October 28, 2012: Day One.

When Max's cab won't start, the first thing he thinks is how his boss— this hardass who Max thinks sounds Eastern European somehow— is gonna be pissed at him. His driving record's clean in Darrow so far, even if he did almost hit that lady that one time, but he gets the feeling that he's gotten on his boss's nerves one too many times the past few months, and maybe he's just looking for a reason to chew him out.

So he's cursing at the ignition as the engine whines and sputters, and doesn't even notice at first that the city's quieted down, the sound of traffic and people gone. There's ash falling silently on his windshield, and when Max finally looks up, convinced that he'll just have to call in to dispatch to see if he he can get a tow, for a second, he's convinced that he's lost it. Maybe one too many times, he's remembered the humid air and the sound of gunfire, and now he's finally going all the way crazy.

He opens the door to his cab and steps out onto the empty street, and he tries to wipe the ash out of his hair for a second before he realizes that it's useless. This doesn't make any sense. It's like someone's dropped an A-bomb on the city, only there wasn't any bomb.

Max knows what the bombs feel like, the gunfire. The smell of gunsmoke in the air, and the ringing in his ears. He can almost smell it, even now, feel the slight shake of the ground beneath his feet, almost like he's Back There.

"Hey!" he shouts, leaving the door of his cab wide open as he heads down the empty road, underneath flickering traffic lights that can't decide if they wanna light up green, red, yellow or all of the above, "Can anybody hear me?!"

And then the siren starts.

It's loud and sudden and Max doesn't expect it. It's an air raid. Only when he whirls around, looking to the sky, he doesn't see anything, doesn't hear any planes or propellers or engines, only that one loud horn that has his heart racing and his hands shaking and the world almost spinning underneath his feet.

Max runs.

He was in shit shape before he was drafted, and maybe they made him run a mile with that fucking pack on his back, but now it's been months since then, and even months since he was back in New York, and he hasn't gone but a few blocks before he's out of breath and his legs are burning. But he keeps running, trying to wipe ash off of face, even though it's on his hands and his forehead's drenched with sweat already.

By the time he makes it back to Oceanview, he's so pumped full of adrenaline that he takes the stairs to Lucy's apartment two at a time and doesn't so much as grab the handrails to push off of.

"Lucy! Luce! Come on, we've gotta go!" he yells, banging his fists against the door to her place. Only the door swings, open the apartment empty. The TV flickers on the other side of the room, all static and snow.

The siren wails on as Max stands in the doorway watching the shadows the light from the TV casts on the walls.

"Shit." He breathes out a shaky breath as he crosses the room to the couch and sits, heart still racing until it's almost louder than the siren, "Shitshitshitshit."

The city goes quiet again.

The TV flickers one last time and goes dark, and he's alone.

He's in the delta, air so thick it takes two lung-fulls just to feel like you've got a good breath in, that one drop of sweat or hot rain stuck to the end of your nose that won't go away no matter how many times you wipe it off.

"Max! Fuck! Man, we've gotta move! They're all over us, move your ass!"


He looks back over his shoulder, like there's something behind him in the dark. Like something's going to come at him from the other side of the wall, grab him and drag him off into the jungle. Down the road. Through the marsh.

Max slides off of the couch onto the floor, half slouched against the side of it and he closes his eyes. He tries to breathe.



Somewhere far off in the darkness, something stirs.

October 29, 2012: Day Two

Someone grabs him by the shoulders, by the straps of his pack and hauls him to his feet. His boots slip in the mud and he can't take his eyes off of the guy in front of him.

The body.

The body who used to be another guy in his unit.

"C'mon, man! We've gotta go!"

The voice is right in his ear and far away all at the same time, but Max is glassy-eyed, waiting for the guy at his feet to move. That is, until something goes off next to him and his face is sprayed with dirt and God only knows what else.

He stands, gripping his gun tighter, and he's back. He's got to move. They've got to go.


He's got to go.

Max doesn't know how long he's been sitting there, on the floor of his sister's apartment, but it seems like a few hours ago that the noises stopped and the TV flickered on again, the constant noise of static filling the silence.

He can't just sit there.

Max pulls himself onto his feet. He's gonna go find someone else, because everyone being gone... that's bullshit. There's no way. He tries to remember what the hell you're supposed to do when you get separated from your unit. Most of that stuff, he's tried to wipe out. Max has tried to forget most of what happened Over There, but he hasn't managed to do it yet.

It takes a full ten minutes before he pulls himself together enough to leave. The noises from the night before have stopped, and the city's quiet. He wanders most of the day, looking, but it's just him. Just him and that endless fucking rain of ash. Max keeps having to go inside just to shake it out of his hair so he can see straight, and in some ways it's worse than mud and marsh.

He doesn't know what time it is when he makes it back home, but he has time to eat some leftover Chinese from his fridge-- he doesn't taste it, barely remembers eating it once it's gone-- before the siren starts again. Before the lights flicker and the TV's dies and the city's plunged into darkness again.

The shifting somewhere in the distance starts, just like the night before. Something just loud enough that Max can hear it, but not so loud that it sounds like it's right outside the door. A rustle in the brush just beyond the trees that might just be from the rain, but might be somebody lying in wait.

At least tonight, he's got a candle, so even if Max is still sitting alone on the floor of his kitchen-- his own apartment now-- he's not completely in the fucking dark. But for a minute, he feels that humid air again and his heart starts pounding in his chest, filling the silence.

He loses track of time.

He's so fucking tired.

Max wishes that he couldn't remember the last time he was this tired, but it's still so fresh in his mind, it could have been yesterday. Maybe it was yesterday.

He gets caught up watching the shadows the candle casts against the cabinets. The tip of the flame flicks back and forth and it reminds him of just after they shipped out, before everything went to hell and he lost part of himself in the jungle. Before long he starts to nod off; his heart slows down and quiets and his eyelids are heavy.



A bang from somewhere down the hall jolts him out of a restless sleep, and he wakes up in the dark. The candle's blown out and it takes him a second to remember where he is, after he reaches for his gun and realizes it's not right next to him, sunken into mud that isn't even there.

Another bang, this time louder, and closer, and Max swears to God he hears someone mumbling. And if it's English, then he doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. In fact, if Max didn't know any better, he could swear it was another language altogether.

One more bang and then a mumble. The shuffle of boots in the hallway. Max's chest tightens and he tries not to breathe. He can't breathe. Yeah, maybe it's the Calvary, maybe someone's finally come looking for him in the dead of night, but his stomach twists and something tells him that's not what's about to happen here.

Max flattens himself against the wall, small in the corner, and he waits. Through the wall, he hears the sound of his neighbor's door getting kicked in, that same shuffle of boots and a mumble in another language. A shout.

"Fuck," he says, but his voice is strained, and the words scratch their way out of his throat at a whisper. "Fuck fuck fuck."

He tenses, sit still, and the door to his own apartment flies in, slamming against the wall so loudly that Max almost thinks he can smell the smoke from a gunshot. Boots squeak against the floor, headed closer and Max scampers on his hands and knees, around the kitchen island to keep out of view. But he pushes off on his knee the wrong way and it slips on the linoleum, his leg flying backwards, knocking over the candle holder in the dark.

There's a loud clatter, then silence.

"I'm unarmed! I live here!" Max shouts, and shit, he's supposed to know how to say some of that in Vietnamese, but he never learned. He wasn't paying any fucking attention.

And the next thing he knows, some guy's rounded the corner and Max is there on the floor staring up at him, still trying to get his eyes to adjust to the lack of light.

He's got no face. The guy staring down at Max, the Charlie, the one holding the submachine gun doesn't have a face. He's talking, shouting orders in Vietnamese and he has no mouth. Max can't think, he can't breathe, he's fucking frozen.

Charlie lifts his gun, and there's a click as it's hand settles into place.

Max scuttles backwards, hands slipping on the linoleum, trying to gain traction, and he only just gets out of the way before the sound of gunshots ring out, and that smell of gunsmoke is all too real and his ears are ringing. He makes for the door, head pounding, heart racing, and splinters with the impact of a bullet as he rounds the corner into the hallway.

Behind him, the faceless soldier's still shouting and emptying out his gun at places in space where Max just was.

He keeps running until it hurts.