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                “I, too, have returned from the deepest hell of man’s despair and madness! I’ll enter her dreams . . . and destroy the very essence of her will to do battle! I will see her beg!”

                                Desty Nova, Battle Angel Alita

                Slate pulls me into the darkened shed and we sit there, listen as the war rages on outside, around us. I hear the explosions of bombs and the roar of tanks. I can hear the cracked call of gunfire and the sailing screams of missiles.

                “How can they wage a war, inside a bio-dome?” I ask. As I speak, an explosion hits near us. The ground shakes and things fall off the shelves around us. But in the darkness, we have no idea what just fell.

                “This building seems pretty secure.” Slate says, sitting next to me. She glances at me for a moment, then looks at the rays of light that spread in through the edges of the blackened windows. “Are you okay?”

                I feel my face and head for the first time. It feels about right. “Yeah, I suppose.” I say. “I mean, I’m disorientated, but I don’t know.”

                “Well, we’ll ride out the battle, then try to make our escape.”

                “To where?” I ask.

                “Anywhere.” She says with some uncertainty. She looks at me again, then turns back to the light. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

                “Yeah.” I say. “Me too.”

                We don’t say another word.

                When the door opens, the last light of the setting sun is disappearing behind the horizon. Before we even see anything of the base, we can smell the odor of the battle. We can smell the choked heat and the smoldering ruin of the fight. We can smell the ruined winds as they sweep in across the battlefield.

                When the door opens more fully, we can see the carcasses that lay strewn about. Bodies lie dead in mangled forms. Tanks and other vehicles lay smoking in mid-stop. The buildings are hollowed-out corpses, their smoking rubble and remains everywhere.

                Circling the crust of the military base is a long, still-burning fire. It circles around where the fighting appears to have been the most intense, while the flames look like they may have reached up ten feet. Given the burned nature of everything that’s around, it looks like the wide, blocks-wide fire may have spread.

                Slate steps out first, looking around for any sign of movement. I listen. I listen to the window blow against the bodies. I listen as the heated metal slowly cools against the hot winds. I listen as the steam and smoke rise up into the sky, mixing with the clouds above. I listen as the world lets itself rest still after the endless confrontation.

                “We’ve got to get some weapons.” Slate says, her voice unconsciously a whisper.

                “I don’t hear anything.” I say, whispering as well. She turns back and looks at me, but I stay still, just listening. “No voices. No animals. No vehicles. No electricity. Nothing.”

                “They may just have moved too far away.” She says. But as she speaks, her voice trails off. Her eyes go wide. I’m almost unwilling to turn. I think I know what she’s looking at. And the very thought of it makes me sick.

                But I turn.

                And I regret it.

                They’re laid out in rows, almost like crops. Since they’re all lying peacefully, I have to believe that they were set on fire afterwards. I want to block the sight of them out of my mind, but once I realize what the fires were, I realize they trail all the way around the inner most portion of the camp.

                They’re the B-types.

                The bodies lay in tight unison, forming a chain that circles around the base. Their bodies are still burning, though most of the clothes and flesh and what would make them truly recognizable as humans is burned away.

                “We’ve got to get out of here.” Slate whispers. All I can do is nod.

                The only part worse than the darkness is the silence.

                I’m sitting with my back against the door of the office, holding a tire iron across my lap. Slate’s laid out on the floor not far from me, her hair draped over her face as she tries to sleep, made up on a bed of coats and seat cushions.

                Through the window, there is no starlight. I have no reason to think this, but I suspect that the hologram or whatever it is that makes the starlight for the nighttime in the bio-domes is busted. Because when the sun went down, there were no stars. There were no clouds. There was only dark. And I do mean dark.

                The only light is the fires. Slate and I were tempted to try the light switches, but we decided against it. For starters, if they did work, then that light on would be a beckon to absolutely anyone who could see it. And given how few light sources there were to begin with, that would be most anyone. But since we didn’t see any clocks or computers still on, we came to the general conclusion that the power was probably knocked out.

                The only sound is Slate and mine’s breathing.

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