Locket of Love

“Mary,” I stride this road that so many have before. So many walk and fall and walk again. Most walk and fall. Never getting back up seems the easier path. It’s always easier to simply lie down and give up. Watch the world spin until you, like most of the world, decays.

Clutching the locket about my neck, I remember why I started this walk. Tucking the silvery heart beneath my vest saves me the pain of a red-hot brand swinging about. The sun’s extra angry today. Angry at all the things it’s witnessed mankind do.

“Mary,” I whisper her name as I march. It’s a pathetic drill, but one that keeps every tenth left in time. Every soldier needs their routine.

Sunlight pours over everything as if it’s jealous of what the rains accomplish. As if the trees were guilty of associating with humanity, the concrete river is watched by withered sentries of cooking wood. Their hollow eyes watch me pass.

How angry we’ve made the sun.

“Mary,” the woman in the locket fills my mind. She’s out there; somewhere beyond the horizon of this concrete river and watching specters. Waiting for me to return and prove there’s more than baking voids and soiled lands.

I shouldn’t be so cynical of the sun. It’s just doing what stars do. An angry star is no different from the apathetic. It scorches what mankind has already destroyed.

Tightening my grip on my M16, heat begins to spread through my gloves. One can’t protect themselves in The Expanse without inflicting harm. It’s a law of humanity now. Every region has something. The Expanse has simply taken to the heat, and it likes how everything blackens beneath the angry, or apathetic, star.

“Mary,” the name keeps me marching. A few hills up ahead. Keep an eye on the horizon. Listen to the emptiness between the howling breeze that scavenges like a rabid beast; digging into the cracked earth for something edible. Hopefully it won’t be me.

Muscles weep as my legs move forward like programmed cybernetics. I never made enough to get the implants. I’d kick myself had I the energy.

Major Adam Bellumberg had them. The man could march a hundred miles, packs and gear strapped on tight, without breaking a sweat. At least, he wouldn’t anywhere but in The Expanse.

We’d marched right into hostile territory at the edge of The New West Commune. A people rich in resource but too brain rotten and diseased to manage it. At least they have trees. Black reaches of twisted bark that rise up with shriveled, bitter fruit as if to taunt people for the past.

“Mary.”

It isn’t their fault, either. They can’t change what man once did any more than I can. Fathers and mothers long lost to time fouled the land. We but bear their mistakes.

However, I can condemn them for what happened. Degenerate mutants spreading lover’s diseases. We marched into what should have been a peaceful signing of a treaty for ore and resources. All those months of work… shattered by a few diseased citizens too rotten in the brain to consider the ramifications.

Major Dan was the last with me. Was a good man. He’d tell us stories of the old world that his daddy told him. Kept the sunburn cooled and the aching limbs quiet around the nightly fires. Tales of airplanes, parades, wars… everything and anything to steal away the concerns of today with the halcyon years before NM-F1.

“Mary.”

No one on the hills. I’ve got enough ammo, luckily, to take on any number of dessert trekking murderers. The last group wasn’t too good with firearms. Maybe another group will show up with more water. Can’t drink bullets, but I guess I take what I can get. Can’t blame them for not having more… but I can blame them for pointing their guns at me.

Major Dan would’ve talked them down. There’s been enough death. Decades of it. In all my travels, death flows like a toxic river—all birthed by the NM-F1.

But, Major’s not here. My gun remains in that vital point between rest and ready. I sweat like an armed pig tossed into a lion’s den. Will my heart make it? One victory over death and lions?

Mary’s waiting for me. The beautiful woman immortalized within the heart-shaped locket.

Eyes green enough to make me picture The Expanse as a thriving forest. Lips as the roses I grow at home in United Territories Incorporate. Hair golden enough to be sold at market. Skin unblemished by the insatiable Expanse, Black Lands, Salt Mounds, Memory Coast Marsh, New West Commune, Donter’s Land of Misbelieve, or the vile Mounty Falls.

“Mary.”

I feel the weight of the locket more so than any gear on my back or chest. As if magnetically tugging at the chambers of my heart, the metal presses against my skin as if to fuse with the bone. I’ll carry it forward. I have to. For Mary.

Major Dan once told me that carrying a locket like this gave a man purpose. A true purpose. He’d spoken as if the gun and the flag meant nothing when compared to the locket. He said that after he’d met with the Communes, but before they ambushed us.

I can agree with that. The gun aids me in the journey. The flag binds me to a people. Together, they paint me the soldier I’ve endured Hell to become.

Yet, if they were gone I would still walk this road. If I were left naked and unarmed, I would try to cross the cracked earth in search of full lips and eyes like emerald forests.

Were it not for the locket…

I keep marching. Death is too tempting a drink to the man knowing only thirst. I have to keep water in reserve. I have to keep my legs moving. I have to make it beyond the horizon. She’s waiting for me.

Damn those Communes.

Forty men dispatched. One returning.

One spared by the rotten in the heads, savage Communes. Reporting back, the First Sergeant of the thirteenth battalion of the third corps of the sixth branch of the Eight Arms to The United Territories Incorporate. Salute before you pass out. Die with honor when the deed is done. Debrief and you are excused. Carry on.

“Mary.”

Every step is like lifting a log, tossing it over lit coals, and then wrapping your arms around it for the next throw. NM-F1 really did a number on this region. Humanity did the rest.

Trees curl upon themselves as if they’d eaten something sour. Humans, panicking and rotten in the heads, did the rest. Bombs and bullets, fire and famine, waves of bodies tossed at the problem… nothing saved them from the inevitable outcome written in glowing green pigments of NM-F1. Like betrayed lovers, the letters of nations metamorphosed into curses scribbled with toxic ink.

And because of their follies, I trudge across a land I heard was once called a National Forest. Now, I see only hills of cracked earth split like lips dried out in the light of an apathetic star.

A single sip of water is all I can spare. If a single drop escapes my lips, I might as well put a bullet in my head now.

Major Dan would punch me for thinking that. Reminding me that suffering means we’re alive. That’s why we endured The Expanse and Mounty Falls. That’s why we met with those damned Communes.

Now, my men are probably the first real feast those savages have had in months. They can’t farm worth a damn.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about how their blistered faces and sunken eyes beamed at the sight of untainted meat. The west holds nothing but lies and nightmares.

Major Dan was excited to deliver the terms of the treaty. He’d said we finally had something to change the tides of these endless wars. Whatever it was, he’d know better than I. Did they promise him ore, food, what was it?

It had to be for something. Something worth dying for… something worth living for.

“Mary.”

Am I even sweating anymore? Are my legs even lifting? Are my arms even holding the M16? The weight of my chest is there. The locket… Mary.

Just another sip. Just another… empty.

“Ma… Mary.”

Dan. Tell me a story.

I can hear the sun’s furious wail. Is it angry? Were trees condemned to perdition solely for bearing witness to mankind’s atrocities? Did they not suffer at NM-F1 without a say in its use? I guess many people did as well.

Perhaps it isn’t apathetic after all. It witnessed a few hands drizzle mere flakes of green among the people, and billions gradually turned to shambling corpses.

I can’t blame it.

Maybe, it’ll see my good deed. For something more than death and fear. One heart-shaped locket leads the way.

Major Dan, tell me a tale. Spin a yarn one last time. One more before I sleep through the day.

I feel the light fading.

Finally.

The harsh light is dying.

“Sergeant.” A voice tickles my ears. “Sergeant, wake up.”

I don’t want to. It’s too bright. It’s always been too bright.

“Sergeant!”

Opening my eyes, reluctantly, I feel a drastic change has occurred in the blink of an eye. Magic! Magic that I’ve simply found my way home. Magic that I’ve survived The Expanse.

“Try not to move.”

Of course, I do. Immediate pain ripples through every limb. I feel tightened; stretched. If I were to move carelessly, I might tear myself into confetti. Glancing about, I see chains and holsters keeping my arms and legs stilled in the air. Bandages cover every part of me I can see.

“You’ve sustained severe burns over most of your body.” The voice drops as if the bad news is only the tip of those icebergs I’ve heard about. “We’re not sure how long you were in the sun, but our patrols found you. You’ve been asleep for days.” I was right. “They… you’re lucky to be alive.” Her eyes fall, and I know that “alive” is only a momentary state.

I look over the edges of bandages on my face to see golden strands like woven wealth, lips as red as the roses I keep, and eyes as green as the wilds. She smiles to me, and I feel my heart beat unobstructed by the locket’s weight. A final act, a victory, of love in this horrid world.

“Sh,” Mary speaks quietly to me; loving and maternal. “You’ve done a great service, Sergeant.” Yet, her eyes begin to fill with tears. She salutes in her pressed uniform decorated with metals that mean nothing when compared to the weight of the locket. Above the medals, the name “Bellumberg” shines on a polished bar. “Major Dan?”

My silence, his final tale, is all I can offer as I stare at the locket in her hands.

“Of course.” She tightens her lips to resist the tears. “A fine man, but he’ll be honored as a hero.” She looks down with eyes filled with pride bolstered by flag and medals. “He secured our victory over Mounty Falls.”

I lift my eyes and inquire with a groan.

“Taken from the Commune.” She holds up the heart-shaped locket so it dazzles in the lights about my bed. “Secured beneath my picture. The reason he asked you, I’m sure, to deliver this to me.” She opens the metal and presses on the picture. A sickly glow of green escapes just behind the treated photo. “The last of the NM-F1. Enough to finish off the last threats to The United Territories Incorporate.”

But… it was a final act of love.

Love.

I lay back as she holds the locket as a child to her breast. I stare into the dim ceiling of gray tiles and think to myself, I can’t blame her.