Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Night of Fire: Part Three

The world came back to Isabeau in pieces.

Her brain felt like it had been beaten with a hammer, and when she tried to move, a stabbing pain shot through her chest.

What had happened?

She'd been standing in the garden with the Brown family, and then . . .

And then . . .

She tried to move again, and rubble shifted beneath and around her, while dust and ash fell in clouds onto her face, filling her mouth and eyes with grit.

A bomb.

There had been another bomb.

The rubble she was lying in – that had been the Browns' house.

Isabeau lifted a hand, trying to paw the dirt out of her eyes, and that made her chest burst with pain again, until she cried out. Those would be broken ribs, then. Several fingers, too, by the looks of them.

Her head was a pulsing ball of pain.

One leg was sticky and wet with what must be blood.

"H-hello?" she croaked, her voice choked with dust.

No one answered her.

"Mr. Brown? Mary?"

Nothing.

Isabeau closed her eyes and tried to summon the strength to move, gritting her teeth against the pain of her broken ribs. Sharp edges dug into her back. She managed to lift her head, and let out an anguished sob.

Frederick Brown lay nearby. Falling debris must have struck his head – the side of his skull was caved in and bits of brain leaked out along with what looked like one of his eyes.

An arm lay near him, and Isabeau didn't know whose it was.

Mary was crumpled beside him, her body contorted into a horrible shape.

Further down, by her feet, lay some glistening chunks of bone and flesh that, judging from the red hair still attached to a strip of scalp, had once been Eileen, and beyond her lay Amy, almost torn in half from the impact of whatever had hit her. Cyril was sprawled across her legs, but his own legs lay a short distance away, sharp edges of bone protruding from shredded flesh.

And then there was Oliver.

Three-year-old Oliver, who'd just wanted to see the planes, who hadn't understood what was going on, and was now lying in the ruins of his home, his tiny body twisted and broken and missing pieces.

Dead.

They were all dead.

They'd been closer to the bomb blast than Isabeau. When the house had collapsed, it had fallen in a way that formed a pocket of space around Isabeau, enough for her to move and start digging free.

If she'd had the strength.

But her injuries had made her weak – more so than she'd ever been in her life.

Isabeau closed her eyes and wept.

She'd tried to save them and now they were all dead, and she was probably going to die too, trapped here with what was left of their bodies. And maybe it was her fault. If she hadn't dug them out of the bombed shelter then it would have protected them when the house came down. But she had rescued them, and in doing so, she had doomed them all.

"Help," she screamed.

Throughout the war so far, she'd been the one to dig people out of the rubble, and now she needed someone to save her, but no one came. No one could hear her.