Chapter 7 - Fire

It feels like I’ve only slept for an hour or so until I suddenly wake up, the scent of smoke in the air. Rubbing my eyes, I realize all around me is a familiar orange glow, spreading all across the remaining buildings and growing closer to me. The air is getting thinner and hard to breathe. In a panic, I grab my stuff, but it’s too late. The concrete building I’m in begins to crack. The walls seem to wobble, the foundation finally falling apart after months of barely sustaining the harsh new environment following the nuclear blast. I can’t make it out on time and everything crumbles down on top of me. My body is crushed under the weight of all of the fragmented concrete and other rubble.

I can’t breathe. I can’t move. It hurts. I desperately try to move my arms and legs and pry myself back into the open. Burning hot fire sears my skin, spreading and growing larger throughout the area, and I scream in agony. With all of the strength I have left, I pull myself away from the fire, and thrash and kick as hard as I can to loosen myself out of the heavy pile of rubble. New cuts, bruises and scrapes form all throughout my body, my crimson red blood staining my worn clothes and the ground around me. But I’m not dead. No matter what happens, despite everything I’ve been through, I’m not dead.

Why? Why was I chosen to go through this torment? For the past few months since my world changed and turned upside down, I haven’t died just yet. I crawl away from the building and spreading fire and stare at the destruction that continues to happen, the fire seemingly eating everything in its path. I can’t even cry anymore. I feel numb – everything that happens to me now is just another loss of the little hope I have left.

I eat the last of the rations I have saved in my bag, and force myself to stand up before immediately falling down to the ground again. My body is even weaker now, in more agonizing pain that plagues my ability to move. How much longer am I going to survive past this point?

Once I am far away from the spreading fire, I attempt to wipe off the blood still spilling from my open wounds and cover them up as I lie on the ground in an open area. I stare at the clouds covering the nighttime sky until my eyes close and I drift off to sleep.

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