Young Writers Society

Blood stung my eyes. I couldn’t remember getting the injury, but it was there now. Something heavy bit into my legs, keeping me in place. Glass was crushed as I ineffectively attempted to wiggle free. Fire blazed somewhere outside. I could smell burning rubber, charring metal, searing flesh. My head pounded from the putrid scent. My heart was beating like a frantic whisper, I was desperate for a way out, but there was nothing I could do.

Soft moans echoed through the demolished metal car, but I couldn’t see where the sounds came from. It was too dark and there were too many shadows. The ringing in my ears wouldn’t stop and kept me from focusing too long on other sounds. But there were other sounds. I could hear them distantly in the background, could feel them rattling the earth below me. More explosions, more guns. People shouted to one another in loud harsh voices, women screamed before they were brought to silence by a gun, others begged for mercy but none ever came.

Sparks glittered above me but I couldn’t tell what had brought them to life. I continued my struggle in freeing my legs. It took a lot of squirming and lifting and pushing on metal to get free, but soon I was free. Blood caked my body and dark bruises coated every inch of free skin. They were already turning yellow around the edges. Blood continued to drip down my face and into my eyes. I still couldn’t remember getting that injury.

The sight that stood before me was one I wouldn’t be able to forget. Dead bodies, contorted and dismembered, littered the train car in lurid positions. The figures of broken bodies hung from twisted metal above me, taunting me with their dead eyes and the sound of blood dripping onto the metal floor. Pieces of flesh and bodies were scattered all about the train car, hanging on crumpled chairs, frying on the burning metal, and contaminating the narrow space I was in. The stench of blood and smoke burned my nose. Glass shimmered in the darkness as it fell from my moving form. Blood dripped from the hanging bodies above me, turning the glass on the floor, crimson. Back home I had found sea glass just that color. Home. I had to get home.

On shaky feet, I picked my way through the rubble, climbing over fallen bodies and twisted metal. A few times my weak legs could no longer hold me up and I fell into the glass and blood at my feet. They cut open my hands and legs, but I merely stood again and continued my quest to find a way out of the Death Hoard I had awoken in. I saw no other survivors. Miraculously, I was the only one alive.

I was getting closer to a way out; shadows flickered around a hole in the train car, invitingly. It was a different kind of darkness that promised a special release from the Death around me. Fire was outside the death hoard, likely to burn me alive if I ventured out, but surely that was better than lying here, waiting to die like the others, to bleed out from my wounds. A soft, whispered sound stopped my tender picking through the debris. I looked around trying to find the source of that strangled plea. I saw nothing that would suggest another living soul had survived. So was I imagining it? I couldn’t have been, it was too close, too real to be a hallucination.

I heard the strangled sound again. It pained me to just let someone die without some kind of comfort. It wasn’t right. I had to find them. I had to try. Taking a deep breath to calm my riled nerves, I bent back to the ground. The glass and metal shards cut deep into my knees and legs but I kept crawling. Below a tangled mass of twisted metal was a figure, bleeding and still, but alive. For now.

As I came closer to the figure, I saw that it was a woman, and she was in dire need of help. I could only see her upper body; the rest was hidden by disfigured metal. I had absolutely no choice; I couldn’t leave her like that. I came up to her side and grasped her hand. Her pleas had grown softer, more hopeless. The woman lay crumpled on the ground, her auburn hair matted with blood, her face ashen and sickly colored. Black spots, like soot, coated the skin under her eyes. I couldn’t see where she was injured yet, but wherever it was, it was leaving her to die a slow and painful death. I gripped her hand as it shook with fatigue. I was desperate to show her some compassion before she left behind this world of pain and war. The shaking eased as I clutched her hand, but she wouldn’t open her eyes. He hand was slender with long fingers. I didn’t know her but I knew her hands. I had seen hands like that at home, playing the piano in the sitting room.

Home. I needed to go home.

The woman moaned, a feeble sound, and it drew my attention from my memories, my desire. I would go home after she died. Her lips parted, as if to speak, but she merely whimpered. She moved as if to speak but no sound came out. Her hand tightened on mine, but she was weak. I looked at her hand again; there was a ring on her finger... someone was waiting for her. I wondered if she had been going home too, if someone would be waiting for her there. If someone would miss her.

“Help…” She said softly. I looked back at her and she lifted her shaking hand from mine, touching the metal that hid her lower body from view. I bent my head to look closely at the large piece of sharp metal above her. It was crushing her midsection, cutting into it, until the organs threatened to be breached. There was no way I could lift the metal and free her, it was too heavy. Even if I did, she would just die, the metal had cut her open. She had lost too much blood as it was. “The baby…?” She asked, looking at me. Her eyes had finally opened. They were a lovely shade of green.

The baby… my eyes widened and I tore my gaze from her pretty eyes. This woman had a baby on the way and she was dying. They were dying. “It’s safe… gone from here.” I told her softly. “She’s at peace and waits for you… go to her.” I didn’t know if it was a girl or boy, but it seemed to please the woman. A smile crossed her face and I watched her eyes flutter closed. I wondered if she could see her child, her baby girl, waiting for her in the arms of whatever God she believed in. I didn’t believe in God, the world was too broken for him to be real, but that didn’t mean she didn’t believe in him. The woman sighed and then she was gone. It was time for me to go home.

I slipped her ring from her finger simply because I could, and I didn’t know if I would need money, and crawled along the glass covered floor. Glass dug into my knees and the soft flesh of my palms. There was a way out, a hole in the floor or the wall, or whatever it was. I couldn’t tell anymore which way was up and which way was down. Still, it was a way out and I didn’t care. The hole was lined with sharpened metal, glinting in the fire light outside. It would be a tight fit. I made myself as small as I could, and squeezed through the hole.

Pain. Lots of pain. Sharp gut wrenching pain that rocked me to the core bloomed inside of me. I screamed, closing my eyes against the agony as I pushed myself harder. I had to get out. I had to get home. Razor blades, that’s what lined the hole, and it dug into my wounded side, cutting at the softened flesh. Gritting my teeth, I slipped through the last of the metal and tumbled to the ground. My breath was shoved out of my lungs, as tears stung my eyes. Pain, such terrible pain. I curled up, clutching my side as warm blood soaked my clothes. No. I had to go home. I couldn’t let pain weaken me. Slowly, I got my bearings and looked around.

The field was covered in bodies. Charred, dying, bloody bodies contorted by war’s rage piled on the hard earth. Armed, screaming, fighting bodies fueled by desperation continued fighting over the dying. Killing for a cause they believed in. Dying for a cause they believed in. Fire burned discarded HUMVs and bodies that were still living, still fighting. The ground was scorched and blackened, watered by the spilled blood of both the Night Raiders and the Guards. Death didn’t care who it took. It just took.

Guns echoed and reechoed as round after round was discharged into the bodies of other living souls. Somewhere in the field another explosion shook the earth. I could see the plumb of smoke rise up in the distance. People were shouting, and I was overwhelmed by the smell, the sound, the chaos of war. I covered my ears, remembering the sound of guns in a narrow street in a darkened city. I had been surrounded there too. They had tried to kill me, tried to keep me from getting home… but they had failed and I had gotten this far. It was too early to die now. I was too close to be captured. I was almost home. I had to keep moving.