Radical-9

Intermission VI:

February 24^th, 2022

2:50 am

I heard about Denver, almost everyone has. It is like hearing about the 9/11 attacks. Except instead of planes from the middle east bombing two buildings in New York it is an entire city collapsing on itself from the people rioting. Entire streets burned, bodies littered the streets. Some say that some of the bodies have been undisturbed, so there they lie, rotting in the street.

3,000 killed in a day? Try near half a million.

I don't mean to say it like I don't care about those who were lost up in the trade center attacks, it is just a little harder to keep everything in perspective when things like this happen right in your backyard. When you can actually walk up to an overturned car and see the corpse of small children, when that smell gets to you...

“You doing okay?” Jake asks, putting an arm around me, pulling me away from the heap of metal.

“Y-Yeah, I'm going to be fine...” I say.

“We can go back,” he suggests.

“No, I'm going to be fine. I just...want to know, is there any other place like this? Any other city hit this hard?” I ask, looking up at the destruction in front of me.

Rubble covers the ground, stone and brick of what used to be infrastructure. Large crater-like clusters are mixed in between the piles of trash. There is a thick haze that clings to the atmosphere, it is like I can taste the despair in the air. Not many of the buildings are left standing, only one or two skyscrapers remain, and they are heavily hit, like cavities in a tooth they've been ruptured.

“As far as I know there aren't any as bad as Denver. Don't get me wrong, though. There are some pretty bad places, I think I remember hearing San Francisco isn't doing too well, Almost all of Florida as well. It's not really centralized in one specific place.”

“Oh, do you think we'll be able to find anything here?” I ask.

“I don't know, I guess the only way to find out is to get to searching. The computer said Raffle Place, correct?” He asks.

I nod.

“Okay, let's see if we can't find something that helps us find this place, huh?” He says.

We begin walking, broken streetlights and bent street signs greet us as we walk by. There are a few fissures in the ground separating parts of the road. To the left I see the fallen sign of a vendor, it lies, angled on the ground from the building it was once attached to and hanging proudly. We seem to be on a side avenue, because I notice a few more places that look like they had once housed some sort of shopkeep or business.

Jake turns his head and then offers his hand, “Don't want to get lost here...especially now,” he says, winking. I take it. It feels cold, almost frozen. I turn to look at it, and then at him, his hand is extremely pale, even by his standards.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I'm just a little stuffy is all,” he says, but not before letting out a hoarse cough, it sounds full of phlegm.

“That doesn't sound fine.”

We climb over a chunk of wall that had collapsed from a building to our right.

Up and over.

“It's just a thing with my Vitiligo, nothing to worry about. It comes and goes,” he says.

There is a large fissure about four feet in length between us and the road. Jake makes the jump first, bending down when he lands, he lets out a small sound. I see him flash a thumbs up, to which I begin with my legs bent. I take off with a quick running start and lift off, I land just beside him, nearly tackling him to the ground as I dismount.

“Ow, maybe next time try landing a little further to the left,” he says, grabbing at his side as he crawls up to his knees.

I move to my feet, as I do I look up, above me is the first of the large skyscrapers, it is heavily damaged, but it looks stable enough to stay standing. There is a large fence about ten feet up surrounding the entire perimeter.

“What's up, Jake?” I ask, turning my head as he stands up.

“What?”

“Your cough, it's not good, and I've never heard you cough like that. This isn't something that just comes and goes, what's up?”

He looks as if he is about to make an excuse, but then stops himself, “I'm scared.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I’ve been trying to forget it, maybe in the slightest of hopes that ignoring it will make it go away, but it won’t. It’s here to stay and I can’t do anything about it.” He says.

“Vitiligo...isn’t the only illness I have. I can’t confirm it, but I’m pretty sure I have something called C.O.P.D.” He says.

I give him a look of confusion.

“I...I don’t know what that is,” I reply.

“Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. It’s made it very difficult to breathe at times and my lungs are slowly decaying. There isn’t a cure, especially with the medical field these days. I’m so scared of the consequences...” He says.

I place my hand on his cheek and it’s wet with tears.

“Jake, I am so sorry, but you should know you can tell me about these things. We’re friends, aren’t we?” I ask.

He sniffs and nods his head, “Best friends.”

“That's why you have to tell me things like this...wait, shouldn’t you be out of the cold with that? Why would you...”

“Why else? For you.”

I'm staring at him, almost in an entirely new light, but that isn't right. Moreso a light that I've been casting to the background.

“I mean...isn't how this is supposed to go? I mean-” He is cut off as I rush up to his lips, kissing him. I see his eyes close and his mouth turns into a smile mid-kiss. I’ll admit it, this isn't what I imagined my first kiss would be like. Our faces separate and we’re staring into each other’s eyes. We turn towards the large building.

“What do you suppose that building was for...before this?” I ask.

Jake is silent.

“Hello?” I ask, turning to him, he looks like he's studying the damn thing.

“I...I think that might be our destination,” he says. “Look over there, to the side of the building, you can make out a bit of the writing.”

“Republic...Plaza?” I read.

“That is the tallest building in all of Colorado, even after all of this mess, and I think that is the building that Jack Adata worked in.”

“Do you think anything will be in there?” I ask.

“I don't know, there looks like there's about fifty stories to that thing,” he says.

“We are not going up that high. I'm not going up there and having that place come crashing down.”

“Right, the height thing.”

Jake found out about my fear of heights when we were in fifth grade and I got myself stuck on my roof during the winter. The snowfall was absolutely horrendous that in one particular spot it actually reached the bottom corner of my roof. Of course, as an adventurous ten year old would I decided to climb up, not until afterwards the snow bank I'd used as a makeshift ladder had collapsed amongst itself. I don't believe it was well packed snow at all, enough only to support my little body once. Jake had been driven over to hang out by his father, and I started having a panic attack. It took Jake's father to manage to coax me off of the roof, I wasn't moving for anything.

“Well, we'll check the first few floors, and if we don't find anything we'll bail, okay?”

“What if we do find something?” I ask.

“Then I'll sweep through the higher floors to see if anything else of importance is there,” he says.

“You aren't doing that.” I say.

“You don't have to come, I wouldn't be up there for long,” he says.

“And what if something happened to you? I wouldn't know and you'd be screwed. No, you're not going up there,” I say. “And that's final.”

I begin walking up to the gate, it's a cold black metal that is too thick between the bars for me to fit through. It looks similar to those made for prison cells, except for they shine off of the moonlight. The top of the gate is much too high for me to reach.

“Do you think you could could get up there if I gave you a boost?” Jake asks.

“Yeah, I think so.”

He nods and then cups his palms over one another, “Just use me to get up and over, and see if you can't unlock the gate from the other side,” he says.

I nod and step into his hands, reaching my arms up, blindly reaching for the top of the gate.

“Come on...almost there. Almost...got it!” I say in quieted relief.

I struggle to pull myself up, taking short breaths. I get my head above, and then my elbows. It takes one quick heave and I'm lifting my entire body over the side. I drop to the ground and jog over towards the gate doors. I see the thick chain that keeps it tightly locked is held together by a huge padlock on my end. I can't seem to find anyway to unlock it without the key.

“I don't know if you can get in this way,” I say.

“Okay, don't worry, I'll find some way inside, sit right there, I'm going to go check around the perimeter of the building, see if there are any weak links,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

“And Jen?”

I turn to face him, looking into his eyes, “Yes?”

“If anything goes wrong I want you to tell me, okay? If you get hurt we can call this whole thing off and I can call my dad,” he says.

“Are you suddenly worried?” I ask.

“Safe, I'm being safe.”

“Well then, that's good. We could use a bit more of that,” I say.

He nods and then is out of sight, vanishing into the darkness. I can feel my head turning slightly towards the Republic Plaza, as if by some magnetic force. Something is calling me inside, something deep inside.

But Jake said not to go in, we would go in together.

Yet...there is something strong, stronger than I beckoning me inside. I cannot help but walk, almost if it is not even my own feet guiding me in. The building towers over me as I stare up the side of it, it vanishes into one single point in the dark sky, almost looking like it vanishes into the moon.

And then I enter.