Katia could feel the world pounding in her ears.
She walked into what was the ruined marketplace, and the shot made her freeze and duck. She could see, afar, the man crouched behind the ruins of a statue, and at each frequency with which the shot rang out, did she time it - she was a hair's breadth lucky - but she needed food, because back home, there was no-one.
"Thank god," gasped the man, "They have boarded up the sewers. I cannot make it home!"
" I will get you home."
Katia held her breath. She ran, and then a bullet struck her leg, and she managed to limp across and into the house. Blood stained the tiles and her head was thudding as she limped downstairs. She could see the door to the sewers, affirmed by the smell, and as she walked along the sewers, her vision was foggy.
"I must keep going… "
She passed many piles of scrap, scrap she would need after medicine, after food, and then she was loosening the boards over the door, and then she could hear gasping and footsteps on the other side, and the man was just as ragged and bleeding as she .
"Thank god. Let me repay you… "
He led the way, and she limped as he gripped his stomach, and their steps in the sewers reverberated, and she thought it odd when he fell, for she had rather felt it was within his power to stay. She had been shot, but so had he , and his was danger, as was all around them, and when she shook him, he lay prone, and when guilt piled up in her stomach, she still gripped what was in his pockets, and it was a key, and then she was standing in the basement, and while her thumb rubbed against the sharp edge of the key, she knew .
For a baby was crying.
She could not drag herself faster, or slower, for she badly needed to rest, and the thudding in her vision was complete. She took a gasp of air and kept moving, she unlocked the door, the baby's cries keeping her sane, for that was liquid to her ears, it was a nonsense that had to make her keep moving.
The baby was in its crib, and she rubbed her hand over the blanket where the name was sewn. She crumpled on the floor and the static TV matched her mind, her ears could hear only the whistling of her brain, and she watched the bassinet, as she gripped the cold metal leg, grow numb.
And the baby kept crying...