armageddon

I was out for a walk when the end of the world began. I'd always feared this. I even had an emergency backpack filled with supplies in my closet back home. I hadn't had a place for it in my dorm room and I haven't been home since I moved here. For once, I honestly didn't think I'd need it. But it's always the moment when you really need something that you don't have it. It's a cosmic rule.

It seemed like flames erupted from the ground all round me. I was trapped in a circle of fire. I fell to my knees on the concrete and covered my head. People ran around me. Peeking out from behind my fingers, I saw the prostitutes from the antique shop across the street feeding the flames, their cheap, faux silk bathrobes fluttering in the breeze. Their faces frozen and stained like snarling African masks.

I moaned. A body lay a short distance away from me. I didn't know if he was alive or not. It didn't look like he was breathing. But I told myself that that was just the shimmering heat of the fire that made it hard to tell. It was just the ashes in the air that made my eyes water.

Someone was pulling me up by my underarms. "Come on!" Alex screamed in my ear. It was just the the sound of breaking glass that made her voice sound so far away. She hoisted me up and slung my arm over her shoulders. I told her she was strong, but I don't think she heard me because she didn't say anything, just hauled me away one step at a time.

"I told you it was coming!" a man streaked by screaming. He looked right at me. "Didn't I tell you?" I nodded, but I had no idea who he was or what he'd told me, if he'd told me anything at all. Something wet and warm was dripping down my neck. I could feel it slipping down into the collar of my shirt.

"Come on," Alex said again and I tried to help her help me.

And then suddenly, we were in the middle of a street - some street that no longer resembled a street - and every one was moving by so fast except for three people standing facing each other. In the light from the burning piece of wood one of them held, I could see their faces. Mr. Day held the torch. He was screaming words and thrusting at Ethan with the fire. Ethan stood in front of him, flinching a little each time the flame came closer to his skin. Beside Ethan, standing like she was all alone in the world, was that repair woman Ethan had told me not to trust, Edna. She looked up at me and then at Ethan. Her lips moved, but I couldn't hear her.

Maybe I'd gone deaf. Maybe that was blood leaking from my busted eardrums. Maybe I couldn't read lips as well as I thought I could. Maybe she didn't say, "vampire."