Free Forty Leap by Ivan Turner

didn’t realize,” she said and her voice
was much more tender than ever before. “I thought, you know, since
you didn’t live through it, you didn’t lose anything.”
    Considering this, I nodded subtly. To be
honest, the idea of losing my brothers and their families was a
very abstract concept to me. For all I knew, they were alive and
safe. They didn’t live in the city and may have gotten out of the
state. Any pain I felt still stemmed from the loss of my mother and
Morty. I tried not to think of them too much because I still felt a
tremendous amount of guilt associated with those two deaths.
    “I was living with my grandma,” Jennie
said.
    We were sitting very high up over the city,
looking out over the destruction. The building we had found stood
twenty two stories, with the top five completely blown off. A
ragged pattern of concrete and girders jutted out toward the sky
with the exposed seventeenth floor open to the sky. Most of it had
collapsed and, really, the only safe place inside was down on
fifteen. But, after finding a good place to sleep and cook our rats
and pigeons, we had discovered a way to climb through the rubble.
There was a stone platform high up that allowed us to see almost
all the way downtown. We were approaching July and the air was
still and hot down below, but up there was a sweet breeze which
brought the scent of the sea with it from the east.
    “When the bombs hit, we were sleeping. Of
course they hit us at night. There was this huge boom and
everything shook. Grandma went for the TV and we got a signal for a
couple minutes until the power went out. There was this burnt guy
on screen yelling about the ‘first bomb attack on American soil
since Pearl Harbor’. I don’t know. It don’t matter. The bombs got
closer and we could hear breaking glass and falling buildings. My
grandma grabbed me and we ran out of the house and down the
stairs.”
    She paused, just looking out over the city. I
suppose she was trying to put the facts together in her head
because, as she began the story again, it seemed more real and more
coherent.
    “Everyone, all my neighbors, were in the
halls and running down the steps. It was hard to see because half
them had flashlights and they was pointing them in my eyes and all
over. Grandma held my wrist and dragged me to the steps. I knew she
was a tough woman; she raised me from a baby. But in the steps
there was so many people. The Lopez’s from upstairs was coming
down. They had like ten little kids and Grandma waited to let them
all get through. It was the right thing to do.”
    She was crying now and I knew how it would
end, but I let her continue. I didn’t want to hear it, but I
wouldn’t interrupt her. That she had chosen to share this with me
meant so much.
    “He pushed her. It was Bender, that stoner
from 4C. He pushed her right into Mr. Lopez, who fell over three of
his kids and they all fell down the stairs, over all the people in
front of them, like a human avalanche. I didn’t fall because
Grandma let go of me so I just stood there, looking at them. There
must have been ten or fifteen people on the landing. They was all
struggling to get up and Grandma was caught right in the
middle.
    “Mr. Lopez came up first, digging through the
bodies for his kids. He was crying and screaming and Bender shot
right past him with all the others who didn’t fall. They was just
running over the people that did fall. Mr. Lopez fought them
off, yelling, screaming, throwing his fists. But some kid from
upstairs came around and kicked him in the nose and he went down so
fast and he didn’t get up. I mean he never got up.
    “I just stood there, looking at it ‘til the
last of the people from upstairs ran past me and out the building.
I could still hear the bombs and screams, but I couldn’t move. The
people on the stairs, the ones who had fell, got themselves out now
that they could and ran out. Mr. Lopez never moved. I saw one of
his kids crawl out, look at