All the best,
Danielle
___________________________________
He
stared at the sky, watching a cloud scuttle by. They reminded him of
puffy cotton balls, so white against a sea of blue. There was
something serene and peaceful about it, luring him to lay there a
while longer. And just what was he
doing, anyway, languishing in a meadow of grass, flat on his back? He
couldn't recall why he was there, didn't remember laying down in the
first place.
Blinking
beads of salty sweat from his eyes, Sander frowned. He had some place
he needed to be, a destination other than here. Exerting himself, he
tried to get up. Tried to move. It was a thought that didn't transfer
to his arms and legs, which he realized he couldn't feel. He couldn't
even get a finger to twitch.
What
the hell was going on?
A
moment after that, Sander understood his coherency had been
compromised. He wasn't thinking straight, couldn't get a grasp on
reality. The blurry edge of his vision cleared enough for him to make
out lumps of black in periphery.
He
wasn't in a meadow, he was on a road, with a hulking twist of metal
to his left. Alarms clanged through his mind, sending urgent signals
to get up, get up, GET UP.
The harder he struggled to get
to his feet, the more blatant his state of paralysis became.
Paralyzed.
He was numb from the neck down.
A loud boom shattered
the bubble of silence he existed in. All at once, an onslaught of
noise battered his ears and heat seared his senses. Part of an arm
flew overhead, severed at the elbow. Shrapnel hit Sander's shoulder
and hip, his entire left side, like buckshot. Pain accompanied the
blow, pain he relished because it meant he could feel. He
wasn't paralyzed, only stunned.
In the distance, he heard a man
scream.
Fire cracked closer, somewhere
to his right.
The scent of burning rubber
mingled with the acrid smell of charred flesh.
Accident. The caravan of
Hummers he'd been traveling in had some kind of accident. He couldn't
remember the impact or the details. Didn't remember being thrown free
of the vehicle.
With extreme effort, more
effort than it should have taken, Sander turned his head to the side.
Stretched along the road was a minefield of debris. Bodies. Remnants
of the Hummers. Fire.
It looked like a war zone.
A man belly crawled over the
asphalt, using his elbows to pull himself forward. His leg was gone.
Sander opened his mouth to
speak, to shout, to say something. Nothing came out. He
couldn't find his voice, wasn't able to lift his arm more than an
inch off the ground.
Get
up, get up, GET UP. His chest
felt strange and heavy, as if an anvil sat there.
The
crawling man slumped, went still. His body twitched once.
Sander
gurgled a sound, then coughed up a mouthful of blood.
He
wondered if he was dying, like the belly crawling man.
Dying
under a bright sky and cotton puff clouds.
Darkness
crowded the edge of his vision, diffusing the incoming light. He
fought it, fought to stay awake. Fought to live.
The
debris field blurred.
His
last thought was of Chey and their unborn child. A boy. A child and a
wife he might never see again. He held tight to her memory, her
smiles, the love in her eyes.
Held
tight until, against his will, she faded to black.
