He imagined Lydia and his boys in the grasp of the Aukowies, imagined the pure horror that would blind their eyes as they realized how all his stories weren’t just stories. As he visualized it, his thoughts turned into a lead weight that sunk into his gut. As much as he would never admit it, he did care for his battle-axe of a wife and his two gangly teenage boys.

That’s right, you old fool, he thought to himself. Teach the world a lesson by destroying it.

Whether or not the rest of the town still understood it, his position was one of the greatest responsibility. He had never yet forsaken it, and he wasn’t about to. No matter how miserable the weather was, no matter how poorly he felt, he had been out there every day since his twenty-first birthday doing his job as stipulated by the contract. Even when he was nearly dead with pneumonia he was out tending Lorne Field. Lydia had been near hysterical trying to get him to the hospital, but he wouldn’t be deterred. Stayed there seven in the morning to seven at night as he always did. Even though he was almost blind from fever and had chipped a tooth ’cause he was shaking so bad, he weeded out the Aukowies and kept the world safe. Took him two years to lose the cough that pneumonia had given him. But he did his job.

Straightening his back as best he could, he pushed out his chin and quickened his pace as he headed to Lorne Field. If he didn’t let that sickness stop him, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let feeling sorry for himself do it now.

Lydia sat deep in thought, a cigarette held loosely between her index and middle fingers, her small bloodshot eyes watering from the smoke. She couldn’t help feeling guilty sending her fool husband out of the house once again with nothing but cold cereal. You’d think he’d catch on that it was no accident it’d been weeks since he had anything decent to eat. That maybe, just maybe, he’d realize she was trying to discourage him from this joke of a life they were living and push him into a real job making real money. But the man was as dense as a brick. He actually sounded as if he believed the nonsense he spouted off about saving the world each day. Well, if he was going to deprive them of a real life then she was going to deprive him of real food!