She wakes up to the howling of the wind rattling the tent. Thinks, today I will kill someone. Thinks, if necessary I will kill everyone I meet today. She yawns and rolls over. Tries for a brave twenty minutes to get back to sleep.

The camp is quiet. Not deserted — she nods at the gun standing guard, his eyes serious and friendless. They ran out of tea a week ago. Coffee two days ago. She rinses stale water through the juiceless puck of grounds and sips the gritty result complacently.

Her gun digs at her shoulder.

The day lightens. The sun will not rise today, hidden behind a thick veil of racing clouds that have portended many things for the last month without delivering any of them. The horizon is aflame, burning city, burning oil wells, burning books. She was there, yesterday, shooting them as they pulled down statues, as they threw jars of gasoline into libraries centuries old. There were maybe fifteen, sixteen, and she put a little empty hole into each of them, but the flames were already licking up through the scrolls.

What is necessary is not always enough.