Panic.
There was no other way to describe it.
To the left: A Porsche, lying on its side on the sidewalk. The entire frame had been smashed as if it were no more than an aluminum pop can. Its once meticulously washed windows crushed, bent, shattered. They lay around it like tiny diamonds, reflecting beautifully the yellow flames flickering from the car's interior. From the passenger side dangled something that resembled an arm. Spatterings of crimson screamed up from the stark flesh, ran in rivulets and dripped to the pavement.
Pure, unadulterated, panic.
To the right: The house next door, two of the four walls completely gone. Wisps of smoke wound their way lazily through the air, originating form the crumbling walls and scorched front lawn. The support of a picture frame on the second story snapped, sending it crashing to the linoleum floor of the kitchen below. A man's face smiled maniacally from behind a mask of shattered glass. A flaming piece of rubble fell on top of it and put out his left eye.
The end of the world as we know it.
I could have stopped this he thought, breath whistling through his throat, eyes seeing all despite his cracked glasses lens. I didn't try hard enough.
He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, despite the braying of the car alarms. People everywhere were bleeding, screaming, dying. One man sprinted past, bellowing in pain, no skin visible on his face through a thick caking of blood. One cheek was torn open and was flapping in the wind. Gunshots like firecrackers sounded from all directions.
The end of the world forever.
He could taste his own blood, metallic and salty, as it leaked from the corner of his mouth. His legs and arms looked as if they had been taken to with a pitchfork. His trench coat hung in tatters from his shoulders. Behind him lay the remains of the Membrane household. Had he been anywhere but the basement, he would not have been able to claw himself out of the wreckage, wouldn't be alive now. For once, tinkering in his father's lab had brought him something other than-
He spun on his heel toward what was once his house as the new thought hit him dead on. "DAD!" he screamed "GAZ!"
His first step wavered and he fell to his knees. He didn't feel the crunching pain as the broken glass tore open the skin on his knee. Didn't feel the hot spray of rubble as the house next door finally gave way, didn't hear the screams of the people who were crushed to death beneath it. He scrambled to his feet, moving faster than they would take him. Again he fell.
"DAD!" he screamed again, his voice squeaking "GAZ!"
He regained his balance shakily, fighting the panic and sobs rising in his throat. The air was thick with dust and stinging his lungs. Still he ran.
Mounting the pile of rubble was no contest. He found his way to the general area of the back of the house. The heat coming from the freshly demolished debris was excruciating, but he began to claw into it anyway.
All he needed was to see her leg, surreal in its pristine state. Somehow, it did not have a single scratch or fleck of blood on it. All he needed was to see it before the sobs broke, viciously and abruptly from his throat.
-Zim-
The professor, his father, had been downstairs in the kitchen. For him, there wouldn't have been a chance.
-He did this that bastard he did all of this and I didn't stop him-
The people on the block. Those good people.
-Good people but dumb people but that doesn't give him the right nothing gives him the right-
His vision blurred with tears, a collage of reds, yellows, browns. Smoke burned in his lungs, air raid sirens threatened to split his eardrums wide open,
The rage was swelling within him now. Capacity was at 80%. Rational thinking was shutting down.
None of this mattered. Nothing mattered.
-Zim you motherfucking sonofawhore-
Gingerly, he took his own tattered trench coat from his shoulders and placed it down upon his dead sister's leg. The rest of her body was there, under the thin layer of debris, but he wouldn't see, couldn't see, didn't want to see.
-You took my family my family my family why did you take them from me why-
He stepped down, on what used to be his front walk. He had to get out, to get away.
-Then run-
Too many memories here.
-Just run-
He ran.