SUMMER WAS IN FULL SWING, but there was somehow never any lingering heat in New Seattle once the sun went down, as if the mortar and the bricks that held the city together couldn’t wait to go back to being cold and lifeless once the lights were out.

After a short detour to Deering's, I’d been driving my way downtown, lonely on my way, for the past half an hour. I passed a few people and even fewer cars, which both surprised me and didn’t. Tonight felt like a night where it didn’t seem right to stay out on the wrong side of the sun.

My Buick passed through the hazy fog of the night like a ship lost at sea. A midnight drive to downtown New Seattle was a journey straight out of a twisted fairytale, the kind where sailors rarely make it back to shore, despite their loved ones’ prayers back home and the lucky charms they always kept abreast. I left home with neither.

So, really, what chance did I have?

I stopped at the crossroads at Fifth’s, just on the cusp that was considered the city’s center. The road ahead was quiet of traffic. I kept the engine running, hot and noisy. Dead cars lined the one-way street to either side and although I couldn’t see anyone, I could hear the sounds of poor people at play, jazz music and cheap laughter coming from the block over.

Even castaways had their fun.

I looked down at my hands, clenched tightly around the steering wheel. I noticed my knuckles were almost sheet-white from the iron grip I hadn’t even realized I was holding, shaking from the strain. I tried to release the tension, to relax my palms, but found I couldn’t.

The sensation of unease that had been growing in my gut all night had turned physical and I knew it wasn’t the running engine that had my digits tremoring. I could feel it in my fingers and I could feel it in my bones, this buzzing, continuous thrumming, subtle but relentless in its pitch.

It was that same feeling I remembered having back during the war, those twinges in my gut, that rattling in my bones, moments before the mortar shells would hit, even before the distant sounds of the beginning cannonade had reached us. It felt like some deep-seated, primal instinct, an ancient intuition geared towards self-preservation and survival at any cost. It felt like it was my body warning me to get going, to get away, to get out of the foxhole. To run, run, never stop running.

I’d felt it sometimes when I was with Nancy, too.

The boys in my unit laughed at me and called me a fool the first time I ran out on them to switch to another foxhole over because I had a bad feeling. Then they called me lucky the second time and gave me a medal that never felt earned. The third time they didn’t call me anything.

They just listened when I said it was time to go.

"You okay there, Sal?"

What?

"Give me your weapon, Sal."

"W-what?" I stammered, opening up my eyes. The light of the sun was harsh, painful to look at. Why? It hadn't been, just a minute ago. I scrunched my eyes almost shut, squeezing them together against the glare of the day. I felt the wet of tears at the corners of my eyes welling up, looking up to the voice. God, it was painful.

"Your gun, Sal. The rifle. Give it to me." said the man. I had a hard time placing the name of a face I was more than sure I knew quite well. The man's eyes were wide, wider than I could ever remember them seeing, his face covered in grime and red. It took me a moment to realize that it was blood, dripping from his face and onto mine. I couldn't tell whose blood it was, but it didn't seem to be either of ours.

The man was looming over me as I was lying on my back. His breathing was quick and shallow and, for some reason, raspy.

Mason. That was it. Paddy J. Mason. He'd never told us what the J stood for. I remember putting a dollar in the pot that it'd be Jebediah.

"Please, Sal. Your gun! Come on, buddy, give me the goddamned gun. Mine's shot to shit and they're coming, Sal. They're coming and you need to get up. You need to get up and you need to give me the goddamned gun so I can shoot some of these goddamned krauts."

I became aware of the sounds of gunfire. Guns and fire. Fire. It wasn't sunlight that had me tearing up, making it hard to see past the edge of the hole we were dug in, but the searing sight of flames, licking the edge of my vision, burning my retinas.

I looked down at my hands, the Garand in my grip, clutched to my chest as if it were the only thing left in the worth clinging on to. I saw Mason's shaking fingers desperately trying to edge their way past mine, trying to wrest the gun away from me.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Sal, god-GODDAMN it, if you don't give me that gun I'm going to cut off your goddamned fingers, you hear me?" I saw Mason's fingers pull back, then heard the sound of steel rattling against leather and knew it had to be the sound of Mason's knife being drawn. I don't know why that scared me, but it did.

Did I really care that much about my fingers?

I saw mine relax slightly, but never stop shaking. Almost immediately, Paddy tore the Garand from my grip and I felt him roughly climb over and past me, positioning himself to fire past the rim of the hole we were dug in to. In the wake of my rifle's grip I was left feeling hollow in more than just my hands. The sudden sound of gunfire directly above me felt comforting for some reason. Hot, empty shells started hitting me on the side of the head and I concluded I wasn't wearing my helmet. The daze was wearing off.

I looked around the foxhole for the first time and realized it had gotten a lot bigger. I saw the wet ruin of what was left of corporal Hammond, who didn’t listen. I then heard Mason scream, screaming over the sound of his own gunfire, something about krauts and shells and

The sudden car horn coming from behind me was a brutal wakeup call to something I'd rather not have answered, shocking me back to where I’d been. I felt disoriented for a moment, then remembered where I was, my fingers still white. I acclimated back to my surroundings, my car, the wheel, the seat, and became aware of my skin, of the filth that caked it and the sweat that stuck to it, and how it interacted unpleasantly with the dark camel coat I was wearing, like gritty grains of sand rolling up and down my back whenever I moved an inch. I cranked down the window and stuck my head out for a breath of fresh air, then waved an apology at the car stuck behind.

"Sorry, pal." I called out.

I waited for a response for courtesy's sake and got none.

"You have a good one." I added, pulling my head back in. I ignored the feel of sand on my back and ground my foot down onto the pedal.

I took a left down Fifth, away from the music, the laughter, the people. The car in my rearview mirror slinked up to the spot I'd just been in and lingered there for a little too long considering the lack of traffic. Again I felt my gut grimacing, warning me.

I eased up on the gas, locking eyes on the other car's lamplights. I'd almost gotten to a second standstill in the middle of the road, before I saw the other car inch up, then make a slow turn right, opposite the way I was going.

Left alone again on the road. A ship adrift once more. Good.

The fog seemed to have grown even thicker during my short time down memory lane. Old buildings shrouded in mist, once uniform and white like a cheerleader’s teeth, had now grown crooked over the years, showing me large, lunatic smiles on each corner I sailed past. The shadows cast by the street lamp lights were the shapes of sharks on the prowl in dark waters.

I’d never felt closer to being chum bait.

The nearer I got to downtown, the more I couldn’t help shake the feeling that I was getting closer and closer to a whirlpool I’d have no way of getting out of. And yet I kept steady the course, smoothly sailing to my destination, obliging the pull of something I didn’t quite fully understand.

I took another left and made my way onto Third.

Unlike in most other great cities of America, New Seattle’s center was anything but. In New Seattle, businesses and entertainment had always preferred to open up at the fringes of the city whenever it expanded, preferring the new sheen of the freshly formed rather than the remnants of the building-bones at the center of the city left behind after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.

People not from the place read ‘downtown’ in the classifieds and think it’s historically significant, never wondering why the home princes are dimes on the dollar compared to any of the other metropolises. “It’s the deal of a lifetime, easy living in one of America’s greatest cities!” Within months they’re usually willing to pay triple rent just to move into the nearest doghouse that isn’t anywhere between First and Third.

The heart of old Seattle had been left to rot, because nobody wanted to deal with the ghosts that were left to linger.

Sure, few ever heard them and even fewer ever saw them, but almost everyone that spent any significant time in downtown New Seattle had felt them. Almost a century after the Fire the dead still creeped and lingered, softly screaming just beyond the edge of most people’s hearing for help to put out flames that hadn’t burned in almost a century, unable to find their way past the Din. I was pretty sure that was the reason why big band music had always been so popular in New Seattle. Nothing seemed to drive away the sounds of the dead like a good drumbeat, something the tribes in Africa learned long ago.

My driving was slow, having to navigate through the fog that blanketed Third's realm, and for fear of hitting a pothole in the road that would send me catapulting, swimming with the sharks. I felt the tension in my body increasing by a sliver of fraction each time my car passed over an unfirm cobblestone during the last stretch of way. Not for the first time I wondered where all my taxpayer’s money went. Surely at some point all that extra cash burning in the city commissioner’s pockets should have formed a hole or two by now, enough to pay for asphalt roads?

By the time I stepped out of the car my neck was stiff, my back was sore, and one of my teeth felt like it was on the verge of cracking.

And I still hadn’t had the chance to shower.

Luckily, Lloyds was the type of man who thought personal hygiene was a luxury a hard-working man could ill afford.

I placed a hand on the engine hood and already felt it cool faster than I would’ve liked or even thought possible.

I straightened my coat, fixed my hat, then slid a hand into my pocket, fingering the fresh edge of an unopened pack of Cockies like it was holy writ. It had cost me an arm and a leg from that midnight-peddler off of Deering’s and the temptation was great, especially at this cold of night, but the man asked for smokes, and in the case of Lloyds that never meant secondhand.

I stepped out into the fog and left the shadow of my Buick behind.