Healer's Gambit (part 3 of 3)

Seeing Falko on his feet braced between my two classmates, I winced at the memory of the lifetime of agony we'd shared only a little while ago. Falko's clothing that still hung together did so by threads and dried blood, every inch of it stained dark red. He looked like a man starved for days. Tufts of hair patched his otherwise bald scalp, most of it yanked out by zombies looking for any sort of purchase on his body. Though his strength must be waning every second, he still kept a white-knuckled grip on his axe hanging at his side. The worst of the damage I could see in his eyes, darting left and right seeking out the next threat coming to cause him harm.

Once I got close enough, very slowly as not to startle Falko, I slipped off my cloak and draped it around him. With a surprising amount of strength I didn't think he had in him, Falko took me to the ground with a shoulder tackle, riding me to the stone floor. A knee in my chest, he raised the axe to strike.

"We're safe now. You got us to safety," I repeated over and over. I held my arms out and away from my body, gesturing to the other two to stay back. I kept my eyes locked with Falko's, trying to find something in there that recognized me: conveying the memories of bones broken, of flesh rendered and torn, of the eternal pain that would never end. With a simple nod, he pulled the pin from his tongue and dropped it on my chest. Then, he got off of me.

Still cautious, I stood slowly. "We'll get you to a real healer as soon as possible, get you fixed up properly," said, trying to convey a friendly smile as I reached out to him.

Falko subtly stepped away, avoiding my touch. "It isn't over yet," he said, walking down the hallway, "You said that the zombies weren't created by a virus, which means the necromancer rose them from the dead. They could've ran off into the town or anywhere else, but they all came this way. The necromancer is close-by, and we're going to find them."

"It'll take us some time to get the Detect Dark Magic spell ready. Are you sure you don't want to rest, or even sit this part out?" Isabella asked, placing a hand on Falko's shoulder, then immediately removed it when Falko let out a bestial growl.

It took the four of us another half-hour to locate the necromancer hiding within the castle walls with the spell. Now that our lives weren't under constant threat, we could not only take the time to complete the spell but actually maintain it while we searched the school grounds and all its hidden chambers. Resurrecting and controlling as many zombies as he did must've weakened him a great deal if he could no longer hide his presence from a simple detection spell cast by four underclassmen.

"So how are we getting in?" I asked as the four of us stared at a bare stone wall. "Do you think there's a password to open the door, or a hidden lever someplace?"

"Step. Aside," Liza said sternly from behind me. I felt the air charge with electricity before I leapt out of the way. A blinding Boom! shook the walls, and for an instant I thought the entire castle might fall down around us. When I could see again, the wall that blocked our path lay in ruins, a thick fog of dirt and debris hanging in the air.

Falko stepped through the hole first, axe in hand. Where he found the strength to keep pushing his body forward after what he'd been through, I'll never know nor hope to ever need to find in myself. A small fire appeared in his free hand which he used to light two torches against the wall. The room appeared to be a storage room filled with rolled rugs standing up against the walls. In the middle of the room stood an old man whose bones probably weighed more than the skin, muscle, and fat clinging to it. A bone grey cloak draped over him. The necromancer. 

Falko approached first, the axe still held down at his side. The necromancer lunged, a knife in hand, one last desperate attempt. The knife sunk into Falko's chest, sliding between his ribs. "Controlling an entire horde may be too much for an old man passed his prime, but once my poison turns your body into a corpse you'll be my puppet. Then we'll see how your friends fare when they're fighting you."

Looking over Falko's shoulder, I smiled at the necromancer as Falko yanked the knife from his chest, the wound already closing. "Healer," I introduced myself, gesturing to my hand on Falko's shoulder. "Now let's all just sit tight until the Council Authority arrives in the morning."

I prepared myself for perhaps one more trick from the necromancer. Instead, it was Falko that moved first, stabbing the knife through the dark wizard's hand and pinning it to a wooden beam against the wall. He raked the axe across the necromancer's mid-section, a line of blood forming on his clothes but not deep enough to reach organs.

The necromancer laughed. "Frail child, that was not nearly deep enough for a killing blow. Perhaps you've used all your strength against my puppets?" He paused, seeing the anger and rage in Falko's face. "Ahh, or maybe that was not meant to be fatal. Do you mean to torture me then, because I can assure you, I will be long dead before you can find any manner of satisfaction." The necromancer grinned even wider, his smile an acid that almost melted the anger from Falko's face into one of despair and frustration.

The final lesson in pain is that it doesn't just end when the body heals, when the bones reset, when the scars fade. Depending upon the amount of trauma the body sustains, it could take even longer for the mind to heal. Healers-in-training spend their first-year learning to heal their bodies from a variety of injuries; and the only way the school teaches is first-hand, constantly breaking the students' bodies. At the end of the year, the school offered all students that passed several counseling sessions over the summer to help with healing our minds with what we'd put ourselves through.

I stared at the necromancer and his toothy smile as if he believed he was the one who was victorious. My body started to shake as my mind returned to the very recent memory of teeth rending flesh and ruthless hands tearing at limbs. I thought about lying on that damn couch trying to describe the helplessness I felt against a seemingly neverending parade of death and torture to someone I knew would never understand. Counseling, as if surviving a thousand, ten-thousand near-death experiences in a matter of hours at the hands of a madman can be cured with mere words. Authority has always put itself between victims and the punishment to be delivered to their assailants, as if they are in a better position to dole out just vengeance than the one that was injured. No, if Falko and I were to truly heal from our experience, we needed to do it on our own, with our own hands. And, I thought, looking at the necromancer's frail body, he'd need to survive for all of it.

I pushed my way passed Falko's frozen frame and slapped the older man in the face. The necromancer recoiled in pain, screaming. And so did I as a spike drove itself into my left eye, the pain of a knife stabbed through my right hand. I glanced up to see Falko looking at me, his resigned face gone and replaced by one of surprise. I nodded.

The necromancer reached for the pin I'd jabbed into his eye with his free hand. With a quick swing, Falko removed it with his axe, the hand dropping to the floor with a wet thud. The necromancer still screamed, trying to pull the pin free from his eye with the bloody stump of his amputated hand. Falko rested the axe on his shoulder while his free hand held another ball of fire. A maniacal grin spread across his face, a contagious one too as I felt his glee spread to my own face. "The Council doesn't arrive until morning. It's only a couple hours away but, trust me, with the experience we just had we know how to make even one hour feel like an eternity."

The axe head swung and I felt it bite into my shoulder, just deep enough to hit bone but not to sever it. Flames scorched my face, melting flesh down to the jaw bone. Like with Falko, I did nothing to numb the necromancer's pain. In fact, I turned up the pain sensitivity as far as I could, causing the necromancer to scream even louder, while ensuring the shock didn't kill him. Through the pain, I felt my own face mirror the same smile on Falko's face. Falko was right, I thought, closing my eyes and embracing the pain, we were in for a long night.

Inspired by a very, very old Reddit Writing Prompt about being attacked by zombies when your specialty magic is healing. And by very old, probably one of the first ones I saw when I started responding to prompts. Wait, you're thinking, why are you only posting this now? Well, this story, like "The Cape" was one of the those stories that I got really carried away with, so instead of ever posting the story, it sat in my head unfinished in other notebooks. Then, since I was writing all those other zombie stories recently, I figured now was a good time to finally get it done. I'm pretty happy about the middle section of the story (I even did research, sort-of, of different body parts that were attacked by the zombies). If this were something I was submitting for publication or getting paid to write, yeah, there's things I'd go back to fix-up. That beginning, we should've gotten more of a look at the 4 students and who they were. Probably introducing the necromancer's motivations, and where the damn faculty disappeared off too that put the four kids in charge of castle defense. If I understood more about mental health (or bothered with research) that ending shouldn't have been so rushed, maybe introduce more about PTSD  and trauma than what I added in there real quick. But those can be added in if I ever find someone looking for a short zombie story, which by the way this already comes in at almost 4800 words (why I split into 3 parts) and if I added everything else, I'm guessing closer to 6000 words which is way too long for these blog posts.

And just for more about the story as it's been sitting in my head for so long. It would be the longest thing I'd written (thus worth more in terms of money per word), it would have horror and action and fear and emotion and just desserts. The other responses to the same prompt, or course, had the main character doing things like healing the undead to counter the necromancy or healing the zombies so their souls could pass on properly. I definitely know that my idea was so much better. I mean, using one of your partners as bait that you keep healing, what a fucked up plan. At least it's not something I'd ever seen anywhere else. Probably because it's such an asshole thing to do. That said, sad to say, this story for the longest time, is what I considered to be my magnum opus, the greatest thing I'd ever written. I know, right, what an insane thing to say - How can you know something is good if you've never written it? And just off the top of my head, I could name at least three stories I've written that are better than this one, one of them even being my Pokemon Fanfic that I also haven't finished so I guess I really haven't learned my lesson. But anyways, it's finally finished after all these years, leaving, I think, just one or two or five more of these types of stories to go before I've gotten through my backlog of unwritten crap. And yes, I also know how insane it is to think that I would send this off to be published as it ends with the main character/s torturing the shit out of the bad guy. Yeah, I'm not so fucked up that I don't know how fucked up that is. And yet, that's probably the one part of the story that I wouldn't compromise if asked, it's definitely staying in.

Healer's Gambit (part 2 of 3)

 

Left arm, I thought, feeling the hands that initially grabbed Falko starting to tug and twist. I focused on strengthening the muscles and tendons, keeping the zombies from tearing off his arm. Then a crack and a pop, the ulna in his forearm breaking through the skin. Falko let out a scream and I felt the temperature drop even more as Isabella increased her assault. I bit my lip, suppressing my own scream, focusing instead on popping the bone back into place and sealing the wound.

Right leg next as my own leg spasmed in phantom pain when teeth sunk into the gastrocnemius in the back of the leg and tore away a mouthful of meat. "Shit," I muttered, emphasizing regrowing the missing flesh while searching the blood stream for any sort of virus or disease. I let out the briefest sigh of relief when nothing out of the ordinary presented itself. "At least the necromancer isn't using a virus to raise and control his zombies."

More hands grabbed and pulled in different directions. More teeth sunk in and tore away pieces of flesh. My own heart pounded in my chest, separate from Falko's own pain and terror. I focused on slowing his heart to prevent him from both bleeding to death and going into cardiac arrest. This was going to be the real test: triage.

I did my best to ignore the pain. Pain tells a person when they've been injured, and where. When your injuries are everywhere though, pain becomes overwhelming and you need to use your mind to prioritize what needs to be fixed first. I put some passive attention on Falko's heart, again keeping it beating at a steady pace. More focus went to the injuries that broke skin - teeth ripping out meat or hands digging into soft parts. I focused on re-connecting veins and arteries, and re-growing the body around them. Broken bones I could ignore for the moment as long as they were still within the body. Viruses that the zombies might be carrying in their mouths also got a low priority, at least everything I sensed wouldn't kill Falko within the next thirty minutes.

Then the phantom pain vanished. One moment of horrific agony just replaced by an emptiness. It couldn't be over, I thought remembering all the undead swarming us in the great hall. Directly in front me, Liza and Isabella continued their attacks, and just further passed them, a dozen or so zombies ripped into Falko as others came around the corner. He couldn't be dead, or I'd have felt it, which meant only one thing - the pin was out! "Shit," I said as I got to my feet. "Falko! Burn! Burn everything!"

Whether Falko actually heard my shouts, or if he realized I was no longer suppressing his magic, I don't know. The temperature in the corridor simply plummeted to near freezing for a second. The air around Falko rippled with heat, then became an inferno. I turned my head, the flames too bright to stare at directly as they engulfed several feet around Falko's body. Once the fire ceased and the air cooled enough that it didn't singe my skin, I sprinted to Falko's side followed by both of my classmates.

"Is he okay?" asked Isabella as I dropped to a knee next to Falko.

Now that I could make physical contact with him, I knew for certain. "He's alive," I said, focusing on the injuries that needed the most immediate healing. "Could the two of you hold the hallway for a bit. I just need some time."

Isabella looked reluctant to leave but Liza dragged her along out into the corridor. It took a couple minutes but I got a majority of the major injuries fixed-up: bite cavities filled in, a punctured eye regrown, a liver partially healed. A mangled hand I magically deadened and amputated, leaving it physically attached but not functional or really connected to anything. It was the best I could do in the time I had and hopefully there would be time after to get it fully healed and operable. Falko's breathing was still shallow and he didn't open his eyes the entire time, but he'd make it.

I found the pin in the mouth of a charred corpse nearby when Isabella and Liza rushed back into the corridor. "I left a sheet of ice blocking the path, but I'm not sure how long it will hold," said Isabella, pausing when she spotted Falko awake and the pin in my hand.

Before she could take the pin from me, Falko, with a surprising amount of strength left for someone in his condition, pried my fingers open and took the pin himself. "Quit playing around," he growled as he stared at the token. "We know why it has to be me. Fire isn't precise, at least not the way I use it. I'm pretty useless in this situation. We can't expect Henry to heal the injuries from both zombies and burns."

Slowly, Falko raised his head and our eyes locked. I didn't have time or energy to heal the superficial scars or minor scratches. His face, as a result, was a web of lines like the worst jigsaw puzzle imaginable. Several teeth were still missing. His eyes though, his eyes were sunken, barely visible in his gaunt face. He was a man who faced death and survived just on the verge of it. In his eyes, I saw a man who would be haunted for the rest of his life by the experiences of the last several minutes. And though I didn't actually experience any of it, he must've seen the same in me because he just gave me a nod, this time sticking the pin through his tongue where it hopefully wouldn't be gotten to as easy.

I placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You are going to get us through this, and I'm going to bring you back," I said before heading back down the corridor, flanked on both sides by Isabella and Liza. To the two of them, I said, "We'll do it the same way we did it the last time, and we might be able to make it out of this mess."

I felt a hand on my shoulder, stopping me in place. "One change," said Isabella, "Let us help. If there's some place you need us to focus our attacks to give you time to heal Falko, tell us. We're not letting him die out there." Without turning around, I just nodded and walked back to my spot.

"You know, after this is all done, Falko is going to beat you to death for this," said Liza.

I couldn't help but smile. "I guess I better not let either of us die." I lay back down in roughly the same position as Falko had. Then I closed my eyes. I didn't want to watch the approach this time. Once again, the pain started small, just hands gripping and teeth biting. Then, of course, it intensified as those same hands forced their way through soft flesh, and teeth began ripping out chunks of meat. The thing about pain that they don't teach is that even after a hundred broken bones, thousands of bites, tens of thousands of bruises, one more is never a boring experience. Every injury hurt just as much as the last which hurts as much as the very first. At least this time I didn't need to concentrate on suppressing Falko's connection to his flames as he already understood his role in the Gambit.

This time though I had teammates that fully understood the plan. They trusted me and I trusted them. "Left leg," I said through clenched teeth, "I need time to repair the artery or Falko could bleed out." I felt a numbing cold sweep the areas as Isabella focused her powers, which also helped to slow the blood flow.

The pain was everywhere and I was running out of time. I numbed any pain from the fingers and toes, forcing clean amputations if they were compromised so that they could break without bleeding being an issue. I kept my focus moving in a continuous circle around the body, healing whatever I could as quick as possible before moving on to the next location. If I put too much focus into one area, it would compromise the rest. Head, neck, chest, midsection, groin, and then back around, keeping my attention consistently on the move.

Finally, the new injuries stopped, leaving behind pain and my screams. "Henry," said Liza, shaking me, "There haven't been any new zombies for a couple minutes. I think we got them all." I opened my eyes to see Liza standing over me, a nervous smile on her face. Just passed her, Isabella was starting to take steps forward, worried about Falko.

"Wait," I shouted, and though it came out raspy and barely audible, Isabella stopped where she stood. "Trust me, you don't want to go over there just yet." Though the injuries might've stopped, I could still feel all the pain racking his body. From the phantom injuries I felt, I knew Falko must look like something out of a horror movie. With whatever magic his body could spare, I spent the next several minutes patching him up as best I could: stopping any bleeding, reconnecting the hand and other extremities I'd severed earlier, resetting any broken bones. Falko must be a real powerhouse when it came to magical reserves though, just seeing how much I had available to work with.

"Okay," I said, slowly getting to my feet as if the pain actually happened to me. "That's as good as it's going to get with the magic we've got left." Isabella and Liza practically flew to Falko's side. I still crept behind slowly, my staff held defensively, not against Falko's possible wrath but in case more zombies straggled down the corridor. 

Healer's Gambit (part 1 of 3)

 All around me the sounds of groans and chattering teeth echoed off the stone walls, filling the castle's great hall. This should have been the safest place to hold them off: the biggest enclosed area in Fortuna's School for the Magically-Gifted provided plenty of room for the four of us to maneuver while putting down the zombie horde that invaded the school grounds. Instead the zombies continued pouring into the room, more dead bodies than I thought possible.

"Every time we put one down, another replaces it. They just keep coming," said Liza as she released a wave of electricity that seized the muscles of a handful of zombies, stopping them in their tracks.

Falko brought his axe down onto the skull of one, and torched another with flames from his free hand. "It just means we're in for a long night," he said with a smirk. I couldn't help but admire his optimism, no matter how misplaced it may be in our situation. I crushed the skull of another zombie with my staff when Falko called out to me. "Hey Henry, can your healing magic help us out at all against these zombies? You know, healing magic vs necromancy."

I shook my head. "That's not how it works. There's other types of light magic that could work directly against zombies but not what I'm in training for."

"What if you, I don't know, try bringing them back to life or something?" said Isabella as she froze the ground in front of her. The zombies directly in front of her lost their footing and slipped, more than one cracking a skull open on the floor.

"Oh, you mean necromancy, the magic being used to try to kill us? I'm training as a Healer. The best I could do would be to heal you all but I'll need some time and space. I could heal the zombies we're fighting but that seems counter-intuitive to our mission."

"Sounds like you're pretty useless right now," retorted Falko, pushing me aside and bathing a dozen or so zombies in fire.

I stumbled a bit but luckily stayed atop the table which I'd been standing. Swinging my staff, I knocked a zombie aside, though not hard enough to put it down for good. "We need to figure out a new strategy," I said.

"We could try the Detect Dark Magic spell? If we can find the necromancer resurrecting the zombies, we can break the curse," suggested Liza, changing tactics and sending a bolt of lightning through the head of an approaching zombie, and whatever else happened to be behind it.

"There's not enough time to set up the spell, or concentrate long enough to track the necromancer. Not with these zombies all over the place," I replied, placing two hands on Isabella and healing the scratch on her leg.

"We could run, find someplace to hide until The Council arrives with reinforcements, or at least full wizards," said Isabella, waving a hand and flinging a wide arc of ice knives through the air. A couple of them found the skulls of decayed bodies. One of them drove itself into the chest of a teacher, newly resurrected into a mindless zombie.

"We already locked the rest of the school into the dorms and classrooms. If we can't keep the necromancer's attention, then he'll just send the horde to breaking down doors. We stay and fight," said Falko letting out another stream of fire.

"Both!" I shouted, pushing a zombie into Falko's flames. "We could do both! Hide and fight. I just need to find a particular hidden room in the castle. The upperclass healers talk about it, the Gambit. It's a secret weapon used against an overwhelming enemy in relentless pursuit of killing your party. It's how we'll get out of this." I grabbed Falko by the cloak and gave it a tug, hoping if I could get him on-board the other two would follow. I got about twenty feet before risking a look back, but sure enough, all three were running right behind me.

We sprinted out of the great hall and wove our way through the castle corridors and hallways, the undead pursuing right behind us. The other three did their best to slow them down or pick them off when they got the chance. Meanwhile, I scanned each path looking for the right hallway. We needed the Gambit, we couldn't keep running nor could we stop to fight. Even if we found someplace to hole-up and strike from a protected location, they'd eventually overrun us, especially in this enclosed castle. What we needed was the Gambit. And, we needed bait.

Finally I got to a corridor that looked promising. This will have to do, I thought. I stood at the turn, motioning Isabella and Liza around the corner. "It's one of those bricks in the wall at the end of the corridor. Find the ones that move and we can re-arrange them to access the secret room." They'd gotten about halfway down the hall when Falko turned the corner, bringing up the rear.

I grabbed Falko with both hands, letting my staff clatter to the stone floor, and twisted him around. His back hit the wall hard, all that momentum knocking some of the wind out of his lungs. A knee driven up between his legs knocked out the rest. With two hands on his head, I slammed the side of it against the cold-stone wall. I pulled a short, thick pin from a pocket in my cloak and jabbed it through his earlobe. Though I'd already prepared for it, I still needed to catch myself from instinctively numbing the pain I was feeling between my legs. It isn't my pain, I thought touching the pin's twin in my own ear. I threw Falko to the ground about ten feet into the corridor. Retrieving my staff, I ran down to the dead-end.

"Turn around! Turn around now!" I shouted shoving passed the other two and putting my back against the wall.

"Where's Falko?" asked Isabella, turning to see Falko lying on the floor.

"What about the secret passageway, and the Gambit?" asked Liza, looking from me to the wall.

I shook my head to both of their answers. "There is no passageway. I needed a dead-end into which we could funnel the zombies. As for Falko, he can't join us since he's our bait. The Gambit isn't a weapon, you understand, it's a strategy. This is the Gambit."

"That's insane," said Isabella, taking a step towards Falko before I grabbed her by the wrist. "We have to help him."

I shook my head. "As I said, this is our only option." Pointing to the twin of the pin I'd stuck in Falko in my own ear, I said, "I've linked us. Any pain, injury, wound he feels, I'll feel too. I can heal myself but I'm not good enough to do it under intense pressure. As long as we're bound, I'll know exactly how he's hurt and can keep him alive, healing him from here through the link." 

"And Falko is the bait. Live bait," said Liza looking at me with grim understanding in her eyes as the first of the zombies came around the corner. I just nodded. Liza pushed me back to the wall and pulled Isabella with her. "Come on, we're on guard duty."

Isabella didn't go quietly though, pulling back against Liza. "And you just chose Falko because he told you that you're useless? Or is it just because he's a guy?"

I nodded. "Yeah, because he's a guy. I'm just a 2nd year, and the Gambit is about healing speed. I won't need to focus on the differences in anatomy." Also, not wanting to say it aloud, but I didn't think I'd be able to concentrate as well hearing Isabella or Liza's screams versus Falko's. And there would be a lot of screaming based on what I'd already seen the zombies do to my classmates.

"If you could also do your best not to hit Falko, that would make my job a little easier," I said as the other two positioned themselves just ahead of me and to either side of the corridor. I lay myself on the floor, arms and legs spread, putting all of my focus into feeling Falko's body. It would happen anytime now. I took a deep breath and focused on healing the concussion, and, unfortunately for Falko, for what was to come.

"Here they come," I heard Liza say as the sound of crackling energy filled my ears and I felt my own hair as well as Falko's stand on end. The temperature dropped and a shiver went through my spine as Isabella also readied her power. No going back now, I thought, bracing myself for the phantom pain while Falko groggily awoke.

Pressure as hands tightened on Falko's wrist startled me, but I ignored it. That would simply leave bruises, and numbing Falko's pain would defeat the purpose of all this. Besides, in a second things were going to get much worse. Instead I put focus into suppressing Falko's access to his fire magics. I could feel his confusion as he reached for his power but found it unobtainable. My muscles seized as a sudden dose of electricity got dumped into Falko's body but again it wasn't a concern. Then it truly began and I went to work.

 

Fire

So, 2 years and 9 months ago I was on my "Grand Adventure" exploring Korea after a week in Japan reuniting with Plume dormmates. Three month prior to that though, I was in the middle of an inferno that cut through the orchid farm. And I guess being the three year anniversary, now seems like a good time to post about it. Why post about it three years later? you might ask. Well, at the time I was also still focused/ overwhelmed with getting everything together for my "Grand Adventure" trip. Besides, an anniversary seems like a good time to talk about something. Also, when I close my eyes I can't immediately pull-up images of smoke choking a red-tinted sky, or flames marching toward me.

My dad and I were working in one of the fields right before lunch when we smelled the smoke. It was a hot, dry summer and a windy day. We spotted white smoke coming from the property above us further up the mountain. We hoped it was someone burning rubbish but then the flames crossed over a hill, the smoke turning black as it burned through so much dry brush and grass so quickly. We ended up wetting as much of the property line as possible with a bunch of garden hoses connected together. The fire came too fast though and soon the air filled with smoke that almost blacked-out the sun as the sky itself took on a reddish-hue. If you're wondering about any pictures or videos, sorry, I don't have any as I really didn't want to be one of those people that die attempting to get a cool picture or video to post on Facebook.

Together, the two of us made as many passes as we could before the smoke choked our lungs. Exhausted, we headed into the house to rest, knowing the fire outside would burn because that's what fire does, and that we'd soon go back out there because that was all there was to do. At this point, the fire was much closer than when we started, sitting at the property line and threatening soon to jump over. I grabbed the van keys and all my stuff, and insisted we should leave, just abandon the cause, throw the dog into the van, and get the hell out of here. When I asked earlier, my dad said we should stay, believing we could stop it at the property line. Again, he declined, this time because "There's no where to go." At this point we had no idea how far down the mountain the fire had spread, if it was already covering the single road in and out or knocked anything across it. We wouldn't be able to see more than five to ten feet ahead through the smoke. There was a part of me in there though that was screaming, "Fuck that. I've been driving this road every weekend since I was in high school. I could make it blindfolded." But we stayed.

At this point in our story, you're probably thinking, "Alan, come on, where are all those jokes about death that you like to throw out there?" Well, welcome to that section of our story. Of course as I'm sitting there, my mind drifts to the realm of "you could fucking die here." Unlike the movies though my brain didn't bring up loved ones I'll never see again or flashback through my entire life. Instead (and no, I'm not making this up for the post as I'm simply re-writing this from a journal entry I did that night) I was disappointed that I'd never get to see the conclusion to Avengers: Infinity War - and that was it. I might've tried to think about other regrets but really that was just it. Maybe because I wasn't dead yet so there really wasn't a point to worrying about anything real or of substance yet. To jump ahead for a moment (spoiler: I survived) two of my cousins came up the next day to help with the damage. When I told them that my biggest fear from yesterday was burning alive, one of my cousins reported that it probably wasn't that bad depending on how you did it, I guess (he's a doctor he has a doctorate). Supposedly the fire and heat should quickly overload the pain sensors near the top of your skin and render you unconscious. So maybe you'll die of shock or just be unconscious until the fire eventually kills you. Either way, you won't spend an eternity in agony as your skin turns extra crispy. The thing though is that you really need to commit to it, just go right into the flames and hang in there until you're gone.

Back to the house, I was recovering and coughing up what I was sure was my lungs while my dad went back out to man the hose again. After a little while, the smoke thickened and the fires now burned in the yard to one side of the house and in the fields on the other side. I ran outside and started yelling into the smoke. For awhile, there wasn't an answer. I continued screaming, going as close to the flames as I'd dare. Eventually I heard his voice though it would still be another few seconds before he emerged, hacking and coughing as I had been. He handed off the hose and instructed me on where to go while he went into the house. The fire had moved over the property line and was well into the farm by now. With the hose in hand, I was basically just doing hot-spot maintenance, hitting the areas that the fire burned but might come back.

I guess it's at this point that I should give a shout-out/ thank you to Tom Cruise. No, not for any firefighting movies he's done (has he done any?). Earlier in the day we watched Edge of Tomorrow, that one where he fights aliens by reliving the day in a time loop. As I'm soaking as much of the flames as possible, I kept hoping for the fire department to eventually show up and take over as this should be a job for professionals, not some dumbass like me. It's not like bagging my own groceries in the check-out line. Then, the scene from the movie just came to me. It's that part where Cruise's character is first strapped into the mech and he tells the other guy that he's never been in a mech before. The other character just responds with "Yeah, well I've never been with two girls at the same time before. But you can bet when that day comes, I'll make it work." And that line kinda just became my mantra through the rest of the day, just repeating it over and over to get me through the shit.

The fires eventually moved their way passed us/ through us. There was nothing we could do about the fields. The only good thing being the very flammable netting above the fields (orchids don't do well in direct sunlight) and high winds that moved the fire along rather quickly. It probably would've been worse if the fires spread downward to the plants and wooden benches and PVC piping carrying our water. We kept soaking different areas where the flames seemed to keep re-igniting themselves. It was here that I got to fulfill every guy's fantasy - pissing out a fire. Well, close enough. I came across a spot that was smoldering and every so often flames would jump from it. Something to note first: I'd been walking, dragging close to six hoses connected together for hours now. I was exhausted, dehydrated, still a little scared that I would die, plus the hose I was pulling had several leaks in it that soaked my pants all day. Also, I'm not a complete idiot, I'm not going to be putting my exposed dick anywhere near an open flame. That said, at one point while it was just a trail of smoke rising from the pile of wreckage, I put the hose down, unzipped and went to work. Now with all those factors I mentioned working against me, I will admit it wasn't a good showing, but I think I got the job done. This was also about the time that I was working up the courage to apologize to my dad for letting fear get the better of me and trying to bitch out of the task at hand. Everything turned out as best it could and we survived. So obviously he had the right idea to stay. Before I could say anything though he just offhandedly remarked "You know, if I was a smarter we would've left a long time ago." And now I'm thinking "well what the hell am I supposed to do with that, to take away from this experience?" And to this day I'm still trying to process it.

Oh, and if you were wondering, I got some pictures of the aftermath