Col fluttered open his eyes and spent the next few seconds trying to get to grips with why he was upside-down. The acrid smell of smoke and a burning pain at his side jolted him all the way awake, and he frantically slapped at his ribcage to put out the fire he was sure was there. There were no flames, though, just a sharp ache and a sudden breathlessness as his ribs ground together.
Beside him, he heard Jaden groan and mumble something about “five more minutes.”
“Jaden,” Col hissed. “Jaden, you OK?”
The seat belt was cutting into Col’s neck. He pressed the button to unfasten it, and immediately collapsed onto the carpet of broken glass that lay scattered across the inside of the car’s roof.
“What the fuck are you doing up there?” Jaden slurred. He glanced around them at the wreckage then groaned again. “Shit. Plane. Are we dead?”
“The jury’s still out,” Col said, twisting himself around so he was upright. He remembered seeing the plane in his rear view mirror. He remembered the noise and the heat, and the sudden sensation of sideways movement, and then… nothing.
“I think the plane crashed,” he said.
Jaden tutted. “You think?” He unclipped his belt and fell heavily onto the ceiling. “Get a car with fucking airbags, Joe,” he grimaced.
Col tried his door, but the metal was too crumpled for it to budge. “Door’s stuck this side.”
Jaden winced in pain as he turned towards the passenger door. “Mine is… uh, elsewhere by the looks of things,” he said. The gap where the door should have been was twisted out of shape, leaving a hole just big enough to squeeze through.
Bending back a ragged sliver of metal and brushing aside the splinters of glass, Jaden crawled out through the gap. “Come on, let’s go check it out,” he said. “Maybe it’s not that bad.”
Three minutes later, Col and Jaden stood on top of the upturned car. The first of those minutes had been spent getting out of the wreck and climbing on top of it. The next two had been spent just staring in stunned silence.
“See? Not as bad as I expected,” Jaden said. “Far worse.”
“So much worse,” Col agreed.
Directly ahead of them was a flaming crater, several blocks wide. It looked like a dark wound had been gouged into the city, tearing through roads and buildings and anything else that tried to stand in its way.
They could see parts of the plane, tangled up in the ruins of houses, all being steadily consumed by a wall of orange-black flame. A car alarm wailed hopelessly. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
“This is messed up,” Col whispered. He glanced over to Jaden, who was recording the carnage on his cellphone camera. “What are you doing?”
“Capturing for posterity,” Jaden said. “Someone’s got to document the end of the world, right?”
Col sighed. “It’s not the...” he began, but then he ran out of steam. Maybe Jaden was right. Maybe this really was the end.
A chunk of half-melted yellow plastic caught his eye. It took a moment for him to recognize it as part of the Shop Wise logo. He watched it melt and dribble onto the scorched tarmac.
“If we’d still been in the store, we’d be dead,” he said.
Jaden nodded. “That’s why I said we had to get out of there ASAP.”
“No you didn’t,” said Col. “You wanted us to hole up in there for the rest of our lives.”
“Jesus, Col,” Jaden said, gesturing at the debris around them, “do you really think this is the right time to discuss what I did and didn’t say? Let’s just agree that I saved our lives, and move on.”
“Move on where?” Col asked.
Jaden hopped down from the car. “To get my mom,” he said. He started to walk, then stopped and patted himself down. “Wait, where’s the gun? Have you got it?”
“Why would I have it? It was in your belt,” said Col.
Turning, Jaden ducked low and looked inside the car. The inside of the roof was a mess of glass, empty coffee cups and sandwich bags. “Joe, you were a messy old fuck,” Jaden muttered.
“Forget it. We don’t need it,” said Col.
“Bullshit, we totally need it,” Jaden argued. “Remember Wayne? With all the face-smashing and the eye-popping?”
Col frowned. “Eye-popping?”
“Oh no, that’s right, you didn’t have to watch that, did you?” Jaden scowled. “I was the only one lucky enough to witness that little spectacle.” He let out a cry of triumph. “Found it. It’s in the back. Hold on.”
Jaden lay down and wriggled into the car, muttering to himself. Col turned back to the carnage of the crash. No-one on the plane could have survived it, that was obvious. Anyone in any of the buildings around it were sure to be shit out of luck, survival-wise, too. How many people, he wondered? Hundreds, definitely. Thousands? Probably. But still, he noticed, not a siren to be heard.
He had just started to wonder where the cops were when he saw one. He was a few hundred yards away along the undamaged end of the street, but closing the gap fast.
“Oh, thank God,” Col said.
“For what?” Jaden asked from inside the car.
“There’s a cop.” The man in the uniform was already running right for them, but Col raised a hand and waved just to be on the safe side. “Here! Over here.”
“Is he coming?” Jaden asked.
“Yeah, he’s running,” Col said. He frowned. “Really fast.”
Jaden stretched into the back, brushing aside the paper cups and other trash. His fingertips brushed the handle of the gun, but only succeeded in pushing it further out of reach. “Damn it,” he muttered. “How fast? Attending the scene of a plane crash fast, or I’m going to eat your face fast?”
“Shit. Second one,” Col yelped. The cop opened his mouth wide and screeched. He hurled himself at the car, his fingers scraping at the vehicle’s rusted underside as he frantically clambered up.
“Back off!” Col warned. “I swear, man, I’ll kick you in the face!”
“Kick him in the face!” Jaden shouted.
Col roared as he drew back his leg and swung. The cop’s head snapped back, but he recovered almost immediately. His hands tore at the metal and his feet kicked, scrabbling himself up onto the upturned vehicle.
“That just pissed him off!” Col cried. He turned to jump, but the cop was on him, slamming into him from the side. They tumbled off the car and hit the ground hard. Col felt the wind leave him in one sharp breath, but the cop was at him already, curved fingers swiping at his face.
Flat on his back, Col grabbed the cop’s arms and tried to keep him at bay. Tendons stood out like cords on the man’s neck as he hissed and spat and screamed, his face twisted up in fury.
“Get off me! Get the fuck off me!” Col squealed, struggling against the cop’s weight. He was a flabby mid-fifties, but stronger than he looked. A knee pressed into Col’s thigh, forcing a gasp of pain from his lips. Col’s arms buckled. The cop’s wide mouth came down, and Col had to jam a forearm under his throat to keep the gnashing teeth at bay.
With one arm now free, the cop grabbed at Col’s face. His thumbnail dug into Col’s cheek, the fingernails scraping at his forehead.
“Agh!” Col grimaced, shoving upwards with his arm. “Get off me you--”
The cop’s head exploded with an ear-splitting bang, showering Col in blood and bone and squidgy lumps of brain. The largely-headless body continued to struggle on for a moment, then fell limp. Col gaped at what was left of the officer’s head. It looked like a porcelain doll that had been dropped. From a great height.
“What the Hell…?” he sobbed, shoving the corpse off him. He jumped up to see Jaden lying on his front inside the car, the gun still smoking in his hand.
“Holy shit, did you see that?” Jaden said. “Did you see the way that bitch’s head popped?”
Col nodded. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, did you see it?”
“I have brains literally all over my face,” Col breathed. “Of course I fucking saw it!”
Jaden dragged himself out of the car on his elbows. He stood up, twirling the gun like a cowboy, and looked down at the remains of the cop. “How’s that for a shot?” he crowed. “I mean, granted, I was aiming for his ass, but for a first time shooter that’s well within the acceptable margin of error.”
Col’s jaw dropped. “You’ve never used a gun before? You could have shot me.”
“
Could have shot you
is just another way of saying
didn’t shoot you
,” Jaden pointed out. He blew the barrel of the gun and flashed his friend a smile. “You’re welcome, you ungrateful bitch.”
He about-turned and swept the gun in an arc in front of him, holding the weapon sideways like a TV action hero. “Coast’s clear,” he said. “Grab the cop’s gun, then let’s go rescue the shit out of my mom.”
Amy Banks slid her back down the closet door until she was sitting on the floor. She gave herself a moment to catch her breath. She deserved that much, at least.
Her head burned where her little brother had ripped a handful of her long dark hair out. She could feel, but hadn’t yet looked at, the gouged scratches he had left on both sides of her neck. She patted both, and her hands came away dotted with blood.
On the other side of the closet, she could hear him hurling himself against the door, kicking and punching and driving his eight-year-old body against the wood. It hadn’t been easy wrestling him off her, or restraining him enough to shove him in the closet and lock the door, but she’d had no other choice. She couldn’t kill him. Not Robin. Not like she’d done to…
Amy stood up and very deliberately did not look into the kitchen. She crossed instead to the table in the hallway, picked up the phone and stabbed 911. There was a click from somewhere down the line, then a busy tone.
Frowning, Amy hit the hang-up button and dialled again. Another click. Another pause. Amy held her breath, trying to ignore the squealing of her brother in the closet.
The busy tone came again. Amy listened to it for a few seconds, like there’d be some clue as to what was going on hidden somewhere in the beeps.
Setting the phone down, she glanced back at the closet, but avoided looking in through the open kitchen door. Half an hour ago, her biggest problem had been a hangover. Half an hour may as well have been a lifetime ago, though, with all that had happened since then.
Amy opened the front door and stepped out into the garden. A police car screamed past right at the end of the garden, making her jump back in fright. Composing herself, she ran out onto the path and shouted after it, but it was already halfway along the street, weaving through stationary traffic.
She stumbled to a stop when she saw Mr Logan from next door. He was in his garden. Or partially, at least. He was flat on his back across his front fence. Two of the ornate metal railings were sticking upwards through his chest. His head and legs both hung down, turning him into the shape of a letter C.
For a long time, Amy just stared. Eventually, she turned her eyes to the front of Mr Logan’s house. There was a hole where one of the upstairs windows should have been. She looked from it to Mr Logan and back again, tracking her neighbor’s probable line of flight.
“OK,” she said, but she didn’t say anything else. She didn’t quite know what else there was
to
say, given the circumstances.
A movement down in the grass caught her eye. Something black and shiny scurried through the overgrown lawn, zig-zagging its way towards her. As she watched it, more and more shapes began to move in the grass. The ground heaved, as if the soil itself were moving. A writhing carpet of black closed in on Amy from all across the garden.
“Bugs,” she whispered, remembering her dad had said something about seeing them, right before he’d…
Leaping back onto the path, Amy raced for the door and slammed it closed. She turned the lock and fastened the security chain, then rested her head against the cool wood.
Over in the closet, Robin continued to thrash and scream. “Shut up, little bro,” she whispered to nobody but herself.
Snatching the phone, Amy took the stairs two at a time and ran into her room. She kicked off her pajamas, cursed under her breath when she couldn’t find any clean underwear in her drawer, and wriggled into the pair she’d taken off the night before instead.
She pulled on the first pair of jeans and t-shirt she found, shoved her feet into her battered Doc Martens, and scraped her hair back into a tight ponytail.
Amy paused to check herself in the mirror. There was blood covering around a third of her face. None of it hers. She calmly reached for the little tub of exfoliating pads on her dresser and plucked out several at once.
Holding her gaze in the mirror, Amy scrubbed. She gritted her teeth, her hand becoming a blur as she scraped the scratchy wipe faster and faster across her cheeks and forehead. She rubbed and scratched and scrubbed until the blood was gone, and long after that, too.
She finally stopped when there were no more pads in the tub. Damp wads of bloodied cotton littered her dresser. Her face was still red, but not with blood. She’d exfoliated several layers of her face way. It wasn’t enough, she knew - the blood was still there somewhere - but it would have to do for now.
Amy looked down at the phone. She’d kept hold of it this whole time, finding some comfort in the weight of it in her hand.
She pressed the plastic against her forehead. “Come on,” she whispered. Then, taking a deep breath, she stabbed the buttons three times.
Silence.
A click.
More silence.
And then, there it was. A voice on the line. Amy raised her eyes to the ceiling and thanked God.
“911,” barked a stressed-sounding female operator. “What is your emergency?”
“Wow. Where do I start?” said Amy, half-laughing. She sat on her bed. She cleared her throat. “Uh. So I guess… I guess I killed my mom and dad,” she said.
And then, with those terrible words finally out in the open, Amy Banks began to cry.