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They never stop coming.
I suppose it makes sense. They call it the Overflow for a reason. At least I’m prepared to deal with these horrors; many others weren’t nearly as lucky.
“Firefighter, are you ready?” To my left is Sniper, who’s fiddling with his goggles. Before all of this happened, we had merely been coworkers. “I just checked, the coast is clear. We have to hurry.”
We got separated from our team a couple of minutes ago. It could hardly be called a team in the first place — we were merely one of a few dozen who had been stranded during the beginning of the Overflow Wars, and had been trying to return to civilization for a few weeks now.
“I’m all stocked up on fuel. Let’s go.”
—
In the absence of one sense, the others are sharpened. I can’t see much since we blocked off the windows and doors, but I can smell the redolence of burnt flesh, and more importantly, I can hear Sniper’s labored breathing.
At least he’s alive, I tell myself. But there’s no guarantee he’ll be alive for much longer.
“Firefighter.” His voice is shaky but firm. From his bloodied, crumpled figure in the corner, it’s difficult to imagine a voice coming from him at all. “The necromancer’s coming up the stairs.”
I take out my axe. The weight of the axe includes unpleasant memories, thoughts that I’d rather blot out from my consciousness, making my arms tremble, and in the moment I wanted nothing more than to put it back and forget it existed. But Sniper’s pitiful figure is still fresh in my mind. I looked back at him, as if to reassure myself that he wasn’t simply a hallucination.
“You don’t need to look at me like that. I can still shoot.” With what I’m sure is no small effort, he crouches down and readies his rifle. Even without the ability to see through walls, I can hear the apprentice’s footsteps growing louder.
*"I’ll help break down the door, just be ready for what comes next."*
“Ha, as if I ever miss.”
—
When I have to use my axe, I prefer doing so during fits of adrenaline. It numbs the memories. The decision to pull out the weighty weapon feels natural, and for a few precious moments I feel a sense of normalcy as I swing the axe over my head, feeling its heavy head embed itself into some poor thing’s skull—
My head hurts. Something is in front of me, and it wants to hurt me. I raise my axe to defend myself, but the effort is useless, and this time, someone else’s axe is swung in a wide arc into my torso. The armored figure in front of me crumples to the ground with an echoing bang, which takes me a few moments to understand was a gunshot.
“Firefighter!” It’s so difficult to move. My body doesn’t seem to want to listen to me. I must seem so pitiful right now, struggling to lift myself. What I can see of myself hardly resembles a living body. “Firefighter, come on, I’ll take you to Assistant.”
“I’ll only slow you down.” Despite my protests, I feel Sniper shift my weight in an attempt to get me upright. The thought of how much pain I’ll be in once the adrenaline wears out is daunting. “Don’t let your feelings get in the way, Sniper, remember? They’ve drilled this into us since the beginning. You need to let me go.”
“You know that shit doesn't apply here anymore.” Step by step, we painstakingly make our way from the small puddle of my blood. I don’t really want to move, but Sniper seems to be stubborn enough for the both of us. “Things are different now. Everything’s different now. And you— we’re different now, too.”
He makes a sound that could have been a chuckle. I wish I could respond, but I can’t seem to formulate words, only produce undignified noises. I’m sorry, Sniper. I think you’re carrying a dead man, and there’s so much I want to say to you.
“We’ve been together since the beginning of this mess, Firefighter, and I’ll be damned if we aren’t together by the end of it, too.”
I’m not entirely sure what he’s saying, but it seems so nice and he sounds so certain that I smile anyway.
—
The team had to lower their standards for “civilization.” Most population centers had been fashioned into war machines of some kind at this point. For us, it’s just the same old work.
It’s always exciting to use my flamethrower. Unlike the axe, it brought me comfort and safety. This is my real calling; to bring fire down on the wicked and impure, to absolve them of their filth and sin until all that was left was pure, smoldering ash.
The silver lining of the Overflow is that it provided me with plenty of monsters to purify. I can tell that the others on this team are afraid of me, but what I offer is too valuable for any of them to disparage me. Back then, our actual team was afraid of me, too. They thought I was a maniac, a psychopath, a monster, but if I really was a psychopath, I’d be using my axe a lot more.
Sniper always thanked me for making his job easier, and he never called me any of those things. Maybe that’s why I’ve stuck with him all this time.
It is painful to put away my flamethrower in the face of adversaries, but plywood is very flammable, and they prefer the building intact. I am, unfortunately, perfectly calm when I take out my axe. Don’t think about the blood, don’t think about the weight, close your eyes if you have to, and swing. I hit something that splatters a cold liquid over my face, and from there the natural course of action is to keep hitting it until it dies.
Later, a noob shyly approaches me and hands me a bowl of whatever soup was for dinner that night. I was confused by the gesture until I realized he was on the same squad as me earlier, at which point I sheepishly thanked him for the bowl. He nods with a small smile and leaves me to my corner.
Sniper was needed on more distant missions for his scouting capabilities, so he was not here tonight, nor would he be here for the next week or so. That’s what he told me. It’s a real shame, since I’ve found myself missing his presence with alarming frequency these days.
With nothing better to do, I go outside and stare at the sunset. Maybe if I squinted hard enough I could trick myself into thinking the setting sun was a massive fire, approaching us from the horizon. The thought makes me smile.
—
Firefighter had quirks that were few in quantity but high in quality (or at least distinctiveness.) For one, the less he used his axe on a given day, the more emotionally stable he’d be, and vice versa. For another, Firefighter had no malice towards people, despite what many thought. It’s just that his love of fire was off-putting for most, and he hated when people got in the way of it.
I couldn’t find him when I came back to the base. I must have asked over half the team where they last saw him before I found him in the darkest corner of one of the hallways, hunched over himself like a puppet with its strings cut. That accursed axe sat in his lap, and although I could not see his face, I knew he must have been staring at it for quite some time now. I walked over to him with footsteps as loud and obvious as I could manage, then sat down next to him.
Early on, I noticed that many enemies shared the same few expressions, which took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to recognize; fear, anger, resignation. From the moment I learned to recognize those expressions, I began to savor the moments where I was the cause for them.
Firefighter’s head snapped towards me with eyes blown wide open. You never told me why that axe disturbs you so much, or why you still keep it around, but I never want to see that look on you.
“Sniper…?” With my hand on the axe I could tell his grip on the handle was flimsy at best, but even so I didn’t dare to move a muscle. “I…”
I swallowed dryly.
“I’m going to take this from you.” I watch him closely for his reaction. “Is that okay?”
Firefighter nods weakly. I slip the axe out of his hands and place it to the side, out of his sight.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I couldn’t help but want to pry. Besides, it was a genuine question; I really don’t know what he thinks he has to apologize to me for. Firefighter flinches away from my gaze, obscuring his face from me. I sighed.
Our old team all had skeletons in our closets. Strictly professionally speaking, we were not supposed to disclose any personal information about ourselves to each other, but that had gone down the drain pretty quickly. You can only put your life in the hands of someone else for so long before you start to trust them at least a little. Firefighter never said anything specific about his past, but what little he did say was enough; we all knew not to pry.
I hope that one day he will trust me enough to tell me what happened to him, and then maybe we can work through it together. I have been hoping for longer than I care to admit. Perhaps I had been hoping for this, for his trust, my entire life, long before I even met him.
Oh. He was sniffling. I reached out to cup his face, which seemed to give the confidence to look at me again. His eyes shone wet with tears that had yet to fall.
“For hiding everything from you.”
“That’s okay.” Truth to be told— “I haven’t told you everything either. It’s hard, isn’t it? To put it to words.”
“…Yeah.” Firefighter swallows, and I feel the motion through my hand. “I think… I’ll tell you soon.”
I try not to show my excitement. Just this once, Sniper. Don’t be selfish. Just for him.
“Take your time.”