Harringer's Nothingness

I could have avoided all the trouble if only I had remembered to shut the door. The older man lifted his chin up and looked around the blackened wasteland as far as the eye could see around him. He sat crossed-legged in the middle of the nothingness. The place was crawling with olives. They were examining everything. An olive hummer pulls up about twenty feet away. A tall, burley man stepped out. He was not the most pleasant man, even a glance could tell you that: tanned and graying with the aura of a piece of sandpaper. Scowling, he whipped his silver rimmed sunglasses off of his face and used them to point at the man sitting down, yelling at the closest olive to him.

"Who is God's name is that weathered piece of shit?! And why is he anywhere near my site?!!"

The unfortunate and nervous sergeant immediately faced him and saluted. He cleared his throat. "Uh..that w-would be D-Dr. Gerald H-Harringer, Major, sir!"

Major Marcus Byron raised his left eyebrow and growled. "And who the hell is that?!!"

The sergeant gasped and quickly ruffled through the paperwork he had on the clipboard on the hood of his hummer. He nervously adjusted his glasses as he read. Byron tensed the muscles in his neck impatiently. The sergeant gasped, astonished at what he was reading. Byron's left eye twitched.

"I'm sure you are having a wonderful time over there. But do you want to share it with the people that are actually worth more than a fucking dime?!!"

The sergeant jumped and turned around abruptly. "It..it seems he owned the m-mansion that sat on the outskirts of the town...sir."

"Town? There ain't shit around here!" Byron waved his hand dismissively at the emptiness around them.

"Y-yes, now, sir. But there was a t-town here. Uh..." The sergeant adjusted his glasses and glanced down at his notes again, "One c-called Dodds to be exact. L-logging town. Around a f-few t-thousand people it s-seems. Surrounded b-by a heavily f-forested area, of c-course."

"And now all that's here is a giant crater and a single man..." Byron mused sourly.

Byron sharply flipped his sunglasses closed and shoved them into the front pocket of his uniform. He advanced toward Dr. Harringer. Hard as he was, there was something about the crunching sound that the charred, flash-fried ground made under his combat boots. Something about the feeling of utter silence under the relative artificial and imposed racket of the soldiers. Something about the smell, or the lack of smell, of the air within the suspiciously clear, crisp, and vibrantly blue sky. The doctor slid his leg out from the cross-legged position, trying to get more comfortable. The sound, one of jeans against the same ghastly devastated land that was under Byron's feet, was somehow the most horrible sound the major had ever heard.

It took Harringer a moment to realize that Byron was standing over him. He lifted his head up to look at him. The two men, opposing and yet connected, stared at each other a moment; one indignant and suspicious, the other shamed and withdrawn, both disgusted.

"Dr. Harringer? I'm Major Byron. You want to tell me what the hell happened here?"

Harringer looked back down at the ground in front of him somberly and replied honestly, "No."

The answer came to Byron like a slap on the face. And he hated that! He reeled inside at the hack's complete lack of respect and disregard for whatever happened here, what happened to the people here. Byron tensed up and tried to sound as though he was speaking through ground teeth and pursed lips.

"I'm sorry, what? Did you just say no?"

Harringer nodded silently.

Byron officially hated this short, silver-haired, and somewhat unremarkable man. However, Harringer did not return Byron's sentiments. He simply had nothing; a fact that left a bad taste and looming dark cloud above Byron, though the major hated that, too.

"So, you are saying that I have to place you under arrest and hold you for obstructing my investigation and suspicion of a terrorist act? Is that it?!"

Harringer scoffed and chuckled. He looked up at him. "Are you insane? Do I look like a terrorist? I mean, tell me, Major, when did an old scientist become the next on the checklist for terrorism?"

Byron narrowed his eyes at him and made an rude noise. "A scientist? Well, that gives you access to all kinds of materials and motives, Doc-tor! So, why don't you tell me?!"

Harringer closed his eyes and motioned for the major to calm down. He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. This would not doubt get him in trouble. However, he owed it to them. The poor townspeople. And her. Yes, most definitely her...