Copyright 2003. All rights reserved.
All events and characters are fictitious.
Paul
Somebody hurt.
It was me.
I opened my eyes. The room was full of dust and smoke. Yet strangely quiet.
The building was rocked by another explosion. More dust and smoke.
I looked around. Heather's backside was about three feet from my head. It twitched. Then moved away. She was turning to face me. There was blood on her face. One little stream was running down her cheekbone. Her eyes were full of tears. I sat up and pulled her towards me and held her tight.
There was a rumbling in the background and a lot of hissing. I looked around the room. Grandfather was sitting with his back to a wall with Bill across his legs. Howie was staggering to his feet beside him. The beds were lying on their sides and Louise's head appeared from beneath one of the mattresses.
I heard somebody screaming. The sound of more explosions from outside. I closed my nostrils with my thumb and forefinger and tried to breathe out hard through it. My ears hurt as the pressure inside them changed. I repeated it.
That was better. I could hear again.
"Is anybody hurt?" I started to ask but had to stop as I was hit with a burst of coughing.
I tried again.
"Is anybody hurt?"
"What was it?" Louise asked in reply.
"The building has been hit by an Artillery shell." Grandfather replied. "Possibly two or three."
Bill was moving, sitting up by his side.
"We have to get out of here." I stated the obvious.
There was a high pitched whistling sound coming from overhead followed by the sound of an explosion.
I looked at Heather's face then ran my fingers as gently as I could through her hair. She grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away. There was a pained looked on her face.
"You're cut." I told her.
"Yes." She smiled weakly.
"We need some water."
I looked up at Louise standing over us.
"Are you okay?" I asked. "Heather's been cut."
"Let me look at it." She said kneeling down by Heather's side. I let Heather go and got slowly to my feet.
Another whistling sound overhead and another explosion behind the hotel in the direction of the government buildings.
I walked to where the French windows had stood, crunching over the glass on the carpet and looked out into the street below. There were bodies of at least three soldiers lying on the ground. All three vehicles lay covered in rubble. I could hear voices from below. People crying. Somebody was shouting further down the street. Further up the street I could see a number of people lying on the ground with others milling about them. There was a lot of smoke and dust in the air.
I opened the door to the bathroom. If he had been able to the Minister could have walked away though the next hotel bedroom. He lay half in the bathtub covered in bricks and masonry. I could see into the next room through where the dividing wall had been. Most of the floor was missing.
"Can everybody move?" I asked. "We have to get out of here."
I stepped out into the corridor and looked in both directions. It was empty of people but full of dust and debris.
The door to the room opposite still stood open and I crossed the corridor and looked inside. My stomach knotted at the thought of what I would see.
The two girls still sat on the bed with their arms around each other. Apart from a fine covering of dust nothing appeared to have changed.
"One of the girls looked up at me."
"Where's our mother?" She asked.
"I don't know." I replied. "She was downstairs."
The second girl, the younger by a year or so, sniffed.
"Daddies dead."
I didn't know what to say so I hurried to the staircase and looked down. I couldn't hear anything so I crept down to the first floor and listened again. There was some groaning and moaning and someone was crying. I went down the first half flight and peered around the corner into the foyer.
I heard a movement behind me and turned and saw that the two girls had followed me. Then the others appeared headed by Louise.
I slowly walked down the stairs into the foyer with my revolver held out in front of me.
It looked as if the foyer had taken the direct blast from the shell. There were bodies and body parts everywhere I looked. A bed had fallen through the ceiling above and lay half over the reception counter.
A soldier's rifle lay on the ground in front of me and I bent to pick it up. The woman's leg that was touching it moved as I lifted it. It moved again and I could look between her thighs and see her knickers. I knelt beside her and lifted the blood soaked arm of a soldier from her breasts. Her eyes opened.
She coughed and tried to sit up.
I helped her.
"Are you alright?" I asked.
"What happened?"
"We think it was an Artillery shell."
"My daughters." She tried to get to her feet.
"They are fine." I assured her.
"Mummy."