Dog Tags

Prologue

This book is in the progress of being rewritten. Some chapters do not yet mix. You have been warned.

Prologue

“Puddles”

March 1, 2028

            Rain fell like sheets of cold ice, pooling into heavy puddles all along the soaked grass. Even the Earth was mourning for the day, its eyes crying large tears that dampened the crowd. Each person was huddled against the trees, willows that waved angrily with a lashing wind. Their heads were lowered to the ground.

            All were laced in black, the color of despair and crushed dreams. The color of death.

            While my little brother and father were protected by a sheet of plastic, protected from the tears of pain and agony, I stood alone, my head held level to watch. The rain picked up, hitting the ground roughly, bouncing off the grass and falling into my black ballet flats. Cold, icy rain, a breath of depression, a chill of fear.

            A lengthy man stood behind the shadow of graves, preaching quietly about the depression of losing yet another young soul. My heart twisted tightly, squeezing in solemn sadness. You will not cry. You will not cry. An American flag was draped across a cedar wood coffin, dark red wood, the color of crimson blood.

            The little blond haired boy I recognized as my brother began to sob, uncontrollably, pressed into my father’s dark shirt and pants. He was so young, too young to experience this. His eyes, olive and ashamed of his tears, tried to beat the pain away, but it was impossible. Even my father had tears streaming down his face, thick against his dark stubble trailing down his jaw.

            Another sharp wind cut through my soaking wet clothes, making me shudder. Why wasn’t I crying? Other than the fact that I told myself not to? Thunder rumbled in the distance, making me jump. He usually was there when the first storm of spring happened. He usually sat on our roof and watched the beautiful rain patter along the beach outside of our home. He was the only one I wanted to watch the storm with. The man I’d been so keen on seeing again, so passionate about keeping close was gone.

            My brother was gone.

            I was hit with the thought so hard that my breath caught in my throat. I’d been so high on denial that falling hard to the ground knocked the wind out of me, my fingers shaking hard. As the preacher removed the flag from his coffin, he folded it up and slowly walked over to me, only me, and laying it into my shivering hands, his colorless eyes trying to be warm. With a closer look, I spotted signatures, lazy or drawled. The first tears began to pour past the barriers, falling onto the soaked flags. My aching heart burst in thousands of pieces, shattering over and over again. I opened my lips to say something yet no words even thought of forming.

            As he returned to closed coffin, he nodded to the three guards with weapons locked and loaded. One shouted something, making the others raise the barrel of their guns in to the air and shoot, once, twice, three times, before the thunder echoed the last shot and the coffin was slowly lowered into the ground. My body fell to the ground, still clutching the flag tightly to my chest. “Davy…” I whispered softly, watching as the last of the blood cedar was set in the ground.

            Rain pooled around my knees like tears. Puddles formed deep under my grey dress, the hope disappearing under the ground he was buried. His oh-so dark eyes gone forever.

            Yet as the storm pounded around me, my mind connected the dots. How I could avenge him. How I could kill the one who slaughtered my brother.