Ethan

My phone was ringing, but I couldn’t get to it. It had flown out of my pocket during the detonation and I couldn’t reach it where I currently was. My leg was stuck underneath something heavy and I couldn’t seem to move it. I didn’t want to look down and see how bad it was because it felt pretty damn bad.

When I finally did it was just pinned without too much damage, but that meant I couldn’t move. I was underneath the new structure we were building up. Everyone on the crew had decided to take lunch an hour later because we wanted time for the locals to clear out from lunch. The tension in the town was palpable and I wanted to avoid trouble.

It wasn’t something that we had been doing. We’d been taking off at noon and going to one of the other two locations, but after what happened at Molly’s specifically, it felt like the thing to do. Now I wish that we wouldn’t have changed it because if it was any other day, there would have been no one there when it went off. I had to believe that they didn’t mean to let it off now, but they had and we were all still here. Who had done this was in my mind.

When sound started to come back to my ears, I could hear loud yelling and screams around me of the people that I was working with moments before.  There were people walking around with wounds and they looked bewildered. I wanted to help, but I was stuck where I was with nowhere to go. I wanted to get up and help, but I was the one that needed help as well.

I tried to see if there was anyone coming, but the rubble around me wouldn’t let me see far around in most directions. I had to hope that the town that didn’t want us here would help. Someone had to help. Right?

There was rumbling underneath me and I wasn’t even sure what I was on. I saw someone coming up to me. It was Charlie and he asked me if I needed help. His voice sounded like it was coming from such a distance away, but I nodded my head because I had heard enough. I needed help.

Charlie had a little blood on his forehead, but he seemed to be in pretty good shape. I was glad to see him and not just because he was trying to figure out how to free me. He was a good friend since I’d arrived and I was glad to see that he was okay just as much.

“What the hell happened?”

“An explosion. It looks like they rigged up the building to go down when we were at lunch.”

I nodded my head like I understood. “When we were supposed to be gone.”

He had a grave look on his face as well. He had already seen a couple of dead bodies of fellow co-workers. I wished that I could get up and do something.

I felt immense relief when the large piece of wood was moved off of my leg and I was able to get up from the broken harbor scattered about that I was laying in that was digging into my back. It was then, limping on the bad leg that I was able to get a better look and Charlie was right. There were several people that were pinned underneath wood beams that had fallen and were not going to be getting up with some help. Some weren’t moving at all and I had to move on to the next one to see if there was anyone else that needed help.

The further I got into the building that was now half down, I saw several more men stuck and Charlie helped me get them out as well. There was going to be a lot of injuries, but at least there were only a few people that weren’t getting up. There wasn’t much I could do for them.

It was winding down; the search was as most of the men were accounted for. There was two missing and as the scene started to empty, I heard someone yelling, but it sounded faint like it was far away. There was only one place where the rubble was that high and I moved over to that place to see if there was someone else stuck under the weight of the harbor.

I looked up above me and the roof looked very unstable, but I heard the voice again and I knew that I had to try and save them. What if it was me that was down there?

No one else was around that wasn’t doing something else, so I started to shift rocks and wood as best as I could. I was okay besides a little pain in the leg where it had been pinched by a beam. It was going to be fine because I was already walking on it, so I was lucky. I wanted to make sure that if there was another else that needed some luck, I would be there good luck and get them out of there. These were my men that were hurt and walking around in a daze. How had this happened? I knew who had done it in general, but I wanted to know the names of every single person that had something to do with this or knew about it. I wasn’t going to let this go.

The anger seemed to steer me on and I felt more strength than I knew I had. It came to be a benefit because the beams felt heavier than I remember. Charlie spotted me and was starting to walk over when I heard a crack above me. I caught him waving his arms towards me like I was in trouble and when I looked up, I knew that I was. The beams above me were coming down. I must have moved the wrong piece.

I felt weight on my head and then blackness. I wasn’t going to be helping anyone else today.