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The War Zone

by Soma Bose
(Pune, India)

Sara moved into the depth of a big hole and glided through the way which ended inside a curved cave. Her partner Larry shook his head, "The place is like a hell."


Sara leaned out over the hole, peering up and down, blackness seemed everywhere except some flash lights were appearing out from the fighter planes. Inside the cave, light was nowhere.
However, Larry had some stones which he picked up earlier and hit them against each other to enlighten the inside area.

Earlier, their car skidded as a bomb from a fighter plane dropped just ahead of their car and with the sudden fall of rocky stones, the road was blocked. They lost the exact route to cross the border of this war-zone. They entered into a forest and now were sitting on the floor inside the cave. As the stones sparked, Larry used some wooden branches to catch the fire and their eyes dropped to a near by animal. Sara shouted,
Larry too looked shaken. "Can you see that?" Sara's voice cracked.

Larry saw that animal, he was an animal trainer, he dared to look into the lion's eyes, it was injured and looking very much weak to make any encounter on them.

Larry opened his bag and took out a cloth. He tore it and knotted a bandage upon the lion's injured neck.
"What the hell are you doing?" Sara shouted.
"My instinct tells me to help him as both we and this lion are the war-victims," Larry replied.

Next morning, something over-whelming happened. With some fear, they came out from the cave and took a route to another direction under the shadow of some high bushes. They wondered to see some groups of larks flying above,"Probably they are heading towards any river or sea side," Larry guessed.

Bombing was stopped since last few hours. They followed the way and reached a sea-shore. They were close enough to cross the war-zone. Advancing through the forest area, they found a white flag wavering from a merchant ship. The ship took them to a safer zone.

***

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