Baggage Train to Apocalypse
by Howerton Morris
Category: Fiction

And on they ride, a swelling, surging neap tide of human flesh, pressing into the valley of death; a microcosm subject to neither time nor space nor the will of any who would curb their slaughter, and my half-David arrogant on a stamping white stallion with hooves striking fire like the flint that sparks from a tinderbox. Deeper into the valley, deeper and ghastlier. Pleasant and painful, hideous and ecstatic, lost in a lush meadow with clover blossoms and lilacs and wild roses and a stream filled with trout where boys swim in the summer, naked and not knowing how little time they have left to be ignorant of Apocalypse. And I stood there dry in the July sun, a commentator on roses and lilacs and Apocalypse and naked children swimming the streams that twist through the valley. And I'm still standing there, still a commentator hiding in abstract thickets of philosophy while the clover wilts and turns brittle on the scorched earth.