Friday Snippet: Calm Like a Bomb

In this week's Friday Snippet, we continue the adventures of Dell. The story finds her in the back alley lot after the nuclear blast she narrowly avoided by calling in sick to work. Daniel's fate still hangs in the balance. Hope you enjoy! Let me know!

Copyrighted, do not reproduce, material liable to change. You know. Etc.

She choked on heat and death when her first breath after the bomb rattled in her chest. Rolling onto her stomach, she clutched her screams in her fists. Grit groaned in her mouth, muddy with blood and sand. She wretched, quivering as she wiped her mouth on her soot-blackened sleeve. She hooked her fingers through the chain link fence, pulling herself to stand. Her bones ached and blood squelched in her left shoe.

But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the smoke swallowing up the sun and sky, and the buildings like skeletons staggering through the flames. She couldn’t hear. She saw the flames and the crumbling buildings, but all was silent as a snow-dusted sky.

Water gushed from a broken main in the street near her apartment and the walls slumped in as though exhausted. Debris blocked the door. On the balcony, Dell saw Caleb Tailor howling. His mother rocked him, but her face was empty. Up the drainpipe and over the wrought iron railing, Dell climbed. She crouched beside them, but neither looked at her. She shivered. Stumbling through their apartment, she couldn’t seem to keep her balance.

Out in the hall, she used the wall for support. A dull ache throbbed behind her eyes and thick white dust coated everything. Blood tickled her temple and sweat stung her eyes. Each step was a cranberry smear along the floor. It was difficult to think, difficult to breath. She was vaguely aware of the panic hissing just behind the pain.

When she found her apartment door jammed, she shouldered her way through. The place reeled like a drunken nightmare; all the angles leaned just enough to add to her vertigo. She reached for Daniel’s pack and saw the ash and blood on her jeans. Her knuckles clinched white on the doorframe.

Corleone meowed, crouching where she left him asleep near the fridge. She knew she was in shock but it was a distant thing. The cat stretched: dust drifted off him like a cocaine cloud. The apartment moaned. In splintered frames, the windowpanes squealed and shattered.

Dell blinked. And then she moved. She slung her pillows from their cases, threw open the cabinet, and swept the canned goods into the first pillowcase. Snatching up the second, she threw in bread and what was left of the bottled water from the fridge. Knotting the two cases together, she slung them over her shoulder. With her sheet and blanket bundled under her arm, she ducked into the hall. Corleone followed.

Up the stairs and through the Tailor’s toy-strewn apartment, she hobbled. On the balcony, Caleb still whimpered. Dell tied Corleone against her with the sheet; he squirmed, but she ignored him. Kneeling, she gripped the eight-year-old’s arms and in her best shut-the-hell-up voice, snapped at him to be quiet.

The balcony trembled and Caleb screamed. When Dell pointed to the drainpipe, the boy shimmied to the ground without question. Fear quickened in her blood. Biting her lip, she waited until he was well out of sight. When she slapped Mrs. Tailor, the woman’s head rocked back as though on a hinge. Color rushed back into her clammy face and her breath came in a gust. She stared up at Dell, actually seeing her for the first time. Dell smiled.

So say we all.
Bri