Between stars and children

Jaw of the storm

A dim light flickered absently above. Its fluorescent gaze fixed solidly on the patent floor below. Its glimmering smile danced around the scuff marks and dirty sheets. The harrow figure of a sleeping man lay among the many injured and ill patients, who sat and shivered in blue sheet wrapped beds, in single file lines. Hounds body, exhausted after meeting the jaw of the storm had collapsed from suffocation, lay motionless between the sterile sheets. His face raw and pale had sunken deeply from the rapid weight loss inflicted by stress and the lack of skin only exaggerated his scars which drew in his face with weariness. Now his face lacking his once boyish charm appeared as a faint sketch, the lines mere shadows of what they are to be in time with attention. His body had altered with fierce similarity. Lying face up the yellow glow above every now and again hollowed his appearance, drawing in the skin at his jaw and ribs which even covered could be seen protruding through his light white gown.

The rows of men surrounding Hound looked on with pity. They perhaps thought of him as a young ex soldier, who after the war had lost his sanity, tearing through the country without care for what might happen along the way. The effects of the war prevailed at all turns; men sedated, men addicted, men on deaths door lay weeping in hospital beds. These men often reminded Hound of his own father, torn apart with terrible grief of trenches and dead civilians. During his youth Hound never did understand why on Sundays his father would lock himself in the attic. His mother said once she had been searching for a set of china and behind her wedding dress had been Hounds father, curled crying, clutching his uniform. Much of Hounds past remained stilled in the back of his mind, left to age with a bitter distain. He scarcely spoke of it to anyone, not even his closest companion, James had known. Those who would know of his father's afflictions saw Hound as a liability, a cut from the same cloth as his father and would soon dim just as fast as he had lit. To the men around him he was just a lost boy who had been caught in the depths of life.

The first thing Hound could remember was the dust. The smothering swarms of dust clogging his throat. Its colour was heated red-like mars. a child had telephoned Hound a day before he had left the house, the way children did now. It sounded like a girl trying to impersonate a boy because whenever she said 'danger' her voice would patter off into soft giggles as if this was all part of a grand plan that only children had been let in on. They must of found Hounds number in the phone book at random selection; Hound found it all rather amusing at worst. Perhaps some were in on what was happening, perhaps some had been expecting this (whatever this was) to happen and had chosen that small child to warn Hound of what awaited him beyond his mothers arms. The thought of Martian dust settling in between his mothers photographs caused Hound to shift his weight. Moving to sit up, he recognized the familiar burning sensation at the back of his throat from the night he lost his father, the familiar metallic tinge of running and running. Looking around he could see endless rows of men spitting up blood and coughing out pills, before realising he had gotten to hospital.

A brisk growl of a voice caught out to Hound from the rooms entrance. The familiar brick like body of Jordan Jones had been identified with great shock to Hound being as he hadn't heard or saw the man before him since the recovery of Margaret Kalder's body.

"Hound. My boy! You're up" he hurled "God you insane man, going out like that. Were you trying to axe yourself?"

"I uh-"

"oh shit on a stick he has a reason"

"How did I get here?"Hound threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood quietly satisfied at the cold floor on the balls of his feet.

"someone must of been out, we don't know really" Jones moved to put an arm around Hounds feeble body to stabilize him. He was repulsed when he felt the protrusion of his spine under his fingers. "no one has been able to leave the hospital since the outbreak so any ambulance service has been delayed or put to a stop more or less, but apparently a stray patient-alcoholic or some shit had opened the door when he heard a knock and that's how you're here" Hound manoeuvred towards the reception area in search of windows to see if the world was still the same as it once was.