Attrition (Part One)
“Get up!“ Henry screamed, his fear as obvious as the raining fire.
The moon was fat and low, nearly touching the tops of the trees that hugged the bank of a sluggish river. Moonlight, reflected in undulating ripples, shook like silver leaves in the dark breeze.
On a rolling knoll a few yards from dense woods and overlooking the current, four brothers, Henry, Clyde, Harold, and William, sat on the soft, damp grass that covered the mound like lichen on an ancient Roman ruin.
They scraped the grass away in a large circle, laying small twigs in the center with leaves and bracken, then touched an old zippo lighter to the pile. Small orange flames licked the sticks and flared higher. Each boy took turns adding larger branches until the fire was hot and moisture escaped the grain as bubbling fragile foam.
The fire was warm and hypnotic, and they were tired because they had walked—retreated, really—for most of the day and into the chill early evening when the night swallowed any hope they had.
Weeks ago, they left what remained of the town where they were born. Each replayed the finality of the destruction that fell with the speed of a comet; the force of its impact sent their memories into the sky like a cloud of bees.
Then, the ashes fell like snow.
Like many others, they grabbed handfuls of supplies and ran to the once-green cornfields nearby. They huddled briefly and then moved into the thick forest a few miles away.
The brothers rested in the woods, watching the sky intently for the destroyer. The boys, almost men, were well-read and familiar with folklore and myth. They liked hearing the stories and feeling gooseflesh blooming on their arms as they quietly listened. But when the light of an orange waxing moon was blocked by the inky shape of a flying serpent—a dragon—the myths converged in one salient truth. They would run or burn.
The night they learned about dragons marked them like a scar. There were the years before the attack and now. The times were as different as a lie was from the truth. Nothing remained of the past. Everything burned, including their parents, who pushed them to leave and run to the woods while they gathered the last bags of food. The house burned around them as the boys reached the far end of the cornfield. All four cried as they ran.
At night, they watched and measured the destruction by the glow that arced from the horizon and up the curving dome of the sky.
They moved northwest. The land was sparsely populated and beautiful but rugged. Brackish water soaked the miles of shoreline and the marshes that hid their steps. Still, the sky glowed behind them.
The third night after they escaped, the sky was as dark as sin. Stars sat like jewels in the velvet black. There was no glow anywhere. They finally believed they were inconspicuous, lost in a dark world, unseen by the predator that haunted them. So they scratched at the earth in the quiet and built the fire.
As the fire hissed and crackled, the boys whispered to each other. Their words were only white noise, blind chatter to remind each other they were alive.
The world around them was heavy with fragrance and the noise of insects chirruping in the grass and the shallow water along the contours of the river. Lightning throbbed in the violet sky toward the east.
The dragon screamed a drawn-out, catarrhal bellow that shook the tops of the white oaks the boys cowered under.
When the moon was high overhead, they dragged their gear into the quiet, dark woods and hid its blackness. Henry kept watch at the tree line while Clyde, William, and Harold slept a mournful sleep full of grief.
The fire was a bed of throbbing red embers that occasionally popped and sent sparks floating above them.
Henry was watching the sparks move upward and get lost among the constellations when one drifted in front of a large black shadow blocking out the field of stars. It moved fast and wheeled to its left in a perilously tight arc, twisting its serpentine body like a noose.
The dragon screamed a drawn-out, catarrhal bellow that shook the tops of the white oaks the boys cowered under.
Corkscrewing its body like a striking whip, the dragon dipped its wings toward the ground. It dove at the tree line and, before striking the ground, twisted its wings and climbed at a silent 90° angle while spraying flames into the trees. In seconds, the canopy raged with a violent fire roaring as deep as a lion.
“Get up!“ Henry screamed, his fear as obvious as the raining fire. His three brothers had already scattered.
A falling branch struck William in his left leg as he tripped over a tangle of shallow roots that spread out from the trunks of the trees like atrophied veins. He fell. A falling branch, heavy, with an end as sharp as flint, cut into his thigh and knocked him sideways. Henry ran to him and shoved his arm under his shoulder. They both rose quickly, pain filling William’s lungs.
Both Henry and William ran into the darkness across the knoll and toward the river. Their eyes, swollen from smoke and heat, scanned for their brothers. The coolness of the sweet night air made them gasp.
The two boys ran with a stiff, awkward gate to cattails casting shadows like daggers and fell through the curtain of reeds into the brackish water.
Death now chased them like lava running down the sides of a volcano, steady and relentless, ready to swallow them and turn them into ashes.
Henry raised his head above the cattails and looked for a place where they all could hide. But Henry and William were alone. Their brothers were gone.