Chapter 3:

Burned and Broken

The fire licked through the skeleton of the high school, up into the sky, spilling heavenward in reds and golds, spewing thick black smoke over the city and blocking out the silver half-moon. The fire itself was malevolent, magnanimous—even majestic, if one didn’t consider the carnage.

Nathan returned to the school, entering the inferno with a single purpose. Michelle was missing. He had to find her. He had to save her.

The school was thick with choking smoke and debris. Nathan found himself carrying more and more people: the limp, the wounded, and the unconscious as he returned to the gymnasium again and again. He returned with only one purpose in mind: Michelle was missing, and he had to find her—yet he couldn’t leave these others.

Each time he returned to the building his hope dimmed. There were so many bodies in charred heaps. There were some beyond his meager help, dark lumps blistered and seared beyond the cares of this world. He tried not to look, not wanting to see his old classmates in such a broken state. He tried to ignore the smell of cooking meat. He assumed if they did not move, if they did not call or cough, they had not survived. Then, he only glanced at them long enough to determine that it was not Michelle he was looking at. No, she was wearing different shoes—and that other corpse had on slacks. A few times, he looked too close, and each time, he regretted it. The gruesome expressions, the wounds and injuries… After a dozen trips back into the burning school, he realized that he would not find Michelle in the gymnasium.

The smoke burned at Nathan’s eyes, seared in his lungs as he pushed through the rest of the school. He burned himself repeatedly on various debris, but the pain never lasted. His skin would char, turn black, and immediately begin to flake: revealing healthy flesh, unscarred, unburned, with no sign of the injury.

He pressed on, trying to find the only person that mattered. Was she still in the ladies room? Which way was the ladies room? He checked the girl’s locker room. He found a blasted mess of twisted metal and broken cinder, but no Michelle.

Most of the school was not burning, but several hallways had toppled lockers, fissured walls, and broken brick. The school was so shaken by the blast that it was crumbling in places. As he wondered the shattered halls, Nathan realized that chances were Michelle was absolutely safe, somewhere around the school, perhaps tending the wounded out front. She was wandering the grounds, looking for him, trying to figure what had happened, fearing he was dead. Chances were she was as good as one could be, considering the circumstances.

Still, Nathan continued to search the school. If she was outside, she was safe, and he’d find her after he’d exhausted the debris. Likely, she was comforting an old friend, a minor gash on her leg, some slight abrasions on her hands and arms, but she’d be fine. She’d smile when she saw him. He’d take her in his arms and everything would be okay.

But if she were still inside… he didn’t want to think about the chance that she was still inside. He searched just in case she happened to be in the wrong place. What if she needed him and he was outside on the grass, strolling around as if everything was just fine? No. He had to search.

Sweat ran over his eyes, mixing with ash. Thick smudges of black ran down his face. He choked and coughed from all the smoke in the air. Nathan turned a corner and found himself standing in a hall full of debris: books, paper, and all manner of stuff strewn about. One wall was broken, leaning precariously, sections smashed and tumbled. Lockers crushed and shattered open, spewed contents: glossy images from magazines, trinkets, ratty textbooks were all over the floor. There, among the detritus of the lockers was Michelle, sucking in shallow breaths, pinned by the rubble of a broken wall. She pushed against the debris, trying to wiggle out from under its weight—but to no effect. She didn’t see Nathan as he ran to her. She didn’t see him until he was leaning over her, kissing her cheek.

Nathan didn’t think. He didn’t have to. For that he was grateful. The wall was heavy, amazingly heavy, though not very big. In such circumstances people often find incredible strength. After a reassuring smile and a quick kiss, he plucked the section of wall off Michelle—and bracing it with one hand—he pulled her free with the other. Nathan dropped the section of wall, which hit the floor with a deafening boom. The school shuddered in response.

“I have you now,” Nathan assured Michelle, as he gathered her in his arms.

Her response was a sharp intake of air and an abbreviated groan. Should he be moving her? If she had spinal injuries… “Can you feel your feet, your fingers?”

“My legs are broken,” she said, the words soaked with tears. Her blood was all over the floor.

“What about your back, your neck?”

Michelle grimaced, and shook her head.

The air was suffocating. The smoke and dust were only increasing. Nathan gathered her as gently as he could. He carried her to the closest door and took her outside. Not far from the football field, Nathan lowered her to the ground under a tree.

Michelle clung to him, her grasp weak. She suffered no burns, thankfully, but did not escape lightly. The wall crushed her legs, and broke several ribs. Nathan saw the mess that used to be her left leg and knew immediately she’d never run another race. She would never again be a world class athlete. She would not be leaving for Gabon after all.

What he could not see, what he could not know was that she also suffered massive internal hemorrhaging due to a rib jutting through a lung. Lying in the grass, neither Marvelous nor Michelle knew the extent of her injuries; only that the pain of it all was making her delirious.

Michelle lay in Nathan’s lap, trying to catch her breath and perceive exactly what was happening. She clung to Nathan, the only thing that made sense, and tried to think through the pain. Only Nathan made sense. Nathan always made sense to her.

Someone approached and spoke to Nathan. Michelle couldn’t make out a face or the words, but she caught Nathan’s reply. “A wall fell on her,” he stated. She could hear the uncertainty in his voice, the quiver of fear and the welling of tears.

She remembered the wall. What was she doing there? What was it she saw before the wall jumped out and attacked her? It was a picture, black and impressionistic. She could see a horse in it, with fiery eyes and flaming hooves. She’d been wandering the halls, giving Nathan time to be alone in a sea of forgotten friends, among people that loved him, even if he didn’t realize it. Why would somebody draw such a horse? She thought, wondering at its dark, terrible, yet beautiful form. With an overwhelming roar, the horse of fire jumped at her. After that, things went black, lost in a sea of pain and fear.

Michelle longed to be home, at the mansion, alone with Nathan. Everything on her peripheral was raw sounds and a mash of color. Tears formed in her eyes, but she did not sob. Her chest hurt too much for that.

Nathan cradled her head, stroked her hair and begged her to hang on. He tried to hold her motionless, which she managed only because moving was so very painful. In the distance, sirens cried their woeful song of approach.

Nathan sat with his back to the fire as it consumed the school. His thin frame was covered in a thick layer of soot. His fine jacket was ruined. His creamy complexion was smudged with dark ash. Sweat, and now tears, rolled off him as he swayed with grief. He tried not to rock, but his agitation, the adrenaline, proved too much. He pitched forward and back ever so slightly. He could not help his shaking.

Kelly stood over the two, her dress wrinkled and dirty, her face etched with worry. She leaned close to Michelle and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Hey babe,” she offered with a smile. She caressed the hair out of Michelle’s face, put her other hand on Nathan’s shoulders and courageously held back her tears. This was not her kind of battle. She didn’t know how to heal bodies. All she could offer was comfort, and hoped that it would be enough.

Michelle gave a twisted smile to her age old friend. “Why is he crying?” she asked. “Is he hurt?” she continued in a broken whisper. “It’d do no good for him to hear her worry.

Kelly tried not to cry as she shook her head. “It’s you, babe,” she answered as she stroked her old friend’s hair.

“Oh,” Michelle said, then moaned between clenched teeth. Her fingers mingled with Nathan’s, squeezing tight, her knuckles white with the pressure.

The sirens were close now, echoing Nathan’s grief, and offering hope as Michelle slipped further and further away. “It won’t be long,” Nathan told Michelle. “Hold on.”

Death and Michelle raced on. If only Michelle could win one last race, Nathan thought.

“I love you,” Michelle whispered, suddenly lucid as she stared up at Nathan. “Promise me you’ll be okay,” she said as she stared her love at him. She smiled, then closed her eyes as the pain continued to fade. She’d offered him all the comfort she could. Now she was weak. She was slipping into a deep and restful sleep. She relaxed and thought of her lover as all the tension slipped from her body.

Nathan shook and sobbed. He felt her fingers slip away from his, as an ambulance pulled up on the grass, only a few feet away. Fire trucks, police cruisers, and more ambulances arrived. The area was quickly overrun with emergency workers dodging into the burning building, manning hoses, assisting the injured. Uniforms scurried about the corpse of the school. The scene reminded Nathan of the times he’d put anthills under his boot. Never before had he felt so sorry for the ants.

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