Wasted World | Episode 1

of drywall had jammed uncomfortably up between her legs, and the top of her head was stuck at an awkward angle in one of the desk’s inner corners. Angela had removed the drywall slab and positioned herself in the tiny area with her face next to the patch of grey light, allowing her just enough room to breathe. She had fished around in the shattered picture frames, shards of glass, fragments of plastic, and endless dust, eventually finding two of the three water bottles she had stashed beneath the desk with her. She had sipped one of them slowly, listened to the rubble settle, and tried to plan a way out of her predicament. Angela had heard someone crying, a woman, she thought. She’d tried putting a face to the sound, but couldn’t. The woman wasn’t speaking; she hadn’t been calling out to anyone, or telling them where she was. She had just wailed her mournful, weak noises, and Angela had sipped away at her water, wandering who it might be. Maybe Trish—Trish the Dish is what the guys in the office called her. Trish the Dish with the big, fake tits.

Jesus, that hurts. What had hurt so much to force Trish to take the Lord’s name in vain? Angela didn’t like it when people did that. She had finished her first bottle of water and decided do something. She had to get out of her little hole and help whoever that was crying. Even foul-mouthed tramps didn’t deserve to suffer. Angela had started to pick at that little trickle of light with her fingers and stopped. I only have one bottle of water left. I need to save it, I can’t share.

But it was more than just the struggle between helping another human being and self-preservation. Angela was terrified. She had lived through the worst of it and felt content to stay in her little black space a while longer. Once she worked her way out, Angela would have to deal with what was left. She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet, maybe never. She had rested her face next to the opening, closed her eyes, and listened to the agonized cries of her co-worker grow fainter.

I’ll make my way out. I’ll go to her and help… soon.

The bomb had smashed into Winnipeg forty-eight hours ago bringing the end to a half million lives. Angela had woken from beneath her desk twelve hours later and listened to her co-worker die. She had gulped down the second bottle of water, swallowing her guilt and self-loathing along the way. Now it was time to do something. Angela had to face her new world.

Digging her way out from under the desk turned out to be a lot harder than she thought it would be. She was weak and hungry, and the debris fought back, stabbing into finger tips and slashing at her arms. The worst injuries Angela had ever received in her office environment up to this point were paper cuts. The conglomeration of furniture and files she had worked in all of her adult life had turned deadly.

Angela was stunned when she finally managed to crawl free and stand to her feet. She was outside, and the city was on fire. Walls of flame reached up and reflected muddy yellow light off a roiling blanket of black above. The smoke from the burning buildings had nowhere to go, trapped low beneath an endless cloud of fallout pressing back down on the earth that had spawned it. She went to the corner of the street—where the corner had been—and searched the horizon east for her home. The fifteen story building was gone; or at least the top half was. The single bedroom apartment on the twelfth floor she’d lived in for the last six months no longer existed. She had lived alone and hadn’t made many friends there—she didn’t even own a cat for company—but Angela would miss the place for its close proximity to work. She loved no longer having to wait for buses or call a cab on the mornings she was running late. Angela could walk to work and be there in less than five minutes.

There’s no more work to go to, she reminded herself. No more buses to take and cabs to call. Even the street corner she was standing on was gone; the concrete torn up and pulverized into dust. All that remained as proof a busy intersection once existed on the corner of Smith and Delgardo was the mass of a twisted traffic light pole at Angela’s feet.

Dear Lord… where am I supposed to go?

A familiar voice spoke inside her head. This is what damnation looks like, girl… the end of the flipping world. It was Angela’s step-father. He spoke to her almost every day; his booming tone as loud in her mind as it ever was when he was living. How’s a useless thing like you going to survive in a place like this?

Angela chewed at her bottom lip—a nervous habit she’d picked up at the age of fourteen, shortly after Dan Bennet had married her mother—and answered softly into the wind. “I’m afraid, Dad, but I’m not useless. I’ll find a way… I’ll find others to help me.” She still called him Dad, even though the brute was no longer around to smack her into saying it.

I’ll find others, he responded mockingly. Why doesn’t that surprise me? You’ve been relying on others your whole life… why stop now?

Hot wind whipped through Angela’s short, grey hair. It buffeted her body, almost sending her to her knees. She made a feeble squeaking sound and started crawling through the rubble of her work place. She couldn’t face this alone, and she certainly didn’t want to face it alone with only her dear old step-father’s advice to carry her along. Angela had to find someone she knew to help her through. She called their names, and