I gag, and then I puke. I dig my fingernails into my knees as I bend over, coughing up saliva and digested lunch as I stare at slabs of smoldering meat surrounding me. The store is silent. It stinks of barbecue and hot blood and this greasy stench of sizzling fats. My stomach coils. And then my sides flex and ache as I dry heave again. Blood in my hair. In my eyes. Can’t see properly without it stinging. Get clean. That’s my first thought. But there’s panic in the store when a woman shrieks. Not only Phil. No, not only him. The walls and the floor and the ceiling fan drizzling us in more blood isn’t only from him—it’s from the several other guys that had been trying to pat Phil down. Dead.

I stare at Pink-Hair, through the coils of bloody blonde hair hanging over my eyes.

She tilts her head and stares at me, a canine smile on her face. She makes a finger gun and points it at me, then mouths a bang as she jerks her hand. Nothing. Then another body explodes, this time from the woman who had been screaming bloody murder. Stop her. I can’t move. Fucking stop her! I try, making a step forward, slip on the blood on the floor, stumble, catch myself, and find Pink-Hair with her hands in her pockets standing over my, the air filling with smoke and the people in the store running for the doors, pushing and shoving, a blood mass of bodies skidding and sliding on the floor. Blood under their shoes. Sheets of skin and ropes of organs tripping them.

One by one, they explode before they reach the door—and I stand there frozen. Stiff. Afraid.

At some point I say stop. I tell her to stop. I reach my hands out and grab her shoulders and tell her to fucking stop, but in a blink, the store is filled with smoke, and the bodies are burning, and the fire alarm is going off. My head is whining. A mess of thoughts and sounds. On the floor. In the dark. Can’t breathe properly. I prop myself on an elbow, one eye shut, wincing from the blazing heat around me. What happened? I cough violently, my body aching with pain. It feels like I’ve been thrown backward or slammed into the floor or punched so hard that it’s left my brain disconnected from my body. I shake my head, get on my hands and knees, then look for her.

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But she’s gone, and I’m surrounded by burning bodies. The roar of flames cackles in my ears, as if they’re all enjoying watching me struggle off the floor, so beat and bruised and aching that I can barely muster the strength. I hear a groan. Not a person. I wince as the ceiling caves, thrusting smoke and sparks and ash into my eyes and lungs and choking me half-blind. I crawl, frantic and slow, along the floor, past the shelves and stopping only at the meat that’s burning in front of me like roadblocks not letting me leave. I’m crying. I know I am. The pathetic gagging kind that’s only making my eyes sting more and my throat swell shut as I swallow gallons of foul hot air.

Then I’m on autopilot, screaming for help, but nobody’s gonna hear me—there’s nobody left to hear me.

I can force myself onto my hands and knees all I want, but there’s nobody to save. There are bodies, Kacey, and they’re burning, Kacey, and fuck me, Kacey, what the fuck were you doing just standing there?! I saw the look in her eyes. This dead and placid look that bled the brand of hate that makes people like her do things like this.

I beat my fist against the tiles, cracking it—shattering the ceramic.

Then I’m moving debris and falling beams, metal rods that warp and bend and pour onto the floor, drooling onto the bodies and melding metal to flesh in long liquid streams. My hair stinks. Everything hurts. My body complains, tells me to stop moving, demands that I lie down and pass out, but I bite down and get to my feet and decide I can feel shitty about myself all I want, but…but nothing. There’s nothing for me to do right now.

Nothing I can do other than give their families something to bury.

That’s if they can identify the bodies, I think grimly. Doesn’t matter. Squat, hands under the smoldering rafters, blisters forming on my palms, and making my shoulders scream as I shove the burning debris off of them.

It’s hopeless, but it’s something.

God, it’s fucking something.