Scorched

   Devastation. That’s the only word she could think about. Tally Green had been taught, throughout her life, that science was inherently good in its intentions and only very devious men, often on the side of the scientific path, would used it for dark purposes. But now, seeing what she had helped create, Tally was not very sure of that any more.

 She saw herself as a good person. She always helped various organizations during Christmas time, she gave money to non-profit groups that helped women and children around the world and she had never been particularly nasty against anyone. She didn’t liked violence, to the degree of never having seen a real fight between two people. Tally thought herself innocent even, of some of the things that human life had to offer.

 But that was the past. Wearing her light gray uniform, checking every camera in the field to check if what she was looking at was real, Tally realized her so-called innocent days were over.

 Applause came from her side, from the politicians and high-ranking military people that had attended the demonstration. They were all please and she could see in their faces that they were not innocent. Actually, it was rather easy to see they loved everything that had to do with destruction, with war and the capacity that someone had to destroy every single thread of decency left in this universe.

 The machine was identified as XLIU897 but the team that had created it called it The Fireman. It was a term of endearment for a weapon able to destroy entire acres of vegetation. It had been created so it would destroy all organic life but leave all the rest intact. They said it would come in handy if an army needed to liberate a city or if some townspeople needed to begin again with their crops. The weapon would destroy it all and then new crops could be put in place, as life could grow again on site.

 That was actually the only thing those men in ties didn’t like about the Fireman. They said they didn’t see the use of a weapon that destroyed and then left the land untouched. It was clear that the military uses for the weapon were a priority and that no government would really let farmers use it in their lands. All they wanted to do was to create hell on Earth and they had already done so.

 Just minutes ago, when everything disappeared under a red light and a hot wind, those awful men were smiling and apparently felt exceedingly happy with themselves. They were awful people, Tally knew that, but she felt she was an even worst person because she had helped create what those men were enjoying and were going to use to destroy.

 When she went back home that night, she was not only exhausted but the weight on her back felt much heavier than usual. Tally thought of the various books she had read about science and instantly remembered of Oppenheimer and all the other men and women involved in the creation of the first atom bomb. She thought that they were even guiltier than she was because an atom bomb had no possibility of being used as any other thing than as a weapon. The Fireman, on the other hand, had real possibilities as a helper to regenerate the land on places were it was needed. Tally had always wanted to help people and thought she was going to do it with that creation.

 But now, opening a can of beer in the kitchen and taking a sip, she realized she couldn’t just let things be. She left the can alone on the counter and grabbed her phone. Without thinking much about it, she called a friend that worked for the ethics committed of the department of defense. Tally told him about her case (she knew he was aware of the weapon) and asked him if was possible to stop the use of such a weapon in the world. After all, it had been created in an independent laboratory.

 The answer was somewhat disappointed, as he told her that if the army decided to acquire the weapon, the government would just block everyone trying to talk or know more about the subject. He said that they could even make her loose her job, just to make her look desperate and use her in public as a case of anti-patriotism.

 When Tally hung up, she had another idea in her mind. She knew her friend was honest and that the army was practically taking over the project. As she walked out of the laboratory, she saw some more military men arriving. That wasn’t normal and it was very likely the department of defense was already enabling the purchase of the weapon, even if the army wanted it to be changed and target also the ground itself.

 In her bedroom, Tally put some clothes on a backpack and also some food. She carried that to her car and drove back to work. As she was one of the main people on the project, she had every key possible. She entered the building, smiling to the security man and hoping she wouldn’t find any military men inside. But there were none. So she entered her lab and almost ran to the main computers. The idea was simple: to erase everything and make it disappear or simply take some vital piece on a portable device and just vanish with it.

 But she was too late. There was nothing on the computers. It had already been taken and people hired by the government were already monitoring the project. She had acted too slowly against them and the world would pay.

 Tally found a job in a pharmaceutical company, not a big one like those in movies but a smaller company that produced cheaper versions of very expensive drugs used to treat HIV and many virus related diseases. The company was controversial because it gave a chance to people suffering the AIDS pandemic to survive and live a happy and healthy life. She loved it there and loved to see reporters and protesters every morning. That way she knew she was finally doing some good in the world.

 She was not really involved in the creation of the drugs but rather on something even more interesting: the development of an effective cure. And they felt they were closer and closer and she felt proud of herself everyday because of that.

 That was until it happened. Half of the whole woke up to the news, the other half saw it begin live. Something was happening in Eastern Europe, some kind of wave was burning every single piece of land, meter by meter. People could see how everything died, slowly. Some ran away from the wave, others stayed and were burned alive by the invisible wall that advanced toward the east. Entire countries were burned alive and survivors were very scattered and not many.

 Then, out of nowhere, a huge army appeared and started invading the devastated lands. It was the first time in History that Moscow fell into foreign hands, half of its population killed slowly by burning. The men that had taken the city proclaimed the end of the failed Russia and announced the annexation of the country to their own new empire.

 All work at her company was stopped that day. Outside, there were no protesters or really anyone. People were too scared to go out to the street. What if one of those invisible walls advanced towards them and turned them into ashes in a matter of seconds?

 It was announced the next day that it had been, as Tally knew, a move by the most powerful country in the world. She had left that place years ago and it haunted her that her work was killing millions somewhere else. What she had been working on now just didn’t cover the evil she had helped create, the enormous guilt she felt for what she had done with her so-called innocence.

 The next day, as more and more troops, more and more bombs, and another wall advanced to the west, Tally decided she just couldn’t keep on living. She hung herself in her living room and was only found weeks after, when the invading army entered the city and saw her charred bones.

Secret of the woods

   The last day they saw each other, they didn’t say a word. They just stared and finally left, each own his or hers on way. They were six people and they had all been there as the war had happened. They had been useful servants, slaves if you will. They had done everything they were ordered and even then the ones that ruled over that place had beaten them with sticks or solid rods. Everyone was cruel and sick during the war and the secret that they all shared was proof of that. When it happened, they all shared that moment but they never really spoke about it. First, because there was no time to do so and, second, because it was extremely hard for them to do it. The war then pressed on and reached its desired end; they were liberated one morning and found themselves to be free.

 Clara was the youngest of the group and the first one to leave that horrible place. She noticed, as she left in a truck filled with liberated people, how the surrounding forest was still dark and scary and how it had no life inside of it. It had been rendered lifeless by the atrocities of war. Eventually, Clara made it to the nearest town and there she desired to get to a port and then away from that forsaken continent. But she never got to do it because she had no money. She decided to work in the town, doing small chores all over. It was doing so that she met a nice young man, a baker, and she fell in love. They eventually married and had a very large and happy family. She was almost seventy years old when she received a phone call, one she never thought she would get.

 Robert, the youngest man, left in the following truck. Its destination was another place like the one he had come from, which made him sick. He vomited several times and made the soldiers think he was sick with something. They left him in a provisional hospital, not too far from there. He wasn’t sick, just nervous and scared. In the hospital, one of the doctors asked him for help, as nurses were very scarce. Eventually, Bob followed the medicine man to a big city in the south and there he paid Robert’s studies to become a doctor. The man turned to be a second father who loved Robert as his own son had died months earlier in battle. Bob turned himself into a great doctor, getting the call too after one of his lectures.

 The oldest was Irina, a woman that didn’t say a word and that left the place by foot. She was not that older but she had seen more of life than Clara and Robert. She was hunted by the violent deaths of her family, which she couldn’t forget. Feet bleeding, she collapsed and was rescued by a group of women, who nursed her back to health. They were also escaping violence, so she joined them. The group eventually settled in the east and became of the first feminist groups of the area. They were adamant in their convictions and Irina proved to be a real fighter. She did good things for women all over the region and was in a frail state when she got her call.

 Next was Alexander, who was the first one that talked publicly about the atrocities he had seen. He became a renowned writer after been able to travel abroad and reunite with his family. He was member of an aristocratic family who had disowned him but now that everything had change, they recognized him again and even more as his fame grew larger. Alexander published books about the war, all very successful. He did novels, and documentaries and short stories. He even sold his rights to make movies about the subject. By the time he was an older man, he was one of the richest persons on that side of the world. Privately, he had grown tired of the subject but as it was his life, he couldn’t drop it. His call caught him in the middle of the night.

 Marissa was the only one that had been transferred from a proper prison camp. She had seen other atrocities and when she was transferred she thought she would have a better life but she didn’t. After the liberation, she had to be institutionalized because of her mental state. She received shock therapy for several months and was even the subject of several dissertations about paranoia. She was finally released to a resting home when she was a woman in her forties. She had no skills and had been permanently damaged but that didn’t stop people at the home to make her clean floors and bathrooms, use her as many had used her before. Then, one morning, someone came and took her away.

 To complete the group, there was Louis. He had been a musician but after the war his fingers were not the same ones. He couldn’t play anything and he did not have any other skills. He tried finding a job as a waiter or as a chauffeur, but he would always ruin it by having awful breakdowns that involved hitting himself repeatedly. His guilt always showed itself to others, and it couldn’t be controlled. He was violent and unpredictable so, when one day he shot himself in the head, no one really made a fuss about it. So many people that had been liberated were committing suicide, so it wasn’t a real shock. When they called Louis, trying to locate him, the news hit hard and deep.

 The person who called was Clara. She had started to contact everyone else for one simple reason and that was because she had received a call by a state officer who was investigating the events that took place in that place in the woods all those years ago. They had identified her as a resident for some time, as well as some others. They wanted to talk to them in order to know exactly what went on there because there were these rumors and it was necessary to know if they were true. Clara just hung up, asking her husband never to pick it up again. When the government came to her doorstep, she chased them away.

 For her, it was too much. Her children and husband didn’t understand, but for Clara it was all a disaster. She was an older woman now, someone who had already done what she had to do, and someone that was already planning to come to terms with her existence as a human being. Clara was almost ready to meet her maker and she had no intention to face the human justice. That was when she had the idea to track all of the people that had been there with her, in those basements with rooms with no windows or proper lighting. She looked for them and after some time she had called them all. They had all agreed to meet, no questions asked, in the town where she lived.

 It was fun, at least for a while, to see how different everyone was. Clara had been a housewife all of her life so she did an effort to look good. She was the one who picked up Clara and, with the help of her husband, nursed her back to a better health in order to be more aware of the world. But Marissa was gone and would rather play with the dogs than talk to those people she didn’t know anymore. Bob and Alex looked fantastic. They were all so dapper and successful in their respective fields. But once there, once they got all together, they went back to being young and simple. Irina walked slow and needed to be waited and helped. But her demeanor was strong and resilient, having struggled all of her life for others. They reunited and, once again, just stared.

 But those empty looks turned into tears and hugs and kisses. They had never done that while at the woods, they had never shared a moment of love because love had been outlawed. They only law, the only real thing there was violence and cruelty and they had been poisoned by it. They talked about their lives and about how everything had changed but had stayed the same in some parts. They also spoke about Louis and Marissa was the first one to smile when hearing his name. She had helped him once and they were the only friends in existence in that awful place. They went there and the cold wind that greeted them made all the memories come back.

 The place was now a museum with a park. A young woman came to them as asked if they wanted to take a tour of the place but they told her they knew it too well. They each told the story of how they had gotten there and how they had gotten out of it. They also confessed to have helped to the killing of several people, including children. The place was used as a testing site for several weapons: biological, chemical and radioactive.  They also tortured them with other experiments and them, who were prisoners, were made to watch and help. If they didn’t, they died. So they did. That place had been hell and now they had liberated themselves from it, in order to leave it there forever.

The forbidden jungle

  The waterfall had always been a lonely place, as it was located deep within the jungle. No one would have ever reached it on purpose, instead stumbling into it by mistake. It was said that the waterfall and its lagoon had the capacity to change locations and appear wherever people needed them to be. Many explorers and escapees from a nearby prison wandered into the jungle and got lost for days. Many of them, to be honest most of them, where eaten up by the jungle, whether it was by the fiery creatures inhabiting it or by the secrets that lay beyond the trees and the mossy ground. There were no natives to the jungle that could tell anyone about what lived beyond the first few kilometres simply because no living being, at least of the human species, had ever been able to come back.

 In satellites pictures, the jungle appeared to be dark green and even black in some parts. And it was all trees and trees, no sign of any waterfall or lagoon, which was only none to those few that had wandered into the jungle and survived. But as said before, these people never left the jungle. Instead, they remained in there, slowly transforming into wandering souls that helped protect the jungle and the secret within it. People that suffered this faith would not suffer or deny their destiny. Once they realized why they should give up their natural lives, they gave it all willingly. After all, those who survived were always the best humans, the examples of what was good and admirable about the human race.

 Such a person was Captain Roma Tennant. When she entered the navy, so many years ago, her peers only saw her as one of the women of the ship. But they had no idea she was far stronger and more capable than any of the men that worked with her in any of the Navy’s vessels. She was always the most oriented and the fastest one, also having great skills for shooting. She was prized several times, always involved in missions of war but far from any real battle. When she was finally sent to it, she became easily traumatized. She saw the few friends she had made in the Navy died, blowing up next to her or simply falling to their knees, a bullet in their foreheads. Her mind, however, got to hold on.

 The bit of sanity that remained in Roma was enough to destroy one of the enemies’ battle stations, thereby giving a perfect position for support troops to launch an attack that would make them win the fight. They did win, after many more casualties and Roma was able to survive, killing even more men and hiding in a sewage pipe. She was rescued by her country and brought back home but the truth was that Roma had been devastated by her, her mind almost broken by images of flying limbs and blood tainting every single drop of water. Her recovery took many months and her family thought they had lost her forever.

 And, in a way, they did. When Roma was able to walk again and use her arms and speak, she told them that she couldn’t live in the city anymore, as the sounds there reminded her of the sounds of battle. Cars and cell phones and planes made her very uneasy, very nervous. So her solution was to go and live by the sea, buy a boat with the money they had paid her for her services in the military, and simply live a quiet life in the ocean. She had to win the respect of her fellow men, once again, by proving she could easily manage to control a fishing boat, a cargo ship and even a small ferry to transport people across a small stretch of water.  She did exactly that at first and then travelled across the globe, working in jobs not very different, trying to bring peace to her mind and food to the table.

 She went to every big port in the world but, as she had realized before, cities were not for her, not even their harbours and marinas. She would settle for smaller towns, where she could be around people that she could recognize every day. But that eventually gave her more problems as she was reminded of the many people she had lost in battle. After one of her episodes, she was institutionalized for several months. This time, she had no family nearby and no one apparently notified them of her state. She remained in her cell, receiving shock therapy, which they still thought would be of any good in the country where she was. Eventually, they let her go when they saw she was calmer, less violent.

 Roma left that country fast and ended up in Indonesia, where she established herself as a fisherwoman. The locals there were not very happy to see her, a woman, trying to compete with all the men. She felt so harassed, that she decided to move upstream, through a large river that crossed a huge jungle. There she would finally be alone and she would be able to have a decent life for the remainder of her days, no matter how many they would be. She then noticed that explorers, scientists from all over who saw the jungle as an incredible source of discoveries, frequently visited the region. They said that a new animal was discovered every six hours and a new plant every eight hours.

 It was hard to believe such tales but Roma decided it was business and she dedicated herself to tour the scientists up and down the river and even through some canals and streams she had discovered. All the foreigners that got on her boat always came back as she was more daring than most people of the region and they knew it was because she had seen more of the world than they had. For a couple of years, explorers became her friends and she would always be there to greet them and take them wherever they needed to do their research. She had fun doing it, as she felt at peace for once in her life and it felt good.

 That changed the day she met Alexander Epps, an American scientist that had heard tales of the forbidden jungle and arrived in the region asking loudly for someone to take him there. Everyone said no, even Roma. She didn’t know all the tales, but she did know that the region of the jungle he was asking to go was very tricky in terms of navigability. She was skilled enough to go, she was sure, but it was difficult to live there and ignore the stories she had heard, about teams of twenty people that left for the jungle and never came back. Boats that appeared out of nowhere in the river and people recognized them as the ones that had transported lost souls to that dark patch of the forest. Roma was an adventurous woman, but she was no fool at all.

 However, Epps was a scientist and his research had also dropped the name of Roma. How it was known she lived there now, was never truly explained. Nevertheless Epps came to talk to her and tried to convince her to take him to the forbidden jungle. He insisted for months and she always said no. But then, as intelligent and twisted as Epps had always being, he tricked Roma into watching some images and footage of the war she had been in. He bombarded her with information, facts and so on. Just as he predicted, she snapped. But before she could lose herself to her own mind, Epps convinced her that the only way to purge herself from everything was to make a good deed and that was to tale him to the jungle.

 The next day, she took his team of ten men in her boat and carried them upstream. As expected, the jungle grew thicker, until it was impossible to keep advancing by boat. She told Epps it was her time to return but he threatened her with a gun and made her walk in front of him. None of that mattered anyways as in only one night; all the men of the expedition would be killed. Roma had not seen such carnage, not even in war. There were gigantic snakes breaking the bones of men, jaguars that destroyed a person in minutes and huge birds with beaks that could poke out eyes in the easiest way possible. The last one to die was Epps, who was impaled by a shadow Roma had seen before.

 Alones and in the brink of insanity, Roma wandered through the jungle, trying to get out of there but knowing one of the beasts was probably waiting for her. She was getting impatient, asking for the jungle to eat her, to destroy her life once and for all. But then she heard the humming of the water and, some steps in front of her; there was a perfect lagoon and a great waterfall where she cleansed herself from everything. Even her memories seemed to leave her as she washed her body. And then, beyond the trees, she saw a light. At first she thought it was an animal but then she realized it had the shape of a human being. Whatever it was, it was asking her to come towards him.

 Slowly, Roma did exactly that. The entity was one of the many souls that lived in the forest, one of the oldest apparently. It took Roma by the hand and took her to a trip where she left her body and transformed into a better version of herself. They wandered all around the jungle until the spirit took her deep within the trees, beyond the killer animals and the poisonous plants, beyond the waterfall and its soothing waters. There, in a space covered by plant life, there was a rock. It was the colour of blood and looked harmless. The spirit invited her to touch it and, when she did, she felt complete. And she understood why no one that wasn’t worthy could ever survive the forbidden jungle.

On the rubble

   At first, the sounds were like thunder. Once and again they repeated themselves, a little bit louder each minute that passed. People were hiding in their basements or in any other structures below ground but were still very close to the bombs. They normally fell for hours, at least two, and then they would stop for another two hours until they came back. It was particularly awful at night, because people had no electricity and they feared something worse could happen in the dark, even worse that a foreign force dropping bombs on their heads. They just stayed there and prayed, if they believed in something. If they didn’t, it was a lot harder to imagine a way to go back outside alive.

 Every single person, even children, now knew that the world had been crumbling down for at least fifty years but no one had really noticed. That was until, all of a sudden, the most powerful country in the powerful got very extremist and started killing their own. People around the world saw it happening and they couldn’t believe their eyes. But as many times before, they did nothing, as they were scared they would get a blockade or some sort of attack just because they wanted to defend the lives of so many that had been massacred. And what the TV showed was only the tip of a very bloody iceberg. If people had known, they wouldn’t have feared, they would have done something. But that didn’t happen and it was only two years after that that the war starter. Ironically, it had nothing to do with mass murders but with a fishing boat.

 Since that happened, the world had seen five awful years of fire, misery and death. People talked about safe havens around the world but they all sounded so perfect, so ideal, that the general population thought they were only a fantasy created by those who didn’t want to realize what their reality was. They were prisoners in their own country, having to eat whatever they could find and surviving as animals, as rats. Some escaped to the countryside but things were supposed to be worst there because of the open spaces and the use of more horrible weapons that one could ever imagine.  The country was dead.

 Besides, they had been cut off from the rest of the world, so heading to the borders was useless as they were all under surveillance. And the truth was that even beyond those fences, life was exactly the same. So why bother in running, escaping and hurting the shitty body one had only to be in a place where things were exactly the same or maybe worst? People survived and they openly welcomed death, but on their terms. No one died of old age anymore but it was the objective of many to die that way. Most people died in the streets, with a shot to the head and probably not even fired by enemies but by other hungry people.

 Rumors were always heard. People had begun a rumor, maybe based on the truth, that a group of rebels had been working before the invasion had happened. You see, before the country was attacked daily, there used to be what people call a “puppet government”. A crazy military man, as they all are, had formed an alliance with the extremist nation that attacked them. He sold the country to them in exchange of letting him live and rule. And they did let him do that but only for some years until he was killed and the occupation really began. It was during that time that several “terrorist” attacks took place. It was them, the rebels.

 But now, it seems, the rebels didn’t existed anymore. Apparently, the government killed them all and then the government itself was killed so nothing remained from the past. News came every so often, from people that had managed to salvage radios or television sets. They said they had heard other countries been taken or an uprising somewhere very far. But even if all those things were true, people knew that they weren’t enough. Those things were happening so far away that they would never get any help. They just knew how their lives would end and they didn’t want to do anything about it. Why change what is inevitable? They just waited for the end and that was it. No more believing in miracles, or in any fantasy about rebels and war on the other side of the world. They were dead and that was the only truth.

 People survived eating small rodents that they found among the rubble after the airplanes had stopped bombing. There was no building standing and it made no sense for them to keep bombing them but they did it anyway. Some people believed that they didn’t want to use real soldiers in order to keep in line people that were already scared and enslaved, in a way. Another rumor was that soon they would come and build factories and that all those people in the basements would be made to work there, making uniforms, guns, helmets and so on. It was the normal thing to do by any foreign oppressive power, or so said the elderly. But no one knew and no one cared enough to think about it.

 A person’s day consisted of hearing the bombing all day, trying to sleep at least two hours and then go out of the hiding place in order to find food. That was it. There was no entertainment or time to be happy or joyful. Those things had died with the war. Any kid who laughed was severely spanked by their mother and learned, the hard way, that there was nothing to be happy about in this world. Some people moved around the city, trying to get more food and it sometimes worked. Some of the ponds and lakes still held water and some fish so it was only a question of how to get them. That would have been a nice way to spend an evening but these people saw it as a way to survive so there was nothing nice or good about it. It was just something they had to do.

 Suddenly, one day the bombing stopped altogether. It was not that they had decided to do less bombings; it was that they just stopped. People were scared then, more than ever. The invasion, the full scale one that they had feared for so long, was finally at their doorstep. Mothers decided to teach their children how to be obedient and how to lower their head before the foreigners. They wanted them to live, even if they had to be submissive and enslaved. Nothing could be worse than been a human rodent. They waited, and waited, and waited, but the invasion never came. They never saw a single soldier come their way but that didn’t make them calm down. Maybe they had decided to test a new weapon on them… Maybe they were going to be destroyed for good.

 But that never happened. A year after the bombings stopped, when the grass started to grow again, as the trees and crops, a battalion arrived to the ruined capital city. People were scared and ran away but they soon noticed those soldiers weren’t wearing the flag used by the extremists. They were wearing a white patch only which many remembered as a sign of peace. That week, five battalions arrived to help the people and teach them how to rebuild and feed themselves. The community was alive again and people, for the first time in many years, felt good about smiling and dreaming. The children were especially happy and their parents could finally have a calm heart.

 Many bodies were buried in huge mass graves. And it was then that they realized that their liberators were locals. Not all of them but many and they told them their story. Apparently, they were the ones called rebels back in the day and they had to flee the country before it went to shit. They said that many stayed behind but were killed. Those who remained hid in boats or planes bound for other parts of the world. Their stories were then so different and fantastic but they untied again at what they called the Big Battle. It had happened about a year ago and it had been the turning point for the war. The extremists were cut off of their resources and then their capital was taken. Their leader was hanged.

 That’s why the bombings had stopped. For all effects and purposes, the war was over. The rebels talked about the sacrifice that many had done in order to get their freedom back and that’s why now they wanted every country to stand up again and become a better version of themselves, to become something that people could look up to in the future. War had to be a thing of the past, something only mad men would think about and those mad men had to be put away, their freedom taken before they could take anyone else’s.

 The world had died but then, it’s heart started beating again. Will there be another chance? Will we survive again to our own demons and stupidity? Let’s hope this time it sticks.