A Wolf Among Vultures

Time moves slowly when standing in a minefield. Each moment stretches longer than the last and my legs shake from fatigue. Sweat drips along my nose, but I remain calm. I have to. My ten-year-old son stands in the same field no more than two paces from me. 

He reminds me of the hour hand of a clock. Straight, narrow, and still, standing in between two bombs. I am less lucky. My left foot engaged a bomb buried no more than a few inches beneath the ground. One misstep, one movement that redistributes my weight, and the entire field erupts. 

The wind blows dirt into the air, caking my sweat stained face. I look across the beaten field at the smoking, shattered remains of a former city. Vultures circle in the air a hundred feet from where I stand. I clench my teeth. I should have seen the indications, the evidence of bombs scattered beneath the ground. But it’s been such a long journey and I’m so tired. 

The rickety glidercycle we found and rode across the countryside ran out of fuel. We lost our way beneath the dark clouds that shadow the earth in all directions. I had a plan. Get to the refugee camp. Though, we should have arrived there with the amount of fuel in the tank of the cycle. 

We used to have maps, technology, satellite GPS, even stars to guide us, but now we have nothing. The only indication of the passing of time is a red sun that occasionally drifts between clouds of a sky so destroyed by radiation, it looks as if Mother Nature bleeds internally. 

The sun peaks its bloodshot figure out from behind gray clouds and heats the cold, unforgiving earth for a few minutes. The vultures screech at the sight of the red blob and circle together in a chorus of squawks and flaps. Now I have my bearings and I can tell which direction is North. I can’t move, but there’s still a chance for my boy. 

He looks at me, his face tense and body even more so. “We’re standing on a minefield, aren’t we?” he asks.

“Did you hear any bomb engage when you stepped?” 

“No,” he says as he shifts his eyes to his feet. “Did you?” 

The innocence in his voice brings tears to my eyes. He’s so young. Born into a world that forced him into an adult at such a young age. I got us lost, but there is still hope for him. We never should have been here. I took a chance, made a guess, and the guess was wrong. That’s the way it goes sometimes. I blink a tear away and focus. “Do you remember what I taught you, how to avoid the bombs in a field?” 

“Yes,” he says. “We used to practice-.” His voice fades. A memory etches the features of his face. A face too young to have experienced so much. Covered in dirt and stained with sweat and tears. Though my heart pleads to run to him, to hug him and tell him that the worst is over, and that peace has finally come, I can’t. I need him to focus. His life depends on it. 

“Move slowly and look for divots. Any inconsistencies in the dirt, any signs of unnatural terrain, you avoid stepping. Understand?”

“Dad,” he says, shifting his weight as if to reach toward me.

“Don’t move yet!” I scream. My voice cracks from dehydration and from steady smoke inhalation. “There’s one in front of you too. By the looks of it, if you take two steps backward you can avoid the bombs and backtrail the way we came, back to the main road. Got it?” 

His bottom lip trembles and his blue eyes fill with tears. The same blue eyes his mother had. The same blue eyes his sister had.

“But you’re coming too, right?” 

“Not this time, buddy,” I say as I slowly wipe sweat from my brow. My legs are stuck in an awkward bent position. My left calf and thigh scream for relief and plead for rest. But I can give them no rest now. Meals are far and few in between which means my muscles have been devoid of essential proteins for weeks. Only adrenaline fuels them now. 

“Why not?” he cries. It’s not a tearful cry though. His eyes are devoid of any moisture now, much like the cracked field we stand in. I watch the movement of his throat as he tries to swallow past a sandpaper dry tongue. His eyes dart to and fro until his bright blue irises lock on my feet. “You’re standing on one now, aren’t you?” 

“Any movement and this entire field blows,” I say plainly, not hiding anything from him. I never did hide anything from him. This war-ravaged world is already too cold, too dark, and too cruel for a father to tell his son lies too. 

“But I-”

“You can make it. By the looks of it we’ve only missed the refugee camp by three or four miles. Make it back to the main road and walk North until you find them.” The look in his eyes tells me that he’ll never leave. He doesn’t want to leave. Dammit, I don’t want him to leave either. But only one of us is making it out of this. I look toward the hopeless sky, but I force a smile filled with as much hope as I can muster. “If you make it to the refugee camp, you can bring someone back to help me. They’ll have more resources to disarm bombs like these.” 

Part of me places hope in this idea too. Maybe, just maybe, he can bring back anyone willing to help. Maybe I’ll make it out of here. But my leg is shaking and my heart is pounding in exhaustion. I feel my lip quiver and sweat pool on my palms. “Now it’s time for you to take two steps backward. Are you ready?” 

“I’m afraid!” he yells.

“There’s no time for fear!” Dammit I hate yelling at him. He’s just a boy, just a child. But this world doesn’t care, and death doesn’t either. “Step backwards just as I say. Raise your left foot.” He does so, standing with his left foot near his right knee and both hands in the air to balance. “Reach that foot backward and don’t put it down until I say.” My eyes focus on the subtle raise in the earth, and I wait for his foot to clear it. “Down, now.” 

He straddles a bomb powerful enough to end an army of lives, let alone two. His split legs are in an awkward position and his balance is shaky at best. “Now the same thing,” I say. “Match your right foot with your left.” 

He shifts his weight backward, but as he pushes, his weight falters and my heart stalls. I watch as he falls, powerless to do anything. His arms wave in small, frantic circles, not wanting to move his feet for fear of stepping on a mine. But now his entire body falls toward the earth. Toward a field of bombs. His eyes widen and his mouth opens to yell, but nothing comes out. 

He continues to fall and time freezes even further. I see everything. My son, the only family I have left, falling into the arms of death and the embrace of oblivion. I no longer feel the pain in my legs. Time shows me mercy, if only for a second. The present moment numbs any pain and replaces it with fear so strong it feels my heart will rip through the skin of my chest. 

In the last moment before his body detonates enough force to decimate this field, he jumps. No. He leaps. With such grace and with such virtue I feel like I’m watching a painting come to life. His body drifts through the air in slow motion, misses the second rise in the earth, and rolls into freedom. 

The pain returns, but I am so happy that I embrace the burn of my muscles. My boy lives. I become so joyful I want to jump up and down in celebration, but then remember my own predicament. 

“You scared me half to death,” I say, unable to hide the smile on my face. “You did it!” He’s happy. More happy than I have seen him in months. I wish for time to slow in this moment, this one moment of peace and joy, but the greedy hand of time steals this too. Our happiness is like the smoke that drifts toward the sky. “You’ve been more of a hero than I could have ever hoped, son. Now it’s time you bring your old man some help.” 

“But Dad I can’t-”

“Promise me,” I plead. This time it is my throat that cries. Tears coalesce with dirt and sweat that rolls down my nose and onto my lips. “If anyone sees you before you reach the camp, you run. You run as fast as you can. If they catch up, you use any means necessary to save yourself. You understand?” I reach to my hip and toss my blaster to the ground beside him. I take a controlled swig out of my dirty canteen and throw it his way as well.

“What if you get thirsty?”

“You’ll be back soon, right?”

“Right,” he says. He picks up the canteen and blaster and straps them into his belt. He looks around, getting his bearings. The sun is still out, if only for a few more moments.

“You’d better hurry, that suns not gonna last long. It’ll be dark again here soon.” 

I watch my son turn with a newfound hope. He believes in the mission, and that makes me want to believe too. Soon he walks out of eyeshot, into a world of war and evil, but somewhere between all that bad has to be some good. That refugee camp will take him in. They have to. 

The burning pain in my legs soon becomes unbearable. For a moment, I think of giving up. That is until I see the same formation of vultures, maybe nine or ten, swarm around the corpse of some kind of animal. They continue their steady descent, unaware of the minefield that they fly down toward. Just my luck. I wait for the blast as they land, but none comes. They're about a hundred feet from me, and from where I stand, I can’t tell how far this minefield stretches. 

I watch as they begin to peck and pull at the corpse of a rotting animal. My stomach growls and I feel sickened at the thought of being jealous of vultures. But I’m not the only one. A dog, or maybe a wolf, pokes its matted head out from behind a withered and petrified tree. He barks at the vultures through rotted teeth, spewing foamy saliva with each shout. Engaged in a predatory squat, he sprawls forward and charges the vultures. Even at my distance, I can see the emaciated body of the beast as it races toward them. Its ribs poke from uneven length fur and it howls in fury. 

The beast runs so quickly that it trips over its front paws with a shriek. It rolls forward, but continues its momentum, finding its feet once again and returning to its original speed. With ravenous, yellow eyes and jagged claws, it gallops like a horse being whipped by a cruel master. The vultures jump from the ground and fly toward the clouds, annoyed that a wolf would ruin their meal. But the four-legged monster wants nothing to do with the dead corpse on the field. It wants the scavengers.

The vultures fly toward me, and the wolf follows. 

With a yelp, the first bomb explodes. One by one, the bombs detonate in a wave of fire and earth. The explosions decimate three of the greedier vultures, who hovered lower, intent on getting back to their meal quickly. Feathers, bones, dirt, and blood crash into one another in an eruption of chaos and flames. The bombs roll toward me like a symphony conducted by an evil composer, arms waving and baton guiding each detonation. 

The last thing I feel, besides the incinerating force that rips my body apart, is hope. I think of my son. The one who got away. The one who survived the minefield, constant war, and unspeakable tragedy. In my mind, I see him running. I see him arriving at the refugee camp, eating a warm meal and drinking cool, clean water. He’s smiling, laughing with others his age. He finds a family, but never forgets his own. He’s happy and so am I. 

I lift my left leg before the last bombs reach me and watch my body tear in two. Bones and muscles rip through such brightness of light that I’m forced to shut my eyes. I smile as bombs echo, shadows cover the earth, and vultures swarm.