Breathless, their forests left to writhe and die, the rising flame, quick-winged, whipped soil, hissing against the fall of rain.
Slow climbs, fast descents; the impact, a symphony of sound creating pockets of dirt and blood to smear against the sky.
Bodies, not yet formed, plunge with shrill screams into vast chasms in this land, deep, but deepening.
The ground burnt, but burning still.
Our bloody feet, not yet numb with cold or pain leave print after print into the mud, into the dead. We pass a boy, the roots of youth still clinging to his face, yet stripped, plucked like poultry, his worthless skin leaving slug trails across the jilted soil. I quicken the pace at this sight, his body so weak and pathetic against the fires, yet so fierce to spread disease into our heads. A man behind me whispers a prayer to himself. But on this day, the Devil shook God down from Heaven, and killed him dead with the rest of us.
We tread further from what we know, passing through small villages, blood still stagnant in the air. I feel the pulse of the unknown beating through my veins, it is heavy, yet rousing with the thrill of our journey moving further along this road. Moving further from the rotting, silenced dirt. I tell them to rest behind an old farm building, the smell of manure sweeter than that of blood and gut. I sit for a few minutes, feeling my chest pulsate through my body, with an intense craze as it reaches the base of my neck. I leave to find food and water.
I am alone, and still, against the veil of dust that suffocates the rhythm of lungs, half hollow at their beat, drumming drumming. It spreads through the dead houses, not listening any longer, if they did not flee, they died here surely? No breath allowed to fog the air. So I stay away from these black houses, their plague not worth the food. But further on, the maze of debris and tall weeds reveals a small house. You can tell those who flee. It is empty and cold, even from a distance. When I walk inside, I do not find a home. They must have ran quickly, they did not have time. I find stale bread, red wine and jars filled with jams and chutneys, the earth once providing sweet fruits. And now Hell spews upwards, as the earth becomes holes plugged by the twisting bodies of the dead, and the dying. When I return we eat and drink and become drunk with wine and exhaustion. We shout to one another of pouring men into the murk of deep crevices. We shout for our children who wait as fathers leave in a meretricious, marching glow, promising return. We shout it as loudly as it will come. We shout and cry about those who we left behind, and some silence and only look my way. But I cannot drag the dying, because it will kill us all. This night breathes deeply and sets our numbed bodies to sleep. I awaken before the sun, after the moon, by the hideous laughter set shaking through my skull. As the men rise by the sun, one does not. He is strong and heavy, but lies there as if he were a child, clutching his gun. The men tell me this feeble boy has not let go of his weapon for three days now. His hands, filthy, grip the body until the veins are close to screaming, popping from under the skin, the blood pulsating, throbbing through his fingers, though his gun. I tell him to get up. He remains lifeless on the ground, and so I turn away, my boots clipping the floor to begin this deranged march once more. Unrested, they turn their bitter tongues towards me, calling me a foul beast for letting him rot there. I suggest they carry him on their backs and they become quiet and follow once more. To let sadness wrap it's coil around your throat is simply to die.
Days drum forth, and we pass much land that runs free from death. This alone keeps these men alive. We find a pig, it's meat a strange satisfaction, will I ever taste this again? By the way they eat, the men who sit before me, feel that gutting sadness too. They tear like bears and wolves against the flesh, their claws coil and their teeth rip. In the time before here, now, weeks and months, minutes and hours felt no meaning in my mind. But I have felt each night as it passed burn its print into my hands, four nights now.
We are sheltered under the dense canopy of a small wood, no different to yesterday, except the rain, the endless rain, has finally stopped.
I feel the glow of hot amber in my dreams.
I awaken as the base of my neck has become hard and stiff. This wound, an enemy to me, wakes me to my hellish death, the burning trees encircling the bodies of men, gloating that we will soon become the dying alongside them. My throat is spewing the ash that falls like some hideous snow from the sky. It dries my lungs, but I can still hear my heart beating like the drum, bashing it's sound over instruments, meek in comparison. I throw these men awake, no sound can penetrate the screaming of the trees. And some do, awaken, their eyes black with fear, bodies rigid, even against such heat. I grab some unmoving boy and begin to run from the flames. As strong as my muscles are, as fast as I can run, they will run faster, letting us few know life until they will burn the rags on our bodies, and char the skin on our bones. We reach the end of the wood, and plunge our sooted limbs into a river. The water laps into my eye sockets and burns my blistered throat. I lie on the banks, the breathe of men around me heals for those seconds. Until someone cries out, for his brothers, burnt black, like a butcher's stock, writhing and bulging in the flames of Hell. The snatching claws of death, undone by no-one here, undone by nothing, their blood feeding the hunger of the flames further, their flesh feasted upon, festering and crawling. But we will lie like breathing dogs, panting like animals, crying for death on this burning night.