The wind blows leaves and bits of garbage. People’s hair flows in the wind, thankfully covering some of their faces. A piece of paper tumbles by and lands on a body that is staring at the smoke-filled sky.

The paper plasters itself against the body’s shoulder, right beside the pale, dead face staring blankly into the sky. It’s a flyer for Dee and Dum’s talent show.

Come one, come all

To the greatest show of all!

A talent show. Those guys actually thought we could have something as silly and frivolous as a talent show.

I scan the faces of the bodies draped across the hoods of cars, the road, the schoolyard, hoping I won’t see Dee or Dum. I walk slowly through the parking lot. A few people are whimpering, curled and crying on the asphalt.

In the school, the windows are smashed, the doors are unhinged and broken, the desks and chairs are thrown all over the yellow grass. There’s more life and motion here, though. People cry over bodies, hug each other, walk dazed and in shock.

I stop to help a girl who is trying to stop the blood flow from a man’s severed arm.

‘What happened?’ I ask, bracing myself to hear a horror story of angels and monsters.

‘Dead people,’ she says, crying. ‘They came shambling in after a bunch of our fighters left for a mission. We just had a skeleton crew to defend the rest of us. Everyone freaked. It was a bloodbath. We thought it was over. But word must have got out that we’ve been attacked and defenseless, because then the gangs came.’

People did this? Not monsters, not angels, not Pit lords. People attacking people.

I shut my eyes. I could blame the angels for turning us into this, but we were doing stuff like this long before they came, weren’t we?

‘What did the gangs want?’ I ask, reluctantly opening my eyes to face the world again.

‘Whatever they could get.’ She wraps a ripped shirt around the unconscious guy’s severed arm. ‘Some of them kept yelling that they wanted their food back. The stuff we took from them when we took over their store.’

The memory of the bloody handprint smeared across the nearby grocery store’s door comes back to me. I had guessed the Resistance had taken it from a gang.

When an older guy comes over to help, I drift off into another group carrying the wounded into the main building.

I came here to say a quick warning and then head north or south with my family. But we end up helping out while I look for Obi. No one knows where he is.