She wasn’t sure what she’d do after that, but she’d think about it then.Īnother wave of planes slithered overhead, the rumble of their engines echoing in her bones. She needed to keep running until she reached her destination. Fairly certain she was on Mac Farren Place, she flattened herself against a recessed door, imagining she could hear approaching footsteps coming for her. She ducked into a doorway to catch her breath, oddly grateful to the fires for lighting her way. The baby lay still as she ran, the partially closed top of the valise protecting him from the ashes that drifted from burning buildings. The shrill whistle of an air raid warden rang out, the sound padded into near oblivion by the thunder of the engines above them. The sidewalk rumbled beneath her, causing her to stumble into the street, almost losing hold of her precious bundle. Another building, another home, another life destroyed as the haphazard finger of fortune pointed with random carelessness. More willing to accept that the world still held on to its beauty when everything lay charred and smoldering, with roofless structures like starving baby birds, mouths open to a useless sky.Īnother incendiary bomb fell nearby. She’d thought then it had been a beautiful sentiment, that it was a wonderful way to make something good out of something so terrible. Someone, she couldn’t remember who, in an underground club perhaps, had whispered that that was what he called the music of the nightly bombings. Pressing herself against a wall, as if she could hide from the noise and the sounds and the terror, she closed her eyes.
The night sky blossomed with fire and scarlet light as the loud bark of the antiaircraft guns answered the banshee wails of the warning sirens. Gingerly, she moved through the darkened high street so familiar in the daylight but foreign to her now. She staggered forward, the blood dripping unchecked from her leg and forehead, the acrid stench of explosives mixed with the sharp smell of death. Fatigue and pain battered her body, both eagerly welcomed, as they disguised the bruise of overwhelming grief. She shifted the valise she cradled in her arms, the pressure on her chest making it difficult to breathe.
A man grabbed her arm, as if to correct her movement, but an explosion nearby made him release his hold and hurry after the crowd.
She tasted dust and burnt embers in the back of her throat as she hurried through a crowd of stragglers running toward a shelter. A wave of planes like angry hornets slipped through the darkened sky over a city already wearing black in preparation for the inevitable mourning. The cool, clear night shuddered, then moaned as the fluctuating drone of hundreds of engines eclipsed the silence.
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