It was hot. The kind of heat that feels like it’s stuck to your skin, making you want to tear it off with your fingernails. The kind that clouds the corners of your vision, that causes vegetation to thirst and die. Torrid… maybe that was a better word. But when one is in such a primal state, words don’t come as easy, nor do they matter. The sun, though just a pulsating, hazy orb through the acidic yellow clouds, was relentless as it beat its rays down upon his back.
To his family and friends, he surely had a name, but it had been so long, so many people had become so unrecognizable that most names simply went forgotten. The locals recognized things about him from before: his work shirts, his black wedding band, the tread marks of his worn-out boots. To jeerers at the bar, his survival earned him the title “Roach,” but most folks these days were too tired to mock and too poor to afford liquid courage. Having lived thus far, he simply was referred to as “that Relic over there.”
He appeared to be nearing the end of his fifties, but the unkempt beard he sported added on a few years. However, when he wore an old T-shirt as a makeshift bandana, as he always did when outside, it was anyone’s guess as to his age. He had trouble seeing out of his left eye, red with severe irritation and colored ooze collecting in the corner. His buttoned work shirt was stained in the armpits from sweat, and the bulky cotton material clung to his chest. The blue jeans he wore, those square-toed boots – everything on him needed repairing. He carried shame and guilt around like an old chain.
Once handsome, his reddened face acquired deep forehead and eye wrinkles in the span of four years. His was a unique case, as most of the people affected by radiation poisoning in the 3 area had died quickly. In the months following the first drop, many mornings he woke up weeping because he had not been afforded the luxury of dying during the night.
Televisions were far scarcer than before, but if you desired to use one it wasn’t impossible to find. Relic had trekked a mile out of town to once again visit the second-rate restaurant whose deeply sun-bleached sign read Carlo’s. Out in the parking lot, the local crazies went on their tirade against whoever they had turned their attention to that day. Today, it was the newscasts.
“They’re lying!” shouted one of the haggardly women, gripping Relic’s wrist in a plea to listen. “It’s recycled! European Confederated is already here!”
He forcefully pulled his hand away, shaking his head in a mix of pity and irritation. He didn’t see how anyone could have the energy these days to put up much of a fight about anything.
The checkered tiles were grimy and dusted white with footprints of ash, and there were dead cockroaches and mouse droppings in the corners, but the handful of people slumped at the bar did not care, their expressions (or lack thereof) zombielike. The latest broadcasting was about to air on the flat-screen hanging on the back wall. A woman with wiry, thin hair and a terrible cough allowed him to take the seat beside her. The anchorwoman was well-dressed, healthy, and melanated as she addressed the camera.
“If you’re planning to take the family on a day trip this weekend, we recommend avoiding the Galveston-Lafayette area, and a 30-mile radius outside of Midland, as the Texas and Louisiana armed forces have informed us in a press conference earlier today that they will be running tests over the next few days for a new weapon in progress. This is, of course, in response to last Wednesday’s nuclear strike outside of Milwaukee. European Confederated take full credit for this latest attack, which officials are now saying have left 35,000 perished.”
“Coffee?” The heavy owner asked Relic, using a pencil to scratch his dark mustache and sticking it in the pocket of his white apron.
“Hm? Oh…No, thank you.” He resumed his focus on the television.
“Hey, friend,” said Carlo, “you use my TV? You buy something first. You know how it is,” he finished with a small shrug, showing a hint of empathy.
“Fine,” Relic sighed, his throat gravelly from a lack of use. “Cola and a water.” Carlo eyed him from the side as he got his drinks ready. Someone hit a button on the remote, turning the volume up.
“EC has threatened to conduct another attack this week of greater magnitude if the United States doesn’t withdraw its forces from the military base in Poland, outside of Confederated borders. All this comes just weeks before the four-year anniversary of the first drop. And now to you, Jim,” she said with a smile, turning it over to the sports reporter. “That was quite a playoff game!”
No one batted an eyelid when the mugging happened. From the sounds of the bell above the door jingling and an angered voice, some guy had pulled a weapon on an old man sitting at a booth by the window. It was happening just a few feet behind them. The volume was turned up louder to drown out the old victim’s whimpered pleading. Relic took a sip of his Cola, lips pulled into a tight line.
Carlo’s had a reputation for being the most accessible place to eat in town, but for that reason there was always the risk of becoming the victim of some kind of crime – the most likely being the kind that involved stealing the shirt off your back.
For being so hot, this new world was awfully cold.
That was the worst part of not yet dying, he thought: watching the good people around him either get sick and “altered,” as health officials called it, to the point of unrecognition, fall victim to the people benefitting from the mayhem, or turn into those people themselves. He didn’t have a vehicle anymore; it had been stolen. He didn’t have friends; like everyone else, he had bargaining partners. He didn’t have a family – it’s just as well. Better they never see what he had to see. Better him than them.
And his wife…Oh, his wife. Things were never perfect between them, but the longer he had been without her, the more he believed her to be. Her silky black hair. Tan skin. The way she could hold a baby so expertly despite not having any practice at home. Something they had in common was their dislike of regularly watching the news. He had to laugh to himself when he realized that this was one of the biggest changes he’d made since the war had broken out.
The old man had just handed his tattered billfold over with a shaky hand when the mugger pointed his pistol at a teenage girl in the next booth over. Her milky eyes, widened by the violent act she only recognized by ear, did not register that she was the next victim until the mugger began to pull harshly on her blistered arm. She cried out in pain, causing Carlo, looking indifferently at the scene before now, to pull out a double-barrel shotgun from under the counter with a sense of urgency. The diners, only slightly stirred awake by this new development, noncommittally turned their heads between either side of the stalemate.
“HEY!” barked Carlo, nodding to the wood-burned sign hanging above the door, the mugger’s eyes following. “In case that ski cap is cutting off the blood to your brain, it says ‘One a day.’ Did you think I was joking when I made that, friend?”
The mugger’s breathing becoming quicker, he grabbed the old man from his seat and pulled him to his feet, keeping the pistol flush against the man’s temple and using him as a human shield until he reached the door. He kicked the man away, running outside to wherever he crawled from.
No one paid the victims any mind. No help was offered. Carlo put his shotgun back in its designated place and watched the TV, as did everyone. Relic thought his Cola could use a cherry. He thought of the extra cost and decided it tasted fine how it was. Cola alone was an indulgence; he’d been craving a glass of it and after beating himself up about it for a long time beforehand, had let himself enjoy the sugary drink. The blind girl continued to sob.
The news program had cut to an interview inside a chapel with a man in his early forties of lean build, thick, dark eyebrows that sat even with the rim of his square glasses, and a mouth that was always turned upward in a subtle, unassuming smirk.
“…And it has been here in the congregation of El Paso that people have flocked for refuge, much-needed medicine, and of course spiritual guidance,” said the chirpy interviewer with perfect hair, breaking away from the camera to smile at the man opposite her but quickly turning back. “And now, exciting things are happening here; with the recent approval from Governor Blonsky, Mr. Jonas’s chapel is now on the map as a transportation hub. Transport forms are available upon request for patrons and will be answered within the week. This is a first for the region, and one that will lift some spirits. Thank you for your time, Mr. Jonas.”
“Thank you,” he said. His name appeared at the bottom of the screen, along with the church address and contact information. Samuel Jonas. “These are difficult times, and we hope that this new addition to our chapel will help give some relief to folks. If you have any spiritual or baptismal needs, the water is fine.”
The interview continued, but Relic looked down and fiddled with his straw wrapper, thinking of his wife. She was religious, more so than he was, and better with names. She knew every fellow church member personally and made it a point of helping him when he got stuck on one of their names, when he would snap his fingers as if the answer would magically come to him that way. She had been the one to go to all the potlucks and visitations; Relic thought she went to twice as many events as everyone else to make up for her no-show husband.
After cashing out, he paid only what was due and a dollar more for a tip – tippers at Carlo’s got cleaner water privileges. He hopped off the red stool, tipping the brim of his hat down to conceal his warped features, though most everyone in the room had it worse than him. For instance, the old victim, who had red sores all over his face. He was sitting on the floor against the wall and held a hand over his heart to calm himself, short legs splayed out and blocking the door. Relic would have tripped over him on his way out if it wasn’t for the fact that there was a sudden grip around his ankle.
“Wait,” the old man croaked. “Wait. Let me see your face.” Relic unintentionally complied by shooting him a quizzical look, trying to break free from the old man’s grasp. The old man’s eyes lit up, instantly releasing his hold. “It is you! I know you!”
This offered no revelation to Relic, who was having a hard time placing the old Spanish man.
“It’s me, it’s Hector! Remember? Your wife, Lory went to church with us! We haven’t seen you since the funeral. Everyone wonders about you, everyone worries – we thought you’d died!”
Relic did remember, now that he thought of it. He recognized his face, minus the sores and nasty gash across his forehead, but again with those pesky names. Relic reached down and helped Hector to his feet.
“Uh…Well, I’m fine, Hector. It’s good to see you.” He pushed the door open, the bell jingling, but something compelled him to stay. To turn around and look at the television, at the man on screen. Samuel Jonas was looking directly into the camera. Peering back at… no. No, through him. Samuel Jonas could help him, he knew that much.
“We are vulnerable creatures, never knowing which breath will be our last. These are scary times, but not for us – not for us who have made peace with the Lord. If you believe, repent and be baptized; we all carry sin and feel guilt, but this is the only way to be saved from it. You have a heavenly family; your loved ones are waiting for you with open arms. God gives us protection. Don’t let it pass you by.”
There was an abrupt cut to the weather, something about a storm warning in another county, but Relic wasn’t listening. He found his attention still wrapped around Jonas’s words. For all the years he had gone to services with Lory, he had never taken that step. He supposed he was just waiting for the right time or for a bolt of some divine inspiration to strike him, but he didn’t know what the right time felt or looked like, nor did he possess a lightning-shaped scar. Maybe that was why he had been kept alive – he wasn’t sure, but to be greeted with open arms by her? That sounded like a much better alternative. And there was no time to waste.
It was eighteen miles to El Paso. His two feet could only go so fast, so he knew he’d have to get an early start. That night at his home, where he was always torn between triple-latching the door or leaving it unlocked – the latter was during his more serious depressive episodes, when he would simply sit and stare at the door for hours, inviting his own salvation to come wandering in – he gathered three gallon jugs of brown, particle-filled water from the filthy kitchen sink, a couple cans of potted meat, a backpack, plus an extra T-shirt to wrap around his mouth and nostrils, and set them aside until morning. He would use the rusty shopping cart he always took with him when getting groceries across town.
Walking was easiest before the sun came up. When it eventually did, he had to put on a pair of sunglasses; if you were looking from a distance, the ground looked like it was covered with snow. It was the white ash appearance of nuclear fallout, but it had the same blinding effect. Stopping for lunch, he came across a spotted, yellow-bellied lizard, with the stump of an extra head growing from the side of the original. The stump was only developed enough to have an almost translucent, paper-thin film over a grayish lump that he could only guess to be a closed eye. It crawled over closer on its stubby feet, nostril slits opening and closing, smelling the can of meat. Relic pinched off a tiny portion of it and tossed it its way. It scuttled away, back into the hole in the cracked ground it came from, hidden by the ash.
That familiar feeling of dread and hopelessness crept over him upon realizing that there really was nowhere left to hide anymore, not even for the animals. For those that choose underground. Well, maybe except for that news anchor and other folks on the coastlines, but regardless. Were they self-appointed saviors or divinely chosen to be the ones alive, the ones in charge of everyone’s fate? Either way, it was out of his control. Maybe he should just die. His thoughts wandered back to the lizard. What its environment was like before the burning and the blinding and the air that choked you…Torrid. He thought of the blind girl, of Hector, of the woman with the terrible cough. Of his wife. If things didn’t change soon, it would certainly mean annihilation. But he knew that nothing would ever go back to the way it was before. Maybe he should just die.
He shook his head, determined not to let those thoughts get in the way of his trek. Standing and rubbing his bad eye (knowing it would only make it more enflamed later), he pushed onward through the flat, expansive region of heat and a yellow, toxic sky. To pass the time, he let himself think about Lory again. He laughed about the good times, like racing their 10 favorite horses through their side of the valley, or when she would come home with stories about her kids at school. He became teary-eyed thinking of the not-so-good times. He didn’t care to dwell on the last few months they had together, on the unfairness or malignancy of her situation.
It was approaching dusk when he finally decided to rest. He had gone through half of his water supply that day and knew that he was close to exhaustion. Sleeping out in the contaminated air was not optimal, but what else was he supposed to do? He simply would have to finish off the last few miles in the morning. Sleep came surprisingly easy.
It was a late hour, not quite pitch black due to the haze of the sky when it started out low: a small rumbling shook the ground. He was gently stirred awake by the movement, then a split second later jumped to his feet, prepared for the worst.
I knew it, he thought to himself, I knew I shouldn’t have stopped. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
He waited for what seemed like forever for the blinding orange fireball, but it never came. Instead, way, way over in the west, where anything was a speck on the horizon – was a barely distinguishable mushroom-shaped plume of smoke.
Right…the Midland test.
There was no chance of falling back asleep now. With a grunt, he pulled himself up using the cart handle and brushed the dust off his jeans, trying to recall the process of navigating in the dark.
—
At dawn, he made it to the foothills of the region’s shallow mountains. Deciding to stop for a quick breakfast, he rested on a boulder and opened another can of meat. He was down to his last few of those, and one jug of water, but he figured he would top off at the church. The shopping cart was already getting to be a hassle to push here, somehow managing to get a wheel pricked by a cactus needle blanketed under a foot of fallout. When he untied the t-shirt from behind his head and let it drop down to his neck, the breeze on that untouched area did wonders for his headache. He wiped the beads of sweat away from his mouth and took carefully measured bites.
At first, he couldn’t tell which direction the sound of the truck was coming from. It started out as a low hum, growing loud enough for Relic to tell it was one of those modified engines that ran on cooking oil, expelling its signature gurgling roar. Clever, but he could never see himself owning one, even if he could find the separate parts and essentially build it for free compared to a ready model – too many of his father’s warnings as a mechanic had taught him since childhood not to trust foreign-made parts or anything claiming to be the “next diesel.”
Leaving his cart and climbing a few feet higher, Relic watched the red truck twist and turn along the road between the valley; not many were comfortable driving these days, as the only distinguishing feature between the road and the ground was just a shade darker due to the pavement underneath, and oversized tires were the standard to avoid getting stuck in a thick layer of ash. Relic couldn’t imagine any sane person driving on this road, as tight and rocky as it was – he became claustrophobic just imagining himself in the driver’s seat. Any minute now he’ll start slowing down, thought Relic, watching with bated breath as the turns got tighter. But instead, the truck, with its monster wheels and upward-curved spikes that looked like they were ripped off a tractor, was gaining speed.
“Moron!” Relic hissed through his teeth. There was movement about a hundred feet ahead, and that was when it sank in: a team of four people, two on either side of the road, were stretching out a thickly coiled net and tying the 12 ends into secure knots around two adjacent trees. Relic wondered how the rope would hold up since the trees were bark-less and so harshly windblown that they both had a serious tilt in the same direction. The truck had to be going over 60 right now to escape… He wanted so badly to look away but just couldn’t.
The four people, clothed in earthy, all-terrain overcoats and some indiscernible face covering that made them appear mummified, ran to the nearby walls, crouching to blend in better among the layers of rock.
It was too late to slow down – the truck hit the net with so much force that it sent the back end several feet in the air, before landing with a thud that made Relic cringe, and rocking left and right on its back wheels. Not wasting any time, the team of four rushed to ambush the vehicle, grabbing loaded guns that were stashed along their hiding place. Relic cursed at himself for not bringing binoculars along with him, and instead cupped his hands around his eyes for a better view. He could see the driver scrambling frantically for something in the truck through the back glass when the four surrounded it, guns of different shapes and sizes at the ready. One of them, holding a pistol in one hand, snaked their way against the side of the truck and threw the left side door open.
Two quick blasts of light and bams made Relic draw his mouth in a tight line to keep himself quiet: the driver had sunk a bullet below the shoulder of an ambusher, but in the same instant the one that opened the door made a killshot, splattering the driver’s blood across the windows. Relic started to take slow steps backward in a crawl. His mind was racing to form one focused thought, just one step in whatever plan he could conjure – any plan would be nice, NOW, please… He had to grab his belongings and go.
“Careful on those rocks there.”
Relic’s blood turned to ice. Making no sudden movements, he turned around and came face-to-face with the owner of the muffled, feminine voice. It had the lightest twang of someone raised in the far south, noticeable in her “O’s”. She was one of them, a member of the tribe from below who must have been a lookout. Upon closer look, it was in fact strips of sun-bleached fabric wrapped around their heads, pieces arranged vertically and horizontally to make a secure fit. Only small squares were left exposed for her brown eyes and slits for the nostrils. He found the lack of facial expression disturbing.
“You’re lost.”
“No,” he began, then considered playing the innocent bystander card. “Yes, I mean.”
“Where’s your navigation system?”
“What?”
“Navigation system – GPS, compass, paper map, phone map, if you still got one of those.”
“Oh – I, I don’t have one.”
The slits in the mask revealed her eyes to be looking him up and down. Relic got chills discovering not even her neutral body language would betray her thoughts.
“No one comes through here without one because no one is stupid enough not to. So, either you know this way well enough to know where you’re going even without a map, in which case you’ve lied to me, or you’re stupid enough for me to not feel so bad about killing you.”
For the first time in four years, Relic had an immediate refusal against the idea of a swift death. With his sights set so much on the chapel, anything killing him before he got there would seem premature.
“No – no, please don’t. I have a wife… I have a son.” The last part may have been a lie, but he said it before he could stop himself. His bad eye was stinging something horrible. The pus oozing from it had run down the side of his nose and onto his top lip. It tickled, but Relic made no move to scratch it, fear paralyzing him.
“Here.” She lazily tossed a t-shirt at his feet for him to wipe it off with. He went to pick it up, realizing midway that it was his own, the extra shirt he packed. She stared at him for an excruciatingly long moment before stepping aside to reveal his unzipped backpack. The ooze was dripping off his chin now.
“If you’re going to kill me, can it please wait till tomorrow?”
He was serious when he asked it, but the woman chuckled dryly. “You must have somewhere to be.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. The church in El Paso.”
She put her fabric-wrapped hands in the pockets of her overcoat. Relic could see several small knives in holsters attached to her belt. He hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t toting a firearm until now.
“There’s a bus that used to come this way,” she recalled, turning her head to observe the landscape before them. “Had the name of some church across the side of it. They must’ve changed their route. Haven’t seen ‘em in a while.”
The woman’s brown eyes studied him with an intensity that Relic found it hard to match. He hung his head, looking at the ground and finally wiping his face clean with his sleeve instead of the shirt. Below them, he could hear the shot ambusher crying in pain.
She exhaled through her nose. “Well. I can’t kill someone for being pious.”
Relic let out a shallow breath he didn’t know he was holding. He was about to thank her when she spoke again. “But I can’t leave here empty-handed.”
“Sure. A little way down from this formation here I have half of a jug –”
“You mean in that silly as sin shopping cart?” She leaned her head over the edge of the small landing they stood on to look below. “Because I count a jug and a half, plus the cans.”
Caught again. That had to have been the final strike. Relic saw the handle of one of her blades catch the light.
“Get out of here,” she said, nodding toward the direction of El Paso. “I’ll let the others know not to tag ‘ya… the Reverend Saint Shopping Cart.”
Her eyes still gave nothing away, they betrayed no emotion. Not moving at first for fear of his passage being a cruel joke, he scrambled down to the place where he left his cart, down the foothills, and went on his way with a thumping heartbeat. For the first time in four years, Relic said a prayer of thanks.
—
It wasn’t until noon that he finally reached his destination – but he had to double and triple check to make sure this was the right place. Yes, the sign confirmed it, but it was just so…small. Forgettable. The chapel was on the outer edge of town, less than a mile away from El Paso’s rocky mountain range. It was thin and long, an old shotgun house with a steeple that used to be white attached at the top. One of the windows was busted out and the gray paint was chipped in places that weren’t blanketed in thick, white fallout. A lone tumbleweed rolled in front of it for dramatic effect.
When he knocked on the door, he expected to be greeted by a volunteer, or one of the many people in need of food and shelter, but here was another surprise – it was Samuel Jonas himself. He had a washrag pressed against his mouth and nose, but the square glasses and salt-and-pepper hair were a dead giveaway. He looked quite normal… Almost a window into before.
To pass the long days at home, Relic would sometimes pull books down from his and Lory’s personal library in the living room. Admittedly, most of them he had burned for fuel, but there was one book he couldn’t bring himself to destroy. It was Briggham’s History of the World, Vol. 7. This particular volume covered events from the American Revolutionary War to the eruption of Krakatoa, to Sputnik, to Woodstock, and everything in between. It was nice to remember what life was like before. What people are supposed to look like. It was refreshing, nostalgic. It made him cry every single time he flipped through those worn, oxidized pages.
Standing here in front of Jonas, Relic wanted to sob.
“Hi, hello, Mr. Jonas?”
“That’s right,” Jonas said in his slightly croaky voice, muffled from the rag. “Can I help you with something, friend? Medicine, clothing?”
“I need water,” he cut in hastily. “I… I need your water.”
Inside, they took off their makeshift masks. There were long tables spread out in the open lobby, but no one was there to take the last remnants of supplies. Wooden pews took up the middle of the space, then at the back were the pulpit, a stained-glass window depicting an ornately divine dove, and below that, the baptistry.
He told Jonas the story that led him to his door, Jonas guiding him to sit on the front pew with him and listened to it all, simply nodding his head from time to time. There was a profound silence when Relic finished talking.
“So, is that something you can do? Is there enough water? I imagine that’s why no one else is here, because there’s no water.”
Jonas stood, rolling the cuffs up on his blue canvas work shirt, looking him in the eye with that unassuming smirk. “Even if I have to build a well.”
—
He wasn’t lying on the television – the water was fine. A little cold, but that was alright; it made for a good wake-up. It wasn’t clean; in fact, it was littered with brown particles, wood chips and gnats. After he had been dipped down into the baptistery, arms folded across his chest and held breath, he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his eyes from watering. Maybe it was the implications of why he had done it, maybe because he had her on his mind when he had done it. For a split second, he was able to forget about all the terrible things happening outside of this building.
Jonas had gotten him a dry change of clothes afterward. They celebrated with half a tin of buttermilk wafers and ate them on the pew in front of the pulpit and had been conversing for close to twenty minutes. He found Jonas quite easy to talk to.
“Where did everyone go?”
Jonas gave a weak smile, looking down at his lap, taking thoughtful pauses between each sentence. Amazingly enough, Relic didn’t see any major alterations on his face – no extra head or oozing eye. His exposed forearms, however, revealed skin that looked pruney or shrink-wrapped, like on those he had seen caught in the blast-wave fires.
“To tell you the truth, there isn’t anyone anymore. I moved out here to preach nine years ago. We had a married couple, Katie and Jake, pass away from the first drop while out of state with their grandkids. It was a freak thing, but our attendance doubled after that; the pews were so full, people had to stand in the back. I don’t remember that ever happening before, and it’s because every single person in this country was terrified of the big ‘what’s next’. Fear pushes us more than bravery ever could.”
“But…?”
“But, after some time, it pushed people into hiding, it pushed them out of state. More of our members were caught in the drops… There were gas masks instead of faces. I watched everything around me turn into a ghost town.”
Relic pictured a dark, featureless crowd staring back at Jonas from the pulpit.
“Enough about that,” Jonas shook his head, turning his head to casually wipe away a tear, playing it off as scratching an itch. “What about you? Are you ready for all this?” He gestured widely – this, meaning everything.
From what Relic just did, he should say yes. From all the times he would wake up, disappointed because he did wake up. He had wanted to die for so long rather than watch the world kill itself before his eyes. He had a similar feeling when Lory died, but there is a difference between wishing something would happen to you instead of a loved one and wishing it on yourself without being provoked. But something was still gnawing at him.
“Samuel, where’s all the transportation? There’s a woman – some masked woman – who said she’s seen your bus going by a few miles out of town, but I didn’t see any outside.”
Jonas tilted his head at him. “When did you hear that?”
“Is… it not true?”
“No, it is. Was, I mean. The state cut our transportation program.”
Relic’s eyebrows knitted together. “Already? But the news reported it a few days ago.”
“Well… I don’t know about that. Our last bus ran a month ago.”
That’s when the siren sounded. A wailing, shrill cry for danger. The two stood at the same time, rushing to the door. Jonas threw it open, forgetting the rag for his mouth. Outside, they looked left and right, then to the sky. They heard the low hum of an engine before the thing itself; the bomber plane was visible only in snippets through the wispy clouds above. There was the wing, then there was the hull, “E” and “C” in blood red letters. Fragments spelled fear just as much as the whole piece. And there – being dropped from the underbelly, hurtling down somehow at both the speed of light and in slow motion, making a whistling sound as it fell – was the end.
It was going to hit the center of the city. That would give them ten milliseconds to watch it all unfold. He had heard eyewitnesses of past drops from a distance say that it was like watching a flower bloom, petals uncurling from around the center.
Whatever Jonas was shouting at him was impossible to hear above the overstimulation of noise. He grabbed Relic by the arm and pulled him inside the chapel. Jonas began frantically blockading the door and windows with furniture, as if it would do any good. Relic panicked only for a moment while looking around at the fake potted plants lining the walls, the tables of supplies, the dove on the window… the baptistry on the very back wall, that wooden box elevated over the rest of the place where they would soon die. The spotlight over the water. It drew him closer.
He found himself at the steps of the baptistry, the only thing of stillness in the middle of the mayhem. He turned around to survey everything one last time. He wanted to give Jonas a smile, a nod of appreciation, anything, but he was now on his knees in the middle of the aisle, eyes shut tight, palms clasped in prayer, his mouth moving a million miles an hour. The whistling was getting louder.
The steps creaked under his feet until he felt the cool water pool around his shoes, his pants, his button-down, his face, his whole body. He allowed himself to just float like that with his eyes open, the corner of his mouth turning slightly upward, restfully.
There was a flash of white light that blinded his vision from even a mile away. He expected to hear the boom, but it never came. And as a wave of scorching hot air blew through the chapel, white heat peeling his skin by the millisecond, Relic pictured himself at the center of a blood-red flower, his wife welcoming him as the petals curled out from around him.
