Page 6 of War

I’m no saint. I’m no hero.

I stare at that road heading west, in the directionoppositethe army, and it looks awfully enticing.

I glance in the other direction, towards where the army headed.

My home.

Leave, my mother’s voice says in my head,leave with the clothes on your back and never come back. Leave and save yourself.

I make my way to the road, leaving behind the branches I chopped down. I glance both ways—west, away from the city, and east, back to Jerusalem.

I rub my forehead. Goddamn but what should I do?

I go over my survival code again: Bend the rules—but don’t break them. Stick to the truth. Avoid notice. Listen to your instincts. Be brave.

Always be brave.

Of course, these are the rules to staying alive. I don’t need the rules to know that going west will increase my survival odds while going east will lower them. It shouldn’t be a question at all—I should go west.

But when I turn and start down the road, my feet don’t take me west.

Instead I march back towards Jerusalem. Back to my house and the army and the horseman.

Maybe it’s stupidity, or morbid curiosity.

Or maybe the apocalypse hasn’t beaten the last bit of selflessness out of me after all.

I’m still no saint.

By the timeI arrive in the city, the streets are already running red with blood.

I press the back of my hand to my mouth, trying to cover up the sick smell of meat that tinges the air. I have to step around the bloody bodies that litter the streets. Many of the buildings are burning, and smoke and ash billow about me.

In the distance I can hear people screaming, but right here, right where I’m walking, the people have already been killed off, and the silence seems to be a thing itself.

Before New Palestine was New Palestine, Israel’s military drafted most of its citizens. Since my country’s civil war, there’s been no mandatory conscription, but most youths here learned to fight anyway. As I glance around at all the dead bodies, I realize none of that matters.

For all the knowledge they may have on fighting and warfare, they’re still dead.

Truly, what was I thinking, coming back here?

My grip on my bow now tightens. I pull out an arrow and nock it.

I shouldn’t even care to save these people. After everything the Muslims did to the Jews and the Jews did to the Muslims, and what everyone did to the Christians and the Druze and every other minority religious sect, you’d think I’d be happy to just let it all burn to the ground.

All religions want the same thing—salvation.I can hear my father’s voice like an echo from the past.We’re all the same.

I walk faster and faster through the streets, my weapon at the ready. The place has been swept through. More structures are on fire, more dead bodies lay scattered in the streets.

I came too late. Too late for the city, and too late for the people.

A few blocks more, and I start to see living people. People who are fleeing. A woman runs with her son in her arms. Ten meters behind her, a mounted man chases her down.

I don’t even think before I raise my bow and fire off the arrow.

It hits him square in the chest, the force of it knocking him off his horse.

I glance over my shoulder in time to see the woman and her son duck into a building.