Embers

When the black and orange fiery ash fell from the sky, we were already standing on the hilltop watching three houses in the immediate distance catch fire and burn. Flecks of ash floated so peacefully that I reached out my hand to catch the snowflake-like embers, not considering their heat, before they ignited the grasses of the mesa. People imagined out loud that another country started the attack. I couldn’t help but think it was our own president, but I kept this to myself. There were three men in military-like outfits with faux-leather construction boots yelling about treason and insurrection, people I would call paranoid under regular circumstances, but they didn’t seem so outlandish to me now. They, at least, were prepared.

I had been returning home from writing at the coffee shop and had just few items in my knapsack: a notebook, three pens, a granola bar, and a heart-shaped locket. Maybe a tangerine, too. I don’t remember everything exactly, except that I pulled the locket out and put it around my neck. It was my grandmother’s, and I didn’t want to lose it. What I remember next is that I was standing with a group of people around my age, all of us shielding our eyes while looking up at the sky. When the embers ignited our clothes, a woman from the group grabbed my hand pulled me into a run. We headed toward a bunker built into the hillside. As a little girl, I had wondered what was behind the black wrought iron gate which was always locked.

That day, the gate was open, and the military guard accepted my driver’s license as identification but would not let anyone else in after me. Her blonde hair was pulled into a low, tight bun, seemingly pulling her eyebrows to the middle of her forehead. Was she real military, or like the paranoid guys outside? Her boots at least looked real. While she yanked the iron gate closed and tightened the gun strap across her chest, my father called. I heard his laugh as he began his litany of jokes about the world coming to an end. "I think it’s here, dad. It started already," I told him. My mother wasn’t home, so I had to pass along that I loved them both before the line went dead. He had stopped laughing and talking long enough to hear me, I hope.

The group I was with seemed to have plan. Mostly they directed me through the bunker while telling me their names and how they knew where to go. Patricia was the woman who had helped me run here. She was also the one who told me my unpreparedness was a liability for the group. I needed water and food; she dictated the amounts and pointed down a corridor while the others hustled through a white metal door. "Parking lot, level K, five minutes," she told me and pulled the weighted door closed behind her.

I never made it to the parking lot, each corridor opened to a maze upon a maze upon a maze with no bottles of water. I lost my way so many times that I sat down, rubbed the locket between my thumb and forefinger, and waited for this all to end. To wake as if from a dream. Or for Patricia to come back and rescue me. No one pulled my hand, but I no longer heard shouts or footsteps either. I crossed my arms over my knees and rested my forehead on my right arm. I stared at the concrete floor willing myself to cry or to fall asleep. Instead, my eyes lost focus and my depth perception diminished. I was one with the floor.

When I heard the footsteps, I looked up to see the guard from the gate over me, her eyebrows now under a black beret. She spoke into her radio: “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Last one as far as I can tell.” I woke from my stupor.

“The last one of what?” I asked. She looked up at the ceiling and then back at me, talons appearing from where I expected her hands to be. She eyed the locket around my neck. Her lips and tongue forming each word precisely.

“The last of your kind in this sector, we suppose.” She smiled at me, the fluorescent hallway lights illuminating her rows upon rows of teeth. So, not real military, either. She reached down and grabbed the locket from around my neck, breaking the chain, and put it in her left breast pocket. She opened her right talons to help me stand, but I stood on my own and followed her down the hallway, not sure of anything at all anymore. At the end of the hall, there was a sign for Parking, Level K. She opened the hollow steel door and I saw Patricia and the others in a truck with iron bars, screaming. She turned and smiled at me again, her talons beckoning me to the truck. I stared at her, not moving, and grabbed for the necklace that was no longer around my neck.