Everyone Dies in the End #53

Cindy

1

The force from the explosion threw Cindy to the ground, the asphalt pulling skin from her knees, and the burning armored personnel carrier singing the hair on her arms. Above, on the bridge crossing the interstate, Christmas lights winked and firecrackers popped. But Cindy knew that there was no celebration. The winking lights were the harbingers of war, and the popping firecrackers the clatter of rifles and submachine guns. The bullets they fired zipped by her angrily, sparking off the pavement, punching holes in the vehicles surrounding her with sedate, can-opening punches. The air smelled of hot metal, burning diesel, and scorched flesh.

Behind her Zak was yelling, forming his men to meet this new threat in a world of threats. In front of her, the shotgun lay where it had fallen. Every fiber, every molecule screamed from her to lay flat, cringe from the hissing bullets that sought her out, but every fiber was wrong. It was time to move. She scuttled to the shotgun, a distance of no more than five feet, and laid her hand on the stock. The hissing bullets came no closer; none sought her out, but the man behind the truck did. She didn’t see him until she grabbed the shotgun, the dancing light from the burning M-113 playing tricks with her eyes, but he rose when she moved, placed his rifle to his shoulder, and charged toward her, screaming.

“Put it down, put it down, don’t move,” he cried.

It was the blind man. The one blinded by the nuke that destroyed Charlotte, but he was not blind now. His blindness had been in a different time, a different world, a world where Charlotte, Zak, and a lot of innocent people had gone bye-bye. Once she had consoled this man (sort of), spoke with him, now, she raised the shotgun and fired.

The blast stopped him cold. Actually that wasn’t really the whole of it. The blast picked him up and threw him on his back, and there was nothing cold about it, she guessed, looking at his chest. The red, pulpy material that had been his skin steamed in the cool night air. Maybe he lived still, she didn’t care, there wasn’t time to care.

           “Let’s go,” shouted Zak and then they were running toward Zak’s surviving soldiers. Neither saw the dark shape slip between the vehicles behind them.