[ WP ] `` It 's surprising that the most important person in the world has so little security . '' Said the assassin to his target . `` I am here , there is no better security . '' Was the casual reply .

I do n't know if you've ever been out to the country. Have you ever seen one of those big, dilapidated barns? The wood all rotted and blackened, like a shadow against the sun, and the slits of light casting bullets inside so that the ground is spotty. The smell of it all is old grass and animal, faint, but stuck to the place like a ghost. I do n't know if you've ever seen one, been to one, but if you have, what was inside? 
 
 
 Was it tools? Was it bare? Old things rusted and falling apart? It usually is like that. I had never gone to the country before, to be honest, but then we had found him and we had to go. There were the usual things you would expect in an old barn. There was also the fate of the world being decided in that moment. 
 
 
 Society is hard to explain to someone like you. You can not understand the breakdown that happened long ago in the late twenty-first century. The anarchy was expected. The rebuilding into what it would become was not. We were warlike and held the guns to our head, and back then we had heads to lose. The world was going but on the horizon there was home, still visible and comforting somehow. It's like the dilapidated barn. It may be dead, but the ghosts of life remain. 
 
 
 King Jesus had taken the lead. He led the Western Front of our world. He held the gun to to the Eastern Front and Far Eastern Front. He was a shrewd man and he had been on the run. 
 
 
 When we came I was surprised at how pristine the area was. There was light splotches of grass and the earth was unmarked, never being hit with shells. We had been chasing them for months, following clues and gossip and pure hope. We had something to lose then, do n't forget. We were relentless. I sometimes think had I not ogled the barn, taken in the sight of it all, we would n't have been too late. For that I am sorry. 
 
 
 Inside there was an assassin. He was a young boy, unhealthy and thin. He struggled with his gun. The shower of light bathed him in pity and his face was scarred from battle. King Jesus stood there, weary and old. He held the briefcase that would change the world. It was the gun to the head. 
 
 
 `` I am here. There is no better security,'' King Jesus said. 
 
 
 I had n't heard what the assassin had said. King Jesus was unarmed but for the briefcase. 
 
 
 `` There is revelation in the air, son,'' he said. `` Revelation and revolution. Are you here to do God's work?'' 
 
 
 The boy spoke so softly that his words seemed lost in the moment. 
 
 
 `` You have sinned too greatly. I am here to end it all,'' the boy said. 
 
 
 We had come in then and I was leading the force. I had hardly seen a place like this, a building not built for battle, wooden and with character. I suppose I am trying to set up my defense, but there is hardly anything I can say. I was late and I was slow. 
 
 
 `` Do God's work!'' King Jesus commanded. 
 
 
 He was shrewd and he was old. In our times we lived longer than you do, but it was not anything like how it was before. He was about forty, King Jesus, and he was near his expectancy. 
 
 
 I remember in that helpless moment that I felt some grim respect for the man. Those who were not his fanatics always thought he was a fraud and an unbeliever like those he purged. His final act made his life true and enacted your demise. 
 
 
 The boy shot and the gun was true and it hit though it did not kill King Jesus immediately. I wonder how things would be had he died then and there. Maybe he did have special powers. 
 
 
 The King was bloody and mangled, crumpled inwards as if in prayer on the floor of the barn. He opened the case of the gun. The machinery inside was electric as this was still the age of that fading magic. There were wires and switches and all manner of complex connections that amounted to one thing: a trigger. 
 
 
 With his bloody hands King Jesus pulled the trigger and smiled at the boy. I opened fire as did my men and we killed the boy but it was too late and then the barn shook as if in fear and the world was filled with a siren that pierced our ears. That was the future crying, knowing it was dead, perhaps. We went outside and the horizon was orange as if it were dusk but the trails of smoke covered the sun and there were explosions amidst the siren. 
 
 
 My men and I looked around and we were frozen with disbelief. There was nothing we could do. I thought back to my great forefathers and their stories of green and peace and of a world that had not left home. Seeking shelter in a faraway trench, we knew that the horizon no longer had any memory of that home. We knew that we were gone now and going farther into that abyss. The horizons now showed only chemical death and a mourning for an unreachable past.
