Consequences

A Story by Cairne

The aftermath of a massive bombing exposes a man to the consequences of what he is doing, and makes a decision that will change a life-for better or worse.

I had seen the results of the bombing for myself. A decimated city, the building replaced with rubble, cars reduced to scrap, and the original vibrant colors replaced with lifeless gray and black, the results of ash and annihilation. Red also decorated the husk. The red of blood.

Assorted citizens and men of our forces volunteered to lift the huge masses of debris; rock that could have once been walls, steel that may have supported buildings. Under it all, the alive were miracles, the dead failures. Our failures. We had promised to protect these people in exchange for their assistance, their rebellion. They had kept their end of the bargain. We had not, and look at the results.
Medics rushed through it all, trying to save the wounded, reunite families, assist the lost, and guide the dying into their eternal sleep. Volunteers assisted them as well. It was remarkable, their bravery in the midst of such chaos.
Some actions were colder. The aircraft, looming above the annihilation searching for signs of a second attack. Our soldiers, assigned to anti-air guns in case there was. Others playing the roles of guards to prevent violence from the citizens.
Mine was the coldest of all. I salvaged the military and technological data from the underground facility, along with surviving records. I didn’t know if any of it was important. From what I could decipher out of it all, it wasn’t. It felt more like a punishment than an assignment.
Even all of this couldn’t prepare me for the scene back at base. Aircraft after aircraft dropped down, released its civilian load, and immediately soared back off in the direction of the city, giving emphasis to just how many people we had failed. Within the base was mayhem, with the medics and nurses carting the wounded every which way. Infirmaries were filled in minutes, and eventually every room, no matter its purpose, became a hostel to the civilians. Some contained the panicked and desperate, whom were calling for family, friends, or pushing each other about looking for them. In these, it was deafening.
Others contained the dead. These were silent, the air feeling colder than ice. All these deceased marked a failure, though it was only known to those who had failed. I was one.
And yet, the hardest of all were the grieving. Some were subdued, staring into space, refusing to accept reality. Others cried quietly, alone or with their loved ones, who accompanied them. Some sat in chairs, their heads in their hands, their bodies quaking with suppressed anguish. These people, I felt, also marked our failure. We had promised to protect them. Thrusting them into a state of utter desolation was not protecting them.
I saw them all, each reality seemingly punching me in the gut, though I didn’t show it. Not in the face of these people. I had no right to even look them in the face. I was one of the ‘protectors’. We were no protectors, we were murderers. We had brought on this bombing with our actions. Though I never wavered in my certainty what we were doing was right, it didn’t make it any easier to see these people, to see the consequences of my handiwork.
I trudged through the hallways, dodging the infinite lines of medic carts, brooding on it all. I began to see different rooms, with doctors explaining to sobbing children that their families weren’t coming back. That they would be raised by assigned guardians who would replace their parents.
These doctors...do they feel nothing?, I thought. Do they understand what they are putting these children through?
Truly, I had no idea if they felt anything. But the way they broke it to the children seemed robotic, emotionless, rehearsed.
I felt a surge of anger. They could at least comfort them, damn it! Does their job description entail being an unfeeling machine toward children? But, I realized, I had no room to speak. Ever since joining the revolutionists, I had been trained to be an apathetic, cold weapon. My anger rushed away, leaving me feeling hollow.
I passed another one of these rooms. It contained a small girl and another doctor. I guessed the girl to be around the age of eleven, or twelve. She was small, and appeared frail, as if she could be injured merely by being touched. Her black hair shielded her face, though I knew she was crying. The doctor was repeating the same speech to her. As I watched, I noticed something else about the girl. She was clutching a ragged teddy bear.
It was this, to me a symbol of innocence destroyed by harsh reality, of the carefree nature of a child being torn away, of happiness giving way to sadness, that made me speak up, just as the doctor was saying, “...will find a suitable guardian...”

“I’ll do it,” I spoke.