The Lair
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I was a college student, and we were having a family reunion in a city on the east coast (Jennifer wasn’t there, though). We’d been swimming. We were walking down the street, and a small plane was zooming with a large American flag trailing in its wake. A missle, four times bigger than the plane, was arching across the sky, and we all stared as it narrowly missed the flag; then we cheered. But it exploded in midair, and we could see the burning debris falling and crushing that part of the city. Then a large disc was hovering in the air, and it turned brilliant, blinding white. Aubrey shouted for us all to shield our eyes, that it was an EM pulse. I could feel it pressing on my chest. Everything went dark around us, and there was a minute of eerie silence. Then everything began exploding. All I remember about our fleeing the city was reaching for Aubrey’s hand and gripping it very tightly, and that we were the ones who led the way together.
Five months later, we’d ended up in Philadelphia, which was much closer to the coast that it actually is. In fact, it was practically right on the coastline. We were living in a deserted warehouse, and the weather was turning bitterly cold. We had no way to get back home, no money, and the world had turned completely crazy. I knew that we had to have a plan for the future, and I knew that we couldn’t stay in the city. I could sense the coming of another attack, and my panic was growing. I tried several times to get in contact with Eric through email, but only managed to tell him that I was still alive and I loved him. I kept thinking about Idaho, although I was picturing remote mountains where we could build a bunker city and hunker down…a place where we could think, plan. And I knew that, once we reached Idaho, I could go from there to Edmonton and Eric.
So, with conditions in Philadelphia worsening, Aubrey and I stole a Hummer and a couple of guns. The roads out of the city were congested with traffic, and even with the Hummer we couldn’t force our way through. Not able to move forward or back, we could only sit as the attack began. Aubrey and I got out of the Hummer, to see if there was a way for the Hummer to get through somehow. A blast rocked near us, throwing us off our feet. When I stood up I could feel blood dripping down my arm and off my fingertips, but not the arm itself. Idaho, I thought. Eric. Eric. Eric.
As I was waking up, I saw hundreds of different images. Of Omi’s white car, which we were driving around landscape that resembled Coober Pedy- dry, brown, sharp cliffs. Of what the shelter in the mountains would look like. Of a man’s grizzled, sooty face. And of a city full of people who walked around with faces of those already dead, none speaking, while I begged to know what had happened, what was wrong. One of them looked up and said something. I couldn’t hear the words, but I understood the gist. America had failed in the counterattack, and the city was doomed to annihilation. Maybe that happened before we stole the Hummer…I’m not sure.
