Count bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums
War Song - Dream #1
I can feel the bombs in my feet. Base drums in the ground. The darkest clouds are on fire and bleeding sinister light, ripping a patchwork sky. They’re hiding in the high columns of the gathering storm clouds, dropping death from search light halos onto the watching people. The vicious roar of larger-than-life planes, drowning out the murmurs. Realization forces their gaping mouths and cracked-back heads that swallow my sight, like they’re trying to swallow the bombs that are dropping faster than the largest boulder. Nothing but the people and the seconds ticking away, dying, and falling from their rapidly beating hearts. There is no wind. There is no waiting.
Dirty, matted, gasping, I am covered in rubble and dust. Buildings are still falling, crumbling onto the people desperately trying to drag themselves from the destruction. Everything is filthy, even the air is sick with horror. I want to scrub out my eyes, but still I am watching the sky as the screams start to come. Gunfire flashes trying to force a silence that will never come to what this place has become.
I have got to get out of here.
Shocks of rubble are ripping through the wailing. I am stumbling over the remains of buildings and looking for a way out. I am…covered in blood. There are bodies in the street. Limbs, parts of people. Each piece is a shock to my reeling heart, and there is nothing that I can do. I am stumbling over the remains of people.
I am stepping over bodies… bleeding, and some still breathing. I can’t tell who’s screaming anymore, it is consuming the space around us. The engines of the tanks and helicopters. Pulsing planes still shrouded in clouds. It’s all getting closer.
I have got to get out of here.
I am stepping over bodies, running now. I am sprinting when the bullets come. Behind me a machine gun mounted to a helicopter begins to scream at me, spitting with leaded fury. I can hear them punishing the ground behind my legs, fragmenting concrete. I imagine I can feel them, tear into my heel, up my calf and… not yet, I am still running. Each breath comes so slow when you think it’s your last. Something as harmless as blinking becomes twisted and panicked. Every second that your eyes close is a deadly chance, but they somehow open one more time. My death is gaining a hairs-breath with every step I pound into the pavement. Franticly scanning my surroundings as the burning cripples my muscles. There is no cover. Somehow I am still running.
There is a crumbling wall half blasted away to my left and I dive, almost too short. I lose my footing but I make it behind the wall as the frustrated metal beats it into crumbles. The helicopter pulls away, denied of it’s prey and sensing more fear close by. I hear screams inside the rapid-fire hatred. I am still not safe.
No breath in my lungs. I am heaving, retching with overwhelm. My eyes have never been this wide and I think they’re stuck now, forever imprinted with horror. I am still and listening. Somehow I still have some control, some presence of mind, though all my thoughts are screaming and all I can see is blood seeping from the dying in my minds eye. My heart is pounding with the danger and terror, head whirring with the fact that one wrong move, the littlest mistake would be my last.
The fence beside me explodes as a tank rips through it easily with it’s angry weight, firing grenades and short-range missiles into the street and the buildings in front of me. There is a little girl and a teenage boy that have just emerged from the carnage next to me. They are silent and frozen with awe and anguish as they stare at the ground ahead, look their hopeless end in the eyes. There is a grenade 10 feet away from them. Neither of them move. Accepting it, too overwhelmed. Thinking maybe it would be better. How could they possibly survive in all this anyway? What was left to live for when your whole universe is hanging in disgraced and violated tatters inside you?
I am running, wrenching the little girl from her feet and dragging they boy with lightning speed. I pull the girl into my arms and we are dashing away from the unrecognizable remains and pain. They are mindlessly following my hope.
I am counting in my head.
5...4... I throw the girl behind a wall into a corner and yank the boy forward, telling him quickly, forcefully, to huddle over top of her…
3...2... She is crying, curled under the boy and clutching to him, he is looking at me with a consuming fear as I lean over them for further protection, all of us shaking together. I am trying to check the math in my head, wading through the overload of information and shock. How many feet did we run? Is it far enough? Can we-
1.
My everything shakes, perception rattling as I’m pelted with small rocks and dust, more blood. The wall held, and I am standing. The girl is clinging to me, silent now. I can see the pleading in her eyes as she looks over the destruction of her world and her innocence, all laid out before her. The boy is shaking beside me, leaning in on me, trying to mirror my strength. But I can see the battle of responsibility and his sisters same horror in his eyes. Their parents are dead. I am all they have. I can feel the need they have for me deep in my bones. I take their hands and look at them both squarely, pull them around to face me. My eyes dart between each of theirs as I use their need of me to fuel my strength.
“Come with me. I will protect you.”
We are running. We are stepping over bodies. We can feel the bombs in our feel, base drums buried deep. War song.
They are coming.