Memories of dead men...

Memories of Dead men…
It’s a cold, windy morning in southern Los Angeles. There’s a bar on 69th street and in the corner of this bar, a tall, dark suited man with a briefcase is holding a photograph, in this photograph there are four tall men. One of them appearing to be the suited man. These men are all dressed in army attires. The man gets up and leaves the bartender a tip, whilst picking up his suitcase and then walking outside and hailing a cab.
The scene changes. The cab arrives at a graveyard, the suited man turn around and says “wait here a minute will you, I need to do something” the cab driver replies “ok pal, be real quick”.
The man walks over to a secluded grave, the writing engraved on the stone reads ‘Martin, Aaron and Colin Stone, we will miss you. All of you. Goodbye’ the suited man then lays the photograph down in front of the grave. And then returns to the cab, the cab then drives away, towards a storm… on encountering the storm a barrage of heavy rain pounded the cab, the rain completely blinded the cab driver, “GODDAMN! The wipers are busted” he screamed he got out to try and repair the broken window wiper.
The suited man thought to himself ‘he’s been out there an awful long time I should check if he’s alright’ he got out stood up and scanned the area for the cab driver but he was nowhere to be seen. So the suited man got back in and sat twiddling his thumbs while thinking about what to do next and started to have flashbacks about what happened.
Afghanistan 2009, the four men from the photograph are sitting in a military Humvee driving in a convoy headed to Qalat, southwest Afghanistan. The convoy had gotten from word from Overlord (a recon team situated outside of Qalat) that the militia had obtained WMD’s (more precisely 2 nuclear warheads capable of wiping out an entire city) the convoy were forced to turn around and head back to base but before they could escape the city, the leader of the militia Mohamed Farrah aidid had ordered the militia in the centre of Qalat to trigger the WMD’s. meanwhile 18 miles away the four men from the photograph were driving quickly out of the city they saw the blast happen immiedietly stopped got out and ran to the nearest house the suited man made but the three men from the photograph didn’t and the suited man watched them be blasted into nothing like dust.
Back in the cab the suited man awakes from his flashback the cab driver reappeared and said “fixed those darned wipers” but by this time the rain had ceased and they carried on driving, now in ohio the cab driver stopped and said “were here, that’ll be 30 dollars buddy” the suited man replied “ok here you go thanks”. The cab driver said “wait it’s been one long ride, I didn’t catch your name” the suited man turned around and said “ And you won’t” then walked away, but dropped something. The cab driver got out picked it up, looked around for the suited man but he was nowhere to be found, it seems he dropped his identification it said ‘ Stone, James Aged: 29 Gender: male occupation: ex – serviceman….

A short story by Sam Trevorrow