Damn Virginians (JeffMads)

:3:

"Call me son......one more time....."

Alexander coughed the dust and soot out of his weakened lungs as the dry tears creeped out of his closed eyelids. His fist clenched around the black headset as voices echoed from the speakers.

"Hamilton? Hamilton! Do you copy?"

George looked down at a Alexander's small frame as he sat with his knees to his chest, back to George.

"Alex....."

Alexander lifted his head upwards toward the ceiling of the crashed black helicopter as dust and dirt swirled around them. Wires hung from all directions along with broken chairs that were sprawled along the ceiling.

"...we're gonna die here..." He muttered as he closed his eyes. "God realized his mistake of letting me live the first time...."

"Alexander that's not tru-"

"YOU KNOW IT IS!" Alexander snapped, standing up to face George. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his uniform and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Angrily, with bitter tears, he unfolded the paper and began yelling its contents

"I take up my pen just to give you an imperfect account of one of the most dreadful Hurricanes that memory or any records whatever can trace, which happened here on the 31st ultimo at night.

It began about dusk, at North, and raged very violently till ten o'clock. Then ensued a sudden and unexpected interval, which lasted about an hour. Meanwhile the wind was shifting round to the South West point, from whence it returned with redoubled fury and continued so 'till near three o'clock in the morning.

Good God! what horror and destruction. It's impossible for me to describe or you to form any idea of it. It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place. The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into angles.

A great part of the buildings throughout the Island are levelled to the ground, almost all the rest very much shattered; several persons killed and numbers utterly ruined; whole families running about the streets, unknowing where to find a place of shelter; the sick exposed to the keenness of water and air without a bed to lie upon, or a dry covering to their bodies; and our harbours entirely bare. In a word, misery, in all its most hideous shapes, spread over the whole face of the country. A strong smell of gunpowder added somewhat to the terrors of the night; and it was observed that the rain was surprisingly salt. Indeed the water is so brackish and full of sulphur that there is hardly any drinking it.

My reflections and feelings on this frightful and melancholy occasion, are set forth in the following self-discourse.

Where now, oh! vile worm, is all thy boasted fortitude and resolution? What is become of thine arrogance and self sufficiency? Why dost thou tremble and stand aghast? How humble, how helpless, how contemptible you now appear-"

Alexander was suddenly cut off by a tight embrace from George. The letter slipped from Alexander's hand and fluttered to the ground.

"Listen to me son...this won't be like when you were seventeen. You won't be alone. You're going to live through this. Because I need you alive. We all need you alive. Can you do that for me son?"

Alexander could hear the words son ring in his ears like the broken bell. They were louder than any of his conflicting thoughts. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he head held by George tightly. His lip quivered as he remembered his father's last words before he walked out that oak wood door.