Hopeless.
Loveless.
And unto this...
Reborn.
There had been two brothers along side him.
In total...
Three.
The other two...
Killed.
Three days under siege.
His entire Radio Battalion...
The defenders of the line.
Whatever the line was.
He spit some dry bile unto the wounded earth.
Bombed and bludgeoned.
What was there...
He wondered...
That was left to defend...
Whom?
Casualties were heavy.
He knew...
But he had to see.
To better understand...
The artistry of modern...
Warfare.
To better understand...
People.
And the enemy he...
Had not seen.
Long range artillery.
A shelling for the ages.
And then...
Drones.
"We can't even kill each other like humans anymore," the soldier murmured unto the oppressive, cold ether.
His parents...
His younger sister and brother...
They had likely had no idea that their lives were about to end.
But they had indeed...
Ended...
And suddenly.
Heavy artillery fire...
Drones.
He wandered through the murk and the devastation.
Within a hollowed out hole of a home he found the last traces of a child's playthings.
Among them was a red cape.
He took it and wrapped it around himself to somehow feel...
If only in spirit rather than body...
Warm...
Heroic.
The last defender.
There was no one left.
None of his comrades had survived this most recent...
Long range...
Attack.
After he had wandered the fields and the newly lifeless square of the once proud town...
The one at the line...
He felt nothing but despair.
He found his way back to the last place where he had know hope...
Solidarity.
He crawled back into the trench and prayed that soon he would die.
But...
He did not.
Another day came and went.
The sun...
The scarlet moon...
Birdless skies and dreamless inanimacy...
Not sleep.
The place was now forgotten...
A battlefield statistic...
A dead zone.
And yet...
This vacancy of a world still had use for him.
His phone beeped within his countless layers of uniform and anything else with which he could stuff some feigned warmth against himself...
His new and bright red...
Cape.
