405 - Afterward

January 9, 2012

Afterward

The building explodes almost at the same time she says, “Run!”

Shit like this, movies do a terrible job preparing you, you know?

And I run.

And she runs.

I can’t hear the gravel beneath my boots and I look over and can’t hear what she’s saying. I tell her blood is coming out her ears but I can’t hear my voice but I can feel the words in my throat. We’re running and the ground quakes as the building crashes fully onto the street.

How quickly the world falls apart, you know? Allegorically, and shit. Something.

If you looked up right now - as you’re running, the way we are - you’d see the bluest sky. You’d see clouds so far away, they’re almost inviting. Then you’d see a misty film of dust and smoke and human atoms begin to drift over and cover the sky. All of it. I look at her and she’s already putting on her goggles and is toggling the filter settings on her mask. That model mask isn’t going to last her more than another week. Ten days if she’s lucky.

If we’re lucky.

My mask is a one piece unit, with a Von Neumann filtering system. Fancy and military. I stole it off a dead marine a year ago. It’s battered but still works. That’s the point of this VN shit: it lasts longer than their owners.

We’re in the middle of the dust cloud and I reach out at my last sight of her, and my hand finds hers. We’re both in leather gloves and latex liners and it feel more intimate than fucking right now.

I can’t hear the gravel crunch beneath my feet, beneath her feet. I can feel the unevenness of it. She’s yelling something but it all sounds like a wind tunnel through her mask and the rushing cloud of debris around us. Almost as if she’s submerged in water. I can’t see her but her hand in mine, I can feel she’s beginning to lag behind. She’s tired. Fuck. I’m tired. It’s her right knee, I know it.

We run. We slow.

I flick a switch on the side of my mask and the red-light filter shows me where her body is in the form of heat. Flick another and my earpiece picks up the rush of air, static, and her voice, so distant it shouldn’t matter she two feet away. I can’t make it out.

Flick a third setting and the blue-light filter shows me the trace outline of our trail light, leading back to the bunker. I aim us toward it, but when I tug at her hand, it resists. She resists. I yank her, and her hands slips from mine. I stop.

In this fog of dirt and soot, I won’t be able to find her and have my blue-light on. I switch to red-light and scan. I’m scared. Did she fall, did her mask give out? I yell her name but I know the sound of the explosion damaged her hearing the same way it did mine. Nothing shows up on the red-light, and maybe I should switch back to blue and go back. Tell them what happened. But I don’t. It’s only a moment-long, the thought.

I walk a few feet over to where I think she may be if she’s fallen, but I don’t see anything. No body heat reading. Off in the distance, the fire in the rubble.

Shit.