Children of the War

Part 1

For as long as Walter could remember, there was the enemy.

Who they were, or what they fought for, confused his young mind.

He first asked about it when he was six.

"Mama, who are we fighting against?"

"There's a bad man named Kaezer," she said. "He's the leader of a country across the ocean, and he wants to take over our country."

"Why?"

Mother hugged him, and tried to explain the difficult concept of war. "Sometimes, people don't agree. They get angry, and stop talking to each other. And they fight, to make their way the only way."

The routine blackouts terrified him. He huddled with his parents and younger sister, Jocelyn, in the back room of the house. All four of them squeezed under Father's sturdy, wooden desk, the only real furniture left in the house. The walls around them shook, plaster fell, and windows shattered from the blasts.

Several times his family was driven from their home by the Kaezer's robotic armies, and by the troopers in their long black uniforms and terrifying gas masks.

Robots three stories tall lumbered through rubble-strewn streets, the metallic thud of their giant strides shaking the ground. Everywhere, the deafening wail of sirens. Thick smoke and hot, twisted metal. Charred buildings. Corpses left in the streets, as no one had time to bury them. And the cries of those left stranded, their loved ones killed, or having deserted in fear. These things were all commonplace.

His parents told him the War had lasted for thirty years, their entire lifetimes, as well as his. Only the oldest citizens remembered what the days of peace were like.

Unlike himself, Jocelyn wanted to be a soldier when she grew up.

"Don't worry, Walter," she said, and threw her small, thin arms around him when he was scared at night. "I'll protect you. When I can fight, I'll make mean old Kaezer go home. And he'll never want to come back again."

When Walter was thirteen, the Pruessian Empire invaded the continents. Entire cities collapsed, and his was no exception. The survivors retreated to the central strongholds, and did their best to defend.

Nations rose and fell. People placed so much faith in things that never lasted. Walter's confidence wavered, as he realized no one came to fight for them anymore. His country, which was called Amerixca, his people, and the institutions he'd been taught to respect were now as insubstantial as shadows.

They lived in the strongholds for about a year, in a cramped, drafty room with no running water, scavenging for what they needed. He was always running from the street gangs, the thugs who'd gladly kill a child for a scrap of food.

And then, the greatest enemy of all engineered the ultimate weapon-a bacteria that was introduced to the water.

Some said it was the Kaezer who was responsible, but there was no evidence to that. It could very well have been the remnants of his own country's fallen regime which unleashed the bio-weapon.

Either way, Earth was never the same again, and reeled under the effects.

The bacteria wasn't supposed to evolve and infest at such a catastrophic rate. But it did.

No one understood what was happening, as most communications were demolished. All they knew was that water, the most essential element of life, suddenly brought death. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.

The Kaezer managed to destroy the strongholds at last. The people garrisoned within were insane with thirst, and with the anguished cries of those who'd ingested the bacteria. It brought slow, agonizing death, as one's organs dissolved, liquefied from the inside out.