The Burning Band

It cannot be stopped. It cannot be slowed. It can only be avoided. Flee.

Philadelphia was nothing more than ash. From his position near the crest of the Appalachian range, Samson could do nothing but stare at the wall of fire that engulfed his former home. Each day that passed brought another city to the ground and another nation to its knees.

The burning started in the east and crossed oceans to reach this country. Some small, insignificant town near the equator had burned first, but people blamed it on the dry desert heat. Then the fires continued to spread to the north and south even though there was nothing but the air to fuel it. People blamed a strange wind for how the fires spread.

But it was too impossible to ignore. When the fires first spread across the Mediterranean, even Rome was powerless to stop it. The fires mounted higher and higher into the air until no one could see past the wall of fire unless they stood upon the moon. No amount of water, fresh or salt, slowed the fires down. It only spread faster and faster and faster. Once the burning had wrapped its arms around the globe, forming a ring of flickering orange ten miles wide, it began to move, using Earth’s poles as its own axis.

The world was woefully unprepared.

At first, it moved west by no more than a mile a day, but now it moved too fast for most to measure and live, so people just had to move as quickly as they could. 

The EU was the first to issue the warnings: It cannot be stopped. It cannot be slowed. It can only be avoided. Flee.

Communication came to a halt shortly after.

The flames devoured everything. Gasoline prices exploded with most of the oil reserves, and soon enough, no one could drive anywhere. The wall of fire was inevitable, and without cars it seemed even faster. 

Strangely, however, the flames never exceeded the ten mile width. As the flames crept west, the fires in the east would die down at least until the other half of the burning band arrived.

But those warnings had become the mantra of the world. Every tongue echoed the words, and no one who wanted to live failed to abide by them.

Samson, however, grew tired. He had just lost his home. The end was obvious. The world would end. Avoidance was a luxury for those rich enough or important enough to have access to a submarine. Avoidance was excuse enough for an emergency plan to colonize the moon, but only with the prestige of humanity. Avoidance was not an option for a person like Samson.

“Let’s keep moving, Sam,” Delilah called out to him. 

Samson did not move.

Delilah begged again, “Come on, babe. It’s a long way to Baltimore.”

He only continued to stare at the approaching flames.

Delilah pleaded with him again, but he did not budge.

“I am looking, D.”

“At what? There’s no time to look at it! There’s nothing left back there! We have to move!”

“No.”

“Samson, don’t.”

“I’m going to go into it.”

“And leave me alone? What about our life together?”

“What kind of life is spent running from flames encircling the globe? What kind of life is spent feeding on ash? At this rate, that’s all that’ll be left of the world’s food supply. We could never replace it fast enough…”

“I’ve ignored the inevitability too long, D. I–”

“Samson!” Delilah pulled herself between him and the fire, pleading one last time, “You’re giving up? That’s not like you! Don’t be stupid! I do not want to die with you.”

“Then you never wanted to live with me.” He pushed her aside. “I am going to enter the burning.” He could not bear to look as the sound of his broken promise to her to never again make her cry tore through her eyes. “Save your tears, D. You’ll need all the water you can get.” Samson continued to stare at the flames. “Go. Before you burn with me.”

The words did not soothe her sobs, but simply silenced them. She left. Samson stayed. Groups of people who were behind them passed him for several hours echoing the same warnings: You’re going to die. Run, you idiot. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be slowed. It can only be avoided. Samson ignored them all. Then the mountain path was silent. The burning band approached, and anyone who had been this close were among those who had long since given up. If anyone screamed from within the flames, they were too far to be heard. He was alone. Even the swift swallows had shed their breeding nests.

But despair was not what gripped Samson’s heart before the burning. It was not quite hope either. It was something far vaguer and far more famously deadly: curiosity. 

He ignored the warnings, and now it was too late to heed them again. The burning was upon him. The wall of fire crept up the mountainside like water coming in for high tide.

“Why had no one mentioned this?” Samson said to himself. The flames burned everything in their wake, of this there was plenty of evidence, but what the Governments had failed to mention was the flame’s distinct lack of heat. As the fire spread waxed toward the west and waned in the east, people saw only the residual ash expected from every fire. Nothing survived. Everything was leveled to the Earth. No one, it seemed, thought to actually check if the burning actually burned.

Samson laughed to himself in disbelief, “No heat.” He had half-expected the experience of waiting for the burning to be a sweat-filled Hell, but every inch that it drew closer, the temperature of the setting night only continued to drop. The strange logic of the flames’ consistent width clicked. The burning stopped widening because nothing ever burned from nearby heat. A ball of lint would not shrink, would not be daunted by these flames, so why should he?

It soon dawned on Samson, however, that even if the flames lacked heat, they still presented the danger of reducing him to ash.

The flames burned closer. The mountain air chilled his skin. The burning wall was a leap away. The wind rushed between the trees. Bright orange dominated Samson’s vision. He stepped forward into the burning.

And he breathed. 

Samson felt no warmer. The hair on his head remained cool to the touch. His arms still had their thin hairs. I am not burning. I am not burning! Only then did he remember that the first images of the burning’s aftermath included blackened corpses. Gesturing and rejoicing to no one, he cried out, “Why am I not burning?”

Because, came the voice of the flame, I have not yet asked why you entered my domain. Did you wish to die?

Still too amazed to be daunted, Samson cried in hilarity, “No!” He could not help but laugh.

Then why have you entered into my fire?

“I don’t know, really… I– I just don’t know.” Samson chuckled again, staring at each part of his unburnt body with a newfound appreciation and love.

The voice of the fire did not respond for some time, perhaps staring with its own hidden eyes and just as much amazement at Samson. It recognized his joy. It felt no despair. It felt Samson’s curiosity blaze into hope, and it loved hope. Fire had once been the hope of all humans, and it had nearly forgotten what it felt like to experience a human’s hope. So it began, I am empowered by the gods to grant a just reward in accordance with your bravery and hope. So, for what do you wish? 

“What about the others who entered into your fire? What did they wish for?”

The despairing were granted no wish but the wish they already had: Death.

“Surely there were others who had hope?”

Yes, but their chosen wishes were worse than death, so they, too, were granted death.

 At last, and against the desires of the fire, Samson’s attitude shifted.

Be not afraid, Samson. Your wish shall not induce my wrath. Your hope is unlike the hope of the others. Their hope was founded entirely in hope for their own safety, yours…

“In hope for the world,” Samson finished, surprising even himself.

Now, what is your wish? 

“I wish for the flames to end. I wish for the rest of the living world to be spared from your burning.”

The voice once more waited to speak. Then it said matter-of-factly, It may be granted, but you will lose your life for it. There was not a hint of indignance, anger, or cruelty. Its voice now sounded to Samson like the voice of his mother when she told him about his grandfather’s death. It was a voice full of personal sorrow but just as full of love.

You will not starve nor will you die of thirst in your trial, from this they have spared you. The gods demand that you drag me into yourself to end this burning, but my vast power will consume you and vanish with you. This is the only way I may be sealed as I once was. But that pitiful totem in which I slumbered before was always temporary, for the soul of a flame cannot be bound to an object, but only another soul. And so your eternal soul shall serve as my eternal seal.

Samson pondered this with, alarming to himself, calm before simply asking, “How do I do it?”

Hold out your hand and take my cord. Samson did so, and a cord of white flame appeared in his hand. Hold this and wait until my other half approaches. This wall will move no more, but the other still comes to you. When it does, grab hold of my other cord and pull them across each other. This will fulfill your wish but end your life. Thank you.

“For what?”

For giving me hope again that I may be tamed.

And so Samson began to wait. At first, the trial was nothing more than a trial of patience. The entire time he held the cord, he remained surrounded by fire. He could not sleep lest he accidentally let go of the white flame, nor could he for the light around him.

The cord seemed to want to escape him. It was not a matter merely of holding something as light as the string of a balloon but a matter of being the one against the many in a tug-of-war.

A few hours passed and the hunger began to gnaw its way into his stomach and the air dried his throat. He was confused until he remembered he was promised only not to starve, not to not hunger.

The hours then turned into tormented days and tortuous weeks. How was this fate not worse than death? Samson thought to himself. To starve and not die. To thirst and not be able to drink. To tire and be unable to sleep. Samson’s grip on the white cord occasionally weakened, but before it completely slipped from his grasp, the voice of flame would chide and encourage him. Beyond that interaction, however, the two seldom spoke. 

Nearly seven weeks passed. His body was hardly more than skin and bones. His face had grown its own pitiful beard, but he had never really been able to grow one. 

It has arrived. Prepare yourself, the voice of the flame advised. Reach out with your other hand and my other half will create its cord.

Samson once again obeyed, but his spare hand was slow to follow his mind’s command.

He breathed. The new cord was of black flame and just as heavy.

Cross them, now!

Samson screamed with every ounce of his strength, pulling the cords across each other and to the ground. The flames around him diminished each second that his hands anchored the cords to the earth, but each second came with another pound of pain.

His arms weakened.

The fire expanded.

Be strong, Samson!

Samson roared and pulled the cords tighter to the ground, leveraging whatever body weight he had left and pushing through the agony that comes with joining one’s soul to an everlasting, world-ending flame.

“Samson?” a familiar voice asked. “Samson, stop!”

He looked up to the voice. Delilah managed to find him again. The flames had nearly dissipated, but perhaps in her eyes they were entirely gone.

“You’ll die!”

You will die, Samson.

“I…” Samson summoned the last of his human strength as the burning finalized its collapse within him. “I die to love.”

With his hands embedded in the earth, Samson drew in with his final breath the final flicker of the flame, and his body faded as smoke from a candle. All that remained of his person were two distinct scorch marks in the dirt where he had set his fists. 

And so the burning band was extinguished.

“Samson?” Delilah asked the air.

I love you, world. I love you, Delilah.