The open war had been going on for nearly 15 years, and already most people had forgotten how it got so far.  America had turned into what its movies had always imagined, but never truly believed, it would become.  True dystopia.  Cities had become battlegrounds, with the rural and suburban areas serving as safe havens for citizens, and staging areas for the invading forces.  By this point none of the survivors cared how the enemies had managed to bring the fight so deep into their homeland.  No one blamed the government.  No one blamed the different ends of the ideological spectrum.  The only concern since the insurgency began….was survival.

Anthony was an excellent survivor.  After the first three years of fighting for his life, he began keeping track of the number of enemies who died by his hand.  Each one in his journal, a hash mark for each body with the word ‘enemy’ written beside it.  No survivor Anthony had ever met boasted a higher number of kills.  But by the same token, no survivor he knew with a body count approaching his managed to handle the emotional strain very well.  Some of them asked him how he was able to stave off the despair, the guilt, the loss of his humanity.  His answer was always very simple.

“I imagine they’re the same people who made my life a living hell when I was a child.  After that, pulling the trigger is surprisingly easy.”

It was because pulling the trigger had become so easy for him that on the day the cease-fire was signed, Anthony made one last hash mark in his journal, and pulled the trigger a final time.  The hash mark had his name written next to it, and the word ‘enemy.’