Chapter I. The small house on a highland (part 2)

Alrighty, let me pick it up where I left it last time. This part will be longer than the last part though.

The wheat field

<....>

His muscles relax. His eyes tell him to sleep, because he is safe now. For no reason at all, he knows that this old woman is going to save him and take care of him. Maybe it is just because she said so or maybe because of her surprisingly familiar voice. For now, it really doesn't matter much for at least his body can rest.

The legs and arms feel numb again, while the senses slowly fades away. Last thing he heard was the woman talking with someone else: "Here you are, Old Fart, your deaf nose made you lost again, huh?".

A blue sky turns dark

The man opens his eyes for someone is calling him, only to find out that he is in the middle of an open wheat field. The field is as vast as if there is no end to it. It cuts the orange sun into a half at the horizon. The winds play with his hair while also making countless waves on the wheat. Some hosts of sparrows flew over where he is sitting, make him notices the wide and peaceful blue sky above.  Fresh air hides between each wave of winds fills his lung with a pleasant scent of the new wheat seeds.

"Lenny, will you ever come back to me?" a dearly voice he has forgotten for a long time whisper into his ear. The girl says, and leans her head on his shoulder.

"Of course I will. Even if this coming war will make me to leave you for a while. I promise, I will come back.". He turns his head to her and looks into those lenient eyes. "No matter what."

"Swear?" She smiles and winks at him, playfully, but also gently, gives him her pinky.

"Swear! Don't you believe me?" He looks at her, knits his brows, trying to act like doubting. Certainly, no one can say he is a good actor. They make a pinky swear.

She looks at him, with a smile so big that her blue eyes disappear behind two moon shaped curves. Then she leans her head on his shoulder again and tightly grips his arm.

"I always believe you. You just made a swear to me, he he."

She pauses a bit, and continue as he is still place his eyes on her dark silky brown hair which is moving in waves with the winds. "I will wait for you, forever. I swear that too."

Lenny turn his eyes back to the vast sky, smiling while slowly puts his back down to the grass with hers. His hands crossed behind the nape, with her cheek still leans on one arm. She holds him tightly and silently. They says nothing at all, just let the peaceful feeling flourishes.

Suddenly, there are ashes. They come from everywhere, falling down from the sky, blown up from ground by the winds. The sky turns dark and atrocious lighting begin to tear it apart with their red flame. He looks to his side, seeing the girl slowly turns into ashes. Cracks appear on her face, with fire under them. Soon he realizes that he is no longer in the wheat field anymore. Many men in uniform run around, yelling and screaming. Panic can be seen on their face, along with tears and despair. They all turn their big guns above their head, and shoot furiously into the dark sky. Even with fire lighting up the ground everywhere, the sky still stays unreasonable, some what evilly dark. Beside the fires, he sees tattered dead bodies. Some of those soulless faces are really familiar, but most are too deformed to be recognized. The sounds of incoming jet fighters tears down the sky, following up by a series of explosions. Before he can turn his head up to see what is going on, a burning airship falls down in front of his sight, explodes, thus leaves a massive fire ball that slowly levels up to the sky.

"Holy mother, it took down our entirely air support!"
"Nooooo, we are doomed."
"Jim and his men were under that explosion, come with me, they may still alive."
"How can we defeat it? I didn't sign up in the army for this kind of thing."
"Shut up and keep shooting, idiots."
"You shut up, we were lied to. They told us this campaign is not..."

A fiery explosion hits that talking soldier place, blowing everything in a range of two hundreds feet up, leaving only fire and ash falling down.

"Oh my god, it killed Dan, it killed our captain!"
"Retreat. Retreat. We are not going to win this war."
"Leave the tanks, scatter out, the tanks are useless now, morons"
"Leave those stupid tanks, it wont be able to chase down all of us at once!"
"Run for your own life!!!!"

While every other soldiers is either running, yelling or crying, Lenny still stands there, doing nothing as the deaths of his soldiers frozen his senses. People are dying in front of him, instantly. They could not even finish their sentence while screaming. Their voice just suddenly disappeared, one by one, after each explosion. It is like seeing them were alive in just a moment ago, and then turned in to ashes and fire in just a second later.

A hand grabs his shoulder and pull, makes him fall down into the trench.

"For the sake of god, what the hell are you doing? Lenny?" Joe is yelling at him.

"I..I.. don't know. They were there, and then they've gone, all of them... all of my friends..", he mumbles as tears fall down his chin.

"Damn, this is not the time for a crying baby, dude, just get a hold of yourself and run. It will kill you if you keep standing there doing nothing." Joe shakes him up.

And then they run like they have never run before in their life. Joe leads the way in the maze of war trenches and Lenny follows him closely. The sky is roaring behind them. Those roars are not like anything Lenny ever heard before in his life. Its loud, ferocious and deadly sound can break the spirit of the bravest soldier. Each roar is followed up by a ground shaken explosion.

"This way, Lenny. We almost there. Our base has an underground bomb shelter. If we get in there, it won't be able to kill us!"

"Alright, lead the way, man." He says, trying to hold himself together.

Joe jumps up a crate, pushes a dead body down in disgust.

"This man lost his head. Looks like everything from his neck were burned down to ash. So nasty.", then he continues, "But his phone still works, we have signal here. Hey brother, rest in peace, I will take your phone now, you don't need it anymore. We will make a good use of it for you.", Joe said to the body, calmly. It makes Lenny feels uneasy.

"How can you be so calm, Joe? We are going to die if we don't rush."

"Dude, don't worry. We are already there. Just need a phone so we can communicate with people. I am not going to die today. Julia will kill me if I die." Joe laughs.

He puts his hand in his pocket, pull out a small lion doll and tell Lenny.

"See this lion? I told you yesterday when we bought it in Carnice that I will give it to Julia. She loves dolls, every five years old love dolls. Looks, I even wrote my name on its belly. It says: -From dad with love, Joseph-." He laughs again then tosses the doll to Lenny, continues.

"I will have to stay alive until I give her that. And you too, you will be alive as well. You told me there is someone waiting for you at your town too, isn't it?"

Lenny promptly nods his head, admiring his friend's attitude while he is still in the worst life scenario possible.

"Alrighty then, when we jump over these two crates and get out of this smelly trench, we will see our base in front of us. And we are saved! Screw you, monster shit!"

Joe said then quickly turns to the crates and jump over them, get to the surface first. Lenny jumps after him while calling from behind,

"Hey wait, you are jumping too fast, what if it see us? And by the way, I am still holding your doll here."

But Joe does not answer him.

"Joe?"

Lenny asked, while finally get out of the trenches. When he looks at Joe standing with his back in front of him, he call Joe again,

"Joe? Why didn't you say anything?"

Joe raises his hand, shakily points toward the front.

"This...this used to be our ...b...base"

Lenny looks to his direction, and a huge meteor crate appeared before their eyes. It is as big as a foot ball stadium, as deep as an old diamond mine, and is filled with flames, resembles a gate way to hell, literally.

Suddenly, both of them hears a roar just above their heads. Lenny and Joe look up into the sky just to see a giant black figure floating covers their whole sight. Neither of them can clearly see what is that thing but its blood red eyes look like there are lava inside. It is not flying, it is floating in front of them. None of its movements on air create a single wind gust. The red eyes look deep into their souls, or at least it feels like that.

"It is ..it..t...t..th..the..Dra..cul.." Joe mumbles in shock.

The dark figure begins to open its mouth, reveals multiple sharp white teeth and a lava tongue. It is like the flame is rushing to get out of its pharynx.

"GET OUT OF THERE, JOE."

Lenny rushes toward his friend as fast as he can, while the dark figure begins to roar and spit a huge fire ball to where Joe is standing. Joe turns back, look at Lenny who is desperately running to him. For a moment, Lenny thinks that his friend is smiling, the smile of a man who accepted to not run away from his fate. That smile is like saying a farewell to him.

Joe's body begin to be dissolved in to gray ashes and blew away part by part when the fire ball come closer. Time is slowed down. While not believing in his own eyes, Lenny looks at his best friend's death in front of him helplessly. The ground is shaken, the time is slowed down. Lenny feels as light as like a bird's feather. The light fades out, as well as every sounds around him, only a calm silence left.

Then he opens his eyes, again, he find himself alone in the dark. There is nothing around him, absolute nothing. He cannot move, neither know where he is and why he is still alive. The surrounding is so quiet he can even feels his heat beating regularly and the sound of air coming in and out of his nose.

And then he feels wet on the head. His right ear is getting wet, then soon his right cheek and his nose.

"What is this? it is so weird!", feeling too uneasy, he bears it no more and yells out,

"STOPPP!!!"

To his surprise, he wakes up, only to know that a huge husky is licking his face.

"Oh dear, stop it Old Fart. Our boy woke up already because of you. " A woman voice raises.

Lenny looks around, while still cannot move anything but his head, to find where the voice is. The dog does not stop licking his face though.

An old woman appeared. She is very short, just about 4.5 feet tall, fat and wrinkled, wearing a dirty apron in front of her dusty old fashioned dress. However, her eyes are bright as the sun, and some what, very wise, despite of her mouth being edentulous. With a big smile on her face, she approaches him and says,

"Hello my dear, so you woke up. I am deeply apologize for Old Fart's action. He hasn't seen anyone in ages!"

After seeing his obviously confused reaction, she continues.

"Oh, how unmannered I am. Let this old grandma introduce myself first. My name is Melinoe. People I knew always call me Grandma Mely. They are all dead already, haha". She giggles.

<To be continued>

The sky is falling