The Airborne Gift

== An Account of the Winston Bombing ==
 The movie was horrible. Sadly, the best part about it was the overpriced Dr. Pepper I bought beforehand. I wish I could say that the worst parts were the sappy Christmas scenes and the dingy bathrooms, but no, the worst was yet to come. Nonetheless, the whole thing absolutely reeked of cheesiness and soft-headed romance.
It happened around the point that I
realized that the movie was going nowhere but downhill, and pretty damn fast by
the looks of it. Looking around me at the sparsely packed theater, I could see
several people with glazed-over eyes, their entire beings infiltrated by this
horrendous Christmas romance. A few of them had other people alongside them,
who were all either snoozing or checking their watches impatiently. I stood up
to leave when suddenly the movie was cut short and the lights were turned on.
For a split-second, I thought that somehow I had done something wrong, though I
quickly realized that would be ridiculous. Confused, I just stood there,
waiting for something to happen. After much complaining from the girls and
cries of relief from the boys, a greasy teenager stumbled in with an expression
of pure terror on his face. I recognized him as the one who had sold me my Dr.
Pepper.
“Out! Out!” he screamed frantically. “Everybody get out, and just go
home! I’ve no time to explain, just go!”
He was clearly in absolute terror of
some unknown horror.
There was a bit of baffled murmuring
before an old woman stood up from out of her seat.
“But Ah paid fifty fer me an’ mah
young ‘uns!” she hollered amidst a swarm of children.
The terrified soda vendor took out
his wallet and threw a wad of cash in her general direction, yelling, “You’ve
got your money, now go!” with a stiff finger pointed at the exit, trembling.
When I finally made it outside, I
was absolutely blown away by the chaos that met my eyes. It was as if every
inmate of every asylum for the criminally insane had broken loose. Police were
beating people senselessly; cars were ramming into everything within reach;
people were slaughtering each other right in the parking lot; children screamed
for their mothers. I needed to find out just what the fuck was going on there,
so I found a man who looked safe enough to approach.
“Sir? Sir?” I asked. “Excuse me,
sir? Can you tell me just what in the hell is going on out here?”
He just stared at me hopelessly,
with tears welled up in his eyes. “You don’t know?” he replied. He was barely
audible over the surrounding cacophony of madness.
I shook my head.
“We’re gonna die…. They’re gonna kill
us all…. We’re gonna burn….”
“Who’s going to kill us? What’s going to make us burn?”
He blinked at me, fresh tears
rolling down his face. “The nukes…. They’re gonna drop…right here… right in
this city….”
“Who!?
Who is doing this!?” 
He just shrugged his shoulders sadly
and shuffled along, seemingly in a daze. I simply stood there, dumbfounded. I
was hardly aware of the anarchy around me. I just kept thinking: Who? Who’s dropping the bombs? It
couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t. It was less than a week before Christmas,
there was no way this was happening, but I knew the man had been telling the
truth. Whether it was ISIS, or North Korea, or even The Disciples of the Wyrm,
I had no clue. Each was an equally viable possibility. Catastrophe was nigh.
It eventually occurred to me to try
and verify what the man had said, so I went from person to person, but they
either didn’t know anything, or it told me one of the groups that I’d guessed
before. It wasn’t until a police officer bashed me across the face and told me
to go home that I snapped out of my panic.
At first I started to walk back
towards my car, but soon realized that there would be no way to get out of the
parking lot amidst all this pandemonium (given the car was even still intact).
Luckily, I only lived a few blocks away from the Winston Cinema, so it wouldn’t
take all that long to get home by foot. But who knew how long would be too
long?
The journey home wasn’t much better
than the parking lot. Every law there was under the sun seemed to have been
thrown out the window. Vehicles lay stranded in the road; people lay injured or
dead in the streets…. Gunshots and explosions were incessantly sounding in the
near distance, mostly from police, but some from civilians. Some of those areas
also had tear gas being implemented, but, luckily, I managed to skirt around
those areas. It wasn't until I was nearly home that the tornado sirens went
off. But I knew all too well that it wasn't tornadoes. Those sirens… they… they
were manifest omens of death, banshees wailing in the distance for all to hear-
for all to know…. Cold, chilling, bloodcurdling, ghastly… all these words
apply. It didn't matter if you plugged your ears, nor does it matter now that
my ears have been blasted completely deaf. They're always sounding, always
echoing in my head, always reminding me of my imminent death. They may have
long grown silent since, but they might as well be still going off.
Finally, and miraculously, I managed
to make it home without much difficulty. After locking and bolting all the
doors and windows to keep people from breaking in, I immediately put my cat
Forrest into his carrier and brought him downstairs to the basement, along with
his food and a bowl of water. I then brought all of my canned and non-frozen
food down, followed by all of my drinks. I scoured my kitchen for any jars and
containers, emptied and rinsed them, filled some with water, and brought them
down too. It was as I was going back up for pillows and blankets that I first heard
the screeching of metal hurdling through the air.
I barely had time to register the noise
before the loudest, most God-forsaken blast met my body and ears, which
ultimately knocked me out, as I woke up on the ground later in complete
darkness, in what felt like an industrial furnace. My first thoughts were that
I'd died and gone to Hell. Well, half of that was true. I may not have died,
but I certainly did go to Hell. But I can feel my death coming soon. Everyone I
ever knew or cared about is most likely dead. Friends… family… all gone. All of
them. I knew I shouldn't leave the basement, but the heat was unbearable.
There's no hope anymore. None
whatsoever. All I can do now is sit in this burning world and wait for that
Dark Angel to finally take me away from this place.
Yet, despite my hopeless situation,
something pushes me onwards in my meager and painful existence. I still drink
this irradiated shit and still eat my irradiated food. I still kept on living
after I crawled out of my basement into these charred ruins. I still kept going
after Forrest died, purring and sick from radiation in my lap. I still breathe
even though the air burns my lungs. Something keeps me going. Looking around
me, all I see is decay and ruin. The sun never shines anymore. The rain is
black and the ash that hangs in the air pricks at my skin. I can barely
breathe, and when I cough, blood comes out. It feels as if my organs are
rotting alive, which probably isn't too far from the truth.
I write this in the hopes that maybe
somebody, someday, will find this and read it. I want the children of tomorrow
to know just what exactly took place here in Winston in the year 2030. Maybe,
just maybe, humanity will learn from its mistakes. But my hopes aren’t high,
because we obviously didn’t learn from Nagasaki or Hiroshima. We still wage war
and destruction, even though all it does is tear us apart. But at least now I
can rest with the knowledge that I made at least some attempt to change the
future. All I can do now is hope, despite how hopeless this all seems.
Signed,
Phillip White
Related Stories:
* The Fate of Humanity
* Rejoice!
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