Chapter 3

"London Is Burning"

Edd left the hospital about a week after waking up, and what a week it was. Doctor Names had told Edd that he technically could have left a couple of days after he had woken up, but since he had had no record of any heart failure in his past or in his family's history, they had wanted to keep him longer to "watch out for any complications or signs of another one", and so that he could recuperate. Edd had only been in a coma for two days, but that was two days for him to lose several pounds. Not that he was complaining; he had always been a bit heavy, but it wasn't his fault that cola tasted so good!

So, he had waited patiently to be discharged from Hearth Home Hospital for a week, taking the odd medical test here and there, trading bad jokes with hospital nurses, watching hours of online videos, doodling on scraps of paper. Occasionally, he was allowed to wander out of his room and chat peacefully with his fellow inmates, or with the nice ladies behind the desks who were otherwise not doing much more than playing Solitaire and Minesweeper. There was a particularly unpleasant experience where one of them had described to him in grisly detail a very recent patient that had arrived covered in blood, and then explained that it had been him. But Edd didn't let being trapped inside of the sterile whiteness of the hospital bother him. He wasn't even going to let the increasingly nervous energy of everyone in London due to the frequent news reports of the Red Army faze him. But he wasn't going to deny that finally being able to leave the place wasn't a cause for celebration.

Tom and Matt had brought him a new change of clothes they day they finally came to pick him up, which included the comfort of one of his beloved green hoodies, and pair of khaki trousers and sneakers. The nice women behind the desk had told him they would be sad to see him go as he left, and wished him luck. His throat had closed up at that, remembering his deal with those ancient deities. However, he smiled widely and accepted their comment with a word of thanks, uncomfortably aware of both Matt and Tom's hands on his back as they guided him around, as though they were waiting for him to keel over any moment and pass out. He suspected they didn't know that he had been walking around quite a bit during his time here, despite the fact that they had visited him almost every day.

He hesitated before finally getting into Tom's car - their old red saloon had been totalled in the crash - but he forced himself in. It was a rare thing, a serious car crash. Nothing to be afraid of. Until it happened. Which it wouldn't.

Their first stop was a petrol station, where Tom filled up the tank of the sleek blue car that he had been saving up for years to get. Then they went to an American hamburger restaurant that all of them enjoyed once in awhile. Edd asked for streaky bacon on his, which was an odd request, though not unheard of to the tense looking teenage cashier. He has a certain fondness for streaky bacon, but Americans certainly were odd people. That fact was only further affirmed by the skinny blonde couple wearing tie-dye t-shirts Edd watched come. They stood in line to order, talking in loud voices heavily accented by some southern town in the United States.

Edd and his companions ate their food inside the little restaurant, packed with other lunch-goers, sitting in a booth by the big front windows and chatting about nothing in particular. Edd, who sat on the inside of the booth next top Matt, leaned against the warm window, content and full as he watched Tom steal a few of the ginger's chips, dunking them in the funny American tomato sauce before shoving them in his mouth. He swallowed and grinned as Matt exclaimed in annoyance. Edd smiled himself. He had missed this.

'Oh, I've missed this.'

The smile slipped off his face at the memory, and he felt suddenly cold.

"So, how long do you think you're going to need to wear that cast?" Matt asked, returning Edd to reality.

"Huh? Oh," Edd shrugged noncommittally, rubbing the rough, neon green fiberglass armor with his free hand. "I'm not exactly sure, but I think Names said something like five weeks. Good thing too. It's driving me mad."

"Edd, you okay?" Edd looked over to Tom, who was sitting across from him. His empty eyes were narrowed with questioning concern. "You look sick."

"What? Oh no, I'm just... Thinking."

Tom looked unconvinced, but dropped the subject. They were too content and pleased with the fact that Edd was finally out of the hospital to be worried. It surely wasn't his business to go and ruin that happy mood. So they leaned back in their seats a moment longer before standing and stretching, ready to leave. Edd watched in mild fascination as the American couple dropped a crisp ten pound note on their table, saying something that sounded oddly like "tip".

He had no clue what the Tip had to do with anything. You didn't recycle money at the Tip. Only when the three friends were getting into Tom's car again did he remember that Americans often left money behind for waiters, and they called it a tip. He chuckled to himself as the set belt clicked satisfyingly in its port. Americans were strange.

The radio had been on when they had parked. Twelve seconds of a silly pop song, just enough time for them to pull out of the car park, and it went static.

"What happened?" Matt questioned relaxedly.

Tom fiddled with the radio knob, mildly annoyed as he searched for another station. "Signal cut out. They must be having issues at the station or something."

He continued to fiddle absently with the radio as he turned onto the main road. He had to pause though, because traffic suddenly appeared around them. It didn't make any sense, though. Why were there so many cars in what didn't seem like a very crowded part of London?

Tom had landed on a station that was working, but instead of the normal talk show hosts, there was a man's nasally voice. Edd's blood ran cold as he listened.

"-Red Army is in London. All civilians please stay calm and follow police instruction. Calling for a full evacuation of London. Stay calm and follow police orders, leaving the city to the East and South."

"What is that?" Matt was pointing wide-eyed at a plume of thick, black smoke to left of them in the distance, which was to the north. Small black specks zoomed in and out of view, through puffy and gentle white clouds and the heavy smoke. As Edd watched one of them suddenly spiralled out of control and crashed into a huge reflective office building with an explosion of yellow fire. His stomach dropped.

"Holy…" Tom didn't finish his statement. All three pairs of eyes were wide. This was real. The smoke coming from the north, which was now right in front of them, was only growing. Here and there one could see a plane get shot down, though none of them could tell whether it was a plane from the Red Army or the RAF, or maybe there would be a plume of smoke and dust that rose high into the air at hundreds of kilometers an hour.

"Oh my gosh… This is… It's… We…" Edd couldn't seem to form words. His throat felt too tight for him to speak.

"We're going to die, aren't we?" Matt asked weakly as Tom turned south, following the steady flow of cars leaving the city. Edd twisted in his seat to continue watching the now black sky behind them through the back window. It was like a storm front. A deadly storm front.

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Tom's teeth were clenched as he squeezed between two cars. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel as he wrenched it from side to side, weaving between other people who were running from the terrifying scene behind them.

Matt and Edd screamed. Two jets tore through the sky just above them, strafing a line of cars to the left of them. Several other vehicles weaved in alarm, their drivers obviously frightened. The cars that were hit crashed into one another, into the road barrier. Edd gasped in horror as he looked at a few of the windscreens suddenly spattered with blood. One car was suddenly engulfed in flames.

Matt's screams turned into frenzied sobs of laughter, tears pooling in his eyes. Tom jerked the wheel to the right as one of the cars that had been shot swerved towards them, clipping their back end. He struggled to regain control, but eventually managed to right their path, with a lot of swearing mixed into the process. Edd also had tears running down his face as he watched the occupants of a small gold salon jumped out their car doors, falling over themselves and clutching at one another only to be hit by another vehicle. He choked out a sob, clutching Matt's seat in front of him. All those people...

The jets' screams faded for a moment before growing louder again. Matt's sobs redoubled. Surely now they were going to die. They heard the ricochet of bullets, but they were all behind them.

"I'm going to die, I'm going to die!" Matt grasped Edd's hand for comfort, though Edd knew he wasn't able to offer any. He bumped up against Tom, who turned to him and started to yell something, leaving Edd the only one still watching the road.

"TOM, WATCH OUT!" Edd shouted, pointing. Tom whipped forward once again and slammed on the brakes. There was a woman standing in front of them, waving her arms wildly in front of her and standing over another woman. She sprinted up to Tom's stopped car, her hands folded in an unheard plea for help. It looked like she and her friend's car had been hit by bullets. Tom rolled down the window to hear her.

"-Please, help me! Louise, she's hurt! Please don't leave us!" The woman was screaming hysterically. Tom scowled.

"Get in the back," he barked.

"But Louise-"

"I'll take care of her, just get in!" He opened the door and leapt out while the woman pulled on the door handle to get in the back. After a split second's hesitation, Edd threw open his own door and followed Tom. He couldn't do much with his broken arm, but he tried his best to help his friend guide the wounded woman, both of her arms draped across their shoulders as they stumbled back to Tom's car. Her right leg was covered in blood. There was the scream of jets once again, the terrifying sound of deadly lead bouncing off the pavement, and the first woman fell to her knees in terror.

But none of the bullets hit them.

First in was Edd, then the wounded woman, who was gasping in pain, then her friend, then Tom, who immediately floored the accelerator, closing the gap between them and the cars in front of them.

On and on, for an hour that felt like an eternity, they were pursued by those jets until finally… They stopped. Gone. Left behind with the rubble they had just escaped.

It was unnerving. They drove alongside those survivors who had escaped London all the way through to the countryside. There weren't that many. So many had been left behind, full of bullet holes, windows shattered and dripping with cold blood. So many who didn't make it, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They out of all of them had made it. Matt, Edd, and the first woman, who said her name was Katy, had managed to stem the flow of blood from the woman Louise with Matt's overcoat, though she still was crying and gasping in pain, her friend beside her attempting to comfort her.

Edd turned around and watched the scene outside the back window, knuckles white as he clutched his seat belt. Behind them, to the North, in the fiery orange sunset dyed red as blood, London burned.

A/N Pretty graphic huh? Betcha ya weren't really expecting that. I hope. I was sitting in my world history class one day when I was first coming up with ideas for an Eddsworld fanfiction. In my class, one of the first things we do every day is to watch CNN 10 online. And, as per frickin usual, there was a story about ISIS. "Huh. Okay." I go home, watch a bit of (a butt load of, don't lie to yourself man) Youtube, mainly Eddsworld, and surfing the Interwebz. Something about ISIS popped up once again. "Hmm... All of these middle eastern countries are being terrorized by a band of Islamic Extremists. It totally is possible to cause havoc and destruction in a country." Thus, warfare - something that both fascinates and terrifies me - became the basis of the story, coupled along with an interesting flipnote I saw about a falling angel.

And... I don't know anything about wa *knock on wood*. I'm lucky enough to live in a place where I don't have to deal with much more than heat-stroke and school. But I've seen some pretty frightening stuff, some pretty sad stories, read some pretty heart and gut wrenching crap. And it scares me. It's ridiculous. It makes me sad. And it is reality. I wanted to capture the horror of that reality in my writing. So this came out.

HAHAH stay happy though, things will get better soon. Just do your part to help the world be a better place. That's all that we can do.

~File_13