The Collapse

by E S Richards

  “You alright there?”

  An elderly lady lowered herself down beside Len, her knees cracking as she made it to the ground.

  “I’m alive,” Len offered the old woman a feeble smile. “How’re you?”

  “Oh I’ve seen some disasters in my day,” the old woman smiled. “Suppose nothing quite adds up to this though. They’re saying we’re the lucky ones down here.”

  “Yeah,” Len let out a strained laugh under his breath. “Not so sure about that.”

  “You got any family out there?” The woman asked after a while, nudging Len to keep speaking. He wasn’t really in the mood for a conversation, but a part of him knew the woman was scared and perhaps talking to someone would help her.

  “Not in Chicago,” he shook his head. “But my ex-wife and son are in South Haven, over in Michigan.”

  “Ah yes I know the place,” the woman smiled, “used to visit there sometimes with my husband.”

  “He still around?” Len asked without thinking, cursing himself internally for such a crude question in their current state.

  “No, no,” the woman shook her head. “He died about three years ago now, there’s just me now. Probably for the best,” she continued after a pause, “Harry would’ve hated it down here.”

  Len offered the woman another weak smile, unsure what to say in response. He needn’t have worried however; the woman was keen to fill the silences.

  “Do you know if they’re okay then? Your wife and son?”

  “Ex-wife,” Len prompted, although again he cursed himself internally. There was no need to bring that up again. “But no, I haven’t been able to reach them. Once we’re out of here I’m going to find them though. I’m going to make it to South Haven even if it kills me.”

  “Well don’t let that happen,” the old woman chuckled. “You’re no use to anyone dead.”

  Len laughed in response, even with the morbidity of the joke. Somehow he found himself telling the old woman—June, he discovered her name was—all about his family, specifically James. A part of him found it cathartic to talk to someone and he quickly realized why June had been so willing for conversation in the first place.

  Eventually she dozed off beside him, letting out a faint snore every once in a while. Len had no idea what the time was, but he figured it had to be well into the night now. Leaning his head back against the wall he shut his eyes once more. If he really did want to get to South Haven, he needed to rest. The journey would be nothing but difficult, of that he was certain.

  Chapter 4

  “Where are we going?”

  “We need to get home, James, we need to get somewhere safe.”

  Amy tugged at her son’s arm as they moved further away from the rest of his evacuated school. She didn’t really know where would be safe for them to go; if what James’s teacher had said was true then the town was about to break out into chaos. For all she knew that had already happened.

  It frightened Amy that this disaster had occurred so quickly. She’d only been out of her office about forty minutes – for so much to go wrong in that small time away from a news source was unheard of. But it had clearly happened.

  Amy set a brisk pace as, much to her dismay, she led James toward the sounds of screaming voices. She could hear the notes of terror in each voice, each cry for help. Bracing herself, Amy steered James around the corner and back onto the main road that curved around the side of Lake Michigan. She didn’t want to see the aftermath, but knew going home was her best option.

  Catching her first glimpse of what lay around the corner, Amy quickly realized it wasn’t the aftermath. The disaster was only just beginning.

  James’s grip on her hand instantly tightened, his little fingers squeezing as closely as they could around her own. She returned the pressure, knowing the hardest part of getting home would be protecting her son throughout the journey. But that wasn’t going to stop her. From the moment Amy had heard that first explosion and the worst thought possible had crept into her head she had vowed to get her son through the danger, no matter how it presented itself.

  No more than twenty feet ahead of her an old woman lay on the road groaning. A truck had veered out of control and one of the wheels was crushing her legs. Amy could see that the old woman had no hope of escape. The huge truck looked immoveable, and even if Amy could find a way to move it, the road was completely gridlocked from all angles.

  Cars were abandoned in disarray, though whether they had crashed and the passengers forced out, or just stopped working naturally, Amy couldn’t tell. Over half of them were smoking violently under the hood and Amy could see pretty soon this entire road was going to follow the direction her cell and the gas station had taken.

  But something stopped her from just walking away. What if that was someone she knew underneath the truck’s wheels? What if it was her mother? In a moment of adrenaline Amy rushed forward, pulling James along beside her.

  Reaching the old woman she knew instantly things didn’t look good. Her legs were bent in an odd direction, her body lying at a sort of right angle to them. As the woman noticed Amy beside her she looked up, a sorrowful expression on her face.

  “Stay with me?” The old woman whispered, flecks of blood forming at the side of her mouth.

  Amy looked down at her son. She had to get him to safety, but who was she to deny an old woman’s dying wish.

  “We’ll stay,” Amy spoke softly, kneeling down beside the woman and taking her hand. Instantly the woman’s face softened and she closed her eyes, her breathing ragged and uneven.

  With her son in one hand and a stranger in the other, Amy starting humming a soft melody under her breath, a lullaby Len used to sing to James when he was a baby. The memory of it calmed her while she felt the woman’s grip on her hand tighten suddenly. Squeezing back Amy hummed louder, trying to fill the woman’s last moments with something other than pain.

  The woman’s grip grew loose and fell from Amy’s hand before the song ended, but Amy remained still, finishing the final verse. She closed her eyes for a moment before looking upon the woman, her eyes closed and her face almost peaceful. At least amongst all the horror and death she had managed to bring a moment of calm to the end of an old woman’s life. That was all she could do.

  “Mom…”

  James’s voice sounded quiet and scared beside her and Amy squeezed her son’s hand again to try and reassure him.

  “We need to move quickly now, James,” she spoke softly while pushing him away from the woman and toward the sidewalk, trying her best to avoid the streams of people that ran up and down the road. She didn’t look back at the old woman; she couldn’t bring herself to see her face again.

  Amy didn’t want to tell her son to run, knowing that would instill more panic in him than was already there, so instead she just started jogging herself, pulling James alongside her until his pace matched hers. Luckily there was a quicker route home than the scenic walk she and James normally made after he finished school. On a good day they could make it back in ten minutes, but Amy knew today wouldn’t be a good day.

  As they moved she tried her best to focus on James and getting him to safety, but the pull of chaos around her was too much to avoid. With the old woman out of sight Amy’s eyes fell on a father and daughter, still inside their car.

  Immediately Amy could see they were both dead. The daughter had a deep cut on her forehead, not dissimilar to the one Amy was sporting but the little girl hadn’t been so lucky. Her eyes stared forward blankly, her mouth slightly open from the impact of the crash.

  The father was even worse. He looked to have lost control of his car, as the front end was wrapped around a streetlamp. His torso hung out of the shattered windshield, shards of glass decorating his body like a work of art.

  A lump formed in Amy’s throat as she jogged directly past the car, shielding James from the incident as much as she could with her body. She knew he would have seen it though, the disaster impossible to miss. Thi
s was too much death for a sweet boy of his age. It almost caused Amy physical pain to expose her son to everything around them. As a mother it was her job to protect him and already on some level she felt like she was failing.

  Hurrying past the death Amy heard a faint hissing sound coming from the vehicle tomb. The hood then immediately started to smoke like several other cars and Amy tried to increase her pace once more.

  “Come on James, can you run a little faster?”

  Amy desperately tried to keep the fear from her voice as she coaxed her son deeper into the mess of cars. They had to move through them to get out the other side, but she knew in the heat the engines wouldn’t hold out much longer.

  The hissing sound began to fill the air, almost overpowering the screams that still echoed off every building. The smell of gas was gradually growing stronger and as more people realized what was about to happen the speed and number of bodies trying to escape the maze of cars heaved.

  James’s hand was pulled from her own by the force of someone knocking into her and Amy let out a cry. She couldn’t lose him, not now, not like this. Everyone was moving in the same direction but still Amy started to shove past people. She screamed her son’s name at the top of her voice, elbowing strangers as they stopped her from reaching her son, his little body being carried forward on the tide of panicked people.

  Angry men and women started to push back at her, the fear in everyone’s eyes steadily reaching a peak in time with the hissing of a thousand snakes slithering from car hoods everywhere. Then the first explosion came. It rattled the crowd to a pause and for a split second everyone was still.

  Amy’s mouth opened to scream her son’s name once more as the second explosion brought the crowd back to life. It was going to set off a chain reaction and she could feel the heat chasing her from behind, just as she had chased the fire earlier.

  Sheer panic was coursing through her veins as she barged a man to the side in order to move through the crowd. Her survival instincts were kicking in now and she didn’t care who she had to pass in order to reach her son. A palm caught her in the side of the head in response and Amy cried out in pain at the head injury she had suffered less than an hour earlier.

  Squaring up to the man, she was about to push him back again when the top of James’s head caught her eye in the distance. He was on the outside of the pack, moving in the right direction but not fast enough. At the current rate of the explosions James was going to get caught in the middle, trapped with nowhere to go.

  Spinning around and away from the man, Amy doubled back and moved against the waves of people for a second. Finally finding an opening between two cars she moved closer to the middle of the road. Now her path was clear. Everyone was avoiding the inside lane, as that was where the explosions seemed to be heading first, but that was also where Amy needed to be if she was going to get to her son.

  Ignoring the pain in her head and the stitch forming in her side, Amy weaved through smoking cars, always keeping one eye on her son in the distance. She was closing the gap between them, but the gap between her and the raging fire behind her was also becoming less and less.

  In a moment of pure need Amy closed down the distance between her and James, screaming his name as loud as she possibly could. His body twitched at the sound, his head twisting back to look over his shoulder. Amy locked eyes with James for a brief second and felt more speed rush into her legs, propelling her body toward him.

  Finally reaching her son Amy fought everything telling her to stop and hug him closely. Instead she crouched down and encouraged James onto her back, feeling his weight as he climbed on. Her body groaned internally at the extra mass, but Amy knew James wouldn’t be fast enough to get away from the fire alone.

  “Hold on James,” she shouted over the chaos, “whatever you do, don’t let go!”

  Carrying her eight-year-old boy, her baby, Amy dug deep inside herself for a final reserve of strength and began forcing her way through people once more. The now familiar bangs of explosions were becoming increasingly more frequent and shards of glass were raining down from the sky along with them.

  Amy forced herself forward, recognizing a small alleyway in the distance she could cut down. A few others had the same idea, but luckily the majority of people kept running straight down the main road. Amy knew that would end badly for them but she had no time to warn or try to save other people. She knew she had to be selfish. Nothing was more important than her child.

  Bang – Bang – Bang

  Time was running out. But the alleyway was almost in touching distance. A wave of heat pushed Amy sideways as a car exploded just to her right, flames licking at the bare skin of her arm. Crying out in pain she strained her arm to hold on tighter to James’s leg, willing them to make it the last few feet.

  Throwing her body around the corner just in time Amy tripped and fell to the ground. Feeling rough asphalt on her already burned arm she yelped in pain while dragging her son deeper into the alleyway. Kneeling in front of him Amy pressed her son’s body into her back and wrapped her arms behind her to hold onto him.

  The sound of cars shattering and burning into a thousand pieces filled the air as the explosions battled down the road in contest. Amy snapped her eyes shut as she saw the first car explode amid the crowd of people still trying to escape. Still the screams permeated her hearing and the smell of fire and gas began to mingle with the smell of burning flesh.

  She allowed her eyes to creep open, natural human curiosity almost imploring her to watch as more bodies were flung into the air with the force of vehicles combusting. Limbs were torn from bodies in the area where she had stood just seconds earlier, the area that she walked her son down five days a week.

  Despite the almost unbearable heat in the air a shiver ran down Amy’s spine. Today she’d got lucky, today she’d somehow managed to dance just out of reach of death. But something told her this disaster was only going to get worse, and she would need something more than luck to keep her and James alive through it all.

  “Are you alright, darling?” Amy pulled herself away from the sight in front of her and twisted around to look upon her son. His face was smeared with tearstains from crying and his hair was sticking out at all angles from being in the midst of the crowd. But other than that he looked unharmed; physically at least.

  James let out a little whimper and snaked his arms around his mother, holding her tightly on his knees in the small alleyway. Amy returned the embrace enthusiastically, steadily reminding herself for the second time in under an hour that she was with her son. She hadn’t lost him.

  “Don’t cry baby,” she whispered as Amy fought to hold back tears of her own. “I’m not going to let go of you ever again, okay?”

  James nodded slightly, still sniffling and trying to regain his composure. Watching her son trying to hold himself together threatened to tip Amy over the edge, but she knew she needed to stay strong for him. She couldn’t let herself break down now.

  Swallowing, she forced herself to stand, pulling her son up with her. She made a conscious effort to keep her body between James and his view of the road they’d just escaped from, picking him up again and facing him in the other direction.

  “We need to get home,” she said resolutely. “There’s not far to go from here, we can make it.”

  “Okay,” James let the word drift softly from his lips. It was all Amy needed to hear as she started marching them further down the alleyway, away from the occasional explosions that still sounded behind them and the constant screams of terror.

  Chapter 5

  Dixon hurried through the varnished hallways as quickly as possible, the report gripped firmly in his hand. Mr. Wilson, the president’s chief of staff, was due out of his meeting at 1600 hours; he only had a few minutes to brief him before he was gone again. Turn right by the bust of George Washington, left at Roosevelt’s wall hanging. Dixon knew the route like the back of his hand thanks to years spent working as a military liaison and fe
rrying reports from one important person to another.

  Like always, Dixon wasn’t cleared to know exactly what was in the report he was carrying, but like always he had a slight suspicion. After all his years he had picked up a thing or two about the codes these reports were delivered in and it helped him sleep better at night—most of the time.

  “Sir!” He picked up his pace slightly as he saw Wilson exiting the Eastern Suite; he couldn’t be late for this delivery.

  “Latest report from satellite command, sir,” Dixon spoke with respect, knowing it best not to irritate his superior. “Your expertise is required.”

  Wilson took the thin binder from Dixon’s hand without even looking him in the eye. Dixon was used to it now, the sheer disinterest no longer bothering him. With a wave of the older man’s hand Dixon was dismissed, back to the command center to wait for the next urgent report.

  Wilson flicked open the binder absentmindedly, scanning the front page for key details. His eyebrows rose slightly at what he found, closing the binder immediately and making his way down the hallway toward his office. With the doors sealed shut behind him he sat down to take a closer look.