3:21 a.m.
Silently the bomb falls like a tear. You are sleeping when it hits the ground. It isn't the sound, but the vibration that makes you open your eyes. You did not expect to wake when you laid down in your clothes last night. You did not dream because dreams here are a treason against one's self. Now that you are conscious you wonder where the next bomb will land.
Days ago you held the yellow flyer that dropped from the same planes bombing you now. Move south, it said, so you moved south with the others and the bombs followed. They keep driving everyone further away. Tomorrow the bulldozers will come to destroy the roads so you cannot return. Tonight they target the buildings so there will be nothing to return to.
You crawl to the window and slowly pull yourself up. The glass long gone, there is nothing separating you from the hot breeze and the drop three stories below. Slowly falling flares light the night sky like candles. You look out the same window you looked out in the morning and the view is gone. The buildings are gone, the trees are gone and the center of it all, the old church, almost as old as Christianity, is now just a shadow burnt into the ground. You grip the silver cross around your neck, but you do not pray.
Outside people are making the only choice they have, whether to stay or to go. For you that choice has already been made. You are here to see and you are here to show. Slowly you begin to reach for your helmet on the floor, but you pause. The flak vest you wear feels hot and heavy. Across the vest in large yellow letters reads the word "PRESS". The vest is supposed to protect your vital organs, to shield your heart, but you know the snipers target it, just as you know the press outside ignore that fact. You let the vest fall next to the helmet and move towards the stairs.
There are no lights or windows in the stairwell. You descend the three flights of stairs carefully and as quick as you can, counting your steps. Either you lose your count or the building has grown impossibly tall. You are lost in the dark for years and when the door to the street finally appears you are afraid, but go through anyway.
There is no outside, just a gray mist of concrete dust and sand backlit by fire. Your skin, eyes and ears are all invaded by the dust. Drowning in the air, your throat constricting, you stumble onto your side. Reaching out to arms that are not there, the last thing you see is the darkness from the stairwell spilling out to dissolve you.
#
When you open your eyes your watch reads 3:21 a.m.. Your throat burns, but the dust has settled and the sky is still bright with flares. You begin to rise when you notice the body before you. Just a torso on its back, flesh hanging in long wet strips where its legs used to be. A child, maybe seven years old, eyes open to the sky as if watching a kite. The child is gray, covered in ash and you notice it is hugging something that looks huge against its small chest. The body of a cat.
You reach for the phone in your pocket. It feels too large and too fragile in your hand, which is the only part of you not shaking. You remove it and take the picture. You don't have the luxury of looking away. If there is a later and if you find a signal, you will upload the image. You will hope that someone sees it and shares it with others. You will hope that the image breaks enough hearts to stop the bombs from falling.
Like an insect plague the drones hum overhead. Soft popping gunfire is a constant in the distance. Down the street there is weeping, but closer a strange softer sound, like the muffled cries of a baby, comes from the ground. You look down and see the cat's paw twitching. You pick it up carefully and feel its tiny heart beat in your hand. Gently you brush the ash from its fur and wonder what color it is. Its paws are burnt, its eyes are singed shut, a small trickle of black blood runs from its open mouth. You hug the cat close to your chest and begin to cry. With the tears comes a crushing shame and an impossible distance grows separating you from everyone else dead or alive.
There is nowhere for you to go and nothing you can do. All that is left now is waiting, but you can't stay here. You've lost all sense of direction, there is no up or down, but you remember the crying down the street and move towards it. At least there you won't be alone.
