Keep The Fire HotAct II

From inside, the smash and swipe of WIN’s path through the lawn of broken garbage introduces his silhouette to the open doorway of this bungalow shithole.

Standing at the door, surveying, he shifts to move on but stops.

Through the hall into the kitchen, something on the floor has his attention.

His footsteps feel heavy, walking slow and deliberate, aware of every sound he makes.

The couch pillows are gone but the front windows are mostly intact.

Grandad’s recliner has seen better days.

Silver food packaging, garbage and leaves, sticks.

This fake-wood panel living room has recently been lived in.

As he walks into the kitchen the shape of the motocross helmet on the floor becomes more obvious.

The dried blood and gore made the rotting head still inside it less of a surprise.

Ouch.

WIN is still again, listening intently now to any possible indication that he’s not alone.

He checks all the corners of the kitchen, the sink, the cupboards but the rest of this guy’s body is nowhere to be found.

The kitchen table has an amusement of different styled chairs likely brought from other houses.

The faucet turns and the filthy sink has clean water running in it.

It smells amazing, it tastes even better.

His bottle is filled.

In one of the bedrooms that was intended for adults has a flurry of drawings on the wall.

Stick figures and sun and clouds and dogs and all in comical proportions. Could be any kid’s scribblings. Could be his own kid’s artwork.

Shivers up his spine to think his kids might have been in the same place as a guy losing his head.

He walks back to look at it.

(to himself)

There must be a good reason why no one wants to eat this yummy rotting head.

It wasn’t cut. It looked..torn. Like a bear swiped it off his body and then took off with it. Despite its weathering, not a single animal has taken a bite.

Mouse and rat droppings in corners under the sink.

The dead bird in the living room.

No trail of blood from dragging a headless body.

The rest of the house is uninteresting.

It looks like a tornado blew through it but it's a clean kind of mess.

He walks to the door and stops before going outside to lean his head out looking far and wide.

Around the back of the house under the deck in the least logical place a person could put it, is a shiny, clean, new but not too new water filter.

Someone planned on staying. Someone dumb enough to think putting the water filter here is the same as hiding it but capable enough to install it and make it work.

WIN sits on the wood steps of the patio facing a line of trees and the train tracks beyond them.

There are other houses to go through.

His eyes drift over the backyards he can see, unlikely they will be as interesting as this one.

The sun is now high above him and he slowly closes his eyes into its warmth.

Before a second has passed he’s thinking about the dirtbag he tied to a playground jungle gym, the mission he’s on, and the woman that was just walking beside him and now, like everyone else, has gone on without him.

Out to the street to look this way and that, there is no movement save the tall branches of the trees.

Three burned out houses in a row and then the road winds around a bend and the trees hide the state of houses beyond it.

WIN looks to the ground in front of him and the mud on this sidewalk looks like the tell-tale pattern of the tracks of a snowmobile.

(to himself)

Well how about that?

On his way back to the library he crosses the tracks slowly.

No fox in either direction and not in the far treeline either.

He wonders if MARA knew anything about how great foxes are and the guilt from that thought, and remembering how he wanted to talk to her about the fox, made him step a little faster in his hobbled way.

From the angle he walks the playground is behind the library and hidden from him.

Until he turns the corner.

GRIP’s still-tied, severed arms dangling without a body to be attached to.

Other people are nearby...and ready to cut a motherfucker to pieces.

WIN, holding in panic, backs out to the street to put the playground behind him.

He listens.

He watches for movement.

No engine sounds. No voices. No doors slamming in the wind.

He continues to hug the storefronts and watch behind him as he moves down the street back towards the intersection that leads to the road where MARA went.

In between buildings there is nothing.

Inside the buildings also, nothing.

He steps into a recessed entry for an empty store and tries to watch through the windows to see if anyone is following.

Still, nothing.

At the end of the street now with all storefront cover spent, his only option is to walk exposed as he had been doing like a fool all this time.

His hands won't stop shaking.

In all directions he sees no people. No threats.

From almost flat against the window, he sprints in an angle across the intersection and then the tracks right into the tree line.

He doesn't stop until he’s three trees deep to look out at the line of buildings behind him.

No one is coming.

Much further away from the library, from behind buildings he and MARA passed on the way in, there is a dark cloud of smoke from a fire.

GRIP’s friends are having another bonfire.

WIN walks deeper into the woods that line the long road north and he starts to change direction to walk alongside the road.

He keeps a thick crop of trees between him and visibility from the road.

His hands are still shaking.

WIN finally stops from exhaustion having pushed hard through dense woods, avoiding roads and walking paths at all costs.

A fat rock to sit facing the direction he came from, watching the woods and trying hard to stop feeling so winded.

Oh, right.

His bandages are disgusting and it's only now that he realizes he also wanted to clean himself up back in that town where GRIP’s arms are probably still swinging in the spring air.

He begins to untie and pull apart his filthy stinking bandages.

One by one he pulls his leg, shoulder and head bandages off, inspects the filth, winces and throws them all into a pile.

Fire kit out and at the ready, he assembles nearby dry twigs into a pile on the bandages.

Holding his flint fire starter close enough to spark flame, he hesitates before striking.

WIN leans back on his rock, listening, looking around.

The high pitched bug noise of a drone is now unmistakable.

WIN kicks dirt and more twigs and leaves and pine needles over his bandage bonfire.

Circling the big rock he crouches behind it, peering over.

The drone is under the tree canopy, about 50 meters away, east of WIN, slowly moving through the trees.

Like it was hunting.

He moves around the rock, still crouching.

By the time he stops moving the drone is almost aligned with his position through the trees.

It hovers just long enough for WIN to see the old American flag on the side of its body.

It moves on, angled away from WIN heading north east.

When it can no longer be heard, WIN moves to the pile of bandages, digs a hole with a rock, buries the bandages deep and stops to sit.

This time, he sits on the Earth, hands to the ground to steady himself and the rock to block him from the visibility of the drone.

At the same rock. In the same position he has sat in for hours.

WIN breathes and looks around and listens and breathes and looks around.

He rocks back and forth.

His leg bounces small bounces.

Ok. OK.

He stands without certainty and stumbles his way in the direction of the road heading north and the last witnessed direction of the American drone.

He pulls his hood over his head and tugs on the draw string to give the hood some strictness.

Held right to his face, his tiny compass on a string catches enough light to let him know his direction without trying to look through the tree canopy to find stars.