The mill.

Milo labored to open his eyes. Almost imperceptibly at first then slightly faster as the sight of the smoky haze was filtered through his eyes and became accepted by his swirling mind.
"Where am I?" he thought as his eyes snapped fiercely open.
He pushed back violently into the arms of the two bystanders that were holding him.
"Take it easy." Sergeant Martinez of the Morefield Sheriffs Office calmly reassured, the words falling from his lips exactly as he'd said them a thousand times before to a thousand different, troubled souls.
"You've just fainted. Too much jogging I'd say," he said as he looked at Milo dressed in a grimy, stained sweatshirt, shorts and runners.
"Doesn't help when you choose to run through this filthy part of town. These fumes will kill you, sure as shootin',  if you keep this up." Martinez advised.
"You don't want to survive three tours in the sandpit just to die by your own hometown air now do you?"
"Wha...no, course not." Milo stammered as he desperately fought to regain his senses.
The smoke was the same. Damn it, the smoke was exactly the same as that caused by the IED that Brammer had kicked. His ears were ringing.
"The flies, where were the flies?  That sulfur smell? " These and other questions pounded on Milo's fragile psyche.
The frozen roadway he sat on as the well-meaning strangers propped him up was asphalt, not the filthy brown dirt of the road outside of Basra?  Milo panicked.
"Mal!" he suddenly screamed. "Bramson, where's Bramson!" he pleaded as tears began to flow down his pale, stubbled cheeks. His fingers clawed at the freshly ironed, brown shirt of Martinez.
"Milo," the soothing Sergeant began, "you're home Milo. You're on the road outside the Morefield Steel Works, see?" he said as he gestured his sweeping hand toward the towering black chimneys looming in front of them. Chimneys that spat their fetid gasses into the late December, Morefield sky.
Suddenly his mind coalesced. Mal Bramson was in the Houston VA, undergoing the latest brutal surgery in his never ending quest to walk again, still hopelessly addicted to the life sucking opiates that gave him some peace. Milo's steadfast warriors mind rallied him.
"I'm okay now thanks, Sheriff," he said almost too quickly.
Panic was setting in. No one must find out, not when he's so close.
"I'd better run you home." said Martinez in a voice that offered no alternative of a refusal.
He pulled Milo all the way to his feet and ushered him into his waiting squad car. The engine had been running so it was warm inside, warm and welcoming. Milo felt no guilt in accepting the Sheriffs ride. If only Sergeant Ruiz Martinez knew what Milo was conspiring to do he'd be placing him in the rear with handcuffs on and a rough downward push on his head rather than in the front with a comforting, gentle pat on the back.
Silence pervaded the cruiser as Martinez drove at a leisurely pace through the quiet, empty streets of their town. The steel mill had been there as long as any living resident could remember. It was the town's life's blood. Unless unusually gifted or inordinately bright, all Morefield youth seemed destined to either work in the mill or join the military. Those were the only choices Morefield High Schools guidance counselors had been offering for decades. Some of the girls were accidently gifted with early pregnancies. This ensured their lives were to be full of drudgery, squalling children and broken dreams. Lives often punctuated by a weekly payday beating at the hands of their defeated, drunken spouses. They were destined to repeat the same brutal cycles of violence that had plagued their own miserable homes as children. Milo, a solitary youth, had chosen the Army and specialized in Explosive Ordinance Disposal. The Army had trained him well. It was the proudest day of his lonely life when he was awarded the crossed lightning bolts behind an inverted bomb badge. Milo had a passion for his work and viewed it as his calling. He was good at it too. Three tours of Iraq had seen him defuse 73 devices and detonate countless more. His ordered, military world came crashing down the day Mal Bramson kicked the IED by mistake. It wasn't his fault. No one had noticed the wires under the dog carcass until Mal kicked it aside on that gruesome day. He'd paid with his legs. Milo was to endure unseeable, yet no less devastating wounds as a result of the explosion.
Martinez slowed the cruiser and stopped outside Milos home.
"Tell your Mom I said hi," called Martinez as Milo stepped from the car.
"Sure thing," said Milo as he hurried up the short path to the shabby door.
The front door had been unlocked ever since Milo could remember, as were most others in Morefield. People still trusted each other in this closeted, east coast, industrial town. After all, everybody knew everybody else. If something had been stolen it was only a short matter of time before the whole town knew who the transgressor was. Milo hurried through the house and into the garage that was attached to the side of the house through an internal door.
As he passed the lounge he called, "Hey, mom," to his mother.
His mother barely noticed him. She'd been unwell of late since her husband had passed and generally spent her days in an over stuffed chair in front of the television with her soap operas. She saw nothing of the garage that Milo had so carefully padlocked. In fact, Milos mother saw nothing more of the world than what the soaps offered and that was just fine by her.
Once inside the gloom of the small garage Milo relaxed. His still trembling fingers flicked the light switch upwards. The glaring white fluorescent light drove the darkness away and lit the room. It was just as he'd left it. Nothing seemed to have been moved at all. The van in the center of the room still held the eight 44 gallon barrels stacked in the rear. It was all still there as were the myriad of red, blue and green wires that interconnected them all and bound them together into one, single, monstrous, immoral mass. He could see through the open, sliding passengers door that all was as he'd left it earlier in the day. It had been the van that his dad had driven to work in the coke ovens at the mill for 6 days a week before he'd passed from the despicable lung cancer that had eaten him alive. It was an old, dark blue, mid-seventies Chevrolet van with some small rust pockets here and there, but it was still in good, running order. Milo had seen to that. The barrels were full to capacity, their savage contents mixed in exactly the correct ratios. The Army had taught him well, but Haji had taught Milo the tricks. The shortcuts and ratios of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil that would cause the maximum amount of damage to solid structures and render soft, vulnerable human flesh into a fine, red mist. Milo had been a keen student of their destructive recipes. The nitrate had been the hardest to get. He'd had to raid farms near and far and only steal small quantities from each that wouldn't be missed immediately. It was winter so the chances of someone noticing the missing fertilizer was slight. The fuel oil had been easier. The van was diesel powered so Milo had spent weeks driving through nearby towns, filling the fuel tank and then siphoning it out when back in the anonymous safety of his garage. The wiring he'd stripped from old, abandoned homes that stood rotting on the outskirts of town. He'd had to lie to Mr. Astill in the electronics shop. He'd said he was building a ham radio to get the few smaller, yet vital components necessary for his vile construction. The final piece of this vehicle laden abomination was the detonator. It sat in pieces on his fathers workbench. The same bench that his father had crafted wooden toys for Milo on during his one day of rest when Milo had been a child. Long before the cancer had started to nonchalantly devour his fathers lungs. The cancer that had turned a once vibrant, tall, powerful man into a stooped, pale, skeleton of a figure, racked with pain, incontinent and too weak to stand. Carcinogens from the steel mill had infiltrated his breathing functions from the age of 15 when he'd first started working there. Milo's father was never gifted or overly intelligent, but he'd been a good, loving father and husband. His inescapable death had destroyed his mother's will. It seems she sat in that over stuffed chair waiting, almost begging for death's final kiss. Milo would set it right. Quickly, nervously, almost excitedly he assembled the murderous trigger. He felt a tremendous sense of justice that he was working on such a thing in this place.

Milo wasn't jogging when the sight of the smoke over the mill had driven his mind back to that blood soaked street in Basra. The very point where so many had lost so much. The acrid, smoky haze and the sulfurous stench had triggered him so badly that he'd fainted from a sensory overload that his mind, in all it's confusion, couldn't handle. It was his mentalities way of stopping itself from tearing apart. Milo had been watching the mill as he'd been doing for weeks. He watched the guard at the gate, old and slow. He'd watched the shift changes and saw who came and went. He'd watched the processes of the mill and had calculated just where and when his human guided missile would cause the greatest amount of damage and the most carnage. All was ready. Hurriedly, confidently he installed the trigger. No test possible with this device but he was certain it would work. Haji had been an exemplary teacher. Milo slowly entered the house and approached his mother. He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She didn't react at all.
"I love you Mom," he whispered to her as he backed slowly away. Still no sign that she'd heard a thing but that was okay too.

The electric opener on the garage door screeched in protest as it raised its burden. His father's shadowy van slid out into the quiet, dark, tree lined street, Milo at the wheel. Headlights piercing the night, his deadly companions in the rear, slightly swaying with the movement of the van.
"Careful now, drive slowly, don't raise suspicion. Be cool", he thought. "just be cool and all will be as it should."
Milo turned from his street onto the highway that lead to the mill. He was lost in thought and failed to see Ruiz Martinez parked on a side street in a black, unmarked Police car. He didn't see Martinez radio the twelve FBI and Homeland Security vehicles parked one block over. Milo simply didn't notice them pull in behind him as he drove slowly along either. There'd be no more nightmares. No more waking in the small hours of the morning screaming into his sweat soaked pillow. In his mind the highway turned to filthy brown dirt. Buildings gave way to mud and straw dwellings. The Adhan wailed overhead calling all to prayer. The lights of the steel mill loomed in the distance.
"I'm bringing you home dad." whispered Milo as he gently gripped the trigger.
Several dark vans, like trailing sharks, began to drive on each side of Milo, but he didn't see them. He was hearing the song of the Imam, calling the faithful to worship,
"Not long now Dad." he murmured,
The blue van sailed on through the chill night. Milo, in his own fractured mind, was finally at peace.


2000 word count.