The Pounding Rain: Chapter One
A bright, cold, white light was shining onto his closed eyelids. They slowly opened, revealing bloodshot eyes, then closed again. A few minutes later, he opened them again. His eyes hurt, but considering that his body was an entire incantation of pain, his eyes were nothing.
McCall rolled painfully onto his stomach. Slowly, trying to move as little as possible. The first things he saw were the remains of his home, almost completely warped and destroyed by the ravaging flames.
McCall stretched out his arms, fingers digging into the hard-packed earth, and with a thrust, propelled himself forward. First the house.
After ten slow minutes of this travelling, pausing every few minutes to take a few rasping breaths, then continuing, he was lying in front of the charred door frame.
McCall reached out a hand to the right post of his blackened doorway, and knuckles whitening, propped himself up to a kneeling position.
Still holding the doorway for support, he painfully, shakily, stood up. He felt blood trickling it's way down his back. He took a tottering step forward. Agony shot up his legs to his chest, and he gasped. But he steeled himself, and took a few more throbbing steps, bent, facing the floor.
He looked around for the remains of his wife, but found nothing. She'd been right int the epicenter of the fire-storm. McCall's eyes scanned the room, but anything that might have been useful had long burned to ash.
His home had been small, with a table to the right of the room, a small kitchenette at the back, in an alcove, and a ladder leading up to the loft where the children had once slept.
Hot tears welled up in his eyes, and he turned away, back outside, a tear slowly streaking it's way to the corner of his mouth, where it hung for a moment, the sun's morning rays catching it, before it dropped onto the ground.
He made his way slowly to the side of the house, where the large barrel of water had once stood, and which was now severely blackened, most of the wood destroyed.
Beside it lay two charred forms of what had once been human, but now their countenance was vile, monstrous, inhuman.
Tears were streaming down his face. McCall's eyes couldn't avert themselves of what once had been his children. He turned away, facing the place where he had fallen unconscious, and walked a few steps, until the torment defeated him, and he fell onto all fours, crawling forwards, cursing the murderers of himself and his family with each passing second.
Finally he reached the edge of the clearing, and rested for a few minutes, then continued in the direction of a small creek, not far from the house. If you were able to walk.
McCall could see the creek now, and after a few moments, reached it, and submerged his head under the cold, clear water, and felt the water giving him strength, new life, and the ability to think clearly.
He studied his reflection. A strained, bloody, haggard face, surrounded by long, brown, wavy hair, and a goatee beard, stared intensely back at him.
McCall thought about his wounds, and realized that there was nothing he could really do right now. He had lost a lot of blood, and was going to lose more, but as long as he ate well, his body would slowly create new blood. No, what worried him most right now was the risk of an infection, as a lot of dirt had come into his wounds, and although it was mostly clean, he was still worried.
Food and drink he could probably get along the way, but the question was in which direction he should go. If he followed the direction the riders had taken, he would enter a barren, freezing, hostile desolation, where there was no human residence for days, even for a healthy man, and survival would be practically impossible.
The odds were already against him as they were.
But if he went in the opposite direction, he would find water and food, and after a few weeks he would come to a small town if he remembered rightly, for he had shut himself off from society, as everything he needed had been provided from nature.
A healthy man, in good weather, and with plenty of provisions, would arrive in the town in a few days, but in his condition it would take him about two weeks.
Maybe never.
And he needed clothes. McCall only had a shirt, pants, and boots right now.
The discarded blanket, in the clearing.
He crawled to the blanket, and hefted it up. It was very heavy, and he didn't fancy the prospect of lugging it behind him for days, but at least it would keep him alive.
Hopefully.
He slowly vanished into the trees, on the road for vengeance.
