Drake

I walk through the town, passing by a large tent.
There are moans. Groans. Wails. The sounds of sobbing beings.

The sign of a plague is everywhere. Sick people laying on the floor, waiting to die. Piles of corpses lay around, set on fire. This town is a town divided. One half perfect and peaceful. The other chaotic and dying.

I notice that a small boy lays on the floor, a woman cradling him. His mother.
She weeps hysterically, her hair in a messy bun, tears streaking down her dirt caked face.
"Mom. I'll be okay, Mom," the boy says, coughing. A hoarse, broken cough. Not as bad as the other coughs, which are more like hacks. The boy has a mild case...but still deadly.

The mother does not answer. Instead, her cries die down to whimpers. Her body convulses. Foam runs from her mouth as her eyes roll back. She clings to her son, and then falls over.

"Mom." the boy says firmly, sitting up. "Mom? ...Mom!" He grows anxious, eyes wide as he inspects his mother. Her fingers are still curled around his shirt. As if she can help him now; as if she can protect him, even in death.

The boy looks horrified. He sits by his mother and shakes her, the shaking growing in speed and desperation.
"No! Don't leave me! D-Don't go!" He buries his face in his mothers dress, inhaling her familiar scent of perfume and pumpkin spice, from when she makes her pies.
"Don't leave me like father did! O-Or my brothers! MOTHER!" He is yelling now, the sound muffled into her dress.

No one notices the boy. Everyone is preoccupied with their own problems. People dealing with the sickness. Parents grieving over their now dead children. The sounds of disease and devastation overcome the wails of the boy. Some people run amuck, panicking that they will be next to die. But no one is there for the boy as his last family dies.

The boy is alone. And he knows it.

He stays there for a long time, oblivious to what goes on around him. Completely clueless.

He does not know what the other side of town plans to do. He does not know that the clean side, the healthy side, can not take it. The remaining half of the town does not want this illness. The wealthy do not want disease. So... they unleash the bombs. A merciless act. An act of a desperate, selfish man.

The boy lays among his lifeless family. In an instant, he is thrown back, his frail, sickly body slamming into a wall. Suddenly, everything erupts into flames. All the bodies. All the tents. Every measly home either catches fire or explodes.

The boy scrambles to his feet and runs as fast as he can, squeezing through the panicking crowds of the sick. He runs under a tent, seeking shelter, not knowing what else to do.

Then the tent collapses. It falls onto the boy. He is consumed in fire,a shrill scream resounding from his lungs as he reaches out a hand, trying to escape the flames.

And then the scene dissapears.

I quickly sit up, my body drenched in sweat from the intensity of the nightmare. The memory that has messed with my thoughts for so long. I can't help running my hand over my scarred and burnt face. Half of it is gone, the flesh melted, my face being a horrendous chunk of old, burnt skin. The only thing not affected is my hair and my right eye. My whole body is covered in the burns from that night. That night that changed everything.

I put my mask on, it covering my deformed face, all except for that one eye. I then get off my bed and sling my gun over my shoulder, looking around the dumpy apartment.

I am a bounty hunter now.
I am no longer that helpless boy, screaming for his mother.
...I am Drake.