The world was on fire.

Walls of flame crushed in, sending hundred-foot trees tumbling to the ground like slain giants.

The air was screaming with heat, it rippled off the encroaching circle of flame in great

sharing waves, highlighting burning trees, brush, foxes of sparks that flew up but into

the night sky that was deeply black, choked of galaxies by a kingdom of smoke.

And it was deafening.

The crackle of heat devouring wood, the haze of things dying in the millions, the whistle

of flames as they spread like disease.

Through the death choir, I couldn't hear the crash of metal and metal, as Sandy pounded

away at the bunker door with his red-tiped service axe.

I was on a defensive attack, putting wet stuff on the red stuff, and an attempt to buy my

only ally enough time to hack us the safety.

We were soldiers, stranded in the enemy's belly, surrounded by an army of flame that

would not stop until it had melted the meat from our bones, and our bones to ash.

Suddenly, hands grabbed me from behind, and before I could react, Sandy was dragging

me down into the bunker.

We hit concrete stairs that stacked down, descending into the unknown, and for a minute I thought

I saw.

Then the metal door slammed shut behind us, and the world was bandaged in darkness.

After all that happened, I wish we'd stayed upstairs and let ourselves burn, it would

have been better like that.

It started as a routine night, the sirens had sounded just best midnight, sending a dozen

...