life now, But there is only sorrow in that…. Everything has a distinct purpose now. There are no more ambling walks in the park, no more songs, no more pets, no more weekends, no joy rides, no art, no entertainment, no love, no peace…. Only the turning of day into night…and night into day…. Only War….. But war frees as much as it imprisons. It gives and takes away. I used to work a job that I hated, in order to accumulate things I didn’t need, for a purpose I was always unsure of…Now all that is a distant and fading memory. All the worlds bullshit went the way of the fish…the way of the cowards. Everything has a clear, sharp and finite purpose now…. KILL or DIE

 

I silently take the empty place at the front of the boat. Death has promoted me to navigator as we travel through this gauntlet. Our objective is unclear, but the motive feels crystal. We MUST get where we are headed by any means necessary. No matter what the toll….I know this is not a rescue mission. Those are as dead and pointless as the cats. Maybe we are on a assassination mission to take down a high priority enemy combatant…. Maybe we are going to blow a bridge and cut off supply lines to the enemy….who ever that is.

The details hardly matter…the reasons mean little. All I know is what I feel, and I feel a gloriously steady calling. A brutally honest truth. The lines have been clearly drawn. The stakes permanently set. Both sides Simultaneously good and bad… Both sides ready to give everything that’s left for their cause. …Not like that’s worth much anymore……. Not like that means much anymore.

I silently give hand signals to the captain from the front of the boat to avoid obstacles like sand bars, floating debris (wood and bodies), and buoyed mines. I spot the D-Bird as it starts to circle back around. The captain starts evasive maneuvering in a zipper formation. The Gunner is ready this time. The Bird starts laying down tracks of lead from the sky that smack the water and jump like synchronized Asian carp. The gunner is patient and still as we weave back and forth. We are in the Birds shadow now and I have a front row seat to this deadly dance. The gunner waits without movement.

Showdown

The D-Birds Fire rains down on the hull of the boat with a low pulsing thud as the gunner starts to fire. Our boat is rocked in every direction from the torque of fire coming and going. We stall suddenly and the gun fire stops. I look up and watch the sputtering Bird smoke and twirl. It falls and my eyes follow it to the horizon. The explosion sounds like thunder, The nameless pilot and our nameless captain are both dead….For whatever reason.

With a look from the green eyed gunner with the painted face, we push the dead weight over the side. I take my perch at the bow and he at the wheel. I signal forward as more thunder rumbles off in the all too near distance. The thunder gets louder, but that’s nothing. Move in any direction and you will be heading straight for it. There is not place to run, and no place to hide. The war is global, and civil. It is fought on fronts domestic and foreign. The enemy and their weapons are indistinguishable from your brother and his own.

I can smell the rain now as we push deeper. It saturates the wind and brightens the smell of corroding metal, powder and blood. Reminds me of battery acid. The sky darkens as we weave in and out of obstacles, but never out of danger. Heat lightning cracks in the humidity. Thunder rolls over more thunder as me and the nameless gunner head up a nameless river, in a unnamed boat, through a unfamiliar land, toward a unidentifiable enemy.

Daylight dies into the horizon..like the Bird….like everything. Night brings a new style of death…. but my mind is stuck on one thought. Stuck in it like those poor yellow souls shredded in the blades…eating away at me like the sludge….Not who..or why…or when….Not even how.

Only where…..Where am I?…. Where does all this lead?…..Where does it end?

 

A thunderstorm woke me up from that dr

eam this mourning….Then I got up and went to work…. continuing my life without clear purpose….