Radioman (A 2/19th Spinoff) - Complete

Old Times

Growing up in Kansas, snow with lightning was a rarity. One the frozen hellscape of the slopes of Alfenwehr, lighting came with snow, rain, or just when the clouds covered the Group Area and electricity rippled through the ion haze, forcing us all inside to avoid being killed by the electrical surge through the clouds. Now, walking through the Kansas night, snow dancing and whirling around me on the wind, growing deeper on the ground with every passing minute, the lightning rippling through the clouds or kissing the earth, I felt nothing.

Just emptiness.

There had been an urge, just for a moment, before the emptiness had devoured it, to kill Nate. To slice him open, hold him down while I carved into his flesh every single indignity, pain, and humiliation he'd handed to out to me when I was younger. I'd fantasized about it, daydreamed about it, so often when I was younger.

Nate, and many other people.

But the desire had left me during Basic Training, when I realized that I was no longer alone. That I had my battle buddies and my fellow soldiers, even Airmen, Marines, and Seamen behind me and beside me.

I had discarded all of those youthful dreams of hurting others the way they had hurt me when I realized that I was no longer all alone and that I mattered.

The fantasies had surged back up.

But dissolved into the emptiness, gone, just like everything else.

I wasn't even angry, wasn't even enraged.

It was personal, but there wasn't anything more than blood price to be paid. Weregild to be paid.

Maybe, just maybe, this was coming.

A small part of me wondered if I had given into my urges back when I had discovered Gail had been cheating on me for months, years, with Dave, if any of this would have happened. I had wanted to hurt her, kill her. Instead, I had simply left her, left my hometown, and gone into Hell.

Gail should have left me in Hell. Should have simply let me hold onto the tiny sliver of joy in my life that was Hannah.

I had stepped out of who I was in Alfenwehr, Hannah had held my hand and drew me out from who I was at Atlas and in my uniform.

Now Hannah was gone, even if Aine survived, I had no way of knowing if Hannah would emerge intact with her.

With her gone everything I could have been vanished with her.

The emptiness sang inside me.

But it was all right.

Maybe it was always meant to turn out this way.

Walking through the snowfall I embraced the cold and darkness.

we own the night

If I took the road, it was nearly five miles to where the trailer park was. Across the fields, it was less than two miles. I crossed by farms, all of them dark, the power obviously out since not even the standard lights farms left on were burning.

The trailer park looked like it always had. Like failed dreams and resignation. The snowfall hadn't covered up the sins, the failures, the bad luck and bad decisions that brought them here, it seemed to highlight them, expose them. Even with the snowfall, it smelled like it always had. A smell particular to trailer parks all over America. Sadness.

They aren't home

I expected not to find Dave's truck in the parking space beside the trailer, so seeing his jacked up Ford pickup truck made me stop in the snow and stare at it. There were no lights, but that didn't mean anything with the power out.