WE HEARD BOMBING LAST NIGHT

[DeJaVu]

8 January 3073 FSN is pleased to publish this fifteen-part excerpt of a journal recently unearthed on Kentares, dating from the Kentares Massacre itself. In these dark times, the knowledge that we have always fought against the darkness is comforting as we fight against the encroaching zealotry of the Word of Blake.
We heard bombing last night. I was up at the minehead, taking a watch. A bunch of planes went overheard, headed toward Harwell or maybe Winton. I’m not sure there’s anything left in Harwell to bomb. Must have been Winton. I’m not sure. It was loud, wherever it was.
I don’t know if they heard it down in the mines. They’re pretty deep—old copper mines—and the ground soaks up a lot of sound. It was me and Hakama on watch. He had a rifle. I didn’t know what we were supposed to do, but Old Man Fuller had us watching.
“We’re going to die here,” Hakama said, after the last plane went over.
“I didn’t plan on dying anywhere else,” I told him. It was the truth—so truthful, in fact, it made me laugh. I’d never wanted to leave Kentares. I did always figure it’d be old age that killed me, though.
“I mean, they’re going to kill us.” Hakama was looking toward the trees but he wasn’t seeing them. I could tell. There were times I didn’t see them, either. You’d blink and see something else, someone else. Some time else.
And then you’d blink again, and it’d be the trees and the rocks and the cold and the gnawing certainty in your gut that you were going to die.
“Yeah,” I said.