I think I smelled it first. Will was looking into the traffid I got his attention and told him to sniff the air. At that moment, he reminded me of a snake, as he looked all around while tasting the air in order to sense danger. His eyes widened aarted to run around a pile of trash that was taller thaher of us. He paused at the point where I could see him and he could see the danger, and then he came sprinting back towards me, and as he got close enough to be heard at a talking volume over the din of shouting and the twisting of metal oal, he said one word.

  “Run.”Both of us ran towards the fehat separated us from what was generally referred to as a no go zone, but I ko be entirely safe. The point was, if you could ehe momentary disfort of being a good person, you would be okay. Will had called this pce Scrabble for as long as I had known him, and it arently a well worn sng term in his circle of friends, born from the hardscrabble existehat the people who lived there had to endure, and the idea that there was so much trash, so much waste that had been dumped there, that you could make aire game of Scrabble pyable just from pig out oer from eadividual game. I did not know if we would have time to test this theory, and as Will and I climbed over the fehat separated extreme violence from extreme desperation, I rather stupidly turned bad tried to see if Audrey had followed our lead. She was right behind us, and as she stalked around the pile of trash, she too noticed what we had, and ran right towards us. Whether she kneere there or not I ot say, but she did sprint towards us, somehow avoiding the mud better than Will had. Perhaps because he had seen the cause of the danger and I had not, Will was slower than me, and as we reached the top of the fence, he grabbed my right side, and through some extreme exertion tossed me onto the ground oher side. I nded face down, managing to brace myself with my hands right before crashing. I rolled over and saw Will pulling Audrey up and over the fence. I had gotten up by this point and rinting away from the hazard, with Audrey not far behind. I turned around to see Will sitting at the top of the fence, apparently frozen. I yelled at him to e down, to save himself over anyone else. Instead of doing that, he held up his hand and started ting down from five. Four, three, two, one. Will jumped off of the fence right as the first explosion souhrough the air. I was shaken, nearly falling onto the ground, and I mao catch my bance right as I saw the first piece of trash. I remember it very clearly, and it stic hamburger er. At that moment, running away from the bombs and the cars, I thought about the process of creating that hamburger. A eeded to be born, and as it grew up, it ate grass whieeded to be watered probably once a week, and almost certainly more. When it got old enough, it was fed slop rather fancifully called feed, which made the cow shit and fart methane, whiulled out all the progress we were supposedly making with the global climate. The shit was especially bad, because it was likely to find its way into the water supply, where it would inate crops, evehy ones like lettud broccoli. O was fat enough for the pate of lorious try, it was shipped off to a sughterhouse, where towers that loomed over the entire world oozed noxious gas into the air. It was then killed without ceremony, in a process that sted about 15 minutes on average. After the sterilization process, which left many of the workers traumatized, anejaculite or suicidal to areme degree. After the meat was shipped (usually by pne or boat, which was agairemely bad for the enviro), it was shot through with a syringe full of chemicals not even known to the CEO of the pany, because the person who made it was long dead. After that, it was ed, packaged, made into a slightly appetizing “meal”, and served. All to make one probably very fat person happy.

  We were all running together. I saw the fire and fmes rise above the pileups and the piles of trash. I assumed that we wouldn’t be running for much longer, and I was right to aent. Will grabbed my head and plugged my ears as we were entering a nd of trash, of which there were many in this pce. Audrey took the initiative first and plugged her own ears, and I quickly uood and grabbed Will’s head, rather too violently, and plugged his ears as well. In any other situation, it would have been rather romantibsp;

  I saw the fire growing, and I heard gunshots in the distance as well. I noticed, rather wly, that the cars were not attempting to speed up and the drivers were not attempting to leave, instead opting to ram into each other, and ihere were more of the ses than I had seen before. I saw the people run into the streets to form one giant brawl, and as punches flew ah disappeared down throats, I remembered something.

  “Will! Where’s Sarah!”

  “I don’t know! It doesn’t matter! Either she’s dead or she isn’t, and there’s nothing we do about it!”

  The shouting we had both done had almost caused me to remove my hands from Will’s ears, but he mao vince me to keep me steady. I looked at Audrey, and I saw the look in her eyes. It was a look of remembrance, and knowing that this was still not as bad as what had happeo her before. It was a fusing look, because I thought it was directed at me and nowhere else. I thought she was saying that once we went to the big city, everything would be revealed to me. I khat she knew I had been to the big city many times before, and I had seen the mass executions and hostages taken and then released missing eyes, legs, or even heads. She khat, and still she told me. I believed, perhaps irrationally, that she was trying to trick me into believing what I already ko be true for her own personal gain. I already knew how horrible the big city was, and so I shouted to her, “I uand! I uand what you are trying to say! I actually already believe it, if you uand that!”

  Audrey was now looking at me with a quizzical expression on her suddenly gaunt face. That was worse, because she didn’t uand what I was trying to say, a I khat she would never hate me as I now assumed she did, but the rules said that she must, and theurned her head to the belg of bck smoke. At that point, I did not believe that this was a safe distance, and almost turo run further, but Will held onto my head tighter, and since I khat he had snapped necks before, and in fact I had seen him do it once, I moved no further. I saw a se taking pce ahead of me. A very tall and very strangely shaped man was dueling aremely shifty and dangerous appearing teenager, and I saw the cars ing up upon them. I did not blink, as I knew what was going to happen and had seen it many times before, but as the sed and far rger explosio off, time slowed to a turtle’s pace. The first thing I did was blink. I then realized that I was still iy and not in one of those primetime drama television shows that everyone loved. The millised, I saw the plume of fire shoot out in 360 degrees. I saw the two people stop fighting as cars around them were ied, and I thought I could see them stare in shock as what they ko be true had finally happened. I saw the strange ma enveloped first, and theeenager, as they saw the skin of the man turn to dust and ash. The cars turo mangled wrecks in an instant, and the heat wave hit us soon after. It knocked us both to the ground, causing Will to fall on top of me, and he somehow mao keep his hands on my ears the whole time. I was not so lucky, and he grimaced as the st of the roar apparently went right into his inner ear and bounced around his brain. We id there for a moment. We were all in shock that we had survived, a humaion that would not go away no matter how many times this type of thing happened. Will, the quickest of the three of us, pulled himself off of me and ran towards the hole that had been torn in the fence. Audrey and I got up at about the same time, and we followed him. We must have looked like quite the sight, sprinting towards fire and wreckage while covered in grass and nearly out of breath. Will tripped a little ways ahead of us, and he kicked the offending object away from us, and as it flew I saw that it iece of shraphat had gohrough the fend skidded to a stop in the grass. I thought that it was very lucky that no pieetal had actually hit us, as the shrapnel had apparently gone everywhere around us, including over us, but never actually onto us. I mao catch up to Will, and I saw the fear in his eyes, fear for something and someone. I didn’t bother to ask what it was, because he would not be running this way if it was something unimportant.

  We all crossed the threshold of the fe about the same time. I saw a world on fire and turned into what I imagined a best of pition of Hell would look like. Fiery paper caught in the wind, threatening to set our heads on fire if we were not careful. A gigantic hole in the ground where the danger had been, and all around, twisted and tattered cars. They had been decimated in the explosion, to the point where some had melted into the ground and fused with the crete. I wao step forward a little more, but Will held me back. Slowly, as if he was trying to make sure that the world would not crumble away from underh him, he picked up a pebble and tossed it further away from us, into one of the holes that the cars had left behind ohey had been fshfired away. I saw the pebble sail through the air and nd on the ground, instantly dissipating into mist with a sizzle.

  “The ground is white hot. Don’t take aep.”

  Audrey had e up beside me as Will had uttered his warning, and she asked the question on all of our minds.

  “Are we going to wait for Sarah?”

  Will thought for a moment.

  “I don’t know. We probably should, but there’s no telling if she’s still alive, and the ground won’t cool for another 72 hours or so.”

  I spoke up while still watg the age in front of me.

  “I stand watch! I don’t really have anything else to do…”

  Will and Audrey looked at each other, both of them leaning past each other in some funny kind of dance, and they both silently agreed. It was then decided that they would go on in search of a way through Scrabble to the big city, or somewhere that would take us further on towards the big city. I would stand watch, waiting for Sarah. The main thing that I was worried about was vagabonds from the road ahead, or even scrabblers from the wilds behind me, but Will had assured me that no one would e close to either side. The people from the ragged city were too prideful (and naturally us three were different), and the scrabblers would never dare e within a mile of a city. These were apparently universal truths, and I accepted them and watched the road. The first thing I noticed was the state of the road itself. It seemed to have been stretched as the sed explosion had happened, and the crater that had followed seemed to be pushing on the road even now. I then saw what had actually caused the two explosions. Apparently, an oil tanker had either run or been run off the road, and some series of events had caused it to erupt into fme. I looked up at the sky and saw the rancid smoke flying upwards and upwards, eventually disappearing out of sight long after I had left the area.

  I saw him after quite a while of nothing. His head had been burned, as well as his body, but it seemed like he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. As he came further into view from around the piles of broken cars, I saw that he was dripping blood, and it appeared to sizzle o left his body. His clothes were fused to his body, and I saw him punch the window of a car right out. He sged around in the backseat for some time, eventually ing across two bills, and once he had assured himself that they were his, he ripped a part of his body open and stuffed the bills in. I ted seven bills that were important enough to him to save before he sealed his money carrying case back up. He gnced around for a moment in order to make sure that no one was watg, and then broke through the driver's side windoulled the entire body of the person out of the car. He proceeded to hop up onto the car, where I could see that his feet were exposed and smoking, ahen proceeded to start tearing at the flesh of the driver. It was an easy task to eat the person, because they had essentially been cooked already by the heat of the fme, and it was obvious that the man had dohis before. I did not believe that he was that hungry, because I saw him toss the body away after eating only a morsel or two, and then he hopped down from the car and started heading straight towards me. I was oblivious at certain points, but this was not one of them. A burned man who I had just seen tear another human’s flesh from their bones was now walking towards me. I could only assume ohing, and so I started running further back to where the trash iled in order to try and find a on. There were a few things that could have been strued as ons, like a bucket full of strange gunk, a brick, and a tightly wound carpet, but I wanted something more, something that could really stab and hurt. I was soon thankful I was wearing shoes, because as I rooted around in the dirt, while looking back at the man and seeing if he was close enough to kill, or had teleported directly towards me, my shoe caught on something and I fell into a pile of sticky paper. Getting up and shaking myself off, I saw the glint of a kig up above the grass. I quickly grabbed it, careful to avoid the bde itself, and then rao grab the brick. From my leaned over position, I saw the man stumbling a little bit as he walked over the bare crete directly onto the grass past the fence. I grabbed the fend then did something that I would not reend to anyone else, and ran forward with the brid threw it directly at him. It sailed through the air, and the man tried to dodge it, but as his feet were so broken, they got stu the grass and he just had to watch as the brick hit him directly in the chest and knocked him out of his feet. I rao him as quickly as I could, almost slipping on a frying pan that had been lightly greased because of the heat, and kneeled down beside the burned man. His eyes were closed, and I raised the knife over my head and smmed it down into his. His body shook, and a spurt of red hot blood came out of his head. Some of it nded on my stabbing arm, and it sizzled my flesh, which made me shout and rub my arm in the grass. Every time I tried to remove my arm from the grass, I shouted in agony, so I left it there and hoped no one else would e along.

  And no one did, at least no ohat was dangerous to me. As the fire calmed down and the trash started to settle into piles once again, I saw a stream of cars ing from down the road. Apparently the traffic had stopped for a matter of minutes, and after sidering that long enough for the problem to be solved (and some shoves from the more impatient of the drivers), they got on their way again. They were moving incredibly quickly, in excess of 100 miles per hour. I saw some people throwing their trash out of the window at other drivers, which more than once caused the drivers who had been hit to swerve and cause a collision, which then ran the cars off the road. I saw the drivers get out of their cars and start attag one another, aually one of two things would happeher one of the two drivers would have been puo death, or both of them would have stepped into the traffid been disied against the windshield of another howling driver. I started to wonder where they were all going, but then I ed the thought. It wasn’t important to worry about those things, as every one of them had somewhere to go, and it would ruin your mind trying to guess at eae.

  Back at the front, the leaders had increased their speed to 130 miles per hour or more and were in a stant battle with each other for first pce. It was absolutely imperative to them that they got ahead of everyone else, as getting to their pce was important above anything else in the world. At that moment, they were as happy as they’d ever been. They were on the open road, finally free from everything that had held them back. And then the first car flew into the air. It had caught on a part of the oil tank and unched into the air at 130 miles an hour. I watched it sail through the sky, the red paint perfectly opposite the clear blue sky. It then caught on a mppost and started flipping around midair, careening towards an apartment building. Not thinking, I pulled my arm out of the grass, not notig that I was no longer in pain. I grabbed at myself, trying to think about what I could do to help, but I realized that there was nothing. I watched helplessly as the car smmed into the apartment building, instantly killing a woman who was out on her baly. It basically phased through the wall, seemingly not making tact with any of the molecules and simply deleting them along the way. I watched it fall through the apartment plex, probably killing several other people on the way down. I turned my attention back to the road, and I saw the pileup that had started. A car had buried itself in a crater, and the back part was stig up into the road. I saw what was going to happen once again, and again I owerless to stop it. I watched as another car rammed directly into the back of the buried car, tearing the buried car in half and causing the other car to spin out and e to a dead halt on the road. The driver had been thrown out of the windshield. He had not been wearing a seatbelt. No oopped, and I don’t think the word stop ever eheir minds. Crash after crash, metal after mangled metal broken against the ground and other cars. Eventually, the crashes started happening at slow enough speeds that the drivers could get out of their cars and start attag each other for their foolishness. Hunting knives, butcher knives, even a gun or two were drawn. There were no moments for preparation, no time to breathe or ready yourself for what was about to happen, just brutal attacks on everyone near enough to hit. It was said that you should never bring a ko a gunfight, but everyone was in such close proximity to each other that knives were the only viable option. Everyone first turned on the people who had guns, shredding them to pieces and making them unreizable, emptying the guns into the air food measure. They would not have that kind of py in this game, it was cheating without doubt. Then they all turned on one another. Ribbons of meossed onto the floor, hearts were butchered along with necks. There were no alliances, nothing that could be called a side or even something worth fighting for, they just wao kill each other because they had ruiheir car, or made them te for work, or made them unhappy in some way. It ool of skin, thousands and thousands of bodies killing each other because they thought they simply had to, because it was their right to do so. I screamed at them, telling them that they were making me very unhappy and that they should stht away, but naturally they did nothing. I doubt that they even heard what I said. Bodies dropped and the crowd thihere was no pattern to the people who were winning. Some of them were tall and strong and really quite handsome, yes they were, but some were very different, and some seemed to have never been in this kind of fight before. I thought that they were scared, which I thought was silly. The people who were left were now fighting in one otles, and I could see them transf into something other than human. Some of them grew carrion wings, some of them transformed into shadows which darted in and out of reality but could always be hit, and a few grew seve and started stepping oher transformed people. It was certainly a sight to behold, and I got quite scared at this turn of events. They used magi each other, some shooting fire from their fiips and others blog it with ice. Electricity flew from the sky down to the ground, shog the people and causing one of the shadows to die. All in all, there were seven people left. They were all locked in this infernal battle, and it seemed to me that it might st forever. The giants were being attacked by the shadows, the ghostly forms whirling around and striking them where the flesh was softest. Tearing and ripping sounds echoed throughout the city. I saw that one of the people, who was a man made of fire and s, had a massive sword that he had been smming into people for a long time. He had no form, and it only worked because it was so big. The man made of ice died instantly on impact, his body sizzling and floating up into the atmosphere. The shadows looked on with teasing faces, saying “Good job, you got him!” and the back to tearing the giants apart. There was only one remaining, and the shadows made quick work of him, biting off his head before actually feasting on his body. You could tell that the other shadows were upset at their prey being killed so easily, but it wasn’t important, not nearly as important as the fiery man. They circled around him, unsure of what to do. They could just go up and dive bomb him, but that wouldn’t be any fun. They could slip underground and snatch his sword away, but that would be too easy. But the fiery man made their decision for them. He raised his hand into the air, nearly dropping the sword on the ground, and then a single beam of light shot into the sky and exploded just above the apartment buildings. It blotted out everything and I had to squeeze my eyes shut in order to keep my sight. I heard screaming, and it was a dark, low scream. I felt the heat of the beam e closer to me and then go further away, above my head and into the air. I dropped to the ground and covered my ears. I started screaming because I was in real danger once again, and if that heat ray even grazed a millimeter of me, I would be dead. I made myself as small as possible, curling up on the ground and weeping. I tried to reason with myself, saying that this thing was normal and it would all be over soon, but I couldn’t shake the fact that he would get me soon enough, that he would mistake me for a shadow and I’d be dead before my friends could ever get bae. My friends…how long had it been since I’d thought about them? For all I khey could have been dead, rotten corpses on the ground or in some shallow grave created by a man with a helmet that trolled every a. I rolled over onto my bad opened my left eye a crack. I did see the heat ray as it traveled through the air, but I couldn’t see the shadows. I opened my eyes all the way, and there they were, flying away as fast as possible, desperately trying to avoid being Icarus. It didn’t happen that way, obviously. No one could avoid a fiery man for that long. The man waited for a moment and thehe ray ahead of the shadows, burning two into dust. The third, and now st, had enough time to fly upwards and away from the ray of fire. The dust from the two dead shadows was caught in a gust of wind and flew onto me, coating me in fine bck powder. Some got into my mouth, and it tasted like the things that no one was supposed to know about, the people that had disappeared without a trace. I imagihings I had never imagined before. A thousand foot tall man stepping over a town, the town that I was in. I saw him crush buildings and stamp people out, and then he jumped into spaever to be seen again. I read the neer a month from that i, and there was ion of the man or the people who had died. Ihere was a story about a churchgoer who had “turo the dark side” and fled to Amsterdam in order to “start a sex cult.” I smiled, got up and threw the neer into the trash. I then saw a man flying above the rooftops, and I tried to tell my friend about the man, but my friend had left, probably to buy some cigarettes. I would tell him about the sight whe back. The man was fighting a shadow at the very top of some apartment plex that looked exactly the same as all the others that surrounded me. Below the man and the shadow, traffic was streaming by on a road pockmarked with dangerously rge holes. I started walking towards the traffi order to stop them from getting hurt, but I heard a squealing hat stopped me in my tracks. From above the shadow came flying down and smmed onto one of the cars, ohat had only one person in it. The man threw out his hands a down a beam of light that destroyed the shadow and the car along with it, sending both of them down to the core of the p, o be seen again.