He motioned his weapon, ordering her to do something.
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
He moved closer.
Abby thought, ‘Fuck it.’ She was going to run.
Standing there at the bottom of the townhouse stairs, she was aware of her will to survive. It was that same survival instinct that had led her to run into that townhouse and hide. She realized that she didn’t want to die.
But Abby’s revelation of the value of life came too late for her.
For all her failed attempts to end her life, all her near death experiences were just a tease to bring her to the realization that she wanted life not death.
In the midst of reasoning with the young soldier, he fired a single shot from his rife, an action for which she was ill prepared.
And the wish of a day or so earlier, her wish to die, came true when the bullet seared into her forehead and Abby dropped to concrete sidewalk and died instantly.
The blood went from warm and thin to cold and thick, turning sticky and sour smelling. But despite the transformation the substance took, Foster stayed still beneath the bodies and didn’t move.
He was prepared to get up earlier but then he heard that lone shot and he stayed still even longer.
He hadn’t a clue how long he was under those bodies; it could have been all day or ten minutes. But enough silence engulfed him and since there hadn’t been any outside noise in a while, Foster deemed it safe to get up.
He was by the door when the soldiers opened fire and was protected by the helpless injured around him.
He sat up, rolling a body away from him. Sitting there, Foster bought the back of his hand to his mouth, raised his knees, laid his head on them and cried.
What had happened? How did he fail these poor people that had depended on him?
Their bodies lay strewn about, riddled with bullet holes.
It had been nothing less than bloodbath.
A merciless bloodbath.
“Is anyone alive?” a female voice whispered.
Foster turned and looked. “Judith?”
“Foster?”
With a sob he looked around. “Say something else.”
“I’m underneath someone.”
He located her voice to his right. Then he saw a hand peeking out from under the body. By the ring on her finger he clearly recognized the hand as Judith’s.
Quickly Foster scurried to her and rolled the body from her.
Judith began to cry.
Her hands covered her face and her body shook. Like him, she was completely covered in blood, someone else’s blood.
“Are you hurt?” Foster asked. “Shot?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
“Oh my God, Foster. What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Soldiers came in here and just shot. They just fired.” He helped her sit up. “But we got to get out of here. We have to go.”
“But where?”
“I don’t know.” Foster peered around as he helped her to stand. He really didn’t have a clue on where they should go, but he knew staying at the recreation center wasn’t an option.
“We were just going about our normal day when the word came,” George explained to Harry in the local tavern. “In fact, we thought it was just a test of the emergency broadcast system, but it wasn’t.”
He went on to tell Harry how the first news bulletin was about a small nuclear warhead detonated in Washington DC. It had been pre-planted, and there was no warning. Same thing had happened in London, a pre-planted Nuclear weapon. Everyone in the country thought it was a terror hit until four low flying planes were spotted in New York City, two in Philadelphia and another in Boston.
All were flying bombs.
They were bombs that set the sky on fire as they ignited the oxygen and burned all those on the ground.
People that were farther out suffered pressure injuries which resulted in blindness or brain damage.
The warnings that something was going to occur on the Eastern cities gave people only a few minutes to seek cover. But it was too late for most of them.
There was no place that was safe from the oxygen burning bombs.
“We huddled around the radio listening to the stories of devastation,” George said. “That was Tuesday morning. By afternoon, people in Connecticut and parts of New Jersey were claiming they heard explosions that sounded like loud pops in the sky. Everyone assumed it was paranoia until everyone got ill. Fast too.”
George went on to explain that people were experiencing cold and flu symptoms by mid day and stores and shops just shut down. Agabarn shut down too, just in case.
“Did anyone come in to help?” Harry asked. “The CDC? FEMA?”
George shook his head. “Not that we know of. Too many, too fast. By that first evening, while America scurried to get on her feet, while she rallied to get help into the affected areas, a first wave airstrike came in shooting anything that moved off the east coast. We heard it and stayed inside.”
“We heard on the radio that we were trying to bring troops home,” Harry said.
“Yeah, we heard that too. But now there are battles going on at sea trying to stop them from returning.”
Harry exhaled heavily. “Are there news broadcasts anymore?”
