The Anti-Irredentist by Jeff Schultz

The Anti-Irredentist

Jeff Schultz

Grimy visage scans the near distance hidden beneath debris, flapping ochre curtain and shabby beard growth. Heedless bipedal occupiers clad in grubby camo pace nervously below lacking awareness, oblivious to the rising threat. High up in the rebar-lined Swiss cheese of smashed prefab apartments he lies on a stained mattress in a once lovely flat, now forced hovel, feeling the crisp breeze yet resolutely steeled to his pending task. A child’s colorful drawing hangs limply from a spindly wall fragment. Inspired and likewise scalded by his wife’s tragic recent passing, he hears her even now from her nearby hasty burial, pleading to him. She would not have agreed with his truculent idea, not this way – no! She was a better person, able to control the monster that he could not. The same monster he met years before in the sandy wastes, when as a lad he fought an unyielding enemy for what now seems so trivial, such empty goals. She was his only real medicine to fight the monster, her touch the salve for his unseen malaise. He shook out of his stupor, coughed and spat, rations running low. The urban resistance nest he carved out hid him from the drones that buzzed overhead, just enough cracked ceiling remained to keep them unaware until it would be too late.