*****
“What the hell is going on here?” Corey turned to look at his friend Dave.
Dave shrugged, making his long wavy blond hair shake over his shoulders. “Beats me. Hey, Jay, go ask somebody what’s up.”
Their friend Jay tucked his skateboard under one arm while he jogged over to a man climbing out of a taxi stuck in the traffic. No cars were moving at all. Pedestrians were pushing and shoving to get past the stopped cars.
“Hey man, what’s going on?”
The man said somethin,g and whatever it was, it had to be bad. Jay turned back to look at Corey and Dave with a pale face and fear in his eyes. He jogged back over to where they waited for him on the corner of the road. Jay was in shock, struggling to form words.
“What’s going on, Jay?”
“The man...the man...said that nukes were going to hit right outside the city and that we should take cover somewhere.”
“Nukes? Seriously? He had to be joking,” Dave shook his head in denial.
Jay finally seemed to snap back into focus and immediately started walking, then jogging, back in the direction they had come from. Corey followed him without a thought. “Where are you going?”
“My mom and little brother are at home...I’ve got to...help them.”
“Help them to do what?” Corey yelled at him as Jay pulled ahead, but he got shoved by a sudden rush people. He was caught off balance and fell to the ground.
He lost track of Jay and looked back to find that Dave had been knocked to the ground, too. The panicked people stepped right on top of them, pressing them hard to the pavement. He breathed in the combined scent of the dirt, oil, gas, and piss that surrounded him. Or at least he did before the breath started being squeezed right out of him by the weight of the people pressing down on him. He and Dave were going to die right here on the ground. No...He wouldn’t go out like that; Corey refused to die on the ground like a bug to be squashed.
Balling his hands into fists, he shoved upward as hard as he could manage so he could get to his knees, and then finally to his feet. He pushed his way through the crowd to where Dave was still on the ground. He reached down and grabbed Dave’s hand, pulling him up to his feet. He had quite a few bruises and cuts on his face and hands. They were both breathing hard, taking in sorely needed oxygen.
“Come on, we have to get out of here.” Corey pulled Dave with him down the street.
“We should go home like Jay,” Dave said, trying to pull away.
Corey managed to get both of them over to the wall of a building as another crowd was shoving past. “Look, we won’t make it back to our homes before this thing hits.”
“How do you know that?”
“I watched a TV special about countries with nukes. When they send out a warning, most places give people thirty minutes to an hour before it hits. I don’t know when this warning went out, but I don’t think we have that much time left.”
Dave ran a shaky hand through his wavy hair. “What do we do?”
Corey looked around and noticed people shoving frantically, trying to get into the subway system stairwell. “There! We go below ground. Maybe the blast will hit far enough out of the city that there will be minimum damage. Let’s go!”
Corey felt a moment of regret that he hadn’t stopped Jay. Maybe his friend would find cover somehow. Right now, though, he had one friend he actually could save. Maybe he could find redemption in that.
*****
“What happened to your friend Dave? What about your parents?” Nix asked, shaking him out of his memories of the past.
“My mom had left me and my dad years before the nuke blast. My father was a drunk, and I guess one day she decided she had enough and left. He didn’t care one way or another about me; I was left to do whatever I wanted. I spent more time with my friends anyway, so I didn’t give a fuck about him either.”
“Your friend Dave?”
“We got to the subway station but were separated going in two different directions. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I’ve thought a lot about him over the years. I really hope he made it, had a good life.”
There was silence after that and Corey was grateful. She didn’t ask him any more questions, and he didn’t really want to answer any more. Thinking about the past always made him feel uncomfortable. He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced sideways at her. She wasn’t looking at him, but the look on her face was strange. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking about, but decided against it. Some emotional distance between them would be good. He had to keep his mind on the mission.
“Ten minutes until we land,” he said out loud.
“Great. I can’t wait to get started.”
“Me either.”
