Astar

Chapter 7. The art of dying | Ars moriendi

Qui mori didicit servire dedidicit; supra omnem potentiam est, certe extra omnem. Quid ad illum carcer et custodia et claustra? liberum ostium habet. Una est catena quae nos alligatos tenet, amor vitae, qui ut non est abiciendus, ita minuendus est, ut si quando res exiget, nihil nos detineat nec impediat quominus parati simus quod quandoque faciendum est statim facere.

He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery; he is above any external power, or, at any rate, he is beyond it. What terrors have prisons and bonds and bars for him? His way out is clear. There is only one chain which binds us to life, and that is the love of life. The chain may not be cast off, but it may be rubbed away, so that, when necessity shall demand, nothing may retard or hinder us from being ready to do at once that which at some time we are bound to do.

— Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XXVI

Am I conscious or not? Or is it just a bad dream? The heartrending screams of people wake me up.

Lying on the floor of the platform, I hold my hand over Zeke's head so that he is not caught by shrapnel, but I do not realize that he covers me the way. I stare at his face a couple of centimeters from mine, trying to tell from the look in his eyes whether he's okay or not. It's still impossible to see beyond us in this smoke, and making sudden movements is especially dangerous — one of us may not feel behind the surge of adrenaline that they are seriously injured.

A minute later, I see that he is trying to come to his senses, looking at my eyes. There was confidence in our silence that we were safe. But suddenly my whole throat burns unbearably and every subsequent breath is given a terrible pain. I get up on my knees and, pulling out the mantle, tear it in two with all my strength.

He takes a piece of cloth and wraps it around his face like a mask, tying a knot at the back of his head. I do the same and get up to check if we're actually okay.

"Are you all right?"

Zeke nods quickly in response, as if ignoring the question. Gently, he touches my cheek and turns my head to the light. His absolutely focused gaze is fixed on my eyes.

"W-what are you doing?"

"Checking to see if there's an obvious concussion. Everything seems to be fine, so far."

"Thank you." I say on an exhale so softly that he probably can't hear because of the mask.

Finally, we look around: everything is shrouded in brown-gray smoke, and the walls of the platform opposite the train look like after the shelling. Large pieces of some kind of shrapnel crashed into the marble. Trying to see what happened to the train, Zeke tugs at my shoulder.

"Keep your head down until most of them run out. They'll drag you into the crowd and trample you to death." He makes the right remark, and I again sneak a peek at the edge of the platform where we are hiding. It is almost empty, people are running along the center of the platform. Suddenly there is a momentary lull, like before a storm, and I can clearly hear his voice, "The far escalator. It's collapsing."

"Fuck." I run out from behind the column and rush to the opposite end of the platform along its very edge, hearing Zeke's curses and how he runs in my footsteps. The smoke is getting thicker and thicker, and I miraculously keep my balance on the narrow strip between the columns and the rails. When we get there, we see a picture of people rushing to run up the loose stairs. Zeke understands without words what the trouble is, and with incredible agility runs around me and jumps onto the wide partition between the escalators, forcefully grabbing two guys by the scruff of the neck and dragging them onto it. This slows down the people below, and the next moment the structure falls down with a terrible roar and screech of metal.