21 THE CITY
[As avatar I’ll take birth in the period in which the earth’s known knowledge and technology and civilization would have collapsed, no matter how by which apocalypse event, maybe by climatic change, maybe manmade destruction like nuclear holocaust or resource depletion. As an avatar, I’ll see the world only as scattered elements of the society and then make it in order.]
When the buses stop in the city, the machines following it also stop instant. All the noise of engines throbbing fall silent, still their headlights are illumining view like daylight.
I look out the window to see we have stopped in front of a lone structure. It’s reaching the sky. The bricks are visible where the plaster is broken and the weakness of bricks is visible. Time has eaten the whole structure like white ants, the paint is worn off and the layers of the dust and sand are covering it as if the whole structure is coated by the dust.
“Experienced,” the Nirbhaya in our bus instructs, “get off the bus with your apprentice.”
All leave their seats. My father and I get off the bus with others. When we are on land made of red rock and covered with sand, I see our bus has a number written on the door. Number – 3.
“Lead them to the glass building.” The Nirbhaya leaves the bus last and closes the door behind him, “bus number 3 will stay there.”
I look around; everything is in fog and darkness. Even in headlights of buses and machines, it’s hard to see what’s actually around. The dust in the air has thickened into a brown fog, and I feel it in every breath. it’s crusting in my eyes as in bus we are protected by the glass but now it’s coming in eyes with the air, making them water and turning into goop that I have to keep wiping away.
The large buildings are looming all around in the clouds of the dust, towering taller and taller, like the wall, but no creepers here like the wall, only glass, and metal and cement.
I focus my eyes on surrounding and get nothing but horror. I see what I’ve never seen before. It terrorizes me. The buildings around me are more fearful than the ghosts roaming in the darkness. The thought that someone could have lived in buildings and the folk will be forced to live in such horror is no less than a nightmare.
The wind is powerful here, pelting us with sand and gritting until it hurt.
And countless scraps of paper and many unknown but harmless things are swirling through the air like the rain.
For a split second, I feel like the sun has risen, my eyes can see everything around me as clear as daylight.
The sight is horrible, all the buildings are damaged, some are standing strait most others are about to fall, half of the buildings are without glasses, instead of windows they have big holes as if nude dogs roaming in the night.
The walls are all around us, so tall and never-ending, encircling us, the wall of broken buildings and ruin is encircling us like we are its victim and it is about to swallow us like it had swallowed thousands of people during Pralaya.
“Run,” my father clutches my hand, “run.” My eyes still staring at the empty space of a building where a window would have stood, where shattered, sharp remains of glass still lie.
My legs work automatically, running following my father, my hand in his hand. It’s hard to run as one footing is on the rock and another on in the sand. I feel I will fall any second.
“What’s coming?” I shout, “Why we are running?” we are running among crows of the Sunyas, all shouting, running and feared.
“It’s a storm.” When my father says, the lightning comes.
I use all my strength, but with a rucksack full of foodstuffs and water bottles, it’s harder than I have imagined. I keep running, all the Sunyas doing the same. It’s do-or-die condition.
I am running, almost dragging myself toward the glass building. Outside the building is a huge ground and we are still several meters away from it. The ground is looking haunted, the swings made of the metal where children would have spent moments of joy and innocent childhood are now creaking and moving in the wind, and the rest in the isolation.
Then a lightning bolts come to the ground, emitting light and thunder, we are almost reaching the glass building.
“Don’t fear,” my father shouts, “just keep running.”
I know he is right.
I am running. My father is running. My people are running.
“Have you seen Surekha?” I shout, “We have promised her safety?”
“She is safe,” he shouts back, “I’ve seen her with Alok. They are ahead of us.”
And the bolts of lightings are falling from the sky like rain hammering in monsoon, slamming into the ground and throwing up massive amounts of the rocky earth and clouds of the sand. The crushing sounds are too much to bear. It’s numbing my ears, and now I can hear the only distant hum as if I am deaf.
My father is shouting something, but I can’t hear or understand it. I want to tell him I am hearing; I really want to hear his voice. But I can’t. The dust-riddled air is choking my throat. I am taking short, quick breaths through my nose. My nostrils can feel the only smell of metal and coal and electricity.
I look at the sky only to see it more darkening, and now it’s hard to see my people around me as the clouds of the sand have thickened the air.
My eyes fall on the building in which we are trying to enter. I’ve not made the observation of it until now. Or maybe from distance, the long wall of the building was obstructing the view but now I see: there is no ceiling.
Why?
Where had it gone?
This question isn’t terrible. The terrible question is – what Pralaya did with it? How can such a huge construction be broken?
I’m running for my life still the curiosity to know what had happened to the building during Pralaya isn’t going away from the mind.
My eyes are burning and hurting to the extent and I feel I can’t see everyone or anything anymore.
I can feel my father’s hand on my wrist, he dragging me and I pushing my legs and a Lightning bolt flashes against us, a short burst of brilliant white illuminating everything.
It’s effect making me blind. We have to reach the building.
We haven’t much option: Reach there or die. We were only several meters away from the glass building when we come across a teenage girl lying in the sand on her back. Her backpack is in her hand, clutched tightly as if she believes it can protect her or maybe as death-knot. Her face is in horror.
I’m the first to spot her.
“Stop,” I yell, “father stop.”
My father stops.
“What?”
I don’t answer but point at the girl.
“Oh my god!” he says, “She is feared.”
I feel the weight in my chest and something turning my limbs inside my stomach. I go near the girl. She is of my age, in our dress code. The sand has covered her whole body and blood is coming out from her nostrils as if people have trampled her under their feet in chaos.
I lean over her. “She is alive,” I say without looking at my father, “she is breathing.”
Her face is gazing the sky with emptiness in her eyes. As if she is waiting for a lightning to strike and take her away, end this miserable life.
“Hey! Girl!” my father shouts, in loud voice, “get on your feet or you will be dead.”
I hear my father’s word but the girl doesn’t show any sign she has even noticed us or heard my father’s words. The ripping wind was too much to hear anything.
I shove my father out of the way and kneel down near the girl. My knees felt the sand. I wave my hand above the girl’s eye, breaking her gaze in the sky. She stares at my palm, nothing, no blinking, or no movement. I clutch her face in my palms and say, “wake up,”
“Can you hear me?” I say, shaking her shoulders, “can you…” I can’t decide what to say.
“Keep trying,” my father says, “you are officially a fool boy who is risking our lives for an unknown girl.”
“She isn’t unknown,” I shout, “She is bloody one of us.”
“Where is my father?” the girl moves.
I’ve shouted at my father but was my face was near her so the shout has a positive effect on her.
“He is okay,” from here my father handles things – a good one is lying.
“I lost his hand,” she tries to stand up, my father supports her, “but I lost him in this commotion.”
“He is fine,” my father says, “can you walk?”
She nods and then a bolt of pure white zigzags from the sky and explodes on the ground right in front of us, on a teenage boy who has stopped to see us helping the girl, I see the worst thing of my life.
I scream. And some burst of energy or wave of air―throws me to the side. I fall flat on my back, the breath stuck in my throat, a spray of dirt and rocks rain down on my body. Spitting, wiping at his face.
I feel I will die with fear. Sure I will die. And suddenly I remember the boy. He was stroked by the lightning.
I look at where he was before something threw me away. Instead, the boy my eyes see a statue made of charcoal there, a horrifying statue, his legs in running position and his hand also, his mouth opens giving me guess he was screaming when the bolt hit him, his eyes – no eyes, just a black stone in his sockets.
Nausea sours my stomach, I feel my heart in my mouth, I have to press my lips tight to stop myself vomiting, fearing my hear would be on the ground if I vomit.
I scramble onto my hands and knees, and then my feet. I still can’t hear anything except a ringing noise like the humming on the electricity in barbed wires, a steady, high-pitched buzz that feels like nails in my eardrums.
The wind is trying to fall me to the ground, eat my clothes, peel out my skin, the dirt eating my skin and burning my eyes, my skin feeling as if I am sleeping on scorching stone, darkness covering around me among flash of lightning bolts.
Again a bolt of lightning falls to the ground, breaking the spell of darkness and revealing another horrific image.
It’s a Nirbhaya. He’s on the ground, like a coiled snake, his clothes half burned and his skin whole burned. No – he isn’t whole.
He isn’t whole; his body has just head and torso, no hips, no legs, nothing below the torso. The bolt of lightning has eaten him – not whole but half. Remaining of his body is covered in the blood. Not blood but black tar – Blood like rain in charcoal mine mixed with coal powder is gushing from where the lightning has halved him. His burned clothes revealing his pale body, now it is like made of nothing but charcoal.
His body is named, not revealing his limbs as there aren’t limbs but just injuries and injuries spreading across his whole body. He is a Sunya, he must have shoulder length hair but now he has no hair.
My knees are bending, among my hard tries to remain on my legs. My legs aren’t accepting direct of my mind as if they aren’t able to bear my weight. My knees feel the hard rocky ground and sand, then the rest of my body feel the same.
***
To be continue.....
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