Free The Remaining by Travis Thrasher

is flip out like the guy running past them just did.
    Another explosion tears through the afternoon air and makes her wince. She looks around and for a second can’t even think.
    Get inside go inside and get away from whatever is happening out here. Help the woman and get back in the church.
    Allison starts to say something and then realizes she hasn’t taken a breath in a few moments. She breathes in and clears her throat, then leans over and helps the bleeding woman to her feet.
    “Let’s go inside and find something to stop the bleeding. Then we’ll call the police and figure out what’s happening.”
    A siren sounds in the distance. There are unfamiliar noises everywhere. She sees a dog scrambling down the road, a bit like the man who just passed them. Frantic, out of breath, going who knows where.
    Allison thinks of the gang she left behind at the hotel. Now she wishes she had stayed with them.
    I have to get ahold of them somehow. Or get back to the hotel.
    She knows this isn’t just something happening on the side of this street. All over Wilmington, some kind of dark chaos is occurring. She pictures Jack and Tommy and Skylar and Dan and Lauren.
    Then she thinks of her family.
    “Come on,” she finally says, snapping herself out of it.
    They head back into the church. Maybe they’ll find some kind of sanctuary inside.

11
GONE
    Death fills the floor.
    The seconds move by like falling sledgehammers dropping against his soul. It’s too much to take in, yet his eyes and his ears are forced to see and hear all of it. Every awful little bit.
    Tommy stumbles over a body as he makes his way to the reception room. This looks like a battleground, like some kind of national tragedy just took place on the top floor of the Plantation Hotel. Yet there is no gun-toting crazy person to be found. No bleeding wounds to be seen. No visible remnants of a bomb blast.
    But death is all around him.
    There are gasps and screams and moans and mumbling. Shouts of all kinds. Too many to make sense of. The music is still playing, making things even worse. The driving dance track by Lady Gaga only adds to the utter hysteria.
    I’m never gonna listen to that song again without picturing all of this.
    Not that he can afford to worry about ever listening to music again.
    He’s gotta survive this right now.
    The inside of the banquet room devastates him. Bodies are everywhere, dropped and discarded like a scene from a ransacked mannequin warehouse. Figures are draped over the fallen, crying and calling and freaking out. He sees trays of food and broken glasses littering the floor. As he walks in hoping to find someone he knows, he can hear the crinkle of glass under his dress shoes.
    His eyes land on an overturned table near the front that had held a bunch of framed photographs of Dan and Skylar. They’re now all spread over the ground as if they’ve been trampled.
    People are running around and the sounds of screams are everywhere.
    What kind of hell is happening in front of me?
    For a second everything goes on pause, including the sights and the sounds and his brain. He feels like he is moving in slow motion until another voice pokes him awake.
    Don’t fade out now just act and react.
    He instinctively cries out Jack’s name because he needssome help here. He moves in and sees mangled legs in high heels beside an overturned table. Tommy sees the face and the hair and knows this woman.
    It’s the Southern belle he was talking to at the bar. He notices the cross pendant hanging around her neck, then sees the blank expression similar to the one the Chapmans had.
    She’s not moving, not breathing, not alive in any way.
    “What the   —?” He can’t say more.
    A funny and sad and weird thought comes to him. He thinks of the last episode of The Walking Dead he saw and for a second he wonders if he needs to grab some kind of weapon. But that’s why it’s funny and sad. This isn’t a zombie movie, and these people aren’t coming