Elias

Around two in the morning, the hotel manager succumbed to the guests' complaints and threw open the hotel doors. But, although Elias' mattress was more comfortable than the one he slept on back home and the blankets were warm, he was awake before sunrise. He rolled onto his back and glared at the ceiling until the first rays of sunlight began to peek from between the curtains. His head already throbbing, Elias clambered up. Whether it was the stress of their circumstances or the time difference between South America and home, he wasn't getting any more sleep this morning.

"You awake?" Abigail groaned. Her eyes still half-lidded, she scrambled up to her feet as well. "You look better. Or rather your pupils are reacting to light like you're a normal person, not some alien."

"Glad to hear it." Elias shrugged and pulled out his phone. No messages from Harold and only twenty-three per cent battery left. "We should grab some food and then head back to that apartment. We need to find the old man."

Abigail yawned, then shook her head. "We should've gone back there last night. What if Misha doubled back and attacked him? Or Najran could've come back for Misha after the explosion. There are a lot of bad possibilities here. We'll find food somewhere on the way."

"You and I did get Harold caught up in all this," Elias conceded.

They left as quietly as they could to avoid disturbing the other guests. Out on the street, still bathed in the soft pinks of the rising sun, nothing moved. What street lamps remained undamaged stood cold. The fumes of minibuses and honking taxes that Elias had scowled at the day before now seemed like mirages pulled from a different world.

Between the two of them, they managed to reconstruct the route they had taken the previous day and soon found themselves on a larger street. Here groups of people were huddled together across the narrow nature strip in the middle of the road. Some slept, others were talking quietly. Elias wondered if they thought themselves to be survivors of an earthquake and were therefore afraid of aftershocks or if they had nowhere else to sleep.

One eye on the uneven pavement and the other on her phone, Abigail flicked through several screens as they walked, then glanced back at Elias. "Damn, my phone is starting to die."

"Are you seriously concerned about your phone right now?" Elias replied. "Najran, Jala, the twins and however many demons they've invited down to this planet could all be in that apartment. Ramiel's not around to help and Raphael's ignoring the bat signal."

"This isn't ideal, I know, but you said it yourself — we got Harold into this mess. We have to try."

"We could die. I like Harold and all, but let's be honest here."

Abigail gave him a hard look. "You could choke on your coffee every time you take a sip."

"Hardly the same thing."

"Oh, never mind, Elias. We're here. This is the street, isn't it?" Abigail said, motioning towards the side street to their left. "If you don't want to come, I'll go alone."

"There's no way you are going in there by yourself."

She snickered and stomped through the puddle in the middle of the lane. A puddle that, if Elias remembered right, had tripled in size and depth overnight. When the saw the door, however, he understood the source of the additional water. It had been left ajar and water trickled through the opening. The stairs too were slick and when they stepped into the apartment, their shoes sunk into the soaked carpet of Najran's living room.

Elias' heart drummed out a nervous beat as they checked each room, but they found no one. Nor was there was evidence of a struggle, save for the destruction Misha's escape had left behind. As the flooding attested, Harold hadn't fixed the burst pipe nor could Elias see traces of any attempt to do so.

"Do you think he just followed you?" Abigail asked.

Elias inspected the broken bedroom window. "This looks the same as it did when I climbed through it. I don't see Harold attempting to follow me through the window, let alone doing so without disturbing any of the glass. He must have used the door. You did close it on your way out yesterday, didn't you?"

"I think so."

"It was ajar when we came in." Elias ran a hand through his hair. "Doesn't matter really how he got out; it's about where he went. If he followed Misha and me, he couldn't have kept up. We should check nearby hospitals. He might have ended up in the blast zone."

Abigail sat down on the bed and hitched up her jeans to keep the hems dry. Elias considered mirroring his sister, then decided it was already too late. His shoes and socks were soaked, the discomfort of wet trouser-hems was nothing compared to the coming misery of having to spend the rest of the day in these shoes.

"Sounds logical to me," Abigail said, "off to the hospital we go. Can't we do anything about the pipe though? This is really wasteful."

"Yeah, you should've gone into plumbing, not commerce."

"Maybe I should've. Plumbing would probably pay more than anything I could get with my degree. And speaking of other things I should've done, but didn't — an offline app with local landmarks would be a big help. Do you know the Spanish word for 'hospital'?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Elias frowned. "Let's hope it's el hospital."

He decided to try his luck with the first person under-thirty they spotted, but the man just shook his head and waved his hand. Elias couldn't tell whether the wave was an attempt to give them directions or whether he wanted Elias and Abigail to go away.

"People do speak English here," he said as they meandered through the streets. "We need to find someone young and wealthy-looking. I bet all the expensive schools around here teach English."

Abigail kicked a stray bottle cap on the ground. "Or maybe they learn French here."

"Hey, I'm meant to be the pessimist."

"I'm just saying, we shouldn't assume things."

The street they had followed for several blocks began to climb sharply, so they veered to the right and into a rundown commercial district. Elias pulled Abigail closer to him. Few of the shops were open and each one attracted a small crowd. The shoppers, however, were outnumbered by youths armed with various implements suitable for bludgeoning, who appeared to be patrolling the broken shot-fronts. These ad-hoc guards looked like they were itching for a fight.

Elias and Abigail sped up. It was only at the back of the commercial strip that Elias understood the situation. Shards of glass and rails of metal shutters lay on the ground in front of several looted shops. Abigail ducked into a pharmacy, which appeared to have taken the brunt of the carnage.

"What are you doing?" Elias hissed.

Abigail sprinted out of the store with a grin on her face. She held two bags of what the packaging promised was biscuits and a fistful of cough drop packets.

"Breakfast."

Elias sped up his pace again; he didn't want to find out what happened to caught looters. The siblings distributed the cough drops between their pockets, then tore into the biscuits. They proved to be plain and somewhat dry, but Elias all but inhaled them nevertheless.

Another block down, the biscuits were gone and Elias' feet were starting to blister, but the situation was starting to look up. Cars must have been permitted back onto the roads, because a couple sped by and he spotted a taxi coming down the street. He threw out his hand to flag it down.

"Hello," Elias said as he and Abigail climbed in. "Habla ingles, per favore?"

The driver frowned and said something in Spanish, of which Elias didn't understand a word.

"Er... Dove el hospital?" he tried again.

"Hospital? Sí."

While Abigail and Elias fumbled in vain for seatbelts, the driver was already speeding through the streets and honking at each intersection. Elias suspected the man revelled in the freedom of near empty streets in a city usually choked with traffic.

The taxi pulled up less than ten minutes later outside a large building adorned with a large angel above the entrance. Elias dug into his wallet. Harold had partitioned their cash between the four of them the previous morning, but failed to explain how much the local currency was worth. Elias took out a fifty bolivianos and awkwardly handed it to the driver, then waited. The man seemed surprised but not upset.

I must've given him too much.

Elias waited, but the taxi driver didn't move to hand out change. Having no clue how to ask for it, Elias let the matter go.

Abigail was already past the front door, so Elias ran to catch up.

The first thing he noticed was the humid heat. The hospital had no working lights, let alone fans or air conditioning. With the number of people packed into the hospital, even opening every window and door wouldn't keep the building cool. While Abigail clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp, Elias looked for hospital staff. He spotted an elderly nurse arguing with someone in a side corridor.

Stepping around the people sitting or lying on the floor, Elias and Abigail made their way over to the woman. The moment she spotted them, however, Elias realised he may have made a mistake. She launched into a barrage of violent Spanish.

"I'm sorry," Abigail cut in when the woman paused to take a breath. "We're looking for our uncle. We haven't seen or heard from him since yesterday."

Abigail reached for her phone, but the nurse scoffed and turned away.

"Ok, that's not helpful," Abigail said. "I'm going to look around, perhaps he's here somewhere or someone saw him."

Elias nodded, only half-listening. The nurse disappeared behind a door labelled something he didn't understand. There were no other nurses to be seen, let alone a doctor. Elias, meanwhile, stood two feet away from a teenage girl with what looked like a broken arm. Next to her lay a man covered in blood. Elias peered back to the main section of the hospital entrance. How many staff do they have for this many people?

The door the nurse had fled through swung open and a curly-haired man in a yellow polo shirt emerged, carrying a clipboard. Elias was certain even a shadow of a beard had never graced his face.

"Hello?" the newcomer called out, his American accent audible in every syllable. "I'm Caleb. Are you looking for someone?"

"Yeah, my uncle. His name's Harold van Bommel. We got separated yesterday, no trace of him since."

"Let me have a look." Caleb bit his lip and worked his index finger down the handwritten list on his clipboard. Reaching the bottom, he flicked to the next page and repeated the process. After eleven pages, he sighed. "I don't have anyone under that name on the list."

"Is everyone in this hospital on there?"

"Not anyone in this hall nor anyone we can't identify. If they don't have ID or can't talk and have no relatives to give us the info them, we can't do much."

"Hold on." Elias took out his phone and searched through his download history until he found an article about Harold and his prize-winning vegetables. He showed Caleb the accompanying photo. "Have you seen him?"

"No, I'm afraid not." Preempting Elias, Caleb added, "You might notice your uncle doesn't look much like a local, I'd remember him."

Elias sighed. "Where else can I look? There are other hospitals in this city, right? And what about your morgue?"

"They're not bringing the dead here. It's some different emergency facility being set up, I think. I don't really know. But I can give you directions to the other hospital."

"Thanks."

Caleb took out a blank page from the back of his clipboard and started sketching directions. Elias, meanwhile, watched the girl with the broken arm. Using her uninjured limb, she shifted over to the bloodied man and shook him. The man muttered something, then closed his eyes.

"You need help here," Elias said. "I'm studying to be a doctor back home. Can I help out? I'd be better than no one at all."

Caleb handed the directions to Elias. "Perhaps. If you knew Spanish they'd definitely recruit you. I'm no doctor either. I'm a Franciscan missionary, I usually do patient advocacy. You should focus on finding your uncle though; family's everything in times like these."

"Yeah, you're right I suppose. Thanks for your help."

Elias folded the page Caleb had given him and worked his way back to the front doors, careful to avoid stepping on anyone. Seeing him, Abigail made her way over to him.

"He's not here then," she said.

"There's more than one hospital in this city."

Probably more than one morgue too.