The Veteran: Part II

Part Two of "The Veteran." Again, super-rough-draft, so be kind!

The Veteran waited four full hours before he slowly began to pull himself together. It took another ten full minutes for him to shake all the debris from his body and rise to a sitting position. Sometime during the firefight, if it could have been called that, his hood had fallen back and rain now plastered his long graying hair to his skull and turned all the dust from the building into mud. Shivering, he wrapped his tattered cloak tighter around his body and flipped the hood up over his head, trying to reclaim some of his lost body heat.

The brutal efficiency of the police disturbed him to no end. They hadn't even bothered to see if they had left anybody alive inside Building 451 Block C; the sheer amount of firepower at their disposal pretty much guaranteed that any occupants were now dead. Despair welled up inside of The Veteran, and he hugged his knees and started to cry again. Though no stranger to death, even senseless death, the occupants of the Cobbler's store had been the first people in decades who had shown him any sort of interest, although their relationship had gone much further than that. They took him in whenever he came by, allowing him to shower in their tiny recycler, feeding him a full meal, and chatting with him about current events... and history.

After all it was the Cobbler and his Wife, both octogenarians and quickly approaching their 90's, who had introduced him to The Way. Their kindness, forthrightness, and sheer implacability had struck him to his very core, and had awakened something inside of him that had been long dead. They had explained to him about The One that had come, all these many millennia ago, to atone and to reconcile the entirety of Humanity to Himself. Upon first meeting them he had been both absolutely enthralled and totally horrified, all interconnected, as though the two could never be separated. After all, he had fought on the losing side, and had spent the last forty years listening to the propaganda of the Government about the evils of Free Thought.

The only thing that had kept him returning, at first, was their kindness and their willingness to allow the vagrant Veteran to use their recycler and their kitchen table. Over time, he ceased debating, and simply started listening.

In retrospect, that was probably the wisest thing he had done in his entire life.

Now, he turned his sorrowful eyes upon the ruined building. Before its destruction it had been an ancient cinderblock-and-mortar building that had hunched forlornly between two taller and more modern constructs. The Cobbler and his Wife had rented out their floor from a rather cantankerous Vietnamese couple who ran an illegal cyber-sitting service from the floor above them; they spent hours jacked into The System, monitoring children in various households throughout the City In The West for the busy parents. The Veteran wiped a grimy hand over his eyes, trying to smear the tears away, even as he distantly wondered what all those children were doing now, for it was obvious that the Cantankerous Vietnamese, too, had perished in the police assault.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, wincing when pain shot up his leg. He checked it briefly, ensuring that he hadn't somehow been hit by all the gunfire, then gave a sort of half-hearted shrug when he remembered that it was his old wound, protesting after having to stay immobile in such a cramped position for so long. Rain continued to pour from the sky, grimy and putrid, and The Veteran paid it no mind as he began to pick his way into the debris field of the building. He had no doubts that The Cobbler and his Wife were dead, but he had a desire to at least look upon them one last time.

He picked his way through the streams of nasty rain pouring from the gaps in the roof and ceiling, courtesy of the gunfire, and over the puddles that had formed over the past several hours. His memory of the small building wasn't complete, but he eventually made his way into the back rooms, where their tiny living area was, and where he was sure they would have retreated to in their final seconds of life.

The Veteran cast about for a few moments, puffing on his artificial lung from the exertion of picking through the debris, until he spotted a partially-curled hand sticking out from under their splintered kitchen table. He began to select a route through the detritus to the hand, then paused: did he really want to see them this way? Or did he want to remember them as they were, kind and firm and merry and healthy? After a few more moments of hesitation he took the last few steps, moving around a fallen section of the roof and the half of the table, and found the body of the Cobblers Wife. Despite the horrible wounds in her chest she had the most peaceful, restful look on her face, and the serenity that she possessed even in the midst of her horrific death shook The Veteran once more, and he began to weep, sinking to his knees and clasping her other free hand in his.

Eventually The Veteran rose to his feet once more, coughing and sobbing, and looked about for the Cobbler himself. He wouldn't have been far; The Veteran knew that he would have died trying to protect his Wife. He turned around and there, partially pinned by the very fallen section of the roof that he had skirted earlier, The Veteran saw the Cobbler; he realized that he must have walked right past the elderly man, so intent was he upon seeing the owner of the hand that had stuck out from under the table.

Grief and horror and anger welled up inside The Veteran, and in mere seconds he was kneeling by the old Cobbler, holding the old man's head in his lap, stroking the wispy white hair with his own gnarled and grimy hands, choking back sobs. The old Cobbler looked as if he had simply fallen asleep, as if he had decided that this was the spot that was the best for a good, long nap. Except, The Veteran knew, he would not be waking up from this nap; at least, not on this Earthly plane.

As he knelt there weeping, a slight movement caught The Veteran's attention. For a split second he ignored it, until he realized that the movement was coming from the Cobbler's mouth. The Veteran stopped sobbing and bent close, to see if the old Cobbler was truly moving his lips, even as he knew that he was simply imagining that the Cobbler was still alive, that perhaps he was projecting his own wishes upon the corpse of the poor old man.

But, no; shock stunned The Veteran when he realized that, indeed, the lips of the Cobbler were moving. He placed his ear next to the man's mouth and held his breath.

"I knew you would come. Go... go tell the rest."

"What 'rest,'" The Veteran gasped, his voice gravelly and deep with grief and surprise. The Cobbler's mouth worked for an instant, before the rest of the words came out in one final gasp, as if he had fought to stay alive for this very moment in time.

"The others who follow The Way... you will find them at the Southern Wharf, near Pier 192A... look for the sign..."

With that, the Cobbler breathed his last. Too shocked to move, The Veteran simply sat with the Cobbler's head still in his lap, a mixture of grief and wonderment filling his chest. There were others? He wondered why the Cobbler hadn't shared this with him before now.

How long he sat there, holding the deceased man's head in his lap and stroking the wispy hair, he couldn't say; he knew that when he looked down, most of the Cobbler's hair was now grimy from The Veteran's own filthy hands. Dismayed at what he saw as the defilement of the body of his only friend, he gently laid the Cobbler's head onto the floor and slowly, painfully, tried to stand. Eventually he made it to his feet and, wheezing, he hobbled to a corner of the building that the rain hadn't begun to invade yet, and leaning up against the wall he slid back to the ground, kicking plaster and debris away from him as he did so.

There were Others! This news was as exciting as the deaths of the Cobbler and his Wife were appalling. "There are Others," The Veteran said aloud, startling himself with his own voice. It wasn't often that he spoke aloud to himself, but when he did it was usually to repeat one of the Cobbler's stories about The One to himself, to help him fall asleep when the dreams from the War of Absolution came and haunted him. Stories about The One were the only things to keep the dreams away. The Veteran shook his head, trying to gather his disjointed thoughts, and began to repeat the location that the Cobbler had given him over and over, until he was sure he had it memorized. His deepest fear, at this point, was forgetting the location of the Others. Then, he truly would be alone in the City In The West; then, all he would have to look forward to would be his eventual, slow death.

"The Southern Wharf. Pier 192A. Look for the sign," The Veteran said. He gave a firm nod, resolving that, first thing tomorrow, he would begin the journey to the Southern Wharf. Wherever that was.