Salt Pillars

Chapter 11

Nothing moved in the streets outside the school — no cars drove back or forth along the road on their way home from work — nobody rushed to the bank to catch the cashier five minutes before closing, or headed off to retrieve their children from soccer practice — nobody waited in line at the grocery store to purchase steaks for dinner or diapers for a screaming infant. The only motion that stirred about anymore was that of the screaming wind tearing through the blackened buildings, pushing along loose debris that rolled and snapped. The wind was hot and full of particulate. Its assault forced them to shield their eyes and to cover their mouths with cloth to keep the dust from entering their lungs. What remained was a bone-yard of fried automotive skeletons lined up in rows and the numerous corpses inside.

Ryan raced ahead of the group. Although he was uncertain where to go, he needed to find his mother; he needed to know what her condition was. He tried to remember the route that he had taken to get to school, or what Eric's address was, or anything that could give him some sense of direction. He only knew one thing: the name of the bank that his mom was going to be working at — the Bank of Eden. She was on her way there after she dropped him off for school that day. He asked another student walking in the same direction how to get to the bank, and then proceeded in route.

It wasn't long before he reached Main Street, a strip of buildings that ran the length of about four blocks; it was the heart of the town, lined with dated, brick buildings that looked like something built in the 1800's with an old western layout. Most of the wooden framing was charred black, but the brick structures still held true. Signs outside the shops posted headings such as Mary's hair salon, and Mike's grill, or Eddy's gas station. There seemed to be a theme naming the establishments after their owners, something that personalized the placed. But the warmth of the cozy community was lost in the wreckage of the burnt vehicles parked along the strip, some of which contained the dead bodies of their owners, still gripping the wheels with their expressions frozen in the terror of excruciating deaths.

At the end of the strip, Ryan came to a large red-bricked building lined with glass-paned windows that were shattered into sparkling shards along the sidewalk out front. The wind blew hot and intensely from the west, carrying dust and ash with it that he had to deflect from his eyes. It howled through the openings of the vacant building.

He stepped through the window-frame, crunching glass beneath his shoes. Inside, it was darker with the lights out, but bright enough to see the scattered corpses strewn about. The smell of death rose up and gagged him with its putrid insolence, and he covered his nose and mouth with his shirt, which only partly masked the odor.

Ryan walked through the dead bodies like he was playing a morbid game of hopscotch, scanning them for his mother. Unlike the corpses in the cars, these bodies were less burnt. Their flesh was a collage of oozing sores and blisters, a sight that only intensified his gag reflex. If Ryan weren't so starved, he would've lost it.

One thing that he found interesting was how so many flies had gathered, the hum of their buzzing filled the air, even with all the radiation and death, the insects still prevailed.

He came around the service counter, and that's where he found her. It was the pink blouse, that she had been wearing the morning of the event that identified her. She was faced down with most of the hair burnt from her head and red, crusted sores peaked through the remaining strands.

The sight of her body in such a mutilated and grotesque way was too much for him now, suddenly he felt the full force of the exhaustion that he had been staving off, and he slid to the ground beside her. He couldn't turn her over to see what had become of her warm, loving face; it was the first thing that he had ever known in this world and the one constant though all the turmoil in his life. He needed to remember her as she was.