The next morning had come and gone by the time Riley awoke on the parched ground. He released a pained groan into the dirt beneath his face and pried open his dried eyes.
Thick black smoke had surrounded him while he slept and Riley could barely see more than a foot in front of him. He reached out a purple, bruised hand into the air, grasping to feel if anything was in front of him, but his hand flailed about without touching anything. The smoke swirled before him before settling again, a colorless blanket before his vision.
Polluted air snuck up his nose and rushed down his throat as Riley tried to gain his bearings. It gripped his lungs and Riley coughed harshly as he struggled to sit up.
When Riley raised his head an enormous cloud of black smoke swirled in a spiral above him. It stretched miles up, puffing out into the atmosphere and grasping vengefully at the white sky above it.
For a moment all Riley could do was stare in awe. With shaky arms he pushed himself up and stood on wobbly legs.
Riley made it one step, and then a second when his exhausted body could stay up no more and he fell to the ground with a thud. He shuddered when the sharp gravel beneath him dug into the palms of his tattered hands and pushed into the fresh and vulnerable wounds residing there.
He was so tired. His whole body was shaking and when he tried to stand his legs quaked and he collapsed again.
Riley squinted through the clouds, there was a form standing before him but he couldn't tell what it was. He stuck out a hand and took a small step forward. When he grasped at nothing but smoke he tentatively drew a little closer, and his hand met rough, splintery wood.
He frowned and moved his hand forward, and his hand collided with scratchy fabric. When he closed his hand around the form it was solid and stiff, it was a leg.
Riley yelped and pulled his hand back, the smoke cleared for just a moment and he saw that it was a man before him, tied up and bound tight on a large wooden cross.
As Riley walked further he saw that the gruesome scene of the night before was now displayed in front of him.
Charred bodies still hot with fire were bound to a number of crosses, and they were placed purposefully about his hometown like beacons. The smell of burning flesh along with the thick smoke made Riley gag. He would have thrown up, however the contents of his stomach were already long empty.
Riley wrapped his weak arms tight across his waist and turned around and around. He tried to find a vantage point to figure out which part of town he was standing in, but he failed. Each home was little more than charred sticks and piles of smoldering ash.
He recognized the road that led to his home, and his heart sunk when he realized it too was gone. His old house still harbored powerful orange flames as what was left burned. The flames burst into the colorless sky and turned to small wisps of grey smoke. Riley felt the hopelessness inside him grow stronger at the sight.
He began to walk through the wreckage, his mind silent as he moved through the town like a ghost. The old general store was destroyed, it's contents tossed and splattered around it like the guts of a smashed radroach.
"Jay's going to be upset about the general store," Riley thought to himself. "He's gonna worry about where we'll get clothes now."
Riley stopped short in his tracks. "Jay…"
The memory of the previous night flooded back to him all at once. He remembered watching in horror as Jay's eyes lost focus. He remembered trying to run before being knocked out.
It hit him in full force, merciless like a big heavy wave of freezing water that was upturned directly on his bare heart.
"Jay…" Riley gasped and his heart folded in on itself. He began to run, his muscles begged him to stop but he refused.
Riley sprinted with the little strength he had left to the center of town. His lungs burned and stretched painfully, but he held back the fits of coughs that begged to be released.
Although, for all his determination, he fell to his knees in despair again when he reached the place it had begun.
He thought there would be more bodies. He thought he would see his father, or Connie, lying in the sand. Yet they were gone, and Riley didn't look up from the ground. He didn't want to see them strung on crosses above him.
A body lay on the ground a few feet away from him, and Riley crawled toward it on his hands and knees.
The body lay face down, and a small part of Riley was relieved he had been given the small solace of not having to look him in the face. Dark burns lacerated the corpse and there was a deep stab wound in his chest.
He was lifeless and half burned, devoid of hopeful words or loving lessons as he simply lay there. The body's back was broad at the shoulders. The fingers of his hands were permanently curled tight as if ready to protect even in death. Riley didn't need to look any closer to know it was Jay.
Riley released an involuntary and terrible sound, like a small wounded animal that had been kicked. It reverberated from his damaged lungs and out into the air, where no one was there to hear him.
He fell to his knees to a soft patch of sand and began to dig at the ground furiously.
"You remember, don't you?" Jay asked him. Riley's crying had woken him up, and he sat calmly at his bedside. Jay's eyelids sagged with fatigue and he yawned before he took Riley's hand in his own.
"Of course I do." Riley mumbled faintly, still shaken from the nightmare that had plagued him. He held the blanket up over his mouth to try and mask the uneasiness in his expression. Jay smiled kindly, with an understanding that he always seemed to have when it came to Riley.
His fingers ached and screamed in pain, his nails chipped on rock, and still he dug and dug even as sand built up under his nails and pushed into his skin. The coarse grains got stuck in his wounds and his bruised knuckles ached, but he didn't care.
"Then say it with me." Jay replied and he ran a gentle hand over Riley's head. "It'll keep the nightmares away, I promise." The bags under Jay's eyes were darker than usual. Riley felt a pang of guilt for waking him up, but Jay didn't show any sign that he minded.
Riley hid his smile under the blanket. "No Jay, I'm too old for that."
"You don't get too old for these things, Riley." Jay told him gently and he scooted forward and crossed his legs.
Riley released another wounded, inhuman cry as he worked further into the earth. His fingers felt like they were going to snap in two. Sand began to slip back into the hole he was making and he angrily tossed a handful over his shoulder. He wasn't making enough progress. Riley reached out for a spade a few feet away and began to dig with it.
"I'm not too old, so neither are you. Come on, there's no sense arguing, I'm not going back to sleep until you say it with me." Jay took Riley's other hand in his own and Riley let the blanket slip from his face, revealing the smile he had been trying to cover.
Riley felt himself break. His mind tried to block the memory and force him to rest, but he continued to push forward with a stubbornness he was unaware he bore.
"Wherever I go." Riley began, his words soft and clear even as his nightmare still wandered in the back of his thoughts.
His fingers were bleeding. His wounds were full of sand, and his vision was beginning to turn black, but he pushed on.
Jay grinned at him, and for a moment Riley felt like he was looking into a mirror. "To the sun, or through the wild land." Jay followed, and he waited for Riley to continue.
Riley didn't know how long he had been digging, it didn't matter to him, and with a strength only born of desperation he dragged Jay's body into the pathetic shallow grave he had created. Riley knew his brother deserved more, but he had no more to give.
When Riley spoke again his brother followed, and they spoke together. "I'll never stop loving you, no matter where I am."
Riley quickly covered the open grave with the nearby pile of unearthed sand and dirt. He tried with all his might, but he still couldn't bring himself to look at his brother's face.
He grabbed a scrap piece of wood from the ground, and stuck it in the sand before the grave. Then his brain finally won, and he collapsed on the ground again.
It was then that the awaited tears arrived in full strength and the child lay alone in the middle of his destroyed town. Beside his brother's grave he began to wail.
Jay flopped back down on his own blankets and closed his tired eyes. "Don't forget it." Jay murmured before he drifted off to sleep.
He cried and sobbed and screamed for what was lost as the sound disappeared into the dark, lonely, and smoke filled air.
Riley giggled and turned on his side, shutting his eyes and reciting the lines again under his breath.
Riley cried until he was too dehydrated to produce any more tears.