by E S Richards
“How is this happening here?” Len breathed in amazement, completely in awe of the beauty in the sky that was so tragically twinned with the destruction on the ground.
“I have no idea,” Rory replied without taking his eyes off the twinkling lights. “It’s incredible.”
The two men watched in silence for minutes, neither of them moving an inch as they remained so captivated by the sky above them. It should be morning, Len thought to himself, the sun should have risen by now. But the longer they stood the more the lights swerved through the sky, showing no sign of giving way to the expected sunrise. It had to be a result of the mass ejection; strange how something so deadly could create something so beautiful.
A crash in the distance suddenly snapped both men’s attention away from the sky. Rory spun round in the direction of the noise on full alert, while Len took a step backwards, instantly on edge.
“What was that?” Len questioned his companion, somehow expecting Rory to have all the answers.
“Probably just a building coming down somewhere,” Rory shrugged. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else out here.”
“Do you think they’re all dead?”
“I don’t know,” Rory shook his head. “I think anyone who was out here when that gas line ruptured will be, but I’m sure lots of other people found safety too. Just like we did.”
“Yeah,” Len half questioned and half agreed with Rory. No one could have survived the full force of the blast, he was sure of that. And he could only imagine what the after effects would have been like. The buildings collapsing, the fires burning through streets and into houses. He thought of the man and baby falling from his makeshift rope the day before; in a way, they too had been lucky.
“So what do we do now?”
“Whatever we want,” Rory paused for a moment, “whatever we can.”
“I’m going to find my family.” Len spoke resolutely, giving himself no other option in the matter.
“Your family?” Rory raised an eyebrow at Len’s sudden confidence. “Where are they?”
“South Haven, Michigan.” Len told Rory what he had told June the night before, how he planned to walk all the way to them if he had to, but no matter what he was going to get to them.
“And you?” Len asked after a moment, “What’s your plan?”
“I’ll help everyone down there while I still can,” Rory gestured back to the underground parking lot. “All my family is in South Carolina, not sure I can make it all the way there on foot.”
A half chuckle escaped Rory that sort of merged into a sob too. He tried to swallow it but Len could see he was affected by what had happened. It was impossible not to be.
“Maybe it’s not as bad over there,” Len attempted to spin a positive light on their situation, although he knew it was only false hope.
Rory knew it too, scoffing at Len’s suggestion. “If Chicago looks like this, Len, the whole world will probably have been destroyed.”
Hearing someone else say it out loud was sobering to Len. He didn’t have a response to the statement and merely bit his lip and looked up to the sky again. Wherever James was, he hoped he at least had the same sky to look up to as well, in all of the death and despair, it was perhaps one pleasant thing to focus on.
“Will you at least come back down and help me explain this to the others?” Rory spoke again after a while. “It shouldn’t take long.”
Len paused for a moment. Now that everything was calmer he should really begin his journey to South Haven. It was going to take him days to get there and even though Chicago’s troubles seemed to be over, he had no idea whether it was the same in Michigan. Rory’s words stuck in his head, the whole world will probably have been destroyed…
But then he thought of the old woman, June, shivering underneath his feet. He thought of the two young children who had not let each other go all night and the brothers Carter and Theo. Although he needed to begin his journey, he was not a monster. He wouldn’t leave a group of people scared and alone underground after what had happened.
“Come on then,” Len beckoned to Rory, making his way back to the stairwell door. “Let’s get them all up here, everyone can make their own decision from there.”
Rory seemed satisfied with Len’s offer and followed him back down to the underground parking lot. When they arrived Carter and Theo were waiting anxiously, everyone else slowly beginning to rise from their night of sleep.
Len let Rory do most of the talking again. He explained what had happened to Chicago, how the buildings had been destroyed and that no one was left as far as they had seen. Several people started to cry when they heard the news, despairing for lost loved ones and where they would go.
Rory tried to reassure the group, explaining that if they had found somewhere to avoid the chaos, there were likely other groups of people out there too. It didn’t offer much solace though; the truth of how many dead lay above the ground was too much for most people to rationalize.
Still, people began slowly moving up the stairwell, making their own way out into what was left of Chicago. Len spotted June amongst the line of people waiting to climb the stairs and moved to her side, offering his arm for her to lean against as they started to walk upwards.
“Thank you,” she smiled, “lost my cane in all the chaos of course.”
Len bit his lip. “Do you know where you’ll go now?” He worried for the old woman; she was completely alone in a desolate city. A part of him wanted to stay with her, to make sure she found a place of relative safety, but he knew he couldn’t do that.
“Oh I’m sure I’ll find somewhere,” she maintained a surprisingly positive attitude, her long life somewhat hardening her to disasters and setbacks. “I’m not long for this world anyway, I’ll just find somewhere to settle down and oh—” June gasped as she and Len finally made it outside, “enjoy the view I suppose.”
All around him the residents of the underground parking lot were gazing upwards to the sky, pointing and smiling as they watched the Northern Lights meander around stars like a great river.
Len slowly withdrew his arm from June, offering her a genuine smile as she too watched the sky, her eyes twinkling along with the lights.
“Good luck,” she called after him as Len started to slowly walk away from the group. “I hope you find your family.”
Me too, Len hoped as the group of strangers steadily disappeared from sight, me too…
Chapter 7
Wandering through the quiet streets as the sun eventually started to rise and the dancing lights faded into nothing, Len could have almost convinced himself he was anywhere but Chicago. Almost, if he hadn’t watched the city falling to ruins around him just hours ago.
Without the skyscrapers and busy intersections, the city was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. It took him a while to get his bearings even though he’d gone to his office building five days a week and had done so for almost ten years. Without the usual surroundings everything looked different. Plus, he was used to having his car and a destination in mind; now, he didn’t know where he was going. Not really.
The desolate scenes of the city disturbed him. Everywhere he looked there were remnants of someone’s life. A discarded teddy bear, a lost shoe, a set of keys. They were the reminders that were easy to stomach; remnants of life in a more human form also covered Len’s path.
The stench of death was already putrid in the air. He must have passed almost a hundred bodies in the first five minutes of leaving the underground parking lot, his office building clearly very central to the disaster. As Len continued his walk, backtracking along the route he had taken to his office, he quickly realized there was something even worse than the dead bodies. Several people were still alive.
The first man he came across was badly burned, his face scarred so far beyond belief that even his own mother probably wouldn’t have recognized him. On top of the scarring there was a huge cut in his head, so deep that Len could see what he b
elieved to be brain matter inside the man’s head.
It was the coughing that Len was drawn to initially, the faint sound echoing around an otherwise silent city. The second he approached the man Len knew there was nothing he could do for him; even if he had years of medical training it was clear this man was beyond help.
He locked eyes with him for a second, guilt tearing through Len’s psyche at the knowledge he was simply going to have to walk away. The man coughed in an attempt to say something, but only a meek gargling noise tumbled from his mouth. Len could only imagine the amount of smoke and fire he would have inhaled, and it was a miracle he’d managed to hold on for so long.
But for what? As Len walked away from the man, his heart heavy with regret, he started to seriously consider what the future would hold now. He had no idea how many people had survived or in fact whether anyone outside of the underground parking lot had made it through the night. The thought that hurt him the most though was what the other cities would be like. If somewhere as big and as well-equipped as Chicago could be brought to its knees in a day, what hope did the smaller towns have? What hope did South Haven have?
Len continually switched between thinking about his family and pushing their faces from his mind. It was much easier to keep moving forward without conjuring up terrible ideas about what could have happened to Amy and James. He tried to simply focus on putting one foot in front of the other, staring at the ground as he walked to avoid the destruction around him.
But with nothing else to occupy his thoughts, they always drifted back to his family. Len’s internal narrative was spinning out of control. Perhaps if he imagined the very worst that could have happened, the state he would eventually find them in wouldn’t seem so bad. Although then he had to remind himself that there was no guarantee of finding them. Amy and James could be dead and that was equally something Len had to prepare himself for.
A faint crying sound snapped Len’s attention away from the dusty floor. Particles of rubble and whatever else floated in the air around him, a faint breeze cutting through the sweltering heat. Len was almost accustomed to it now though, his once pristine white shirt now dark gray and clinging to his body with sweat, dirt and blood.
He narrowed his eyes as he listened, trying to discern what the sound was and where it was coming from. It definitely sounded like someone crying. Someone very young, maybe even a baby.
With a sudden realization, Len swung his eyes around the intersection where he stood, remembering in a flash the scene that had unravelled there the evening before. The tilting building. The poorly made rope. The abseiler. The fire. The baby.
Len started running toward the sound, hoping with all his might that whatever he found wasn’t going to bring him more pain. When he reached the fallen building he slowed his pace, treading carefully through the wreckage like a teenager sneaking out of the house.
Broken bricks and bits of buildings were everywhere. A refrigerator lay on its side, food spilling out onto the ground and already starting to rot in the immense heat. As he climbed over a large portion of rock Len let out a quiet gasp. Roughly twenty bodies occupied the immediate area in front of him, all still, not a whisper of life between them. But still the crying came.
It wasn’t hard to trace the noise now that Len was so close. He held his breath in disbelief at the idea that a baby could have survived all this when so many more capable men and women had fallen beforehand. Len wasn’t what he’d call a regularly practicing religious man but this was something that seemed like no less than a miracle.
Standing so close to the crying, Len checked all the debris in front of him, looking anywhere and everywhere that a baby could have been hidden away. Then he saw the man; the abseiler. He had fallen backwards into the road when his rope started to burn, landing flat on his back. It looked like he had died instantly, the pool of blood surrounding his head already dried and darkened in color. But all life hadn’t truly left his still form.
Reaching down Len unzipped the jacket the man wore, feeling the lump beneath the fabric. Raising the baby up to his face tears started to form in his eyes. How was this possible? In his own two hands he held a tiny baby boy, no more than a year old and yet, he was more alive than anyone in the city. His miniscule lungs working to full capacity as the baby continued to cry, even as Len hugged the infant to his chest.
He couldn’t stop the tears from coming then, the feeling all too familiar to Len, memories of holding James as a baby swimming to the forefront of his mind. How this little boy had survived was completely beyond him, Len could only guess that the abseiler’s body had completely cushioned his fall. Not a single scratch visible.
Perhaps there was hope, Len decided. If someone so helpless could survive what had killed thousands, perhaps his family had made it through as well.
He rocked the young boy against his chest as Len continued to walk, knowing it was pointless to look for the mother as well. Eventually the crying ceased and the boy drifted softly to sleep in Len’s arms. Such innocence almost brought Len to tears once more but he sniffed and held his head up high, knowing for sure he needed to complete his journey now.
After half an hour of walking, Len was no further out of the annihilation of Chicago. Slowly though, people started to appear from hiding places, exiting dark corners and still upright buildings with a look of confusion on their faces. Many of them stared at Len; the first other sign of life for each of them. A middle-aged man walking through the city of Chicago with a dead woman’s baby clutched to his chest.
Some people shouted questions at him, asking what had happened and where everyone else was. For each of them though Len was left without an answer, merely shaking his head and navigating his way in the direction of home.
It took over an hour for Len to reach the outskirts of the city center, fallen buildings and blocked roads forcing him to change his course on several occasions. The baby boy slept peacefully throughout it, although Len had started to worry about what he would do with the child. Bringing him along to South Haven didn’t seem like a very logical decision.
Muffled voices gradually started to fill Len’s ears and he wondered whether more people had managed to survive further out of the center. The thought gave him hope, until he rounded a corner and saw a large gathering of men and women, varying in ages from teenagers to middle aged. What struck Len most though was what half of them were carrying. Guns. Axes. Pieces of pipe. Anything that could be used in a show of aggression.
Len shrunk back against the wall around the corner, tightening his grip on the little boy. He frantically tried to rationalize the need for weapons in his head, but Len was not an aggressive man. He always tried to avoid violence and confrontation in his life, turning away and evading challenging situations whenever possible. It was one of the reasons his marriage had broken down in the end, through his unwillingness to care and argue for the things that mattered most to his wife.
But this was not a marital dispute. This was a landmark moment in human history, something that children would learn about in school in the future—if the world managed to rebuild. Len shuddered in thought.
As Len stood hidden in shadows he slowly started to guess at the purpose of the group ahead of him. They were going to make the most of the chaos, of the lack of rules and regulations. Ergo, they were not a group Len wanted to come into contact with. Turning away from the wall, Len started to creep back in the direction he’d come from. He’d have to find another way back to his home, there was no way he was walking past a group of people with deadly weapons. A group of people with deadly weapons who probably had nothing left to lose.
The baby moved against his chest as Len backtracked, stretching slightly in his sleep. Please not now. Please stay asleep. Len’s hopes were ignored. The little boy yawned and looked up at Len, his expression as harmless as only a baby’s could be. Then the worst happened and he opened his mouth and started crying in a shrill, harsh tone.
Len jogged toward a broken building
, sheltering in the slight shade of the doorway. He bounced the baby up and down, hushing to it and pleading for him to stop crying. Len’s efforts were fruitless and his heart sank as he heard a shout coming from further down the road—the very direction of the group he was so desperately trying to avoid.
Len bit his lip in panic, clueless as to what the group would do when they found him. What they would do to the baby. In a split decision Len laid the little boy down on the ground, begging with his eyes for him to stop crying. Then he ran out into the road, heading straight in the direction he knew the group would emerge from. If he could distract them from the baby, maybe he could save at least one life that day.
“Well, well, well!” A young-ish man with a shaved head and a rifle slung casually over his shoulder spotted Len first, sauntering toward him with a cocky expression on his face. “What do we have here?”
“Err, hi?” Len questioned innocently, already having made the decision to try and play dumb and get away from the people as quickly as possible. “Are you alright?”