The Aftermath

My watch told me it was 3:23 am, but it could have been one in the afternoon, or six in the evening, for all I could tell. There was no way of knowing for sure with all the smoke and ash clouding the sky. The only light came from the fires that adorned every city block like enormous, sinister Christmas lights.

The people were huddled around the smaller fires—those who had the sense to, anyway. The rest, too dazed to feel cold or fear danger, were wandering aimlessly, stumbling over bricks, fallen tree limbs and the occasional body. The streets were covered in broken glass, reflecting the dancing flames a million times over.

I’d always thought of myself as a bit of a pyromaniac—but now the sight of the flames nauseates me.

I’d always thought of myself as a bit of a revolutionary—but this couldn’t be what I’d wanted.

Every so often I’d recognize a face. A neighbor, a co-worker.  A woman who took the same 7:30 bus that I did. Those faces were what jarred me back to reality and told me that this wasn't some sick dream, and that I’d had some part in it.

“Timmy! Timmy, that you?”

I spun around at the sound of my name, knowing who it was before I saw him.

I’d worked at a small grocery store when I was a teenager, owned by an old, stooped over man and his wife—Vechito’s Grocery. I still shopped there from time to time. Mr. and Mrs. Vechito were the only two people who still called me Timmy.

“Timmy!” My eyes fell on Mr. Vechito soon enough, kneeling on the sidewalk. His cane was on the sidewalk to his left. To his right was…

“Oh, Jesus, Mrs. V…” I muttered as I ran towards him.

“Maria…she’s just…she can’t walk,” he sighed brokenly.

“You old fool, I’ll be fine if—“

“You guys can’t stay here,” I interrupted. My voice sounded like a hollow caricature of itself. “It’s dangerous. Sit up,” I said to Mrs. V, “please.”
I lifted her off the ground and slung her arm over my shoulder. She was barely skin and bones.

“Come on, Mr. V, we gotta go.”

I brought the two of them to the nearest congregation of people around one of the more controlled fires and quickly scanned their faces—all strangers, no medics.

“I’ll stay with you guys until a doctor comes by,” I told them. The two of them nodded silently, and I sat down next to them.

Mrs. Vechito’s leg was at an odd, unnatural angle—broken. And none of the other people around seemed to be in better shape. The youngest, a girl of seven, if that, had a black and blistered burn mark on her leg, yet somehow she wasn’t crying. The man next to her had shards of glass sticking out of the left side of his face and body.

I closed my eyes briefly and sighed. None of this had been under my control from the start—but I couldn’t help but feel that everything from the broken glass to the burn marks to Mrs. V’s broken leg was my fault, and no one else’s.
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After about half an hour, a couple of medics arrived. Medics were just the hospital workers we’d been able to recruit—of these two, the younger looked like he was just barely an intern. He tended to the girl with the burns, automatic and machine like in his movements. The older was in his fifties or sixties, and looked somehow more in control. He began to set Mrs. V’s broken leg with whatever emergency materials he had left.

“This your grandmother?” the older medic asked me. His voice was gruff and commanded attention, like a drill sergeant. I shook my head.

“Friend of the family.”

“You one of the ones who wanted…this?” he asked, motioning at the burning buildings and the smoke. I shook my head again.

“Nossir.”

“I’m not ‘sir’, I’m Frank. We’ll talk when I’m through here,” he said, getting up to help the others huddled around the fire. Nearly everyone was wounded and required his attention. After making sure Mr. and Mrs. V were okay on their own, I got up and began to help the young intern with the little girl’s burned leg.

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An hour or so later, the group of people seemed to be as well as they could be. Frank had the intern stay behind and motioned for me to follow him away from the relative sanctuary of the congregation.

“You didn’t have to help us,” he said once we were a good distance away. “But you did. That tells me something.”

“What’s that?”

“That you were one of the honest ones in this. So help me God, tell me I’m right.”

“One of the idiots, you mean?”

“Idiocy has nothing to do with this.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I’m one of the honest ones.”

“Do you know who did this, then?”

“A handful of zealots, far as I can tell. They got some of the people into a frenzy, and now…”

“And now this.”

We walked in silence. A window that had somehow remained intact through the riots burst from the heat of the surrounding flames, sending sparkling shards in every direction. I asked the question we’d both been thinking of; the question everyone in the city must have been thinking of.

“Where do we go from here?”

“We rebuild—or they rebuild. Probably the latter. The radicals will fade out in time.”

“So…so all this was for nothing?”

“Not necessarily. But probably.”

We walked in silence again. We’d wound up on what seemed to be Main Street. This was confirmed when I saw the partially burning sign reading “Vechito’s Grocery” hanging askew on a small brick building. It shocked me back to reality, just like every familiar face of friends, co-workers and near strangers had.

My watch now read 6:38 am—but the sky was still blacked out by the smoke and ash. This wasn’t my vision, but it’s my making. I shook my head at the sound of a war-cry from off in the distance, praying that it wasn’t one of my men, one of those brave young thinkers who had gathered in my basement and hundreds of others like it, planning anything—anything but this. I sighed again.

“Some revolution.”