Blown Away
© Jamie K. Schmidt

 

Zoraya wore a vest of dynamite under a puffy, pink parka. The detonator was clutched in her fist, her thumb on the button. Fear and the warmth of the coat's down stuffing caused sweat to stream down her temples and the back of her neck. She had a hysterical thought that it might short circuit the electronics in the bomb.

“You don't have to do this,” a ghostly whisper said. “It won't bring me back.”

Zoraya sniffed and got on the bus. Maybe she should have stolen a car too. But she didn't know how to hotwire it and Jeff wouldn't have risked himself to do it. Making a human bomb, sure, crouching under a steering column in a parking lot, hell no. Zoraya started singing gospel songs and rocking back and forth. That kept most people from sitting anywhere near her and hopefully from taking a second look at the “crazy” person who was wearing a parka in 60 degree weather.

She got off at the subway stop and made her way down to the tracks. It was cooler underground and she was able to breathe a little easier when she passed through the turnstile without jostling loose anything important.

“Give me your money.” The sound of a switchblade being flicked had her turning around in horror.

The kid wore a lime green bandana and the requisite colors of the Shinji Dragons gang that ran this side of town. Zoraya blinked at him, scenarios flickering across her brain. She could flash him and have him scream the place down. Headline: Gang thug, local hero. She could run and bring attention to herself. Maybe trip, fall and boom! She didn't have any money to give him. She didn't have any other weapon but the bomb and she didn't want to set it off here. People would get killed.

“Are you deaf ikeike?” He swore at her in Japanese.

“Walk away,” the ghostly whisper said. Zoraya heard it from behind the boy. He shook it off visibly, looking around for the voice.

“Run.” The whisper sounded like crunching gravel under tires.

He scrunched his eyes closed and Zoraya backed away. When he started to sob and drop to his knees, she turned and hustled towards the next train. She got in even though it was going in the wrong direction.

No one looks at her when she tripped on the stairs and went down hard on one knee. Her thumb pressed the detonator in reaction. Zoraya gasped, not releasing the trigger. The train, oblivious, sped away and people stepped over her muttering angrily about drunk, homeless people. Zoraya staggered off at the next stop, her arm muscles spasming from holding that button down. She got on a new train, going in the right direction this time and sat down on the hard plastic seat and lay her head on the cool plastic window.

The whisper caught up with her just as she was emerging from the subway station onto the crowded financial district street. Her hand was aching now with effort and it was going tingly with pins and needles.

“This will change nothing.” The whisper sounded satiated and Zoraya felt grim resolve quicken her step.

The former church was locked with a police banner pasted across its heavy doors. Zoraya looked around, trying to be casual, but the corporate drones just went about their business.

“What are you going to do? Break a window? Kick the door down? Or are you going to do it here and risk the blast? You'll probably take out a few pedestrians, maybe that lady with the stroller and the bike messenger. Might even get the café across the street.” That was a big speech for the whisper and it was starting to sound a little nervous.

Zoraya blew a steady breath out and walked around the back. Annalisa had been too lazy to go all the way down into the basement to unlock the double cellar doors, then go all the way back out to bring the chairs back in from whatever social event the church was having. She had showed her the trick of rattling the bolt just right to pop open the door. Bracing her foot on the other door, Zoraya twisted and grunted, making sure that her other hand didn't come off the detonator. The left side door of the door popped open. She climbed down the stairs and pulled the door shut, blocking out the light and hiding her from view. It smelled like mold and dust and the faint smell of rotting meat and old blood.

“The rats here are bigger than your shoe. And they're hungry. There are some in the cubby above you. They'll pounce on your hair.”

“Then we'll all go up sooner rather than later,” Zoraya addressed the whisper for the first time. Her free hand trailed against the wall, guiding her. She'd been here many times. She had her first kiss, sitting on that piano bench. She saw an angel in the wall. Zoraya's fingers traced the pattern that still glowed on a spectrum only her and her sister had been able to see. They had set up for countless dinners and meetings for the church, each time coming down to pray before it and kneel on the cold cement floor. They watched the angel die when the phantom attacked. Annalisa screamed as she launched herself at the phantom. Zoraya went for help. The priest died too.

Scandal. The headlines read: Murder/Suicide? Sex in the Sanctuary?

Annalisa shimmered into form in front of her. It wasn't her sister. Zoraya knew that. Or she thought she did. Maybe she only wished it was just the phantom disguising itself to trick her.

Zoraya let go of the detonator in relief, before the phantom could whisper at her again. Nothing happened. Click. Clicketedy Clicketedy Click.

The phantom grinned as Zoraya started stripping off the parka and the duct-taped dynamite. It flinched when she stomped on the sticks that hit the ground. But the nitroglycerin didn't detonate.

“Where's the earth shattering kaboom?” Annalisa mocked at her.

Zoraya swung at her, her fist passing through the incorporeal form, but doing damage. She could see bits ghosting away from the grimace on her sister's face.

“You can't kill me,” it said. Annalisa's pretty features faded as mottled bits of rot sprouted up and then glistened to a grey sheen before shimmering away.

It had swallowed up the angel's light. It had devoured Annalisa and then killed the priest with Annalisa's tiny hands, her nails curled into acrylic knives. Then it left their bodies as shells on the floor. But it hadn't come after Zoraya. It hadn't engulfed her or harmed her.

“Maybe you can't kill me either,” she whispered and slowly turned herself around to see where it went.

The phantom was now a demented shadow on the wall, stalking her and preparing to pounce. “That's because I am you.”

It leapt and Zoraya was too stunned to flinch. It was cold and dark and tickled in her throat. The whisper was like the headache you get when you gobble down ice cream too quickly. “The light you called the angel was your innocence, the good that you and your sister shared.”

“Is that what you told her?” Zoraya ground out, each word coming with more difficulty. She looked down at her hands as the shadow eclipsed her skin, just like it had with Annalisa. “And she believed you?”

“She was unmarried and pregnant. And so full of guilt.” The shadow's flare of pride gushed icy snowflakes into her gut.

Zoraya frowned. “So you killed her for it.”

There was that blizzard flash inside her again. “She gave herself to me.”

Zoraya closed her eyes and thought of warmth and the sun to stop her teeth from shaking with the cold.

It leapt out of her again to face her as her sister. “I'm no longer afraid, Zoraya.” It said in her sister's voice.

“You are not Annalisa. You are not me.” Zoraya said and backed up the stairs. She remembered what the shadow did to the priest in this form. “I'm not afraid and I'm not pregnant.”

“But are you guilty?” Annalisa asked. “You left me to die.”

“Maybe you chose to die. You gave up. There were ways. And you didn't have to kill Father O'Ryan. He was just trying to help.”

Annalisa lifted a slim shoulder in a shrug. “It was necessary. I needed to feed. He was there. I enjoyed ripping him apart.”

“Freeze!” The policeman said from the top of the stairs. “I've heard enough.”

Annalisa laughed and moved closer. Zoraya sat down on the stairs and scooted her butt up towards the top, stopping when she reached the cop's feet.

“Walk away,” Annalisa whispered.

“Don't shoot,” Zoraya said, trying to warn him about the explosives.

Annalisa had her foot on the stairs. She leered at the cop and waggled her fingers at him. “I'm going to rip you apart and eat your soul.”

Things sped up then as if someone hit the fast forward button. Zoraya scurried around him.

“I said, don't move.” The cop clicked the action back on his pistol, sparing Zoraya a glance as she crawled back from the cellar on her butt.

“Run,” Annalisa whispered.

“Bombs,” Zoraya warned. “Don't shoot.”

“It will always come to this. You will bring me the weak and I will feed on them.” Annalisa said as she crept closer.

“On the floor,” Zoraya babbled. “There's dynamite. Don't pull the trigger.”

But he did, because Annalisa lunged for him. The bullets passed through Annalisa and ricocheted off the cement wall.

The explosion roared and tossed both the cop and Zoraya back through the air. The earth rumbled and when she hit the ground, it felt hot and raw against her cheek. Fire belched tongues of flame out of the cellar. The church gave a mighty shudder and then collapsed. Using her elbows, Zoraya scurried away, but chunks of stone and wood pelted down around her and the pain made her black out.

When she came to, she thought there were sirens, but the wailing was in her head alongside what sounded like a swarm of angry bees. An EMT was speaking soothingly to her, but Zoraya couldn't make out the words. To her left, they were putting the cop into another ambulance and as his head wasn't covered with a sheet, she figured he'd be OK. Trying to sit up, caused the EMT to muscle her back down and she winced in pain from the scrapes on her back and arms. But Zoraya saw that the church had been leveled. The cellar had swallowed up what hadn't been blown all over the streets and nearby buildings.

Shadows and patterns of light played behind her eyes and Zoraya whispered to the EMT, “Walk away.”

The End