Page 246 of Fragments

“Right, becauseyouhave no metal on you.” I roll my eyes behind my bag. “Idiots.”

The guy dragging me stops walking. “What did you just say?”

“Hermano, leave it,” the other guy grumbles at his pal.

Another flash lights up the darkness with a loud crack, like the sky just split down the middle. Thunder shakes beneath my feet, and I can’t help it. I’m even more nervous now.

This storm is scary as shit.

Winds that must be at least forty miles an hour have the rain beating down so hard it feels like hail. Maybe itis. I have no idea where we are exactly, but I hear loud thumping sounds coming from somewhere nearby.

“Holy shit!” one of the guys shouts, and I feel his body brush past me.

“What the fuck??” I grunt, wobbling on my feet.

“Dios mío, was that a brick??”

“What’s happening??” I gasp again, backing up slowly.

Lightning strikes once more, and I trip over a rock, crashing onto the ground. And when the thunder blares, another sound follows.

“Holy—”

That’s the last thing I hear before amassivebang. A crash so loud, the ground shakes like an explosion. For a moment, I think a bomb was just dropped.

My default is to curl up into a ball and cover my head, but I don’t have access to my arms. So I smush my face into the wet leaves and pray that I haven’t been hit by shrapnel.

An oddly calm silence follows the monstrous sound. All I hear are the winds and the ocean. Trembling and unable to see, I lift my head slowly while someone next to me shifts.

“Dios…” one of the guards coughs. “Eduardo… está bien?” More shuffling. “Háblame!Fuck fuck fuck… Eduardo??”

“What thehellis goingon??” I gasp, squirming on the ground to try to get this goddamn bag off my head.

“Shut up!” he barks. “Dios mío,Eduardo, por favor…”

Finally, the material catches on something, and I pull my head free. Blinking the fuzz from my vision, I balk at the sight of one of the guards knelt on the ground, cradling the body of the other guard. He’s unconscious and visibly bleeding from the head.

I blink heavily, in shock. His skull looks split open…

Holy fuck, that’s disgusting.

I’m gonna be sick…

My stomach rolls at the sight, and I look away while the other guard cries, clutching his clearly very dead friend. I have no idea what happened, but when I peek back over, I see a giant hunk of stone beside him covered in blood.

I gaze up. And all the air leaves my lungs in a horrifiedwhoosh.

The prison… There’s a big hole in it.

“Oh… my… God…” I whisper, gaping up at the destruction.

Alabaster Penitentiary has been smashed through. Probably not the whole thing, but adieselfucking chunk of it is now nothing but rubble.

Remains of a giant structure are leaning to the right, as if the top half completely snapped off and fell… right onto the fucking prison.

That must have been the guard tower…

I’d hear about it, but of course, I’ve never seen it before. It looks like maybe it was struck, and the whole thing came toppling down, giant chunks of concrete, cement and rebar decimating nearly half the prison. It might have only hit one section… But the worn, crumbling conditions of the building did the rest of the work, like falling dominoes.