Chapter 9: Eternal Sunset

Henry lifted his head gasping, spitting water over his beard. He thrust his back into the wall and stood up, dropping the shotgun. After a slow descent to a final water burial, Henry felt it come to rest on his feet, disarmed and useless. His eyes were heavy, almost numb, frozen, like the rest of him.

Gone was the panic and fury that had drained the last drops of his adrenaline. Henry was just a sick exhausted old man, not even an accountant. He was corpse boxed in with other corpses. Dead bodies floated about, bumping into each other like toy boats. One nameless victim stayed alone in a corner, dancing with himself caught in the current of a small whirlpool. It was a quiet party, not the attack Henry hallucinated before dozing off to dreams of a dead soldier.

The fight was over. Death waited, beckoning with a harp. Henry heard the music and wanted to follow. The old man now shivered furiously, his body forcing his muscles to quake for the sake of their own survival. But Henry didn't notice. He only noticed the sunset.

He strained his eyes to confirm it was real. Shadows lay across the rippling water across the trailer. A bug eyed man with a moustache and a hole in his head bobbed up and down, up in the sunlight and down in the shade. Henry didn't recognize him. He must have been a victim of Morgan Still.

Henry turned his back from the flooded party in his living room. The old man looked back out his window to the horizon of the bay. A piece of the sun had indeed crossed below the horizon. Night was coming. Daylight neared its end.

Tears, warm and salty, dribbled down the old man's cheeks. Ice pellets in his beard broke and melted in their path. "Beautiful," Henry whispered. He lifted his arms and stretched his back.

Henry made up what was left of his mind. The answer came so clearly the hypothermia couldn't blur it. Everything made sense. It was time to say goodbye. The party approached its ending. Henry didn't want to stay longer than he was welcome.

The old man lowered his chest back into the water and began to stroke his way forward. He spun mid stroke and settled on his back. His blackened toes wiggled and splashed in his boots. He took big strokes with his arms, paddling with his feet.

As Henry swam this farewell backstroke, he would pull in bodies as he passed, bodies he had slain. He collided with the lonely dancer and pulled him from the current. "Join the party," Henry humored and bade in a voice drowning in slushed spit.

His arm would wrap around an elbow, an ankle, a neck, and gently pull it inward, like a hug. He said good bye and released them. Good bye, Bavilla. Good bye Lee.

The twenty foot journey lasted almost an hour. Henry enjoyed his last moments wishing well to those he had hurt. At last, he arrived at his door step. He grabbed the door knob and pulled himself back upright.

Spots clouded his vision more than the shadows of a six month night. Drool flowed invisibly from his chapped, charred lips. Henry used the last of his strength to push the door open. And the flood took over from there.

The pressure of the stream burst into his back once it connected with the outside current. The water rammed Henry into the door, wedging himself stuck against the water rushing against the other side. The old man could only sit and drown, no fight left. But the water from the inside held its own and finally shoved the old man into the river.

He barely kept his balance as he moved, but maintained his head above water long enough to look back at his home. The bodies of the damned and the misunderstood started spilling out the windows as they buckled. A few of his old enemies even managed to chase him out the front door. The trailer was buckling from the weight and pressure of the flood. Henry had opened the door for them all.

One more glance to the sunset and his eyes slid shut with the night. Perhaps the smile was frozen like his beard. The dead accountant twirled in the meshing streams as he made his way to the sea. He danced alone which is how he wanted it. A soldier's life is a lonely one to lead.