fear

I ran.
   I ran and ran and ran until my chest was on fire and my heart was thumping in my throat. I felt like being sick, but I couldn’t gather enough breath to retch. I had to get away from the madness I had created, and yet I couldn’t just leave her. I had to go back for her, but I couldn’t set another foot on that roof without going insane.
   And so there I stood, on the edge of sanity – should I go back? Maybe I should just keep running.

   “Ben!”

   An angel’s voice echoed through the empty hallways of the building and punched a hole in my chest. My breath picked up and I turned to see her waving and running towards me. She stumbled every few steps and had one arm wrapped round her waist. I ran up to her and swallowed her up into my arms.

   She screamed.

   I let go.

   “Baby?”

   I caught her just before she hit the floor. My hands were suddenly wet. Her eyelids flickered and her vision was distant, like she was struggling to focus on things close to her.

   “Oh, God, no,” I murmured. I sat beside her and slid her into my lap. She was bleeding ferociously from a gash down the side of her cheek and a gunshot wound in her stomach. Her brow was matted with a cold sweat and her face was flushed with pain and effort.

   “Ben,” she groaned. “You left me.”

   I shivered.

   “Oh, God,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry... Oh God...”

   She moaned and convulsed in my arms, her eyes screwed up in pain. My heart skipped a beat and my chest flared with pain.

   “No, no, open your eyes, baby, look at me,” I panicked.

   She stared up at me.

  A lingering moment passed in which I could feel the pain firing through her body and the alarming rate at which she was slipping away.

   Suddenly deep voices and heavy, running footsteps echoed across the walls.

   I scooped her up in my arms and ran.

   I ran and ran and ran until my chest was on fire and my heart was thumping in my throat. The thought of losing her spurred me on. I didn’t want to die either. Not like this.

   I turned several corners until we escaped through a crack in the wall on the ground floor and out into the outside world; a crack that I kicked myself for missing before. I welcomed the damp air and abandoned streets, gulping the air in huge breaths. The sound of the attack behind us had subsided, lost in the winding hallways of the building. We’d lost them.

   The explosion propelled me forward, but I managed to stay on my feet with her in my arms. Everything was gone – the machine, the soldiers, the lab...

   But now what?