The Girl in the City (9 page)

Leah had reached the edge of the forest when the bomb exploded. She heard the muffled thump, like distant thunder, and turned back. The City was a blaze of blue-white light so bright it hurt her eyes, and she had to shield them with her hand. A red cloud, the shape of the tiny mushrooms her father had sometimes brought back from the market, billowed above the city. Below it, a roiling wall of blue flame rolled outward across the landscape.

A fierce wind rose up out of nowhere. Clouds of dust and grit filled the air. The wind brought with it a high-pitched howl, and Leah wondered if that was the sound a city made when it died.

Dust scratched at Leah’s eyes, but she refused to look away. She might be the only person witnessing the death of the City who actually cared about the people there. She had to watch. And remember.

The wind whipped around Leah, pulling at her clothes as she watched the billowing cloud expanding upwards and outwards, until it hung over the city like some hellish storm. The blue wall swept across the landscape, swallowing up everything in its path—the ridges, the trees, the rocks, everything. The air became warmer and thicker. It was tinged with a harsh metallic tang that clung to Leah’s throat and made it hard for her to breathe. The ground beneath her feet shook. The trees around her shuddered and groaned. Limbs cracked and broke apart. A branch the size of Leah’s arm bounced past, a few inches from her head.

But despite the chaos whirling around her, Leah felt utterly calm. Whatever hand fate chose to deal her—death or life, the end or a new beginning—she was ready.

And then the wind died, slowly at first, just a subtle easing of pressure, then quicker and quicker. As the wind dropped, the dust thinned, and the howling faded away, leaving behind a heavy silence. The air was still warm and metallic, but the blue fire was receding almost as fast as it had advanced. The groaning of the forest turned to a whispered rustling. Leah felt a breeze against her back. It was cool, almost refreshing. The cloud above the City was dispersing too, the night sky reappearing through shreds of orange and scarlet.

Gradually, the blue fire burned itself out and left behind… nothing. There were no lights, no signs of life, no rubble. Where once there had been a city filled with living, breathing human beings, now there was just a flat expanse of earth, a desolate wasteland. Thousands of lives and all they’d struggled to build, gone in a matter of seconds.

Leah took a mouthful of water from her canteen and rinsed it around her mouth, hoping to get rid of the metallic taste. She spat the water out and heard her father’s voice in her ear, reprimanding her for wasting what little she had left. She half turned to answer him before she remembered he was gone.

Anger bubbled inside her, quiet fury at the people that had done this. She took a deep breath and let the rage fuel her tired limbs.

She sipped more water, swallowing it this time, then took one last look at the place where the City had stood—the place where she’d been born, the place where she’d spent her entire life fighting to survive. The place her father had died trying to save.

“Goodbye,” she said, and she turned and walked into the forest.

Thanks for reading
The Girl in the City
, I hope you enjoyed it. The story was inspired by events in Michael Bunker’s novel,
Pennsylvania
, and I’d like to thank him for writing the novel, and graciously allowing me to play in his world. If you haven’t read
Pennsylvania
, you should.

The illustrations that accompany the story are by the amazing Ben Adams. Thank you, Ben. You can find more of Ben’s work at his website -
http://www.benjadams.com
.

A huge thank you to the multi-talented Jason Gurley who created the spectacular cover.

And thank you to Joe Nassise for his development editing of the story and the team at Red Adept Editing for copy editing and proofreading.

Finally, thank you to my beta readers - Jeff, Sherryl-Annette, Connie, Ryan and my wife, Ann. Their invaluable feedback improved the story immensely.

Only Friends
is a short story that was originally published in
The Anthology of European SF
. The anthology is no longer publicly available but you can get a free ebook edition of
Only Friends
by visiting my website at
http://solitarybooks.com/gcfree
.

It’s available in Kindle (MOBI), Nook, Kobo and Apple (EPUB), and PDF formats so you should be able to get a copy that works for you.

Just click on this link or type it into your browser for more information and to download your free ebook:

Honest reviews are extremely helpful for authors, big and small, and help bring my books to the attention of other readers. If you enjoyed this book, I would really appreciate it if you left a review wherever you bought it, or on Goodreads. It can be short, just a few words on what you enjoyed about the story and why.

Thank You.

Philip Harris

Philip Harris is a speculative fiction author and video game developer. Originally born near Oxford, England, he now lives on the West Coast of Canada where he spends his days developing video games and his nights writing speculative fiction - anything from horror to science fiction to fantasy.

His first publication,
Letter From a Victim
, appeared in the award winning magazine,
Peeping Tom
, in 1995. Since then he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including
Garbled Transmissions
,
So Long, and Thanks for All The Brains
and James Ward Kirk’s
Best of Horror 2013
. He has also worked as security for Darth Vader.

His science fiction serial novel,
Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet
is a homage to the old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials and will be published in early 2015.

For up to date information on new releases, free ebooks and other exclusive extras, please sign up to the mailing list at
http://solitarybooks.com/gcnews
.

You can also find his blog and more free fiction at his website.

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Short Stories

Bottled Lightning

Curfew

Saviour

Coming Soon

Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet