Back to the World

Jones walked by the shattered storefront long bare of all goods, and paused. The city was silent. Jones had always like noise; noise let him know what to listen for. It was a false comfort, of course, like sitting with his back to a wall in a restaurant. In reality that just limited his options for when a nutjob inevitably kicked in the door and started shooting. Inevitable in his mind, of course, such a thing happening was always more rare than his stacked mountain of untreated disorders forced him to believe.

The silence felt hostile. It sharpened his focus beyond the point of tolerance, kept him grounded in the moment, prevented his mind from escaping. There wasn't anything left to attack him, of course. He hadn't seen a living soul in months. He rounded a corner and struck off down an alleyway. There were a couple of vagrants who had been present at the end. Two men, by their clothes. Intimate, if their final terrified embrace was any indication. Jones absently rifled through their pockets. The larger skeleton had a VA Identification card on him. Jones roughly shoved the other remains off of the veteran and laid out his brother. He took his sledgehammer and busied himself with shattering a section of sidewalk. The labor was good, the labor kept his mind from awareness.

When he had an appreciable pile of rubble, he built a cairn around the veteran. All he had left to mark it down was pink sidewalk chalk; he'd have to find a Home Depot to raid. He marked down E-5 THOMAS LOMEL on a wall beneath a short awning over what once had been a window, hopefully out of the rain. Jones moved on, not quite going out of his way to crush the civilian's skull under his boot, but pointedly not avoiding the act.

He looked up into the sky, the sun was low. It was time to find a place to rest. Jones wracked his brain, vaguely remembering a hotel not too far away from the time he'd visited on leave. He adjusted his path and headed that way. In less than an hour, the sun was a brief arch on the horizon and the shadows had gathered. Jones entered into the hotel. On a lark, he rang the bell. As predicted, nobody answered. He leaned over the counter, seeing the yellowed bones of the receptionist laid out haphazardly. Her purse was still there. Rifling through it, he found a driver's license, a wad of money, and a bag of dodgy looking pills. Jones threw it all back in the purse and tipped it over the edge. He walked deeper into the hotel.

The first six rooms were empty. Time had stopped in the off season, so that made sense. The seventh room was an old man's, the bones still on the bed, wrapped in a perfectly preserved bath robe next to an oxygen machine. The next two rooms were also empty. The room after those showed two entangled bones on the bed. A man's wedding ring sat on the bedside table. No woman's ring was evident. They had thrown it all away on a fling, there was probably a woman's skeleton at home with two little piles of child bones, waiting for Jodie to get home from work. Jones yanked the sheet. It mostly tore, but it moved enough to send the bones tumbling to the floor. After a few minutes of furious stomping, Jones had sat down on the bed, removing his carbon-filter mask and lighting up one of his precious cigarettes.

Shortages at the front. That's what he remembered from all that time ago. Shortages at the front, nobody volunteering. Guys go home, they get spit on. One party hates them openly, the other party hates them in secret. Thing is, which was which traded places on a dime. Kids go off to war and get disowned. Everyone loves to talk about how Johnny is off fighting for freedom, and they'd never let anyone forget it if he didn't come home at all, but if he left pieces on the field, if he really needed them, what then? He was a sucker. He was a loser. He was a coward. A monster. A child killer. An imperialist. A pig. An idiot. Toxic. Vile. Woke. Racist. Anything the civilians could think of to justify not signing up. Not bearing the load. Not doing their part. Here was Jodie, probably banging some Marine's girlfriend while he was off on another continent ducking bullets and hoping to get home to his little innocent Marie. Jones flicked the cigarette onto the bones. Some part of him hoped it would all burn down. No such luck, of course. If he'd have been lucky at all he'd have died in country.

He moved on. Every room was a similar story. People living their lives like there wasn't a war on. Mostly doing things that they'd have been ashamed of, as if that shame had been enough to make them good people. As he searched their rooms, he knew what they'd been doing with their last moments. He found no less than two skeletons that had been hanged in their closets. Judging by their clothes, both were Wall Street elites. Too good to fight a war, not good enough to survive the stock market. That made Jones happy.

He found a few veterans, too. One without legs had all of his worldly possessions in his room. Disowned, probably, thrown out of his home. Parents who couldn't take care of him, maybe, or perhaps a fiancée that couldn't deal with the scarred face or the nights waking up screaming. He wrapped these bodies in sheets, marking what he knew of their identities. He made sure to leave the civilian bones in piles. It was the least he could do.

Jones found a place to sleep, a room that hadn't been used since its last cleaning. He stretched out and was instantly asleep.

He was back on the front. He always was. He was curious to see which of the phantasmagoria of horrors he'd experienced would be his daily bread tonight. It turned out to be the day that Milotis was shot. That made sense, given his current mission. He sure wished something else would come along, though.

The sun stabbed his eyes awake. Jones groaned, replacing his equipment and moving on. He decided to come back later to the hotel, he didn't think he could take one more floor. He moved to the center of the street. There had been survivors through at one point. The storefronts were broken and looted. Someone had stolen a television. The world ended, power grid obliterated, and some jackass stole a television. That was a civilian mindset if ever there was one.

He realized that he was almost to the end of the mission. That made his knees shake. It usually did. He crossed a bridge. Jones followed the signs like an old prophet reading bird flight patterns. They made about as much sense to him by now. Jones passed home after home. Flags planted among rotten flowers. Political signs. Lawn gnomes. It was all so gaudy and ridiculous. He stopped in front of a house. Faded pink siding with a green tiled roof. The sign on the lawn said, “I LOVE MY MARINE”. This was the Milotis home.

He knocked. He wasn't sure why he knocked, but he did anyway. The door was unlocked. Entering the home, he found Milotis's little brother – Kyle? Karl? Something with a hard K sound. The boy had been playing a VR game. Probably some shooter game that made civilians feel qualified to opine on strategy. Mr. Milotis wasn't around. Either at work, or maybe at a hotel room with a secretary. That didn't matter, he wasn't the mission. Mrs. Milotis had been in the tub, identifiable only by her wedding ring. With a bit of reverence, Jones pulled a chain out of his pouch. On the chain were two dog tags, and a heart shaped locket. For the first time since it had come into his possession two years prior, he opened the tag. A little baby-faced Milotis and his mother were in the inside curve. He didn't close it. “Will says he loves you, Mrs. Milotis,” Jones sighed. “You raised a good kid. Shame there weren't more mothers like you around.” He patted the bones of her arm where they rested on the side of the tub, then wrapped the chain around her fingers where they clutched the wine glass.

After a period of silence, Jones looked in his little weatherproof notebook. Another name crossed off. Next up was Lance Corporal Paul Murphy. Glen Dale, West Virginia; one set of tags and an engagement ring.