It was Trish. She cried in agony, and I listened to her die.
Maybe Trish wasn’t dead. Perhaps there were more survivors like Angela, trapped under their desks or balled up into washrooms and closets. It would be almost impossible to hear their screams in the thunderous roar of flames surrounding her. It had been a miracle Angela had heard those faint cries in the first place. She started pulling the wreckage away. After ten agonizing minutes she gave up. The heat had grown unbearable, the task lying in front of her beyond impossible. There was nothing substantive enough left—besides the miserable space beneath her overturned desk—to take cover in. Bonn’s Accounting was a pile of ruin. Whoever it was Angela had heard crying was thankfully gone. She didn’t have the strength or time to find anyone else.
Giving up already? Lazy girl. Let those before you suffer for your sins. Lazy, cowardly girl. I wish I’d had more time with you… maybe I could’ve knocked some morals into you.
Something big started to groan behind her. Angela turned and watched the remains of an old brick building come crashing down. Andy’s Delicatessen… I bought lunch there every Friday. It punched the pavement with a rumble, throwing up a cloud of smoke and dust into the even bigger clouds of smoke and dust above. Angela heard the sound of what was like a thousand firecrackers going off at once. She saw the sparks a few seconds later, a sea of orange and yellow sparkles travelling above the column of dusty smoke. A strong gust of wind caught the floating embers and drove them towards where Angela was standing. They rained about her magically, a million points of starlight, floating in the black and grey. They settled in the crumpled mess of paper, wood, and plastic at her feet and continued to smoulder brightly. The sparks rained into her hair and bit her shoulders. She danced about wildly, striking the pain away. Her desk burst into flames, and Angela ran.
There she goes… running away from doing what’s right. Run, girl! Run, you useless thing.
She staggered in the opposite direction from where Andy’s had collapsed, away from where she once worked, and towards that area of city block not already consumed in flames. It was too late for Trish. It was too late for Lisa, Michelle, Sandra, and all the other workers she occasionally went out with for drinks and called her friends. Even the ones she didn’t like; the men that laughed and called her the sexy old Jesus-freak with a nice ass behind her back. Even her boss, John Bonn—the man that once owned the flaming pile of debris at her heels—was beyond rescue. They were all beyond hope. Angela would have to find someone else to save.
Chapter 6
She went west, out of the business district and towards the suburban part of the city. Angela wanted to get away from the collapsing office buildings. She wanted to find the homes where people used to live. Fires were still raging around her, but they were smaller and spaced farther apart. She stepped carefully over fallen power lines, even though they looked as dead and inactive as everything else. Electricity was a thing of the past but tripping on the tangles of endless charred cables at her feet was a very real possibility.
Angela scavenged what she could from exposed basements and flattened corner stores. If she’d had money to leave for the stolen bottles of water and bags of potato chips, she would have. She had even scrounged around for a pen and paper in the smoking aftermath of a 7-Eleven to leave a note. Sorry I couldn’t pay for the melted chocolate bars and flat soft drink. I don’t have any money. I’ll pay you back when the city’s back on its feet and money means something again. That’s what she would’ve written, or something to that effect, had she managed to find a pen the ink hadn’t boiled out of, or paper that hadn’t been transformed into ash. Angela took what she could and remembered her path. She would make it up to them someday.
She went on like that for hours, searching for food and fresh water, calling weakly into the wind for other poor retches stumbling about in the ruined city. The fires continued, and the smoke blocked the stars above. Angela knew it was night-time; the dainty gold wristwatch her grandmother had given her was still working, still ticking the hours, minutes, and seconds away. It was 10 p.m. and Angela was tired. She had found enough to eat and drink since leaving Bonn Accounting, and had stored more in the pockets of her dress to last another twenty-four hours. Angela wanted to get out of the smoke. She needed to find a cool, dark place to curl up in and sleep the next ten or twelve hours away. Should’ve stayed under your desk.
She found a single story house still standing behind the rubble of a collapsed church. This will do just fine. The glass once sitting inside the window frames had blown in, but the structure of the building seemed solid enough. The front door was locked—or the latch had been damaged in the blast—so she crept in through the open living room window. It was dark and still inside, perfect for her needs. She groped forward, and her foot bumped into an overturned coffee table. She blinked her eyes a few times, adjusting her sight to the almost complete blackness, and saw the hulking form of an antique chesterfield beyond the table. She leaned forward and felt the coarse fabric covering the middle pillow with her fingertips. Angela would’ve squealed in excitement if she wasn’t so tired. She crawled over the table and sat on one end of the couch. She closed her eyes and let her head sink back into the
