Summer of 2345: Columbius, Ohiya

         It’s been a long time.
         No, no, it’s not that I didn’t want to come back. It’s just that, with the war and all, there wasn’t much of a point, ‘cause they burned it down pretty thoroughly a few years back.
        

Oh yeah, and there’s also the fact that the pack didn’t want to come. There was just too much military stuff in the area. As much as we hate ‘em, we have to admit that the military has some serious technology up their stiff sleeves.
         We’ve been caught a couple times. Wasn’t too pretty.
         But, after we heard that Pajan and Surisa came and destroyed everything again, we thought that it was worth checkin’ out, ‘specially after they said there was a gun battle.
         Guns. As much as they hurt, at least they make for a cleaner fight. Makes the pickin’ easier.
         I should probably mention that we’re thieves. Don’t get me wrong though. We definitely aren’t thieves in the way you’d imagine.
         You see, I don’t really think stealing from the dead counts as stealing, ya’ know?

*****

         We call ourselves “pickers”. It sorta depends on where you’re at, but most of the Northern ones‘ll go by that. The ones down south call ‘emselves somethin’ else.
         Most of us are displaced civilians whose homes were burned down in the war. Some of us are escapin’ the draft. Actually scratch that. With the Camerian casualties so far, we’re probably all escapin’ the draft. Most of us just don’t know for sure.
         We pretty much just travel around in packs, roamin’ around the country and pick-pocketing dead soldiers at the aftermaths of battles. Afterwards, we sell soma’ our items at the closest pawnshops. We try our best to travel as fast as we can to the battles. We want to be the first ones there so we can get the good stuff. It also helps to be there early so the smell hasn’t gotten too strong yet.
         It’s a hard way to make a livin’. These days, that damn military won’t let their soldiers carry much more than the essentials, and a few personal belongin’s. We don’t get much special stuff besides rings and necklaces, these days. Sometimes we find soma’ the military’s technology, but that stuff isn’t worth much if ya’ don’t know how to use it.
         I remember years ago when you could still find soma’ the cool stuff. Heck, there was an evenin’ when we were down south in Floridia and Crazy Ollie found a guitar.
         In fact, Ollie’s playin’ that guitar right now, just as I’m about to break the news to the pack.
         “Gather round, pickers! Got some news ya’ll should hear.”
         The sound doesn’t carry much in the abandoned barn we found, so I really have ta’ shout so they can hear. I hop up onta’ a wooden crate so I’m higher than the rest of ‘em.
         “Listen folks! I ran out to get somethin’ to drink from the bar out there, and the bartender said there’s been a battle at Columbius.”
         Some excited shuffling ensues. We were only a few miles away.
         “It was a gunfight, and the bartender says that they went and burned the camps and lookouts too.”
         A lot more excited shuffling goes on. No one likes the bloodier battles. Everyone prefers the gunfights, and the fact that the lookouts are gone makes it safe to go pickin’.
         “Well, what are we waitin’ for? Shouldn’t we head on out?” Hank, one of our older pickers, shouts out.
         A large number of pickers express their approval.
         Then I look towards Old Al, the eldest member of the pack. Although we never really elected him or anythin’, he had sorta become the unofficial leader of the pack. With his grayin’ hair, sharp eyes, and large but not too imposin’ stature, he was the perfect fatherly figure most of us had never really had. The war had claimed all our fathers.
         “What about you, huh?” he says.
         “Me?”
         “Yes you. What about ya’ past there?”
         “Aww, that’s nothin’. I barely even remember what happened there.” I try to wave my hand in dismissal of the matter, but Old Al isn’t fooled so easily. His concern about my past draws the attention of the other pickers who don’t all know my story. I can practically see their ears perk up.
         “You don’t remember, huh? A mighty young fella’ like you don’t remember?”
         I take a breath and reply.
         “I ain’t that young! It’s been years, anyway. It don’t matter.”
         Old Al still looks suspicious. He focuses his sharp grey eyes on me.
         “You’re only what, twenty somethin’? You remember what happened.”
         “Aww, Al, I don’t remember, alright? It’s fine. Let’s go!” I try my best to look exasperated at his questioning, but eager to go pickin’. He finally gives in.
         “Alright, but let’s get a good night a’ rest before we head out.”
Just like that, the matter is settled, and the pickers all spread around the barn to get some rest.
         I hop off the crate and walk to my spot in the corner next to Crazy Ollie. I lie down on a stack of blankets and close my eyes.
         Do I remember? Heck, I remember everything.
         You’d have to be completely heartless to forget.

*****

         It had been a few years since my father had joined the army. They all said he was a goner, and honestly, we believed them. No one else had ever come back, why cling to the hope that he would?
         Still, we stayed in Columbius, just like the other families had. It wasn’t really home without Dad, but it wouldn’t be home at all if we left.
         With all the world’s countries in a gigantic war, everyone was constantly in fear. We tried not to be too afraid. After all, Columbius was a relatively unimportant city in Cameria compared to some of the coastal cities that had already gotten bombed. Still, there was a fear consuming us all. We just tried not to think about it.
         I guess it probably was a bad idea to stay, because a few years after Dad was drafted, Pajanese foot soldiers marched right into Columbius. Armed with metal torches lighted by chemical flames- flames that had been developed to burn homes in a matter of seconds- they advanced forward into our neighborhood.
         I was only nine at the time, and I was playing outside when I saw them marching right in. I screamed and ran into the house. “Momma! They’re here! They’re coming for us! They’ve got the torches!” My mother was baking, and she put everything down with widened eyes. She brought her floured hands up to her face in shock. I ran to her and she wrapped me up in her tight embrace.

         “What do we do Momma? What do we do?” I asked frantically.
         She raised her head and looked around, as if searching for an answer. She clutched the silver locket around her neck that she always clutched when she didn’t know what to do. Then, she focused on the view of the high growing grass in the backyard. With one last kiss, my mother pushed me out the back door and shut it.
         “Run honey!” She yelled through the open window on the door. “Don’t come back!”
         “Momma!” I screamed and pounded on the door, unwilling to leave her.
         “Honey! Run!” she screamed right back, and I took off running with tears swimming down my face.
         I ran through the tall grass behind our house till I could run no more, and when I finally looked back, my mother and the house were gone. Nothing was left of my neighborhood besides flickering flames and black, black ash.
        

Thinking back, I realized that what my mother did was clever. The Pajanese hunted down all the other people they saw running, but because I was small, the grass could hide me. They couldn’t have spotted me very easily.
       

Still, I almost wish I stayed in that house.
       

I kept running through the fields, and eventually I collapsed in the grass and fell asleep. When I finally woke up, I remember seeing some dark faces blocking out the blinding sun, muttering things I didn’t understand. They were the faces of Old Al and a few of the older pickers. They hauled me up, brought me to their camp, and made me a picker.

*****

Out a’ nowhere, a rooster squawks and rouses us all as the sun’s first rays strike the earth. We grumble and moan, stretchin’ and helpin’ each other up from our makeshift beds. A few of the pickers stroll in bringing handfuls of eggs that they found in the abandoned hen-house a few feet away from the barn. Someone gets a pot out of their pack and Old Al starts a fire with the bits of hay and wood salvaged from the barn floor. The eggs are cracked and tossed in the pot, and Old Al, with help from a few jars of salt and pepper and a metal spatula, makes us all a breakfast of fried eggs.

Someone pulls out a stale loaf of bread from our last pickin’, and we each get a slice. Lackin’ proper silverware, we eat with our hands on paper plates someone bought at a grocery store a few days ago, after we had sold a few items at a pawn shop. When I stuff the bread in my mouth, it feels like I’m eatin’ Styrofoam and it sure doesn’t taste any better than that, but at least it’s somethin’. The eggs make it better. It’s not often we get fresh food, and the eggs taste better than anything I’ve had in a long time.

         We finish eatin’ and try to plan out how we’re going to get to the battle site. We haven’t found any vehicles close by, but Hank and a few of the other pickers suspect that there’s probably a tractor or two in the shed across the field that’s by the barn. We’ve got about thirty pickers in the pack though, so some of us‘ll probably have to hitchhike.

         By the time the sun is in the middle of the sky the next day, by stolen-tractor or by foot, we’ve all made it to the site of the gunfight. It’s located on a field in the suburbs, close to where I had lived before. Since it had been years since the Pajanese burned it down, the whole area was covered in thorny plants that had grown from the soot of torched homes and burned flesh.
        

As we approached the site, we heard that eerie silence that we always heard before we approached the remains of every battle. It always felt like we were trespassin’. Always.
As we walked, I found I didn’t know what to feel. It wasn’t the home I knew anymore, even though it was supposed to be. The new landscape made me doubt my childhood memories. All the memories of when my father used ta’ push me on a plastic swing… all the memories of my mother lettin’ me taste the cookie batter…They didn’t happen here. They couldn’t have. My memories were in a rainbow of colors, smells, tastes…emotions. They couldn’t be connected to this dark soil and cruel, untamed nature that sprang from the roots of disaster.
        

When we finally start to see the bodies, there isn’t a single member of the group that isn’t stunned to death.
        

Even for me, the carnage was unbelievable, and I’ve been at this job for nearly two decades. Bodies were piled everywhere, and every bloodied body contained far more bullet wounds than necessary to kill. The blood turned the ashy dirt into thick mud.
        

After another sweep over the soldiers, I realized that none of ‘em were Pajanese or Surisan either. All of the bodies were outfitted with bloodstained Camerian uniforms. All of them.
         We pickers had always made it our top priority to never give a damn about any war. We never bothered to take sides. We never bothered to learn the reasons why. That was the picker way.
         It was hard to not take sides at this point.
         Still, we all crouched down and started doin’ what we did best. Pickin’
         I tried not to look at faces of the soldiers. While I ran my tremblin’ hands over pockets and into combat shoes, I avoided their faces. This was something I always did. I never wanted to see their expressions of frozen misery. The expressions of death.
         But today, I did it for a different reason. I was ashamed.
         My father had always told me to stick up for what was right. He had never faltered with this. He always supported was he thought was justified, right up to his joining the army when I was seven.
         I was young, so I suppose my opinion of what was right was that he should have stayed. But he went, and I knew that deep down, he knew that that was the right thing to do. I knew it to. I just didn’t want him to go.
         After he left, I promised myself I would be true to what he always told me. I would always stick up for what was right.
         But have I? Is this right? Is runnin’ around, gettin’ to battles after their fought, stealin’, yes, stealin’, is it right?
         My mind kept telling me no. No!
         But my fingers kept moving, doing what they had been doing for years. They trembled, but they kept their rhythm along nonetheless.
         I stopped my thoughts, and simply started mindlessly shufflin’ through the belongings of the dead. I pocketed wedding rings and pilfered religious necklaces. I took everything I could sell later on, just like I had before. My hand finally started steadyin’ themselves and calming down.
Suddenly, crouched down at the feet of an older man with graying hair, I unraveled his clutched fist and found a silver locket.
         The locket was an oval shape, with engravings of flowered vines framing the borders. The silver glinted subtly in the noon sunlight, like the whisperings of a secret.
         It was my mother’s locket.
         But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. My mother’s locket died in the flames that had killed her and my childhood memories.
         I opened it, knowing that if it was my mother’s, it would have held a lock of thick, brown hair, along with a picture of my father.
         The contents of the locket shocked me more than I could have imagined. Inside there was a photo of my mother, and a curl of lustrous black hair.
         I swerved my head and stared right at the soldier’s face and I felt my body freeze. I stopped hearing the shouts of pickers and the shuffling of footsteps. I could only hear my own breath, and I heard it become shallow and uneven.
         The face was my father’s.
         I stared at the face that I could only seem to remember from photographs and warm, glowing memories that were hazy at best. As much as I wanted to remember, it was always easier to forget.
         But there was one memory that stood out the most. An evening on a backyard swing. And my father, pushin’ the swing and hollerin’ out: “There goes Conor!”
         That’s the voice I hear when the aged body beneath me mutters something…my name.
         “C-connor?”
         “Dad? Dad, you’re alive! You’re not dead!” I spring forwards.
         “Connor? Is that you?”
         “Yes! It’s me! You’re alive! They all said…they all said you would die.”
         My father, my very own father, looks up at me and, almost imperceptibly, smiles.
         “I kept myself up-and-going as long as I could. But you…what happened? I heard about the attack on Columbius. How did you survive? Is…is your mother…?”
         I hang my head. “No…no she isn’t.” I tell him everything.
         “At least you’re alive. That was more than I had hoped would happen.” Then, he focuses on what’s going on around him, and he focuses on me. My state of dress. My hands. My over-flooded pockets.
         “Well, a picker, huh?” He tries to keep his weak voice light, but I know he is disappointed. He expected more from me. I hang my head again, and he tries to reach his hand to the top of my head. His hand, with a bullet shot straight through and blood oozing slowly through a landscape of thin lines and calloused skin, is wounded terribly. The scariest part is that he doesn’t even seem to realize that his hand is wounded until he’s staring right at it.
         He gives up trying to reach my head.
         “Son, it’s alright. I don’t blame you. You didn’t have anyone to help you and guide you.”
         “But I…I should’ve known better. I should have…”
         “No son. It’s alright. It’s okay.” In a way, this forgiveness is worse than any anger he could have given me.
         He sees the locket in my hands.
         “Take it son. It’s a part of me and a part of your mother. Take it. Remember us when you…when you make your next decision.” I see him start to close his eyes…wait…remember us? I finally scan his body completely, and realize that he is wounded much more severely than I had thought.
         “Wait! Dad! No! You’re alive! You’re okay! We’ll take you back to our camp. You’ll come with us! You’ll be okay!”
         I see him struggle to open his eyes again. He smiles very faintly in a way that makes me feel young and small, with so much more to learn in the world.
         “Son, it’s my time, and I think it’s your time to make a decision. Take the locket okay? There’s a vial in my pocket, too. Take the vial.”
         I reach into his chest pocket and pull out a glass vial filled with a foggy white substance, and I understand immediately why he wants me to take it. He starts to close his eyes again.
         “I’ll tell your mother you said hi, eh?” He winks and I start crying as his eyes shut completely , never to open again.

*****

We buried my father in a small clearing, about a mile away from the site of his death. The pickers all collected wildflowers to scatter on his grave. It’s the least I could do for the father who taught me everything he could in the time he had with me.
        

As I pondered over everything he had told me in the moments before his death, I realized that he had known that I would make a decision after seeing him- even before I knew. But now I know. I know that I don’t belong here. All those years spent stealing from soldiers and talking like the rest of them, and I realized that it wasn’t the life I wanted for myself. It was simply the only life I had known besides the life that burned away with my mother, and I was too afraid to leave.
        

Well, I’m not afraid anymore.
        

The next morning I set out with a pack of provisions, the locket, and the empty vial. I woke up before the sun rose, and abandoned the rest of the sleeping pickers with a new mindset and my father’s memories tucked into my mind. I had the memories from ingesting the contents of the vial my father handed to me in his dying moments. The army used the vials to store information through the memories of its soldiers. Usually, there would be someone left at the end of the battle to collect the vials. At this battle, there was nobody left, so my father gave his vial to me.
       

When I woke and began packing, I thought no one else was awake. Then I turned and saw Old Al staring right at me. I was afraid he would stop me from leaving, but he only smiled sadly at me, like a father watching his son leave home for the first time. He lifted his hand in a silent farewell, then he lay back down again and closed his eyes. After that, I shuffled out of the camp and started walking.
        

I don’t know where I’ll go. I don’t know what I’ll do. But I do know that, armed with my father’s memories and my own, I’m prepared to face anything that the world will put up against me. No matter what happens, I’m ready. And no matter what, I will do what’s right.