A girl approaches the body nailed on the cross-skittish, slow steps. There was a smell of decaying flesh sharp, overwhelming, clinging to nostrils with that certain intensity that spoke of horrors that once occurred here.
Before her lay the corpse that had been ravaged beyond recognition. Flesh hung loose in tatters on the bones and was discolored, while some of the inner organs that had spilled out now seemed congealed into a noisome mass. The gaze shifted, studying with a sort of eerie detachment. No amount of scrutiny could reveal to her sight the identity of the poor soul whose body time and violence had so defiled.
The reality stared back in all gruesomeness as she looked around: strewn all over were not only villagers but soldiers, too-their uniforms torn and saturated with the blood of a forgotten war. A little distance ahead, a huge hunk of rusting metal stared back at her. On coming closer, it revealed itself-a tank carcass, its armor broken, its once-formidable figure reduced to scrap pieces.
She knelt beside the bodies of the fallen soldiers and mechanically searched their bodies. In the ruins of what they had, she managed to find cans of food and a dusty bottle of fruit juice. Curiosity flashed in her eyes as she opened it and took a sip, but after one moment of hope, it turned to disgust as she had to spit it out, sour and rancid.
With a soft, resigned sigh, she turned away and let her eyes drop to the pile of discarded signs on the ground nearby. She picked them up one after another, reading the messages scrawled across each:
She had let the signs fall one by one, her face a mask, and kept walking as crunching debris softly serenaded her boots.
A little further from there, she saw what was left of the building: its walls all smeared with blood that was now dry, the messages thereon speaking of desperation and woe; some begged for someone to help them, while others were farewell notes and some cries of longing and other prayers to a God no longer answering.
She came upon a checkpoint up the road, its barricades ineffective to block her path in its present state. All about lay the bodies of the soldiers and others with different kinds of strange uniform arrangements. Torn, with blood on them - such seemed to be the hallmarks or badges of respect, it seemed.
One caught her eye-how someone held in dear, tight to the body some form of book into their chest area. She crouched and pried the book free. Opening the cover, she found the pages covered in enough blood to obscure any words. With a heavy sigh, she tucked the book into her satchel and turned toward the other bodies. Each one clutched a book just like this one, as if it were some final anchor against some raging sea of madness.
As she trudged on, her limbs ached with weariness. Maybe it was from her earlier sprint through the construction area. She stopped, and then, after peering around for some form of shelter, found herself going into the ruins of some sort of unfamiliar building. The architecture told her that this had once been important, though all semblances of its beauty were now gone.
Inside, a gruesome sight of bodies upon bodies was there-the mass grave of the people who had lost all their hope and clung obstinately to their faith. Amidst the carnage, a small notebook had fallen on the ground; she stooped down and picked it up, flipping the pages.
Her face inscrutable, she flung aside the notebook that had written, in a mad scurry of pencil marks. Now she moved along the wrecked shell that seemed once to be such a great altar.
She stood in front of it, breathed deeply, and allowed herself to stay in that second of silence. Then from nowhere, anger burst out from inside her. Taking out the gun, she sprayed bullets over the altar, the echoing ringing sound in the hollowness. Her furor spent, her body folded into the ground, weighted by the boulder-size burden at her shoulders.
She lay still and silent, for one long moment, amidst ruins of broken faith and prayers forgotten.