The silence continues as a blanket of smog tumbles from the hill in front of me. It’s so eerie and black as my head spins, and the smell of burning flesh awakens my senses, making me choke and gag, scalding my nostrils and throat. I feel sick. I think I’m going to be sick.
Long, drawn-out, demonic moans surround me and are soon replaced by deafening screams that pierce my ears but then I realize that I too am screaming. My God, I’m screaming and then I’m crying in silence again, then I’m screaming again until I break down into a pathetic sob that can go nowhere against the ear-splitting, riotous roaring around me.
‘Shannon! I’m here, my darling! I’m over here!’ I sobhelplessly, lying on the ground. ‘Please God, please let me find her! Shannon!’
DAVID
I limp along the street, holding myself up in doorway after doorway. Bodies and body parts are strewn around me, tripping me up and making me weak at the sight of the brutality that surrounds me. This can’t be real. It’s too horrific, it’s apocalyptic and dark, and fear makes me feel as if I’m going to puke.
The smell of burning flesh scalds my nostrils and waves of dizziness make every movement I see blur into slow motion; sounds of unearthly groans and whimpering like the stuff of nightmares and scary movies fill my ears.
An old man lies trapped under a heavy pillar just out of my reach, his brown coat drenched in dark blood and his eyes rolling back in his head. I hobble towards him, sure that I recognize him.
‘Don’t stop,’ he whispers to me as I fall to my knees by his side. ‘Don’t stop for me, son. Save yourself. Get help.’
His voice is shaking and low, but I can just about make out what he is saying. I shake my head frantically. I do recognize him! Yes, he comes into the shop all the time! He made a joke about the cost of a morning coffee in the caféup the street and how he was going to visit his wife in hospital.
‘You’re going to be OK,’ I tell him, wiping what I hope are tears from my face but when I glance at my hand I realize it’s my own blood. ‘You’re going to visit your wife like you said you were. This isn’t real. It can’t be. We have to get help. They’re coming, I know they are, so just you wait and see. Listen. Can you hear them? It’s sirens. Help is coming.’
His weary eyes catch mine and his hand reaches towards me before flopping to his side in defeat.
‘No!No, pleaseno!’
I look away and close my eyes tight, doing my best to distance my mind from what can’t be unseen. I just can’t watch as the last seconds of this elderly man’s life are sucked away from him. He had plans for today! He was going to visit his wife!
‘I’m so sorry!’ I scream into nowhere. ‘I’m so, so sorry!’
I sob into the darkness as I pull myself up from my knees, stumbling with every heavy step, not knowing where to go next. Others do the same, climbing up the hill in slow motion like dust-covered zombies, calling out names and clutching onto the thread of life as best they can.
I can barely walk now. It makes me sick with anger to realize I can’t help anyone else no matter how I try. I should have helped that man! I should have saved him!
‘Help!’ I cry out, as loudly as I can, to nothing and nowhere. ‘Somebody help us! Please!’
The cries of the wounded screech in my ears and the urgency of the sirens I heard before still squeal in the distance, coming closer and closer, but it’s taking so long for them to get this far.
I can’t look down. I know my arm is ripped open from my shoulder to my elbow, but I must keep going. I don’t know where, but I keep moving for as long as I can and then I see her, holding tight onto what’s left of a lamppost, so alone and afraid, her face blackened and charred and her hands patched in red, the colour clashing with the hot pink T-shirt I recognize from earlier.
It’s the birthday girl from the shop before, the little girl who had the balloon and the blue ice cream, but she’s almost unrecognizable and I’m not sure if it’s my eyes or the fact that she’s covered, like most of us, in thick dust. I reach my arm out towards her but the force of the water that gushes down the street beside us knocks her off her feet and she goes with it, thrusting her into a doorway where she lies, pinned to the concrete wall, her eyes wide and so frightened. I have to follow her. I can’t leave her alone.
‘I’m coming for you now! It’s OK!’ I shout to her. My arm is agony, stabbing pains shooting up into my neck, but I can’t just leave her alone. I need to get to her. I couldn’t help the man before, but maybe I can help this little girl and that will mean something.
‘Shannon!’
‘I’m on my way now! Don’t be scared.’
‘Shannon!’
We both get to her at the exact same time and collapse down beside her. Everywhere I look I see death and I smell fear. But this little girl. She’s like a ray of hope and I need to focus on that. We still have hope.
‘Thank God! Baby, are you OK?’ The girl from earlier with the rolled-up jeans and the white shirt – now a mix of black dust and red blood – sits beside us. She grasps the little girl, holding her close. ‘I found you! My darling girl! My sweet baby girl!’
She kisses the little girl’s forehead frantically, holding her tight, checking her over and over to make sure she isn’t hurt.
‘My balloon!’ the little girl weeps. ‘I’m sorry, Kate! I let go of my balloon!’
Kate’s striking eyes look into mine as she cradles the child’s head to her chest, rubbing her matted hair as the sirens scream louder towards us. Thick tears stream down her face leaving flesh-coloured lines in the black dust that smothers us all, like a river of hope that there’s life beyond this madness.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask her, barely recognizing my own voice. I can’t stop shaking. ‘We can wait here together until some help comes. I won’t leave you, I promise.’
