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Lane Richard opened his eyes to an ugly, pale orange colored sky. The new thunderbird he had bought only days before, lay next to him, a crumpled wreck He remembered seeing a hot, dark cloud rolling towards him like a locomotive. then his car being picked up and thrown off the road like a toy.
His head was bleeding, and his white dress shirt was covered in blood. He figured he’d been out for hours. He kicked the passenger side window out to escape from the mangled wreck. He struggled to his feet, and again noticed the strange color of the sky, and the smoky smell in the air. It was as if a million matches had been blown out at once. In the distance he could see an amber glow above San Francisco, like there had been a massive fire.
Feeling weak, he sat down next to the car he had been so proud of only hours ago. He tried to sort out what had happened. He had been to a two day sales seminar in Sacramento, and was heading home to San Francisco, when a great gust of wind sent his car reeling like a tumbleweed blowing in the wind. No warning. No storm in the area. Nothing. He felt light headed and lay up against the car to rest.
*
Hours later
The sound of light rain dripping off the trees onto his car woke him up. It was nearly dark, but he could still see the strange light reflecting off the low clouded sky, towards the city. He struggled to his feet. His head had stopped bleeding, but ached badly. Eerily, there was no traffic on the highway. Normally cars would be streaming by. But there were none. Up ahead he could see why. Like his, cars were strewn alongside the highway like blown sagebrush. The only movement was the smoke rising from the wreckage.
Then it hit him. Tensions between the united States and Iraq had peaked in the past few weeks, and a war seemed immanent. People carried on with their lives, ignoring what had been in the making for years. Lane and his wife had talked about it only days ago. They had decided they would not want to go on living without each other and their two sons. They knew if missiles started flying that San Francisco would be one of the first cities to go. It was!
Lane’s knees gave out, and he sank to the ground sobbing. He knew his family was gone. He lay there wishing he had been there when it happened. He didn’t want to be a survivor if it meant living without his family.
As if in a trance he began walking toward the city. Or what was left of it. In the distance he could hear a faint whining noise. He tried to avoid looking at the death all around him, but it was impossible. Their was a fatal stillness in the air. Cars and trucks littered the roadside in unnatural positions, filled with burnt corpses. Lane wished it wasn’t real, that it was all a bad dream. He wished he would wake up and it would all be gone. He started to run. Home was the only thing he could think of. He wanted to be home. He thought that if he could get home, maybe somehow it would all be gone.
As he ran the whining noise became louder and stronger. It was coming from a small pickup truck, that had been thrown off the road into a tree like a vine wrapping itself around it. Reluctantly, he moved toward it. Inside lay two bodies burned beyond recognition. He felt sick, and threw up at the sight. Several feet from the truck he found the source of the whining. A baby wrapped tightly in a blanket, lay chewing on its hand. It must have been thrown form the truck and somehow spared. It seemed unharmed, but in need of a diaper change. Somehow he envied the child. It was so innocent and unaware of the disaster that had struck. Lane fashioned his T-shirt into a diaper. Changing the diaper brought him back to some sense of reality. He rewrapped the baby in its blanket, picked him up and began walking towards the city. "Looks like it’s just you and me little buddy."
*
Next morning
The sun was rising through the smoke filled sky. Lane had walked through the night, passing dark, deadly sights at every step. Blackened, charred wrecks scattered the roadside like tin cans left from a burned out campfire. His arms and back ached from carrying the baby. He’d waken several times during the night, but eventually fell back to sleep each time. Lane passed a blown over sign that read; San Francisco 5 miles. He felt he would never make it. The closer he got to the city the worse the destruction became. Everything was burnt. Suffocated. Dead. He felt weak and sat down to rest.
He began daydreaming. He was home and everything was back to normal. He would listen to his wife explaining the everyday catastrophes that a housewife endures. He could hear his sons in the driveway shooting baskets, beckoning him to join them. The baby’s cry woke him form his solace.
He decided he had to keep walking. To what he wasn’t sure. He wondered, was there anyone else left alive. Was there anybody else besides he and the baby. He began to shout. "Goddamit, is there anybody else out there. Can anybody hear me? Somebody help me. God, why me, why me?" Nobody heard him. nobody was there.
He started to run, ignoring the babies cry behind him. He ran,, four miles, three miles, two miles. He barely noticed the signs as he passed them. He could see the tops of the buildings against the smoldering sky. Surely someone was there, he thought. Surely he could find a phone that worked.. His wife, he thought maybe somehow she had survived. Maybe there was some chance his family made it through, like him.
When he reached the hill that overlooked the city he collapsed at the sight. The once beautiful city was now a mass of destruction. Fires burned everywhere. Skyscrapers were reduced to rubble, yet some remained standing like giant gravestones. It looked as if the blast centered in the heart of the city, then spread outward to the suburbs. There was no sign of life anywhere.
Through the smoke he could see the Golden Gate Bridge. It still stood proudly, like an old friend. It seemed so familiar to him. Like him, it was a survivor. In the distance he could see 10 Harbor, the building where he had worked. He decided to go there, hoping there would be some sign of life, something familiar that somehow survived the blast. He could barely identify the streets that he once knew so well. Wrecked vehicles with lifeless bodies in them cluttered the sidewalks. Broken gas lines left the air thick with fumes. Mangled water pipes shot fountains of water high into the air. Bodies lay everywhere in his path, like a faceless obstacle course.
He stopped at the entrance to the building he had worked in the past 12 years. Tears began rolling down his cheeks. He thought of the people that had touched his life; some in simple ways, others that were close to him. He would never hear their voices, never touch them again. He thought back to when he was a child. To when his father would point out a missile silo to his mother. He wondered how he could bring his children up in a world so bent on destroying itself. He wondered why he didn’t do more to prevent it.
He climbed what was left of the stairwell to the tenth floor, where his office had been. He walked past the bodies of friends and co-workers he had come to know so well. There was no one left. Nothing remained. He felt no hope. His body was drained of it’s will to live. He opened a window and climbed out onto the ledge. "Take me God, I want to go home to be with the rest of them." He jumped. As he fell, a phone rang.........
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