You Will Not Survive

©2026 Steve Gray

You will be seen,

You will be caught out, heat gives away your position, your image tells them where you are, your firepower will be useless.

You want to hide, you want to run. In the first place you shouldn’t be here; you realise that you are here, and you want to survive, the biting, chilling reality is that you may not survive.

They sent you, they trained you, but you are useless. You are part of a protracted war nobody wanted. Millions have died, more will be maimed. Soon, you and many others will be ‘evaporated’. New technology finds you and makes you go away, a pile of ash might be all that’s left.

If you wait, they come, they make themselves known to you, their buzz, their group assault. You feel some pain, enough to make a sound as you shriek. Then they focus. Then they apply force. Then you could be gone. No number, no rank. No accolades!

You make a decision, because you know all of this, they say turn right, so you turn left, uniform gone, dog tags gone and a long slow walk to nowhere. Desolate, homeless, hungry and all the trimmings, but you survived.

Don’t let them find you, scan your eyes, match your fingerprints, they will want to reprogram you, somehow, they will want you to fight. Keep walking, keep moving, find a border, find some space.

In the end you will not survive, but at least you will have a chance to exist a little longer than  your original impossible position.