Post by Dean on Aug 12, 2010 13:49:32 GMT -5
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Some things never change, no matter how much they seem to. Even after everything: the war, everything I had done and not done, all that pain…
The Texas sunrise was as still beautiful as ever.
The wind whipped around my ankles as a walked into what was once my hometown. There was nothing left for anyone to be able to tell, of course. What was now Tanic, Texas was a perverse cross between White Sands, New Mexico and the Sahara desert. Most of north Texas looked the same, and everything south of that couldn’t survive for long, the southern updrafts and heat pushing the fallout all the way down to the Gulf.
But I knew were I was. I could never forget this place. Even though I had tried at times, I’m sad to say.
The parched earth crunched with every step I took, dust following in my wake. As I walked through what I knew was downtown, I could just barely see a small stick off in the distance, slightly distorted by the waviness that the growing heat caused on the horizon. It was the Black Spire. An obsidian sentry the people put up in memory of the people and non-people lost in The War, and more specifically, Dallas. That’s were it was, Dallas. There was so much nothing in between here and the Spire that I could see it from two hundred kilometers away. It wasn’t even that tall.
The sun had cleared the horizon by the time I had reached were I was heading. It seemed that even a nuclear blast couldn’t level out all of Texas, because the old caves were still there. Most of them anyway. I crouched, my beat up dust colored long coat fanning around me clumsily. It was amazing, some would say impossible, that the raggedy thing had survived as long as it had-
-but hell, a lot of people said that about me.
The Caves were the only real assurance that I was where I thought I was. Which was the orphanage that I grew up in a lifetime ago. The caverns spanning under where the building once was were an old silver mine back in the 1800’s, and the orphanage--then church-- built on it after the mine died. They used it for storage of one kind or another. I heard later in the war it got turned into a big Yeerk Pool. I guess none of that mattered anymore anyway. I hadn’t come back to remember the history of the place.
I had come back to lay to rest an old friend.
I pulled out a set of cracked Rosary Beads, once black but now a kind of rust color that came to aged wood. I fumbled with them in my callused hands, turning them around and wrapping them across my fingers. I had taken them for the lifeless hands of the bravest man I had ever knew. The only reason I had lived to fight was because of him. He died not three feet from where I was crouched, I guessed. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did. But I guess there was a lot of that going around those first couple of nights.
I slid down the slight slope towards the cave opening, my recently broken in boots helping me stay off my ass. We had never figured out had to morph shoes, and I had a tendency to need some. One of many reasons I didn’t use the Andalite’s “Gift” much anymore.
I worked my way into the dark cavern, the dust just as thick as it was outside. It wasn’t any cooler either, but hey, that was Texas. I managed to find some splintered pieces of two by fours strangely enough, and was able to find some string in my bandoleer. I still carried the damn thing, along with my pistol and rifle. It was more of a comfort thing than a paranoid thing. But there was that too. I don’t know, I don’t stop to think about it much, I tend to stay on the move. I was too recognizable now.
I clutched the wood and string in my hand and climbed back up the shallow dune like hill, back up to where I could make out the Spire. I put the small pieces of wood together, square lashing them together. The sun was well in the sky when I stuck the now one piece in the ground, dirt and dust blowing with the hammering wind. I took out a small knife and carved the name and words I told the dieing man I would put on his grave. It wasn’t much. I thought about making a stone in one of the many national cemeteries across the world, where whole sections were bodiless tombstones. But I knew this is were he would he would want it. Simple. Plain. And above all--Humble.
I stood up and placed the Beads over the cross reading what I had put:Here Lies Father Leonardo Angel.
He Died Doing The Right Thing.
After that I left Tanic--for good this time--
There was nothing left for me there.
