The Fallen by Jack Ziebell Page B

Russian way.  He climbed in and tried the ignition, surprisingly the starter motor turned but the engine didn’t start.  He tried it again, nothing.  He was about to get out but stopped himself and tried one last time.  The Russian engine roared to life, making him jump then laugh out loud.  “Asefa, get over here and check this out!”
    Asefa looked over the car.  “Well I’ll be damned, how in the hell did you do that?” 
    “I don’t know, it just started, I think the battery was a bit flat from not being driven, but apart from that it seems fine, even has a full tank.”
    “Well let us not hang around,” said Asefa, “that terrible wailing is like a knife in my heart, I do not want to go close to it, but you are right, we must go into town to see if anyone there is OK.  But we must go carefully.”
    “And the old man?”
    “I do not want to leave him Tim, but it is better if we do.  When we find help we can send people back to help him.” 
    Asefa got into the car and they drove towards the town.  Tim stayed at the wheel, he knew Asefa would be cautious but thought he would take things more slowly than his friend. 
    The car rounded the last bend bringing the town into full view.  Tim could only think of it as biblical.  It seemed as though the End Times had come, perhaps they had?  People crawling in the streets, some naked, some burned, others lying motionless where they fell, having hit their heads on curb stones as they did so.  In some places blood flowed between the cracks in the cobbled streets and pooled in the gutter.  He knew the roads but even so it was hard to navigate to the Development Institute through the smoke and vehicles.  Fires were burning out of control in buildings.  Some of the people reached out to the car as they approached and Tim tried to forget the crack he heard as one wrist stretched too close to their passing tyres. 
    When they finally arrived at the office he was relieved to see it was still standing, although smoke billowed from the top floor windows.  He told Asefa to pull up close to the compound wall so that he was able to hop onto the Niva’s sturdy roof rack, clamber over the wall and open the gate from the inside.  Asefa drove in and they closed the gate behind them.  Being a Saturday, the office was locked.  The guard who should have been outside the gate was nowhere to be seen - no coincidence when both bosses were supposed to be out of town for the weekend.  For a fraction of a second Tim felt annoyed and then realised whatever had befallen the poor man was far worse than he deserved, in fact he hoped that the guard had spent Saturday morning in bed with his wife and then had a long family breakfast with his kids. 
    In the relative safety of the office yard his mind wandered to his own friends and family.  Had this spread to Addis Ababa, to Europe, to the UK?  Was his mum OK in her bungalow in Dorset, or had she fallen too, like her fall the year before, but worse?  Who would check on her, who would help her up and get her to the hospital?  Suddenly he was glad he didn’t have kids of his own.  For a long time he and Sarah hadn’t tried to have any.  She’d wanted to start her career; he’d wanted to create a family home first and enjoy married life as a couple.  They’d both come across so many tough international women who seemingly had it all but had nothing.  You’d get them drunk and it would all come out; ‘I had a man, he loved me, but I took the job overseas and then left him when he didn’t quit his whole life to follow me to the ends of the earth…  I made my choices.’  He’d heard that story a half-dozen times.  Now these women were leaders in their field; Gender Experts, Child-Protection Specialists, Regional Directors, but living alone, childless and growing bitter about their successes, knowing it was the successes that had tempted them further and further away from happiness.  He and Sarah had kept saying,