Every path leads to destruction.

I dropped my bag and fell to my knees on the railroad tracks, hands on my thighs. My breath wheezed in and out of me, never quite enough to fill my lungs. My eyes followed the rails off into the distance, where they converged on the glowing cityscape. Red heat and smoke hovered over the skyline, hazy and thick and deadly. The vision blurred behind threatening tears.

"Maybe we shouldn't stop here."

I turned to the voice. Joe's own eyes gazed down the tracks, and I thought I saw a hint of moisture in them, too. Miraculously, he barely labored in his breathing, and his close-cropped blond hair looked dry and cool compared to the dark mop of curls dripping down my own temples. But Joe was a runner. Personally, I could run a Playstation avatar across miles and miles of virtual landscape without so much as a wimper, but that was a fantasy world. I knew that now.

This was reality.

"Why not?" I panted. He looked down at me and started to speak, but I held up a finger to indicate that I wasn't done. After several breaths, I continued, panting between phrases. "No trains. Not tonight. No station. Nowhere to go."

"Think, Charlie. They'll be sending aid. They'll bring it as close as they can. And even if no trains go by, we're kinda sitting ducks up here." His eyes looked down the rocky hill on either side of the tracks, then flicked back to the city. "We're too visible up here. We need to go down and hide in the woods."

Almost on cue, the sound of rotating helicopter blades filled our ears, coming from the other direction. We turned to look. It was a Red Cross chopper. In Joe's strong profile, I saw hope. He stood straighter, lifted his chin a little higher, and a slight smile formed on his lips.

An explosion rocked the air, knocking us completely off the tracks and down the rocky slope into the ditch lining one side. Already on my knees, I slid most of the way down the rocky incline on my back. Sharp rocks cut into my back and legs on the way down, and my head banged on larger ones more times than I cared to count. I lost sight of the chopper for a moment, during my fall, but I heard it stutter. I looked up and saw it in nosedive, flames spitting from either side. It crashed into the woods some miles from us. I couldn't tell if the pounding in my chest came from the ground shaking with impact or my own heart beating in my chest.

I turned to find Joe, and find him, I did. I found him on the ground, on his back, his neck twisted at a strange angle. His lifeless eyes stared at the empty sky.

I almost cried out, but at the last moment, I held my tongue. I was alone. Far from home. And in enemy territory.