Among the Roaring Dead Read Free

– cold water.
    “What the hell!” Michael said, sitting up.
    “Stay down!”
    When the boys started shivering, she turned the stream off.
    It seemed as though an hour had passed. She tried the handle once more, realizing that they couldn’t stay put forever. It was incredibly hot – so much so that she worried there was a fire on the other side. Michael popped his head up from the bathtub, looking very much like his father, rousing confusedly from some deep foggy dream.
    “I told you - stay down,” she said, pointing her finger at his face in warning. “We’re getting out of here. I just need to check things out first.”
    Her sight had still not returned completely. Everything had a glow to it and her brain hurt directly behind her eyes.
    The sky outside the windows was a strange orange colour. There were no signs that the building was going to crumble but as she walked around she noticed that some plastic items had been partially melted down into a glob of indiscernible shapes.
    She grabbed backpacks and duffel bags and started filling them with toiletries and food. She was trying to move faster than her body would allow and she tripped and knocked things over. Food items spilled from shelves in the kitchen.
    She had four bags filled and sitting at the front door of the apartment when Michael and Dustin showed themselves at the entrance to the bathroom.
    “Let’s go, I have enough packed.”
    Neither of them moved.
    Dustin said: “Is my PAL in there?”
    “No, it is not! This is an emergency not a vacation! Get over here and let’s go now!”
    She opened the door and they went out into the hallway. The boys started heading for the elevator.
    “Where are you guys going? We’re not taking the elevator.”
    “But mom, it’s fifteen floors!”
    “I don’t care if it’s fifty floors; we’re not taking the elevator.”
    The building was L-shaped. The hallway went down to the far end and bent around a corner. Someone came stumbling out of the space towards them.
    “Help! Are you there?”
    It was the old man who lived at the end with his younger wife. He always wore, as he did now, a blue workman’s jumpsuit with his name stitched on the front.
    “What is it Joe?”
    “I can’t see and I think my wife is dead!”
    He moved forward with uneasy steps, a hand propped against the wall to keep him balanced. When he got close enough to them he tried to reach out, perhaps to grab on to a shadow he thought he saw but he missed and would have fell had Toni not stepped forward to grab his arm.
    He seemed more confident with her now and stood straight up. His hand closed around her wrist and he started to walk back to his apartment.
    “You need to come,” he said, “and see my wife.”
    She looked back at her boys who stood there not knowing what to do.
    “Just wait one minute – I’ll be right back.”
    When their mother and the man were out of view from having turned the corner at the end of the hall, a nearby apartment door opened very slowly.
    Half a man’s head peeked out.
    “Hey kids, what’s going on?”
    Michael shrugged his shoulders and said: “Umm, in case you haven’t noticed, the building’s shaking and there’s some other stuff happening.”
    “Where are you guys going?”
    “I don’t know,” Michael said, “to our car I think.”
    “Wow, that’s a courageous move.” He opened the door a little bit further and looked down the hall. A cigarette dangled from his hand and instantly wafted out and touched their noses. “There’s definitely some weird things going on. Right after the flash happened I called down to the office. The Super has some kind of a HAM radio or something. Heard a message before the power went out about NORAD having a safe command centre in North Bay.”
    Michael’s face scrunched up as he tried to digest the news.
    “The place can’t handle millions of people.”
    “I don’t think it will have to. Haven’t you heard all the screaming outside?”
    There