“Ma’am?” Harper shook her shoulder. She still held the infant, whose shrieks had turned to a whimper. “Ma’am, you need to get up.”
The woman remained still.
“I have your baby boy. He needs you.” Harper placed her fingers on the woman’s pulse. Please, get up.
“She’s gone,” a voice behind her said. Harper reared her head back to the black cop. She didn’t have words.
Harper felt sick, physically and mentally. She forced herself to stand and face the man. She read his name tag. “Officer Taylor, this kid…”
“I know,” the man replied, signs of fear and bravery mixed on his dark face.
She handed him the infant, whom he received with delicacy amidst the fray.
Before the officer could respond, Harper was already sprinting to the fluffy smokescreen that still lingered before the Washington Monument. She’d delayed long enough. It was time to find her son.
Taking a final deep breath of crisp air, she plunged into the haze.
The dense mist clawed down her throat, and a sharp, hot stinging made her eyes wet. Black shreds of clothes and other charred scraps bumped against her skin and scratched her nose with the smell of fire, dirt, and cooked flesh. Using the collar of her camo uniform, Harper shielded her mouth. Coughs and cries and moans sounded in the bubble of lingering smoke. Small bonfires cast orange-and-yellow glows all around. Harper’s foot snagged something hard. She stumbled and reared back her head, introducing herself to the blackened body she’d tripped on. The only tell that it was human was the shape. It was all charred flesh. Moving on, Harper squinted, noticing dozens of charred lumps across the upturned grass. Weeping came from unseen locals.
“Eli!” she shouted. The barbequed meats were all unrecognizable.
Distorted silhouettes of monstrous and incomplete humanoids materialized in the smog. A man stumbled toward her. His meaty fingers grasped her shoulders. The explosion had eaten half his youthful head and left a black, bloody smear where his ear once was. One eye was shut, and the other poured tears. His fingernails raked against Harper’s skin. Tatted and with a thick ear gage, he wasn’t Eli. Harper shoved at him, but his grip dominated her.
“Please!” he begged hoarsely.
Harper yanked her shoulder away from his grip and snatched his palm. In a movement, she twisted him and put his arm behind his back. “Get to the police! Now!” She pushed him in the direction she had come. He stumbled that way, and the unnatural mist consumed him.
Harper pressed on to where the smoke was thickest and the corpses piled high. Slews of recently amputated men and women shambled mindlessly. One groped the ground furiously for the part he’d left behind. Another convulsed like an epileptic. The woman nearest her sat cross legged and jerked her head around at the sound of the slightest footstep. Nothing remained of her eyes.
Harper’s attention shifted quickly from one horror to the next. Soon it melded into a blurry picture of smoke and death, coughs and screams. The dirt beneath her feet had softened from the explosion, and with a fell swoop, Harper was falling. Her bottom slid down tousled dirt, and she soon realized that she sat in a deformed circular dish. The impact zone. Its diameter ran a few yards across and a foot deep. If it was a suicide bomber, nothing was left.
“Eli!” she wailed, even louder this time.
The concert stage, its front chewed back from the explosion’s bite, became visible to her. Tall vertical trusses were toppled on its deck. Glass and sparks leaked from the hanging lights that swayed to one side. The forty-foot metal cube that encompassed the stage moaned as its metal support piping bowed in odd directions.
“Take my hand!” a man commanded.
Harper forced herself to her feet. Her knees felt like noodles, and her head bubbled. She hacked, coughed, and reached her hand to the stranger. The calloused palm was not familiar. Past her smoke-seared vision, she noticed the man’s black hat and dainty police uniform. “Ma’am. Keep calm. We’re getting you out of here.”
No! Help the others! My son needs me! She wanted to protest, but her voice was too crusted and dry. The police officer pulled her from the ditch. Putting an arm around her shoulder, he led her farther from the bodies. Farther from where she hoped to find her son.
“Mom!” A faint shout from a shrouded place.
An illusion? She didn’t risk it. Breaking from her wall of meekness and the man’s grip, Harper shot back into the smoke.
“Mom!” The voice faded.
Forcing her numbing legs, Harper darted to the stage. She craned her head in all directions. The sound of struggle drew her closer to the stage. The world and the smoke spun around her. Her eyes burned. She covered her mouth to mask her cough. Then she saw her son, digging himself out from under a body.
Dirt and soot clung to his thick brown hair and smudged his pale, youthful cheeks. He pushed against the thick corpse with the palms of his hands. The obese man rolled but only enough to remove him from Eli’s legs.
“Eli!” she bellowed out. Her eyes watered with joy. Within the heart of the thick cloud, Harper ran to her trapped son.
Her boy turned to her, mouth agape from shock and pain. The stage cast its shadow upon him like Lucifer’s wings. The metal cube groaned as it bowed under its own weight. Her son’s handsome eyes widened as the massive structure snapped and collapsed upon him.
5
Estranged
With a metallic roar, the aluminum piping smacked against and jabbed into the soft dirt, creating a maze of twisted spires and warped hurdles. Dirt and dust shot into the hazy air. Harper strode to the right, dodging a falling light casing larger than her head. It exploded into plastic splinters upon impact.
The smoke thinned, but Harper didn’t breathe. Her maternal instincts thundered in her heart and mind. She forgot her fear, her doubt, and herself. The only things that mattered were the heaps of metal that covered her son. She charged into the calamity that was once a stage of music, joy, and passion. Lifting explosion-charred flooring, she only found shredded cables. She spotted a tennis shoe ending on a pencil-thin leg buried by metal. Using her might, she rolled the metal aside. It was a woman beneath, very much dead. She called for her son. Only the wind and muffled conflict outside of the cloud replied.
A lump of truss caught her eye. Harper yanked at the first piece. Something contested her grip. A familiar man looked back at her. His bloodshot eyes met hers. A large smudge of dirt curled around his left brow and down his stubbled cheek. The stink of sweat and soot overpowered his strong cologne.
“Harper?” The words tumbled from his lips. She saw surprise and guilt on his face.
She hardly recognized him, but there he was: James Murphy, her estranged husband.
No time for introductions. Without a word, Harper yanked the piece away. It slid across the tossed dirt. James didn’t need it spelled out for him. Her mere presence commanded him to keep digging. And so they did.
With haste, they drew out the links of truss and threw them to the side. The dirt-covered fat man revealed himself. Tracks from the aluminum piping stained his polo shirt with thick lines. Blood caked his balding head. Eli came into view. He wasn’t moving.
“Together,” Harper ordered.
James grabbed the arms, and Harper grabbed the legs. They lifted the large body and, on the count of three, slung it to the dirt. Their attention turned to Eli. He lay across the ground with his arms and legs spread in all directions. The side of his face rested in the dirt, and a trickle of blood leaked from his chapped lips.
Harper dropped to her knees. She cradled his drooping head in her arms. His blue hood fell between her arms and landed on her lap. The idea of strength fled far from her. Tears, snot, and soundless cries ruled Harper. She rocked her son in her gentle grip.
James lowered, facing his son and wife. His face was still, but his eyes screamed sorrow. He reached his hand out, aiming for Harper’s. With ugly tears over red skin, she shot him a glance of contempt. James retracted his hand
, sliding it in his jean pocket. He averted his auburn eyes to the dirt.
Oh please. Please. Please. Please! Harper begged behind her sobs. With a trembling touch, she ran her knuckles down Eli’s soft, warm cheek and to his neck. She placed her index and middle finger against his jugular and waited.
James sniffled. The blood had left his long face, and a frown weighed upon his chiseled jaw. “Babe, I…”
Then Harper felt it. A pulse of life in the boy’s vein. Then another and another. “Help me get him up,” she barked.
Startled, James obliged. They both took an arm and looped it around their necks and on their shoulders. Eli screamed in pain. Harper caught sight of the knob under his skin. The bone inside his forearm wiggled as she moved. James took up the slack as Harper slid out from beneath her son’s broken arm.
With awkward fingers, Harper unbuttoned her uniform jacket, stripping to her tan T-shirt beneath. “Get his arm up.”
“Don’t worry, buddy,” James said with calm determination as he assisted his son to an upright position. “We’re going to get you to the hospital.”
Eli groaned painfully as James elevated his broken arm. Harper fashioned the camo jacket into a makeshift sling around his arm.
“No. We’re not.” Harper looked around the dispersing smoke, trying to get oriented.
James belted out a quick burst of angry laughter. “Harper, are you kidding me? Look at the boy. Look at me, for heaven’s sake.”
“This way.” Harper led them, taking long strides over the corpses.
Eli groaned as James shuffled around a body. “His arm may not be the only problem. Who knows what sort of internal injuries he could be experiencing.”
Harper clenched her fist by her side and halted. She turned back to James, deliberately not masking her annoyance. “Did you notice your phone cut off? Or power in the street die? Maybe your little band went silent all of a sudden? You know, the one you took my son out of school to see? Yeah, well, that whole thing was the result of an EMP blast that just fried nearly every electronic device in the city. Even the hospitals with reserve power are too understaffed to deal with a broken arm.”
“It could be more than that. We just witnessed a bomb go off in a crowd of hundreds of people. I don’t mean to complain, but my ears haven’t stopped ringing since I woke up next to a dozen frickin’ dead people!”
Harper frowned. She couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like to see the explosion firsthand. The simple thought made her shiver. “We’re going to the reserve center. He can get help there.”
Eli burst into a fit of painful coughs.
“First things first,” James said while looking at his son. “Let’s get our boy out of here.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
The sounds of panic and shouting bled into Harper’s ears just as she passed through the smoky haze. The three of them escaped the suffocating cloud and looked out at the chaos before them. A massive crowd swarmed around the police, who separated them with a semicircle of riot shields.
“One at a time!” an officer yelled. “One at a time!”
In the back of the line, a middle-aged man held the limp body of his six-year-old daughter in his arms, begging to get into the ambulance on the other side of the riot police. No one gave him room. The medical staff couldn’t have been from any local hospital, Harper deduced. They must’ve been parked here for the concert. They were heavily understaffed, more than ten to one. The bleeding and battered bomb survivors struggled to bust through.
Through a megaphone, an officer announced that the ambulances were low on medical supplies, and to follow an officer to the nearest hospital. People jeered, put their children behind them, and then charged the riot shields. Their shoulders smacked against the durable plastic. Nine times out of ten, they would bounce back. However, there was always that one who hugged the shield and tried to pull it away from the officers. The assault ended when a baton clubbed someone’s back or head.
Harper gave James a look. He was engrossed in the scene. His eyes watered as he watched good people become desperate animals.
The police led a man missing an arm through the crowd. They tried to part the sea of people to get to the ambulance. The man died before he arrived at the wall of riot shields. Cursing, they still brought his limp body through.
“We are officially out of supplies,” the megaphone-wielding officer explained. “Please proceed to the nearest hospital in orderly fashion.”
She didn’t see who threw the rock, but the police retaliated. Officers stepped out from behind the line of shields and fired cans into the crowd. With a hiss, yellow gas exploded into the streets.
“Go! Now!” she shouted to James and Eli. Arms around each other’s shoulders, the two boys started sprinting. Harper lagged behind them.
Bystanders ran in every direction. One tackled an officer, yanked off his gas mask, and proceeded to beat his face with his fists. The horse-mounted cops trotted around the area, clubbing suspicious figures that escaped the explosion. Harper directed James and Eli down a certain street. Suddenly, her chin rammed against the concrete. Her teeth felt loose, and a large man sprinted by her. Then a woman. Then a child. I need to get up. She lost sight of Eli and James. She pushed against the earth to rise and was shoved back down. A throbbing pain soared up her back. She saw the running man, who didn’t even bat an eye at her. Another boot stomped her spine, this time from a woman.
Harper’s chest pounded in agony as another person ran over her. She struggled to stand. Failed. More pain, more people, more footprints upon her back with every attempt to rise. She held her hands over her head and moved into the fetal position. The blows softened, but they kept on coming. She could smell the pungent tear gas crawling her way.
Golden tongues of gas licked at her feet. Harper found her opening: a miniscule gap of sunlight opened within the human stampede. She rolled on her feet. Sharp pain erupted up her back as she found her footing. The tear gas gave her arm a stinging kiss, and then she was one with the herd.
Like driftwood, Harper was forced down the ocean current of people. As the yellow cloud neared, the more desperate the assault became. Harper could barely breathe within the horde of sweaty bodies. Those behind her collapsed in pain from the gas. Their cries rang in her ears. Eli and James were out of sight and earshot. She fought to get a better view and was groped and punched and shoved in return. Her nose and throat burned as the gas pulled at her. A balding man wearing a sweater tripped on car debris and fell, quickly overtaken by the indiscriminate cloud. The thump of launchers, the bounce of metal, and the hiss of smoke continued all around Harper.
As Harper neared the street’s end, a can zipped by her head and clocked a man in the temple. He staggered and clenched the newly bleeding bruise. The yellow smoke burst out from beneath his feet. Swift as lightning, the crowd screamed and split in every direction. An elderly man and woman blocked Harper’s path. She twisted by them and headed in a direction that she thought was east. The pockets of tear gas bloomed in every direction. A car blocked her path. Instinctively, she jumped, sliding her bottom across the cold hood and landing feet first on the other side.
“Mom!”
She jerked her head to the left. Golden smoke. Crashed cars. No Eli. She turned to the right and saw screaming pedestrians running through the smoke with puffy eyes and uncontrollable tears. Her son not among them. To her front, an office building. Rubbernecking bystanders watching through the tinted glass. James running to her. Eli banging on the locked door with his good arm. Like toxic reapers, two clouds neared him from both sides.
“Harper!” James yelled as he met her halfway and tried to take her by the hand. Not stopping, she refused him.
“Get that door open!” She ran to her son and rammed her shoulder against the glass door. Pain was her only reward. The onlookers inside stepped back. Yellow filled Harper’s peripherals. No, no, no!
She didn’t hear exactly what James commanded, but she hunkered
herself and Eli down, and they braced themselves. A hunk of something broke the air by her face, and glass shattered behind her. She took Eli around the shoulders and sprinted through the devastated glass door, taking a few weak shards to the head and shoulders. Inside the dark office building, the white-collared workers and desk jockeys dived out of the way. She beelined for the exit door in the back and, with Eli’s assistance, burst through to the other side.
The alley was decrepit, skinny, and lined with Dumpsters. Harper never felt more relieved. She embraced her son.
“Mom,” he complained, but she didn’t let go. His warmth powered her with life.
“It’s okay. I got you.” She could not calm her rapid breathing and raging heartbeat.
“My. Arm.” He winced.
“Oh.” She pulled away, leaving a hand on each of his shoulders. She smiled apologetically. “Right. I’m sorry.”
With his big brown eyes, unkempt hair, and an air of rebellion, Eli looked like a mirror image of his father. She and James were only sixteen when they got together. Had it really been that long?
Concern awoke in Eli’s eyes. “Where’s Dad?”
The air left Harper. The cries of the city were fading in the blue sky touched with gold from the rising gas. She looked back at the closed door. Its white paint was chipped and discolored.
It rattled and swung open. James stumbled through the doorway and wobbled to a stop only a yard from them. Placing his palms on his knees, he panted. Dirty beads of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and dangled at the tip. “Holy hell.”
He looked up at them and grimaced. “You good?”
Harper’s chin was bruised, her teeth felt loose, and her ribs were killing her. With pursed lips, she nodded.
Surviving The Collapse Super Boxset: EMP Post Apocalyptic Fiction Page 89
