The refugee camp has fallen, the last form of hope with it.
Alone, her grief and a backpack as only baggages, Charlie must find the strength to move forward on the ruins of her beloved city. On the ruins of her past life.
Alone, until the unexpecte...
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Two days and fourteen hours was the time that had passed since Charlie had entered the camp.
Two days and fourteen hours during which she had remained prostrate in the corner of the dark and smelly room she shared with far too many people.
She had no idea how much time had actually passed as her head remained in the hollow of her arms crossed around her face, her tightly closed eyelids letting images pass by that she knew she would never forget.
She hadn't slept, she hadn't drunk, she hadn't eaten, she hadn't lived since the minute Alice was taken from her.
Her breath was ragged, as if symbolically she was forced to breathe with one lung. To breathe. Charlie would have given everything she had to make this finally stop, but a force beyond her control forced her to continue to exist.
She was unaware of her surroundings. The room was filled with refugees, some crying, others silent. To her left was a family, or what was left of it: a woman, a man and the teddy bear they were taking turns holding to their chest.
The whole room seemed to be plunged into a paralysis, an expectation of something unknown.
The windows had been boarded up, but sometimes the door let pass sounds, their only reminder that it was all real. Charlie couldn't even hear them anymore, the gunshots, the screams, couldn't cover the silence that had imprisoned her.
The few refugees who had entered the camp had been spread out on the ground floor of a building.
Outside, the soldiers were overwhelmed and were trying to hold back the flood of people who were falling against the doors. The crowd that had waited to find the much-desired safety of the refugee camp was the same, but different. Dead. Screams had given way to grunts, and outstretched hands had become talons seeking to close on prey.
The messages coming from the country's authorities did not make a difference on the situation and the guards present could not make themselves heard about the urgency to take the survivors out of the city. Communication was becoming increasingly difficult.
The makeshift gates would not hold for long, the troops were exhausted, and the situation was uncontrollable. A reality was dwelling in all the living who were looking at the scene in front of them, the dead would pass, it was only a matter of time.
Soon hundreds of people would flood in and spread this virus of death. And it is undoubtedly this inevitability which pushed the still active authorities to launch on their own civilians, on their own army, the bombers which would raze Atlanta.
Charlie was not aware of any of this, the images of Alice's shattered shoulder and neck haunted her and mingled with the memories that her brain forced her to recall. She and Alice had never been separated. They had always been in the same class, always shared every key moment of their lives. Charlie without Alice, Alice without Charlie, the impossible had become reality.
