The Farm. Prologue

Prologue
05th October 1985

SMOKE SPIRALED and kissed his nostrils, unforgiving. Barely could he see his hand at his face. Above him, on the stairwell his two friends had fallen. Into shadow the enemy had retreated.

From the mob somewhere above, cries of exaltation and celebratory carnal screams hailed and assaulted him. He sighed.

Slowly descending in waxed droplets from concrete steps, in the dimly lit relative seclusion of a third floor concrete stairwell, pools of blood licked at his feet. His colleagues lay where they fell, unmoving.

Below him on a lower stairwell the men, his tired friends, were still fighting, about to be breached. But here was relatively quiet and safe. The urge to stay put, to curl up in a fetal position almost overwhelmed him. Penn turned from a stairwell below and looked up at him, pleading, resigned to his own fate.

“How many men!” He shouted at Tony over the bedlam and carnage. He raised his shield to fend off another petrol bomb, flames caressingly danced around it to cover him momentarily as the tidal mob surged on his line once again, only teasingly to withdraw into the darkness.

Tony looked down at him, men and boys jumped and darted through the smoke but none attacked. Penn turned to him again, this time desperation etching his bloodied face.

Penn shouted. “Tony, how many men!?”

“Two, two men … And now three.”

He turned. Penn realized his intention. Penn shouted, pleading with him to stop. Tony raised his shield, with all the dwindling strength he could muster he charged up the stairs. Through gritted teeth a loud deep howl broke from an unknown hiding place deep within his chest, he ran over the disfigured bodies of his fallen friends. In his wake blood flew from under his feet as he disappeared into the smoke.

Penn tried to make out his young officer amidst the haze. Through the cutting thrusting action of the fight heads and lofted arms danced and came together in a slow and violent embrace above swirling cloying smoke.
Lazy spirals of lost smoke soon filled the void Tony had left. The only indication he had ever stood his ground were bloodied boot-prints he left behind.

“God help him.” Penn muttered quietly.

ChickenHawk