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 no one answered.
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.