Dawn of Destruction

by Ronald Williams

  “Did you lose anybody?” Bill asked.

  “Nope,” Bonnie said. “Eight out, eight in, Captain.”

  “Very happy to hear that,” Bill said. “What say we all have a drink, then figure out what we’ve got and get ready to deal with whatever comes next?”

  THE END

  The Bug Out

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 (Holly)

  Chapter 2 (Holly)

  Chapter 3 (Holly)

  Chapter 4 (Holly)

  Chapter 5 (Holly)

  Chapter 6 (Holly)

  Chapter 7 (Holly)

  Chapter 8 (Holly)

  Chapter 9 (Holly)

  Chapter 10 (Matthew)

  Chapter 11 (Holly)

  Chapter 12 (Matthew)

  Chapter 13 (Holly)

  Chapter 14 (Matthew)

  Chapter 15 (Holly

  Chapter 16 (Matthew)

  Chapter 17 (Holly)

  CHAPTER 1 (Holly)

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  I sat across the table from Matthew, hoping the wine would excuse my blushing cheeks.

  He had just begun telling me and Liza about his trek up Mount Everest where he’d lost his pinky toe to the indomitable mountain.

  Liza sat next to me, her gaze drifting back and forth between me and Matthew.

  Her foot continued to tap mine under the table, her head moving back and forth suggestively.

  “Liza, are you okay?” Matthew’s brow furrowed with concern. “Did you sleep the wrong way last night?”

  “Uh . . . no, Matthew, she just has a tic. She doesn’t like to talk about it, very self-conscious. Cheers!” I giggled behind my drink.

  Liza shot daggers through her eyes.

  “Matthew . . . go on with your story about Everest . . . did you make the climb or turn back?” I smiled, placing my hand on top of his encouragingly.

  Matthew looked down briefly and then opened his mouth to speak, but through the window behind him, the night sky lit up like fireworks.

  But no, that was wrong, the fireworks were too close, all the same color of bright orange and yellow and smoke.

  My brain took several long seconds to register . . . those explosions weren’t fireworks. No, they were actual explosions.

  People were running and screaming, cars burning as bits of metal rained down from the ebony sky. The window shattered.

  Glass showered the occupants of the pub like confetti. Everyone in the bar shouted and scrambled under the tables.

  I looked over to see Liza cowering by my side.

  Matthew? Where’s Matthew?

  I crawled forward, feeling my way around under the table until my hands caught on something wet and warm.

  I lifted my hands to my face in the darkness, firelight playing shadows across my fingers and palm.

  Blood!

  My head felt light, my vision blurred. I collapsed forward, steadying myself on hands and knees, closing my eyes tightly, swallowing bile.

  When I opened them again, Matthew lay in front of me, eyes vacant and cold, twisted metal protruding from his chest.

  I heard the muffled sound of someone screaming. My head started to clear, the screams piercing through.

  And suddenly, I realized, the screams were my own.

  * * *

  I shot up in a panic, scrambling under the sheets, fighting them off of me to catch my breath.

  One . . . two . . . three.

  I tried to regain myself. Inhale. Exhale. Just a dream. Just a dream.

  I repeated the mantra over and over until my breathing slowed, and my body stopped trembling.

  My eyes searched the room, the street lights shining through the apartment window.

  Friday night busy on the street below. Thank God. I let out a long sigh as I heard signs of normal life buzzing in the world around me.

  I lay back down and drifted in and out of consciousness. Those crazy stories Norman always told me.

  Norman, my cooky old grandfather on my mother’s side, the epitome of the doomsday preppers like you saw on TV.

  He always found himself in the middle of a doomsday situation, or at least he thought he did.

  He would babble on over with what I thought was useless knowledge that he somehow felt compelled to teach me, which would have been fine if he hadn’t started by scaring the crap out of his six year old granddaughter with stories of volcanic eruptions that block out the sun for decades or some foreign country shooting missiles that wipe out the entire United States government or economic collapses that would throw things back to the Great Depression.

  You name an apocalyptic event, my grandpa Norman was prepared for it, with an underground bunker and a decade’s worth of supplies to show for it.

  I laid back down, nestling into the sheets.

  As I closed my eyes, I drifted into that peaceful place between sleep and wakefulness, and my consciousness lost itself in a hazy memory.

  “Holly?”

  Norman placed a large hand on my tiny shoulder and roused me gently. I was six, that age where real life was somewhere between fantasy and reality.

  My imagination could make all things possible. I had fallen asleep around the tea table, Mrs. Bo Peep and Mr. Potato Head sitting comfortably on either side of me.

  “Oh, hi grandpa, where’s dad?” I asked as I delicately lifted the rose pink teacup in his direction and wiped sleep from my eyes.

  His face came into view, but something didn’t seem right. His face seemed distorted without the usual cheerful smile he normally greeted me with.

  “Hey, Teacup,” He spoke my nickname softly, his hand lingering on my shoulder. “Dad left for a while. He had to take care of something. I want you to know that I love you, and I’m going to have to tell you something that’s going to be really hard for you to hear. Just remember, I’m right here, okay?”

  He sat down on my bed, the slats creaking in protest, and motioned for me to come sit with him. He looked frightened.

  I tiptoed over and climbed up into his lap, grasping his hands in mine to try and comfort him.

  “Grandpa,” I said, suddenly alert and realizing that something was deeply wrong. “Why are your hands shaking.”

  I looked up into his eyes and saw tears gathered in the corners.

  “Are you crying?”

  “It’s your mom, Holly. She was reporting on a story in Chechnya, and her plane crashed out in the mountains. They found her after three days. She’d been injured and . . . “ he broke momentarily.

  I watched his lips form a thin, determined line, the white around them bunching up into pale wrinkles with the force of determination.

  “Your mom is gone, Holly. She could have survived if she’d known how. She could have made it, but she was helpless out there,” Norman angrily swiped away his tears. “I promise I’ll never let anything happen to you. We start learning together. I should have done more, taught your mother more. I should have . . . “

  Norman couldn’t continue. He gathered me in his arms and wept.

  I felt the haziness of sleep tug at me as his sobs faded. The memories preventing my mind from drifting away completely for a long while until, finally, I lost myself in unconsciousness.

  My drowsiness slipping into deep, unencumbered sleep.

  * * *

  The first thing that woke me was the silence. My eyes popped open.

  It was too quiet. In the city, there was always a buzz of electricity, a comforting noisiness that lulled everyone to sleep.

  I listened to the absence of the humming. Complete silence. Everything was black. No street lights. The store signs across the street never went out, but they were eerily absent.

  The night was pitch black. I listened harder, sitting up and feeling my way to the window.

  Drawing the shades back, I looked out upon a dead city.

  For the first time, I could see stars littering the sky. The moon half-hidden behind wispy clouds. The beauty of it unnerving me.r />
  Wow. A citywide blackout. This has NEVER happened.

  I felt a chill travel up my arms, my stomach in nervous knots. I’m sure they will get it up and running soon.

  The moonlight illuminating my bedroom cast a silver glow across everything.

  I turned and swiped my phone off the charging dock on the nightstand table, hoping to reach Liza.

  I pressed the home button distractedly but looked down when I didn’t hear the familiar click. No light. No touch ID. Dead. My iPhone was useless. I knew I had charged it earlier that night, too, before dinner. No way it could be dead.

  As I turned back toward the window, a shadow streaking across the sky startled me. I felt the apartment shake violently as it plummeted into buildings several blocks away.

  A plume of smoke and fire exploded upward from the street.

  I stood frozen watching planes continue to drop out of the night in the far off horizon, clouds of fire erupting here and there, dotting the landscape around the city and lighting up the night.

  I just stood there transfixed, uncomprehending.

  The world was exploding around me, but I couldn’t hear it. It just seemed so distant, like seeing through a tunnel. The loud pounding on my door pierced the haze.

  “Holly! Holly!” Matthew’s voice pressed urgently through the door.

  I rushed through the apartment, nearly swinging the front door off its hinges. A bright light shined through the doorway.

  Matthew’s dark figure stood in front of me, a large, heavy duty flashlight blinding me momentarily.

  I could hear screams and panic from the street bleeding through the walls of the complex.

  “Matthew,” I uttered breathlessly. “What’s going on? Have you heard anything?”

  “Everything is down, Holly.” His face looked green in the cast-off light. “Planes are falling from the sky. People are in a panic in the hallway. Do you have any idea what could be happening? I heard a guy in the hallway yelling about a terrorist attack. Another lady was saying something about God and the Devil. Once the planes started crashing, people just went crazy.”

  “Do you have your phone? Was it on the charger when the blackout happened?” I asked.

  “Uh, no, but . . .” I held out my hand to stop him.

  “I need to see it.”

  He lifted it from the back pocket of his jeans, unlocked it, and held it out to me. The screen was alight, and everything looked normal. I tried the internet. Just a blank page, no search engine.

  I tried to call my phone just to hear the quick beep, beep, beep and then the phone ended the attempted call. I tossed it back at Matthew.

  “Hold on,” I commandeered his flashlight and dashed to my closet, flinging clothes and shoes wildly out of the closet.

  Searching, searching, searching until I found it.

  My pack, the one Norman made we swear to keep packed and ready to go. The one promise I could never break after seeing what my mom’s death made of him.

  I always kept it ready, my emergency kit, extra clothes, hammock rolled up and attached to the bottom, water filter, empty water bottle, other necessities . . . in my apartment, always enough stockpiled to rough it with conservative rations for at least a month in the wild.

  I stepped back into the bedroom and opened my bottom dresser drawer, pulling out light cargo pants, a short sleeved shirt, light jacket, socks, and hiking boots.

  My emergency drawer. I had left everything folded and secure in that drawer and had not opened it since that first day I’d moved into the apartment four years ago.

  I nabbed an extra flashlight from the kitchen drawer and stuffed a bundle of MRE’s from the pantry into the top of the pack before cinching it closed again.

  I secured all of the buckles and side straps before lifting it deftly onto the bed and sitting in front of it. Straps on, buckle from waist to top, tighten, and ready. Ticking it off in my head like Grandpa Norman taught me, to keep calm, to think clearly.

  With a deep sigh, I lifted myself off the mattress and headed toward the door. Matthew stood there, watching me with eyes wide.

  I grabbed my keys off the hook by the door, tossed the flashlight to Matthew, walked out of the apartment, and shut the door behind me.

  CHAPTER 2 (Holly)

  The hallway was littered with dark shadows and beams of light hovering in all directions.

  I turned to Matthew.

  We were all like stark, over-sized fireflies in a big cage. I shook my head to get rid of the image.

  “Go back to your apartment. Grab a backpack and fill it with extra clothing, different layers, long and short sleeves, long pants and shorts, jacket, water bottle. Pick up anything else you think you might need to survive a long trip. You’re a hiker. Just think of it as a long backpacking trip. Then, meet me downstairs in the lobby.”

  Matthew headed toward his apartment two doors down as I turned toward the stairs.

  “Holly! Holly!”

  A wavering stream of light cut down the corridor to my apartment just as the lock clicked.

  I pocketed my keys and turned towards the high pitched panicky voice now running down the dark hallway.

  Liza plummeted towards me in a clumsy embrace. I hugged her briefly before firmly grasping her arms, my hands steadying her, nose to nose, her light casting a pale reflection on our frightened faces.

  “Liza, we need to get out of here. Now. I was just coming down to grab you.”

  “The elevators are out, everything’s crazy! People are screaming. Fires in the city. What’s going on? What do we do, Holly? What do we do?!”

  Fear assaulted me with every word Liza thrust out. I took her face in my palms; panicked sweat and hot tears covered my hands as I grasped her face.

  She collapsed into me, and I folded my arms around her trembling body.

  “Breathe, Liza. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .” I counted until her breathing steadied.

  We stood there for a long while. Counting and comforting her steadied me. Liza’s breathing finally slowed. She wiped the tears away with a wavering determination.

  “Okay.” I glanced up to see Matthew coming back towards me.

  Solemn. Steady. Strong. He was prepared, a bulky backpack strapped and ready to go.

  “Go with Matthew. He’s going to take you back to your apartment to pack some clothes.”

  I pulled Matthew aside, out of Liza’s hearing. “Make sure she has something to do. Give her a list of clothing items she might need. People with a purpose stay calm. When you’re done, meet me at my car. I just realized that I’ve got to check something. I’m parked on the street to the left of the front entrance.”

  Matthew nodded, walking toward Liza, soothing her with his deep voice while talking her through what she would pack.

  I jolted towards the stairs, flashlight jumping off the walls, pinpointing the exit sign that was no longer alight.

  Five flights down, the corridors were dark and quickly heating up, the damp night air stuffing into the small space.

  The moisture beaded on my face. I held the flashlight in one hand and freed my ponytail from the back of my sticky neck with the other.

  Finally, the light landed on the lobby sign. I burst through the door, my light pinpointed on the lobby doors ahead of me.

  The front of the lobby was just window upon window. I always enjoyed sitting on the comfy couches while I worked on my writing and sipped coffee from the complimentary coffee bar.

  You could sit and watch city life unfolding in front of you, great fodder for characters and story lines.

  The Atlanta sunsets were breathtaking through that wall of windows. I had watched the beautiful endings of so many days sitting in that lobby, all the bright oranges giving way to a myriad of colors and finally fading to black dotted with the vibrant city lights.

  But now, the city’s only lights were bright reds and angry oranges, fire upon fire. The large windows had imploded from the radiating heat, glass littered the flo
or. People were beginning to congregate in the lobby.

  I scanned the room with my flashlight and landed on face after face. Fear binding us all together in that moment.