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PROLOGUE
Cries.
Shouts.
Screams.
The smell of acrid smoke and burnt flesh.
I struggled to open my eyes, wincing at the pounding in my head, yet my body felt numb and weighed by lead.
I panicked. Was I paralyzed?
The noise receded until all I heard was the pulsing in my ears.
Was I in a dream?
My surrounding was gray and even as I blinked, my eyes saw nothing.
For the love of God, was I blind too?
Not a dream.
A nightmare.
I saw a flicker cut through the billows of gray.
Smoke.
My lungs seized and I was wracked with coughing. Agonizing sensations stabbed my arms, legs, and back making me wished I remained numb.
As I pushed up from an elbow and straightened to a sitting position, the chaos around me slammed into me like a freight train.
Fire burned in fallen piles of debris causing an orange glow to lick against the edges of the spiraling smoke. But it was the bodies and torn limbs that gripped my heart in a vise of fear. A choked sob sent me into another coughing fit. It was either that or scream hysterically. Breathing hurt. Maybe I was dying.
I stared dispassionately down my body. My jeans were torn and blood was seeping through.
I noticed dark liquid pooling inches from where I sat, but it was not my blood.
I commanded my eyes not to look, but human nature won this round. I lifted my gaze in dread to track the source.
“Help me, ” a voice croaked in the upheaval of my mind before the cacophony of noises returned with a vengeance.
Wails.
Groans.
Weeping.
“Help me,” the voice repeated.
It was coming from this face or what looked like a face, for the only recognizable feature was the white of its eyes. Everything else was covered in soot or blood or—my mind stopped processing because I dared not look past his chest because I’d caught a glimpse of something I’d rather bleach from my brain.
I shook the haze from my head, tried not to vomit, and crawled toward the dying man. There was no question his injuries were fatal, and maybe so were mine, and I did not want to die alone.
He reached toward me and I clasped his shaking hand. Both of us tried to ignore the hell around us: people running, the walking injured wandering aimlessly, and others crying over loved ones who may already be dead.
Total hell.
