Sugarcane

The train ride is a moment of peace. Like the walk from the prison to the nameless town, you are alone in the journey. The wind keeps words from travelling far, and all keep to themselves.\n\nIt is good to think and let the wind whip at your back. The train does not move so quickly as it might have looked, and you feel no closer to Avellino when the sun sets as when you boarded. \n\nYou lie on your side and with the smell of soil of the valleys and autumn rain, you sleep.\n\n[[To rest, to dream...]]

"Die? Aahahaha!" the man breaks into raccous laughter. "Do not be so morbid, brother. You are Nestor Galleani, correct?"\n\n"Yes, I am he." you say.\n\n"Then, brother, congratualtions are in order, for today you are free!" \n\nHis face is clearer. You do not recognize him. He is corpulent and ruddy, and wearing a freshly pressed uniform. You expected maybe the british officer, Alec, or maybe Victor, or Camillo, the sad Lombard.\n\n"Who are you?" you ask.\n\n"Who am I? I was going to be your warden. You are lucky I came here were I did. This place is deserted."\n\n[[They left me?]]

To dream is to be cold and alone. There is only moiling imagery, and what little warmth there is is always turns to burning and death.\n\nYou hold you gun. Many others are with you. Your backs are up against the earth. Your leader is younger than you by a year, and French. He speaks in accented italian and stutters, and you can see he is shivering. You're all shivering.\n\n"We are moving! 30 seconds. Do not stop. Loose formation."\n\nHe pulls out his pistol.\n\n"Have no fear, and you will survive. Run, and you will be shot." he gulps hard.\n\nA whistle blows, followed shortly after by the impact of a shell.\n\n"Now, OVER THE TOP!"\n\nHe yells and charges. Your brothers charge after him.\n\n[[So do you]]\n\n

People are mixed in with the rats. They float in the muck, and you can only tell who they are by what they marked themselves with. There's the french morrocan, Fass Maginot, who sewed cartoons onto the sleeves and back of his trench coat. There's Michael Dunchad, the englishman, or irishman, you never remember. He had a book of poems he wrote, one written every other day. It's floating in the mud, a bullet having hit it in the spine and the pages logged with mud.\n\n[[<<Back|Forward]]

You find that Avellino has become the same as Ardea. Everywhere you look, either men in those black shirts, the posters, and people looking away when they see you.\n\n"No, we have no positions for you." says one shopkeeper, and turns his back on you.\n\n"Get out, get out now before I call the police." says an innkeeper before you've even said anything, much to the laughter of the patrons.\n\n"I'm sorry..." the priest in the church says, even as the hundred red wax candles are being lit for the night, claiming that their alms have all been given away. When you ask to stay the night, he turns you away.\n\nA soldier is begging in the street, his arms completely covered in bandages, and one of his ears terribly mangled. Still, he offers you to share his [[blanket]].

The farmer is a solemn man, as he no doubt must be in these times. Half the soldiers who went with you were from farms in Sicily and places around cities like Ardea.\n\nHe is loading up his cart for the night.\n\nYou know his answer before you even get close. That was a power in the looks the kids from the farms could give. They could have been actors, every last one of them, with what they could say with just a few wrinkled lines on the forehead, a frown or a smirk.\n\nThe farmer mumbles something and you already start to turn away. His two sons give you the same piteous looks.\n\n[[<<back|Onto Ardea]]

You reach for the bundle in the man's arms, but is slips from both your grasps. His free hand grasps yours and you pull him up. He is openly weeping and you hold him in a close embrace once you are back on the path.\n\nThe weeping continues.\n\n[[You hold him until he stops]]

Down the cell block, you can hear a clinking sound, the sound of a warden's club slowly rattling across prison bars.\n\nYour prison doesn't have bars, only walls, and a small slit to let sunlight in through a dirty glass window and little latched flap to let food in.\n\nHow many years has it been? 3 since you deserted your station, 2 since you were caught, 1 since you were put here in the dark. It wasn't your fault the other prisoner called you a coward and a traitor, he should've known what would happen to him.\n\nThe clinking gets louder. Every day for 2 years you've heard him walk down with his club, stop at a door, and lead someone out. Sometimes shortly after you heard silence, sometimes you heard a short string of gunfire.\n\nThis time though, the clinking does stop in front of your door, the big metal door with only a flap in the bottom for him to shove food to you. You hear him unlatching the door, and soon it's open, and the light is so bright his face is a black shadow.\n\nYou figure, if this is the end, you might as well face it bravely.\n\n[[Am I going to die?]]

You walk into the inn. It is a finer establishment than the one before. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling, bawdy music plays while men deal out cards and smoke.\n\nA man in fine clothes comes up to you, but his smile quicky dissipates when he draws near.\n\n"No, no, no. You must leave."\n\n"But I just to ask if you have work." \n\n"Oh, we do, but, uh-" he wipes away at some dust on the shoulder of your jacket, which doesn't come off. You look at [[yourself]].\n\n"I'm afraid I must ask you to leave."\n\nSuddenly he's flanked by two men who appeared seemingly from nowhere. Their necks are huge and muscled.\n\n[[Perhaps it would be best to leave]]\n\n"Viva il Duce!" a man in black says, and his compatriots shout along with him.

Either way, you pass onwards to Salerno, and everything that awaits you there.

You will not force violence, thought he sight of the gun in her hands stirs something in you. \n\nYou are not a dog to be run out with its tail between its legs. You are - were - a soldier of the Kingdom of Italy.\n\nYou turn your back to her with your head held high, and walk out into the night, hunger and weariness be damned. You look around for other lodging.\n\nEvery other building is closed. A soft looking bench is underneath the sign with the train arrival times. Sleep does not come on the bench.\n\n[[Wait by the train station]]

The posters are all the same. Each is a simple gray background with a basic lithograph of a bundle of sticks with an axe head emerging from the top. You can't recall ever seeing it before.\n\nThe words under the posters read: "From Lombardy to Sicily, The Fasces Leads."\n\n[[<<Back|post office]]

A foot path leads you to Salerno. The way is quiet and empty, but the main roads are all blocked off.\n\nAutumn has found its way here in full stride, and the weight of the air seems to want to pull you down. It's misty and calm, and redolent of the smell of dead leaves freshly fallen.\n\n[[Stop to watch the leaves]]\n[[Trudge on]]

Rats are the one constant of any battlefield. Dead rats, live rats, rats caught in between. Rats with their hind legs still kicking even after their heads have melted off from gas. There's a hole from which rats are pouring out, and you can see it leads into another tunnel, maybe a whole network of tunnels under the earth.\n\nPink rat babies are kicked into the mud by their mothers and fathers, and then drown. Some rats have gotten their tails tangled together and have become a writhing, panicking ball of pink tails, black fur, and snapping teeth.\n\n[[<<Back|So do you]]

In the morning you are met with the clean air of a forest after a lightning storm. It's always interested you, how clean the air is after a lightning [[storm]].\n\nLuigi is in the kitchen, wrapped in blankets. His face is pale and his hair is tangled. His breath is halted and quick.\n\n"Please, a doctor..." he whispers hoarsely.\n\nYou fumble around. The nearest doctor is at least a day's march away.\n\nThis is not just the flu, but something more. You've seen this before.\n\nYou set a pot of tea, find some herbs, and slowly spoon the mixture to him. You do the same with soup, and stakc several more blankets on him.\n\nHe falls asleep, and you are left alone in the house.\n\nThere are [[chores]] to be done.

The town is a small thing, several dozen miles from the outskirts of the city of Subiaco to the north.\n\nIt is very empty and quiet for midday. You see no one in the streets, only a thin dog shambling around, taking no notice of you.\n\nYou see that this place can barely be called a town, more like an outpost to bring supplies up to the prison. There is a [[post office]], a [[hostel]], a [[restaurant]], but nothing else. The square's fountain has run dry, and every window you see is boarded up.\n\nYou see a [[train platform]] and a set of rails going south.

The hostel is actually not empty, and there are two other people here, a barmaid and a man who looks to be the proprietor.\n\nThe man comes up to you.\n\n"Hello, sir, will you be staying the night? We have a bed and some simple food if you want. Nothing more than bread and some vegetables we've grown"\n\nBread and vegetables sounds wonderful.\n\n"Of course. How much for the lot?"\n\n"20 lira." the man says.\n\n"What?" 20 lira is an appalling sum. "That's all my money. How can you expect me to pay that?"\n\n"That is the price, sir, and if you don't like it, then leave us in peace."\n\nThe barmaid is staring at the two of you intently.\n\n[[Accept and pay]]\n[[Force a deal]]\n[[<<Back|To the Town]]

The next few days pass by much like this.\n\nLuigi is intermittently conscious, and you do things together. You play [[cards]], talk [[politics]], [[culture]].\n\nIt goes on, for 3 months, until the blood [[disappears]].\n

The track ends at Avellino. The train was again full, though you were at least able to find a seat in one of the cars. Avellino is a dirtier, somber town than Ardea.\n\n[[Explore the town]]\n[[Proceed on Foot]]

You watch him blindly stumble about, calling in german to his comrades, none of whom come. He is already mortally wounded, you can tell, and blind, as well. You take your finger off the trigger. Damn everything, no force in this world would save you if you killed this pitiful creature in cold blood.\n\nHe can't be more than 16.\n\nYou watch him walk, fumble, get up, moan. Shells are still falling, faint outlines of men above the hill.\n\nHe falls into you and your gun slips from your hand. You hold him there until he finally dies.\n\n[[And now...]]

The first crater is a perfect indentation in the earth, but deceptively deep in the middle. You must wade through with your gun over your head.\n\nIt is a crawling barrage, each impact shaking the ground and sending dirt, mud, blood and metal over your head. If you could not break the lines by yourself, then God himself would stamp a path with his finger, and damn anyone caught in his way.\n\nYour foot gets caught in a mudhole.\n\nThere is gunfire up above the rim of the crater. Every step takes your entire body. You're sweating and hot, and mud is in your mouth. Metal and debris continues to rain down on you.\n\nIt as if though all the elements are trying to push you into the bubbling mire.\n\n[[Let the mud take you]]\n[[Forward]]

Though they are a little dusty. There is a uniform, but it's been eaten away by moths, and hangs ragged on it's hangar.\n\n"So friend, where will you go now?" asks Luciano. He pulls a flask and takes a short sip, offers it to you.\n\n"I'm not sure."\n\n"Well, there are plenty of options for a man like you. There's a town not too far from here, you could walk to it in a hour. They might have work for you. From there you could take the train anywhere. You are still young. A warm meal and a soft bed and all will be well." \n\nHe claps you on the back again and your stomach rumbles. It has been some time since you've eaten a fair meal, and a soft bed with a glass of wi\n\n"Thank you." you say, as he leads you out to the gates.\n\n"Brother, think nothing of it. It is the new way of things." he smiles. "Viva il Duce."\n\n[[Salute Back]]\n[[Say Nothing, keep walking]]\n\n

Shame is a feeling you have felt many times over, and you feel it now as blood rushes to your face.\n\nYou are not an animal, and what could you have done? Would you have smashed the man's head on the table, ripped the gun from the barmaid's hands?\n\nYou leave and you here the doors behind you close and the bolt slam shut.\n\nEvery other building is closed. A soft looking bench is underneath the sign with the train arrival times. Sleep does not come on the bench.\n[[Wait by the train station]]

The mud is warm and engulfing. It finds its way into every opening in your uniform, covers your every wound, your mouth, your eyes, your ears...\n\nIt blocks screaming, shelling, everything. Why resist it? Why fight it just to die screaming from an austrian's bullet? Why fight this death when another, more horrible one, is waiting for you just over the next shelled ridge?\n\n[[And now...]]

"I am sorry." says Luciano. "But know that you were lucky. THe plague took many of them. They are buried in the lot outside. Come along with me. We will find you clothes."\n\nHe takes your hand and leads you along. It is though you are in a dream. The stuco walls, the plain tan floor, the real, actual, unfiltered sunlight through the barred windows, is almost too much. It smells beautiful, earthy and wet, and you remember it is the beginning of fall.\n\nLuciano did not lie; the [[prison]] is empty.\n\nYou come to the lockers where you were forced to hand over your belongs when you first came here.\n\nTogether, you find your locker, untouched after 6 years. Your clothes are still there, along with your money, 20 lira in coinage.\n\n"Excellent. 20 lira is nothing to scoff at." says Luciano.\n\nWhen you were imprisoned, 20 lira couldn't buy you a nice meal.\n\n[[At least your clothes still fit.]]\n\n

The night air is warm and clean, and clears away the smell of tobacco and cologne. The soporific effect of the inn has left you, replaced by biting hunger.\n\n

Brucoli and Gaspard are the two, both of them younger than you by a year. Brucoli came from a poor family on the Aventine, Gaspard from a richer one on the Capitolium. THey became friends in training camp.\n\nNow they're both lying on their backs in the mud, indistinguishable from on another.\n\n[[<<Back|Forward]]

It reminds you of the past. The man, his name is Ancomo Garibaldi, mumbles for the entire night. He asks you what unit you were from, where you served, without waiting or even caring for an answer. The skin on his arms smells like rotten eggs and cinder, with the barest hint of sweetness.\n\nThe smells follows you to dreams, neither concrete nor interpretable, only dark and ugly, and you wake up to vomit.\n\nWhen the sun rises, you leave without waking Ancomo. The Salerno is not far, if you [[Proceed on Foot]], and the day seems pleasant.

...But there is no time to watch the leaves. No time when you are hungry, no time when the night is cold and dark and brings with it fever and flu and sickness.\n\nSo you trudge on and ignore the leaves. You see something up ahead.\n\nOn the side of the pass, smashed onto its side, is a wagon. One horse lies dead, another in the throes of dying. A man holds a bundle in his arms and weeps.\n\n[[I must help this man]]\n

You pull the trigger once, which clips him in the arm, then a second time, this time hitting him in the chest, bringing the soldier down.\n\nHe falls face first. His comrade rushes to assist him, you shoot him too. And then the next, and then the next, and it goes by, with you shooting men as they idiotically rush to help their fallen friend.\n\nYour gun never runs out of ammo, and you simply shoot and shoot and shoot until a mountain of people is in front of you.\n\nThe french commander appears next to you and claps you on the back.\n\n[[And now...]]

You walk by the cells of other inmates, and though they are empty, you can tell who lived where. You pass by Ludovic's cell, where he kept a map the world and traced to all the places he'd wished to go to. He was a cheery man, one who hadn't been made for life in the service.\n\nThe brute David's cell is sparse and desultory. You did not like him, but he did keep you company. It's a piteous sight. The blanket of his cot is tossed on the ground, and a book lies sprawled with its pages facing the floor. You did not know he read.\n\nThe refectory is similarly a mess. Plates lie about, and flies buzz over the remains of half eaten food. An ashtray filled up to a little hill of cigarette butts sits in the middle of the long table.\n\nYou come to the lockers where you were forced to hand over your belongs when you first came here.\n\nTogether, you find your locker, untouched after 6 years. Your clothes are still there, along with your money, 20 lira in coinage.\n\n"Excellent. 20 lira is nothing to scoff at." says Luciano.\n\nWhen you were imprisoned, 20 lira couldn't buy you a nice meal.\n\n[[At least your clothes still fit.]]

Before, a man or woman could walk down the street, and if they had a strong back and a hardy disposition, they could find work. An officer in uniform, moreso. Now, every thing you see says otherwise.\n\nPeople throw you dirty, ugly looks. You suspect the promise of work was a lie.\n\nThoughts turn to Salerno. Salerno, a center of commerce and trade in the region. Surely they would be in need of manpower, in the wake of the war and the flu.\n\nHome beckons. \n\nYou should leave this place.\n\nBack,[[Onto Ardea]]

Leaves continue to fall, and you hear a thunderbolt in the far distance. The man finally quiets and you release him. \n\nHe seems to be about your age, though far more haggard. He has the look of someone made thin by illness.\n\n"Is there someplace we could head to for shelter? I don't like the look of those clouds." you say, just as the first drop taps you on the shoulder.\n\n"Our- I mean, my house is not far from here, just up the mountain. I can lead."\n\nYou help him to his feet and he starts to walk up the mountai path, a deadened stare, a deadened affect.\n\n[[Follow]]

The rats, the dead, the dying, those about to die, you slogging through this godforsaken, wasted land. Your gun slips from your fingers and into the muck and you must grasp blindly for it. A wave of smoke drifts over the ridge and you start to cough.\n\nYou dive into the muck to escape. Swim down. It's not the thick mire if mud, but filthy water, as if an aquifer had burst open.\n\nYou start to swim down after your rifle, barely able to see past your own hands. The bottom of this hole never seems to come, it just goes down forever, getting colder and colder and colder, until you're floating in a world of black water and drifting shadows.\n\n[[And now...]]

It's quite literally the softest, most luxuriant bed you've ever slept in. Angels sleep on beds this soft.\n\nThe tea and the warmth keeps the dreams away until [[morning]].

Bathhouses, whorehouses, shops with carvings denoting them as plces where Felonian wine could be purchased, streets whose cobbled roads were trodden on by drunken statesmen of the roman empire on the eve of Augustus' coronation, lamenting the fall of the republic and the beginning the long decline.\n\n[[<<back|Onto Ardea]]

\n\n\n[[Onwards]]

You raise an arm, recite the salute back.\n\n"Viva il Duce."\n\nIt doesn't quite have his conviction, but then again, it's the first time you've ever said it.\n\nYou turn your back on him and start walking down the road, away from the prison that was your home for the better part of half a decade.\n\n[[To the Town]]

You dare anyone to call you a coward after seeing what you see now, a barren hellscape the likes of which you could not have imagined existing in your most painful fever dreams. The sky is grey, the ground is grey, every last bit of color in this world has been eaten away and replaced by an ugly wash of mud, grease, and smoke.\n\nWatching your friends and brothers run headlong into death...no, you will not, you cannot, throw your life away over a few yards of charred landscape.\n\nSo you turn around, and shut your eyes, and wait for the shelling to end.\n\nBut you are not alone in the trench, and the french commander is there, pistol in hand, a long smear of blood running across one side of his body.\n\nHe points his pistol at you.\n\n[[And now...]]

The bed is a mix of feather on top of a base of straw, and you bury your face into the folds. It's the softest thing you've felt in years, and smells clean, if not a little worn. It reminds you of the bed you used to have in your room in Salerno. \n\nYou preferred to spend your nights in the small guest room by the greenhouse rather than your room on the top floor.\n\nOf course, you spy the [[wine]]...

Tapestries, couches, silk pillows, caraffes filed with chocolate. Paintings and hand carved chairs, delicate glass ornaments and a pantry with more food than you could ever possibly hope to eat.\n\n[[<<back|I'll make some tea]]

One more crater.\n\nThat's all you need to cross, just once more. There is heat, and gas, and yelling as you make the last push.\n\nThis one breached into the enemy line, and you are free. The machine guns cannot wheel to fire in the trench, and you catch many of the enemy unaware. For the first time since combat began, you ready your weapon.\n\nIn the darkness of the trench, you cannot tell who is alive and who is dead. Many lie against the trench walls and in the mud as little more than decrepit husks.\n\nYou see a man shambling in the muck, towards you.\n\n[[Shoot him]]\n[[Watch him]]

The tea is amazing. Even in peace time you didn't have tea this good. It's lemony and filling, and make you alert and awake. It's good tea, and it's a beautiful room to drink tea in. It's the home of a man of [[leisure]].\n\n"I'm sorry, sir, I don't even know your name." the man says. "I'm Luigi Mandratti."\n\n"Luigi, I am Nestor- Galleani."\n\n"That's an odd name."\n\nWhy do people keep saying that?\n\n"I suppose so." you say. The two of you drink your tea in silence. \n\n"She was [[dead already]], you know." he says.

The horse and the bundled wife go over the cliffside path. You have no time to react but to grab his arm. The man is incoherent in his babbling, equally praising god and cursing you to the devil.\n\nYou pull him to the path and embrace him to staunch the crying.\n\n[[You hold him until he stops]].

Ardea is a town of life. Everywhere you go, there is something to do, someone trying to sell something. Gambling, prostitution, liquour flowing as water from an aquifer, every debauchery imaginable is satisfied in some doorway along the cobbled streets.\n\nThis was a city of pleasure even in ancient times, and the [[signs]] are everywhere.\n\nYou see more of those [[posters and signs]].\n\nBut there is little time for pleasure. You need food and work.\n\nNearby there is an [[inn]], a [[silk merchant]], a [[farmer's stall]]. All decent places to find work.\n\nThe [[large station]] you came in from looms as a landmark.

You ease away. Luigi looks at you with a hurt, but knowing look.\n\n"No,no,no,no, it's not that. It's just, the blood, I don't really like it."\n\nLuigi looks over you. "You were in the army? No, I can tell from your coat. Please, stay the night. It's the least I could offer you."\n\nYou look out the window. Rain and lightning are crashing down.\n\n"That's a generous offer, and one I gladly take." you say.\n\nHe raises a glass of tea to you, followed by another round of hacking coughs, then it's to [[bed]].

The man takes a turn in the mountain path to a small villa, tucked away into the side, overlooking a valley below. In the far distance you can see the faint shimmer of street lights on Salerno's main boulevard. Another day's travel and you will have reached the end of your journey.\n\nThe man's house is a luxurious thing, the kind of house that perhaps served as the summer home of the old Kingdom's nobility.\n\n"Please, sit." he says. "[[I'll make some tea]]."\n\n

The train comes whistling by on time for once. At least that's a good change.\n\nWhat's not so good is the number of people on board. Men sit on the roofs of the cars and hang from the side like monkeys.\n\nThe conductor blows the whistle, but the train does not come to a complete stop. One man yells at you.\n\n"You must jump on board. We're not stopping till we reach Avellino."\n\nAvellino, nearly the entire way to Salerno. So many memories. Your mother and father are still there. They wait for you, their son. Would that they still considered you their sun.\n\nThe train is already accelerating. You look at the town. This is a dead place, it stinks of rot. The dog has laid down in the street and does not move. \n\n[[Board the Train]]

You look around. Everywhere you see men in black shirts and spiffy black uniforms. Not a man among them wears the olive green or the green and red patch that showed you were a soldier for the Kingdom of Italy.\n\nAll you see are the budle of sticks with the axe head.\n\n[[<<Back|inn]]

You go to a silk merchant struggling with a bundle of bolts. He drops one particular fine cloth, which you save from falling into a puddle.\n\n"Oh, thank you, sir, that would have cost me a month's- oh, you are a soldier?"\n\n"Yes, from the north, I fought near Lombardy, with the 102nd and-" you begin, in your most deferential tone.\n\n"No, no, that's quite alright, eh-" the merchant says. He seems quite uncomfortable.\n\n"You seem to be struggling. I was told I could find work here in Ardea." you say. The merchant's eyes look for a way out.\n\n"No, not here." the Merchant says, and quickly hurries away into his shop. You can see him peeking at you from behind the glass.\n\n"Ok," you say, and proceed back [[Onto Ardea]]. Things are so strange now, not like [[before]].

"The Flu took her. I was taking her to a doctor in Ardea but, I think I knew deep down that it was hopeless." Luigi says.\n\n"Hmm." What else can be said?\n\n"But I thank you for coming along when you did. I might have died as well had you not." he lets out a hacking cough onto a napkin. A small drop of [[blood]] appears in the phlegm.

You haven't saluted anyone in nearly 6 years and you don't intend to start again now. The idea of it makes you feel so low, like you're already giving up one set of prison bars for another.\n\nSo you turn your back on him and start walking down the road, away from the prison that was your home for the better part of half a decade.\n\n[[To the Town]]

Dawn comes slowly, though the train comes whistling by on time for once. At least that's a good change.\n\nWhat's not so good is the number of people on board. Men sit on the roofs of the cars and hang from the side like monkeys.\n\nThe conductor blows the whistle, but the train does not come to a complete stop. One man yells at you.\n\n"You must jump on board. We're not stopping till we reach Avellino."\n\nAvellino, nearly the entire way to Salerno. So many memories. Your mother and father are still there. They wait for you, their son. Would that they still considered you their sun.\n\nThe train is already accelerating. You look at the town. This is a dead place, it stinks of rot. The dog has laid down in the street and does not move. \n\n[[Board the Train]]

More posters, more signs, covering every bare inch of wall. The posters are of a bundle of sticks with an axe head, the signs show a collection of skeletons dancing over a burning pyre.\n\nFrom a distance, where you can't tell they're skeletons, it seems like the wall is covered in pictures of people celebrating. The images seem so out of place in Ardea.\n\n[[<<Back|Onto Ardea]]

"I will pay you 10 lira, no more. That is more than a generous offer."\n\n"I will not accept that, and you've insulted me in my own business. Now get out."\n\nYou get up from your chair. Even in your weakened state, you are a deal better than the small man in front of you. The army taught you pushups, and there wasn't much to read in your cell.\n\n"I want a decent night's sleep and a bottle of wine and you're going to give it to me." You say it as coldy as possible.\n\n"Oy, get back!" you hear the barmaid yell. She has a gun out, a thin hunting rifle. You put your hands up.\n\n"Please-"\n\n"GET OUT!" she yells, and cocks the rifle.\n\nYou raise your hands up slowly.\n\n[[Walk out solemnly]]\n[[Walk out defiantly]]

Abandoned and desolate are good words to describe the restaurant. It once might have been a decent place to eat, but no more. There are broken bottles everywhere.\n\nAn old woman sweeps the floor.\n\n"Excuse me-"\n\nBut she backs away. She is shrouded in black and her eyes are heavy and watery. She mumbles a blessing on you and disappears into the back before you can do anything else.\n\n"I just wanted to know what happened here..."\n\n[[<<Back|To the Town]]

You remember times like this. When you were in the trenches there were only 2 seasons, the snowy and the wet, but there were times when each brought you moments of joy.\n\nYou remember snow, and how during christmas when the whole world was ugly and blackened from shells and fire, the snow would gently tumble down, and when you would wake up the whole world would be clean and white, and no one dared to be the first to break the perfect ocean of white.\n\nA smile creeps onto your face, but a crash up ahead snaps you out of your brief respite.\n\nYou see something up ahead through the mist.\n\nOn the side of the pass, smashed onto its side, is a wagon. One horse lies dead, another in the throes of dying. A man holds a bundle in his arms and weeps.\n\n[[I must help this man]]\n

You wake to the screech of the conductor's whistle. Unlike in the nameless town, the train comes to a full stop for this station, and men and women pour out from the cars and leap down from the roofs.\n\nThe man who helped you when you first boarded gives you another piece of advice.\n\n"Friend, there is work here in Ardea, and the flu is not so terrible. You spoke in your sleep, of Salerno. It is worse there, I have heard, and the devil has taken many." he spits onto the street. "Here there is opportunity. You still wear the old uniform proudly." he salutes and he takes his leave of you, disappearing into the crowd.\n\nOpportunity, decent labor, the chance at a new life. How many of these men were thieves and murderers in their own right, more fit for prison than you ever were?\n\n[[Onto Ardea]]\n[[Ride for one more day]]

You tenuously walk down the side of the path. It is steep, and you are not surprised that the cart overturned. One of the horses is dead, the other, dying. You wish you had a pistol to give mercy to the creature. A rock slides from the path face and the weeping man looks up at you.\n\n"Are you hurt?" you call to him.\n\n"Please, will you help?" he cries. "My wife, you must help her."\n\nYou see that in his hands he is holding a shrouded bundle.\n\nThe dying horse is crying out. Both the man and the animal are almost too much. There is so much noise, so much screaming. Everything is red and brown from autumn and the birds take flight when the horse kicks out the wheel of the cart. The man loses grasp of his wife, one arm free.\n\nThere is no time.\n[[Save the man]]\n[[Save his wife]]

The next day is grey and overcast. There is a light chill, but not much you can do to stave it off. It is early enough that it may warm up.\n\nYour head pounds with every step you take downstairs. The innkeeper and the barmaid are nowhere to be seen, which you think is bad form.\n\nBack in the town, the other shops are all closed, even the post office. It is a gloomy, dolorous place.\n\nThe [[train platform]] beckons.

It is hard to part with so much of your wealth, but a soft bed and a meal free from weevils is too tempting, and why should you fault these people for charging so much?\n\nTheir hostel is empty, and ugly, and though they are the owners, they might live in greater squalor than you. They cannot simply leave, they are tied to this town.\n\nYou hand the man your coinage and he leads you to your room, a place little better than the cell you just left.\n\nHe leaves you the key.\n\nThere is a [[soft bed]], and some [[wine]] on the tableside.\n\n

The post office is empty, save for a few letters. After looking in, however, you see there is a postman. He is sound asleep, an empty bottle is on the counter.\n\nThere is a [[flyer]] on the wall, and many [[posters]].\n\n[[<<Back|To the Town]]

A black and white flyer floats in the breeze. A single tack keeps it on the wall. \n\nIt depicts a group of skeletons dancing around a mound of caskets. A great flame engulfs the dancers and the caskets.\n\n"To all, the flu spreads. Fly far from here. In Benevento, plague, in Cannae, plague, in the small towns and safe valleys, plague. Plague takes all. Bury your dead deep, or burn them and let the ashes be swallowed by the earth. God have mercy on the living."\n\nA flu...\n\n[[<<Back|post office]]

\n\nThere is [[pillow]] on the couch

Forward. There is only one way, forward. Forward there is hope, but to go back, death is guaranteed.\n\nAgain, over the top, practically falling into the next crater it's so close. This one is imperfect, and water is gushing in from somewhere, perhaps an aquifer smashed open.\n\nThere is no cool water, only more mud, mixed in with the bodies of [[rats]] and [[people]]. Mud enters your mouth as you push through. You can hear your commander yelling at you in a mix of french and italian.\n\nMore impacts, this time mixed with german.\n\n[[One more]]\n[[No more]]

Going over the ridge of your trench opens you up to a hellish landscape. You cannot see far, but black smoke is on either horizon, and you can see the faint trails of shells flying through the air to smash into the ground.\n\n[[2 men]] are already dead, shot as they went over.\n\nThere is no time to waste. There is only the need to survive. The trench is still within distance.\n\n[[Leap back to safety]]\n[[Into the first crater]]

\n\n\n

Luigi holds up the handkerchief. \n\n"Hah! You'd think it was just a mild cold, same as anyone might catch in the fall."\n\n"It was anything but." you say. You turn on the lights as night falls. Salerno is bright in the distance. You look at it every [[night]], in fact.\n\n[[Luigi will be well enough that he will not need you]].

\n\n[[Just a moment, and it would all be yours]]. \n\n

The times of the trains are all clearly visible. Trains actually pass through here quite frequently, as Avellino is a popular stop, being the end of the track.\n\nGo back [[Onto Ardea]]\n\nCatch the [[next train to Avellino]].

Seeing wine for the first time in 6 years is almost unbearable. You pour a glass, down it quickly, then another, and another, and another, and soon the world is spinning and your stomach roils at the first taste of alcohol in so long.\n\nThey hadn't even given you beer for christmas, the prison wardens. They had a party every week on the upper floors where the 10 or so officers would gather and keep the rest of the prison up until the late hours of the evening. You used to cry at how your life could ahve come to this, but not anymore, it's been too long.\n\nYou feel so tired and thoughtless from the wine. [[You will dream no dreams tonight]].