We’d
been walking for days, tramping the ground where once life lived, at
peace. My men are restless, tired, dead within, however I must not
be. I must be brave, I must be awake, I must be what the army has
trained me to be.
“I
believe this is the road sir”, my second in command tells me in a
high-strung accent.
“Thank
you lieutenant”, I reply in a thankless voice.
I
look across the road, nothing but barbed-wire and lifeless bodies,
the view of most places nowadays.
“We’ll
keep walking till nightfall, then rest, then continue in the morning”
“Good
plan sir”, always the kiss ass my second in command replies with
a smirk upon his dirty, malnourished and unkept face.
So
we walk, our feet sounding a beat as we do. As we reach the top
of a hill suddenly the land slopes away from us and we are left with
a view of war. In the river battleships ready themselves for the
boarding of the battalion of Fife, numbering some 100,000 men and
women, who have for sometime been fighting in the wastelands of the
north of Scotland trying to hold off the inevitable, the occupation
of Britain.
“Incoming!”,
the word echoes through the Valley of Dead.
“Find
cover!”, I shout at my bewildered and bedraggled men.
Lying
in the blood stained mud I feel the earth shake beneath me as shell
after shell drops from the heavens, finding its resting place in the
fields where once life was abundant, leaving only death.The shelling
stops and we continue. It is a daily occurrence which we have all
gotten used to. We never know where they come from, or who
sends them. By the time it was over it had gotten dark, so I instruct
the men to find a hole and rest, the only comfort they have.
Morning
comes early and so does the new wave of earth shakers. My bones are
rattled, my eardrums are beaten till broken, and my men are murdered.
Yet we continue. The landscape of this part is changed completely.
Where once the farmer would've ploughed the fields, tanks lie,
abandoned and alone. The trees where once pigeons cooed from have
been replaced by artillery and the pigeons made extinct. And the
whole ground has been moved 6 foot below where it used to stand. Man has
done this, and when it is over, man will be the only thing left.
“HQ
is down there sir, at the rivers edge”
“Thank
you lieu… whats that there?”
“According
to the map, Longannet power station sir, decommissioned of course”
I
was stunned, I hadn't seen that tower since I was a child, on walks
with my father.
“Any
other landmarks?”
“A
church too sir”
“You
take the men, I'm going alone”
“Sir?
Are you sure?”
“Just
do it!”
I
start running, gravity doing half the work as I fly down the hill, my
lieutenant shouting after me, his voice being carried away by the
wind, once smelling of nature, now of death. I reach the ruin of a
grand house, my breath taken away by it, I stare at the house which
once I called home. The roof has gone, the floors too, glass from the
windows lie smashed on the ground and the kitchen has an unexploded
bomb in it, but its still home. I keep running, through the gate and
into the graveyard, past the church and left, still running,
oblivious to all that is around me. I pass the neighbours, they
wave to me as they water the plants, and keep going, down the
potholed road and past the cow field, I say hello to them. Past the
only parking anyone had, the left-hand side of the hill road, the cars
still there, and still I'm flying. I see the house with the evil
eyes, it no longer scares me, I pass Conner's house, I pass Graham
and Lora’s house, where I used to go for curry evenings and
we’d play board games till 2am. Onto the cobbles, the ankle
breakers. It doesn't stop me though, I pass the cafe where Conner
works, I pass the unicorn statue, and, finally, I glimpse the river.
I rush past the town hall, now on flat ground, where Graham sells
pictures from and straight to the pier. I stop, I turn back, and
there it is, my…
“Incoming!”
After
an hour or so of earth shaking I get up and realise it was a mirage,
where once the houses and the people stood, rubble and soldiers now
do. I walk, slowly, back to the village of my birth, and looking down
at the blood splattered masonry where the town hall once stood, where
graham used to sell his pictures from. I begin to cry. I look up at
the single lane road that runs through the village, where once my bus
would drive along to pick and drop me off for school, now rows of
soldiers march, their boots beating against the cobbles. I am
lost now, the only thing that tied me to this earth is gone. My home,
is gone.
Points: 132
Reviews: 3
Donate