And it feels like heaven's so far away Who: Sam + NPCs Where: Along the march route When: After the big bang...s Warning: Um...sadness and a dead person?
Sam couldn’t recall how long he’d spent looking for Amelia. When he’d pulled himself up off the floor after the initial blast she was gone, and in a way he’d been glad of that. It meant that she’d carried on running, she’d gotten away from the burning cars and falling buildings to somewhere of safety. If she’d turned back and or waited, she could’ve been injured herself. But no, as long as she’d kept going it meant that she’d gotten out of this okay.
Although his mind still played out various scenarios in which she was helped by others or taken off to a makeshift first aid tent set up by the roadside, or even ran home to find her parents, his optimism was beginning to dip. Sam couldn’t call her, he’d lost his phone, and although he’d passed by several ambulances and emergency crews, there was nobody that looked like Amelia lurking around, nursing her cuts and bruises and waiting for him.
It wasn’t looking good.
He’d spoken to doctors, nurses, first aiders trying to lend a hand as they piled onto the scene, but they breezed right by him. There were so many dead, so many dying, so many in need of help that the living ceased to exist to them. They didn’t even look his way when he asked about Amelia. Most of the survivors he’d spoken to were in a state of shock; they were no help, and the ones that still had all of their faculties were too busy helping others. His voice, no matter how loud he seemed to shout or scream, was drowned out by sirens and cries from the wounded.
So it was all up to him. After wiping his eyes and gaining composure, Sammie headed back to the last place he’d seen Amelia alive. What if she’d gone back there to find him? It made sense. And if he’d gone to look for her just before she’d come back...well that would explain everything, wouldn’t it? Why he couldn’t find her? That had to be the reason. She’d gone back to look for Sam.
That had to be the reason she wasn’t here.
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The first thing he noticed was that some of the rubble had moved. Bodies, both living and dead, were being hauled out of the rubble by emergency personnel and ordinary citizens alike. Flashing lights were everywhere – an epileptic’s nightmare if ever there was one – as people rushed to and fro carrying stretchers and medical supplies. Yellow police tape was everywhere, although most of the people at the scene were anything but spectators.
He’d seen it on other streets when he’d been searching for Amelia, but now that the paramedics and emergency teams were all assembled in the last place he’d seen her, it made Sammie wonder whether she really had made escaped or not.
Before he could really entertain that thought any further, something caught his attention. Sam turned to where a dozen or so bodies had been placed with sheets over them, to where the defensive scream he’d heard had originated. They were putting the corpses into body bags, taking them away from the scene to the hospital morgue, most likely, but a dark haired girl, blood covering the front of her skirt was refusing to let her loved one go.
It was Amelia.
“Amelia!” His voice must’ve been choked, she didn’t hear him. Sammie didn’t care. He ran over, trying to catch her attention. “Amelia!”
Again, she shook her head, refusing to let the body go.
“No!” Amelia’s voice was shrill and her eyes were dark. “You can’t take him!” She wasn’t letting the body go without a fight.
Sam stopped in front of the row of bodies. “Amelia, what are you doing?” He looked at her quizzically, his eyes darting to two people kneeling beside her, Cassie and Steve. Their friends. They looked like they’d been crying too, although not to the degree Amelia had; her mascara had left dirty lines running down her cheeks. Both of them were trying to pull her away and let the medical staff do their job, but she still held on.
“You can’t take him, please don’t take him,” she cooed more softly this time, before collapsing into a heavy stream of sobs.
There was an arm sticking out from under the sheet. Sam could see the white sleeve of the t-shirt that the corpse was wearing and he could see the black and orange plastic bands it wore around its wrist. He looked at his right wrist. He was wearing the same black and orange wristbands.
“No...” He shook his head. That wasn’t him.
There was a mark on the corpse’s elbow, the same length and shape as the one Sammie had on his elbow, from when his brother pushed him out of a tree when they were kids.
“I...I got away...I’m alive, I got away....”
Sam looked up at Amelia. Cassie and Steve were slowly pulling her away from the body now, leaving the ambulance team to deal with the corpse. His gut told him to stay where he was but he ignored it, walking around to where Cassie, Amelia and Steve were standing as the body was placed in the bag.
Sam was dead.
He saw his own face, eyes closed, dark hair matted with blood and something else; he didn’t want to know what it was. A few splashes of red had painted themselves onto his cheek like freckles, with several larger, heavier spots seeping through his t-shirt. Amelia put her hand to his chest before the body bag was zipped up.
He hadn’t survived. The body beneath the rubble had been him all along.
Sammie put his hand instinctively to where the stone block must’ve hit him, but when he brought his hand to his face to look at it, there was nothing there. His mouth hung open as he sank to his knees.
“This can’t be happening,” he wailed. “I can’t be dead...”
To the left of him Amelia was pressed into Steve’s arms, sobbing. They didn’t even know he was there. Sniffling, Sam reached out to touch her hair but his hand went straight through it, and although he could feel it was there he couldn’t touch it, not like he’d been able to when he was alive.
“I can’t be dead....why am I still here if I’m dead?!”
Steve and Cassie helped Amelia to her feet, gently guiding her away from the remaining bodies as they were bagged up and loaded into the back of a private ambulance. Sam could still hear Amelia crying and wailing as she was taken back to the emergency teams to get a cut on her head looked at, but as his body made its way to the hospital morgue, he was too busy sobbing his own dry tears to try to stem anyone else’s.