The Citadel was quiet after sunset. Wind ran through the rickety metal interior, whistling through cracks. On a dark night a traveler could see the monstrosity from a hundred miles away. It towered above the fields and forests, bleak and ancient and bare, like a gravestone covered in rusty, flickering lights. Besides the stars and moon, no place offered light or man-made shelter for hundreds of miles.
He woke in the night, his mouth dry. Without opening his eyes, he quietly slipped from under the single dirty sheet and went to the kitchen on his toes. He filled a glass with water, and with his eyes barely open, found his way to the front door, unlocked the flimsy chain lock, and squeezed out trying not to let the outside light in.
The distant view from the high, exterior walkway was one of total black. In the distance he could hear dogs barking and howling and the wind carried smells of stirred up dust and the distant ocean. He stood and looked out, sipping water from the coffee stained, chipped glass.
He often sat there in the early morning and contemplated the paranoia of the place, the insanity of keeping watch over a land of nothing. The lives in everyone in the outpost revolved around the government's fear that Elora had secretly left behind an underground base that lay waiting to attack. When would the fear end and normalcy begin again? Never, he thought, time does not seem to heal this wound.
He leaned over the railing and looked at the nothingness below. Squinting at the shadows, he saw only black. There was nothing to see and 'nothing' was his doom. Nothing awaited him. No purpose called. The fields and forests and tunnels below were vacant and it had long been so, so long that no living man could remember it any differently.
To his left and right, above him and below him, no soul stirred. I should sleep, he thought. Instead, he began walking along the walkway. He knew what had woken him.
In the barren dead of night, he hated this place and dreamed of cities that restlessly stirred and buzzed, meeting at cafes, political rallies, clubs, restaurants, and training performances. The citadel rises at sunrise and save one or two bars, retires at sunset.
He walked the fifteen minutes past the armory, other living quarters, and training facilities. Then he ascended old, creaking metal staircases to reach the higher levels. Climbing rusty ladders he ascended that last few levels hand over hand, until he reached the flight decks. The wind came in hard from the East. He pulled out his cap and tucked his hair under as he pulled it down tight, then he walked to the overlook above helipad 7.
