The Inferno of the Forgotten

I plunge my bare fingers into the gash on my flank. The blood is sticky, thick, black, already cooled by the shadow of this ventilation duct. Keeping my fever locked away to protect Jolanda and the kids? A tomb of comfort. An insult to the Flame.

My sister used to beat her rusted barrels to puncture the anesthesia of our childhood. She taught me the uproar. The forbidden rhythm that strikes against resignation.

I stand up all at once.

The infection from my wound becomes my fuel, feeding the glass of my right arm which ignites under the thermal load. I smash the grate open with my shoulder. We emerge into the Obsidienne Sector.

The armored vehicles of Stability form a steel jaw around the square, their turrets aligned on the stela of bones and basalt I erected at dawn. They want to crush our memory under their tracks. Around the machines, a skeletal crowd retreats. The Oubliés. Bowed heads, empty stares.

Lio grips his iron bar until his knuckles turn white. Jolanda takes her place at my left.

I step into the middle of the avenue and open the floodgates of my own wound. The temperature explodes. A suffocating wave sweeps the square. In my bones, Marisol's cadence dictates the flow of the blaze. Boom-tak. Boom-tak. The air distorts. I raise my unstable fist toward the soot-filled sky.

The stela's magma awakens in echo, spitting a rain of red sparks that fall back onto the crowd. The incandescent shower refuses to incinerate them. It awakens the flesh. The furnace swallows fear to substitute an animal rage. Knotted hands pick up cement blocks torn from the roadway. A hoarse rumble rises from chests. Mutation takes root at last in thousands of starving bellies, an ocean of anger rising up against the order.

The cannons pivot toward me. The officer barks his firing order. Will the armor plates hold when the entire street turns into an inferno?