Ruins

This wasn't supposed to be a complete story; I was trying to flesh out a character background for a shared setting, hence its fragmented nature. But while writing it, the narrative increasingly stood by itself, so why not. Even if a grim, sad near-future war story isn't my usual fare at all.

Content warning: guns.

The cold red sun of autumn sends slanted rays through the gaping hole that used to be a window. Inside, debris litter the bare floor. Little furniture still stands within the room's concrete cube. Outside's what matters anyway. Four meters below and across the street, between two apartment buildings that don't look much better, people in camo are coming, bent low among cars and dumpsters. I flip the fire selector down one notch and fire a couple of short bursts; the tankies turn tail and scatter back the way they came. One falls. A lone shot rings from the floor above me, but I'm looking at other moving shadows by then. Oh, that's just a tree in the wind. I lean back against the wall while the old PM-65 slowly cools down. Then they show up again, and again. It lasts halfway to noon.

---

This fancy hovel used to be a restaurant. Not the kind a street boy could walk into, way back. Now its owners must be long gone, like their clients from the mansions across the lake; what a view it is from up here. But all I can think of is how many refugees it could house. Meanwhile, a starched ass prattles on.

They moved the tables to divide the room in half. In the lacquered corner, wearing olive green uniforms with too many braids, the brass. Not our brass, mind. We're over here, among broken glass, all dark blue work clothes and covered faces. Also guns. That's what we have and they want. They can't seem to grasp why we don't care to get in uniform.

Dude. Do you want to fight tankies, or have someone to boss around?

Another general is talking now. He's making veiled threats, and doesn't seem to notice when barrels begin to shift, hands resting on safeties. Then someone shouts, "DRONE!" The whole gathering piles out through every opening. We're far enough when the missile hits.

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