Another short story I recently wrote. Tried to make this one more cohesive in hopes it would flow better together. Any feedback is appreciated.
I do remember. Yes.
The sonic blast was so loud it cut out my hearing briefly. There was a flash, far brighter than that of a camera. Huddled underneath my wooden two piece desk and chair, time and sound carried themselves back to me in a burst of immediacy. I could hear the students frantically running, but to where I wasn’t quite sure. I suppose “away” is the only suitable answer. The smell of sulfur whirled through the classroom making me increasingly nauseous. My lower back ached from sitting arched on the dusted floor. My head was bowed between my boney kneecaps, and the fingers were interlocked around my thighs. The dirt that painted itself across the tiling was moist and uninviting, much like a watercolor bleeding its canvas in gentle slides. Water sprayed violently from the ceiling hung sprinklers. The homeroom teacher, Ms Lorell could be seen crouched under her metal pedestal desk hyperventilating heavily and swaying back in fourth in muted movements, gathering her rosary beads and wrapping them around her shaking hands, twisting them into the sign of the cross. Muttering in slow successions she began reciting Apostles Creed:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
* * * creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
***** who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
***** and born of the virgin Mary, etc
etc.
Amen. mimed her mouth. Other students, also huddled underneath their desks had either fainted or were hanging on the cusp of consciousness. To my left was Buddy, who’s leg had been amputated a few year prior due to a nasty infection on his big toe that spread up his leg and turned into gangrene. He was never good with responsibility, but in situations where one could find themselves scatterbrained, he remained calm and collected. I liked that about him.
Lifting myself up off the floor was difficult to accomplish. Dizziness came in mild winding spurts which made collecting my vision difficult. My head ached; a marble rolling, scurrying through my frontal lobe was all there was to be felt. Cognitively I felt dull, unsharpened. The walls were sunken in and the bricks were laying in scattered groups across the room. All I remember about the ceiling was its immediate dive unto the floor, drywall falling upon students heads, hands, legs, body. I touched my hand which had a bright orangey red burn on it; the room felt numb, perhaps velvety. I was safe, however the rather large chunks of drywall encapsulated me into a remaining piece of brick wall in the furthest right side of the classroom. Much to my luck I found a rather small crevice that I was able to crawl out of by contorting my body to fit its dimensions.
I grabbed Buddy’s hand and attempted to shake him awake. He seemed flatlined. I took the rings off of my fingers and smacked him as hard as I could, which resulted in his rather large face sinking back into his chin. The sprinklers were still flailing water; I was drenched. In an act of desperation I kicked him as hard as I could, probably breaking his hand. I was confident that last one would elicit a response, however angry it may be. He lay there on the dirt lined floor with not so much as a flinch of his eyelid. Motionless. I knelt down and I wrapped my arms around his rather large body, his soaking shirt stuck to him like glue. It was just him and I for what momentarily felt like a lifetime amidst the shattered, inflamed, rusted, buildings that encased us. I drew a deep sigh of resignation. Ms Lorell was still behind her desk praying. I asked her to say one for Buddy. She nodded, not really paying attention at all.
Around the fourth hour I hadn’t gotten very far. My arm had a rather large laceration from a blown out window; shards of glass were scattered across the floor. Climbing through the window my arm got caught on a blade still stuck inside the framing. I knew I had to keep moving. Juncture Hall, which was where I was when the bomb dropped, was connected to the East Ward, Holloway Hall, and the cafeteria, through a lengthy hallway overlooking the Mohawk Valleys, which was now like staring through a kaleidoscope besieged by the nine circles of hell. I detoured through the dilapidated remnants of the solemn ornate corridor. They lay still in an eerie silence that was unshakable; which is why I jumped through the window, leading me to the once grassy knolls outside the building. The ground was now split down the middle, a crevice plastered itself in the middle of the field with fifteen foot high flames burning trees to nothing but a crisp dust that the wind carried away. Smoke settled across the entire field, reaching the now crashing mountains. They had fallen to their own demise. No birds in flight or mid motion to be seen, no swallows with their bobbing black heads. The few I did see were stripped of their wings from beak to claw laying silently in the dirt. Some lay in a uniformly collective pack of nakedness, their bodies roasted, crisp like an overcooked Turkey dinner. Laying in the dirt around me were those who had been afflicted with adverse affects much worse than mine; most were covered in their own puke, or deliriously crawling on the ground with their eyes closed, screaming inaudible nothingness. Their backs and arms and legs were stained with keloids, burns the size of school rulers. Others hair was falling out due to radiation. You could walk a mile in the opposite direction and still see a dead person every couple steps.
It was dusk, 6pm to be exact, and all I could think about was Buddy and the way his large bullish formality contracted his soft spoken demeanor, which was often the butt end of many jokes in grade school. The kids thought of him as an ogre, a dummy — he never cared much. He’d lean against the marble pillar in the lobby, Guinness in hand speaking to all whom wished to listen. He’d usually talk about what in the hell happened to his leg and people would almost always show up inquiring him about this that and the third, encircling him — making him the keynote speaker at his own one man convention. He was never shy, he’d always be upfront about it. But now, I thought, his life had ended in vain. I thought I should learn a few prayers. If I knew any I would say one for Buddy.
Come 8pm the campus was echoing pitch black from burnt building to building. I believed myself to be near the tennis courts; However I couldn’t quite be sure, what with the inferno settling upon the dewy grass all along the campus’ edge. I made out what appeared to be varsity tennis nets. They were ripped and tattered with their once blue lining now burnt. I walked, my stomach grumbling, gurgling. Hunger pangs grew, as did the headache. The laceration on my arm had settled after I wrapped my blue Old Navy shirt around my arm using at as a makeshift tourniquet. The velvet gray sky juxtaposed against the cooked ground made for a serene view in such a time of distress. Stars were flailing in the sky dancing together under the midnight flames below. For the first time in hours I felt a strange tranquility. I couldn’t get too comfortable though, I knew I had to keep moving. Upon passing the campus’ garden I realized all the fruits, corn, were dead; disintegrated, much like everyone else within the fields or buildings. The palms of my hands drenched with tiny particles of sweat, freezing momentarily than beginning to sweat again, again and again — atom bombs are known to cause severe defects to the central nervous system, if one does not die before then.
Walking through the tough, thick terrain posed a challenge to my already deteriorating health. With hands in pockets and head peaked towards the sky, I walked and walked and walked for half a mile. I heard a branch break off in the distance, so I hurried my way towards the gates, which now laid upon one another in a rusted flattened husk of conquered metal. I pushed through the last remaining hinge of metal, my hands feeling the warm, brisk chrome embellishment across the middle railing. Just outside the gates, there was a vending machine that had been left untouched, somehow unscathed with wires still in tact, chock full of different types of snacks and or water and soda. I put in the last crumpled dollar I had left, and nothing happened. No hiss, no buzz, no nothing. I guess looks are deceiving. I smacked the blue vending machine with the open palm of my hand attempting to wiggle a treat out of it. No such luck. A loose sigh floated through the charred lining of my lungs and into the burnt open air. I studied the same flames from a couple miles back, they burned away at the night sky, much like a wax candle lights the preoccupied darkness of a boarded up room. My burned feet ached standing upon the pebbles, the rough ground was grayer than modeling clay. A muddy, hot gray. I thought about Buddy again; the nub of his leg and the way he’d hop around to make me laugh. I wondered now that he was dead, what he was thinking about. I envisioned it, him leaned against a pillar somewhere above with a Guinness in his hand in a perfunctory sort of way; I bet he was saying a prayer for me.
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