At first she thought it was all her fault. She woke up on her back staring at a black sky. The roof of the trolley was gone and the car was a cistern of black water. Black raindrops hit her face, outlining the beads of glass that had burrowed in her skin like vengeful ticks. She lifted a shard of metal and rolled over to see that every building within her sight had been demolished. A fire licked at what used to be the post office, her husband's place of work and her last stop.
How could one girl, barely in her twenties, cause so much destruction? He would have a very good answer. He would yell at her that night--if she made it home that night--about not paying attention during her training. I should have known, he would say, not to let a silly girl drive a train. He would make her recount her tragic mistake in great detail. I was about to turn a sharp corner, she would whisper. And then there was this white light...the sun must have got in my eyes and then.... How was it that she could not perform the smallest job for the war effort without causing a disaster when he had so loyally served the emperor in the army for so long, giving his leg and almost his leg? She crumbled to the soot-covered, debris-strewn ground, crying in shame.
And then she saw the creatures without skin.
"Water, water!" they hissed in unison. Only one, the leader, looked vaguely human. Naked, his body was charred black. He held his intestines as he ambled towards her. The others, their eyeballs dangling like pocket watches, their flesh melted off to reveal bone, followed the sound of his voice and bumped into things. The shortest one fell at her feet, a scorched black ball tumbling from her back.
"Water. For my child," she murmured, feeling for the lifeless bundle. "I need water for my child."
"No. No water. I don't have any. I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me," she cried, drawing back. Had she become like them? Was she looking in a mirror? She checked to see that her legs still worked. She, too, was mostly naked, with only a few rags of clothes stuck to her skin. She attempted to cover herself, curling her limbs out in front of her. An intense pain in her back halted this attempted movement.
The people without skin stopped moving, too. They seemed to have frozen where they lay on the ground that she could now see was littered with corpses. Something had happened, but--she was now certain--it was not her fault. It was someone else, someone who would not be scolded for it. She closed her eyes against the realization and leaned back against the bare steel frame of the trolley. Flinching in pain again, she felt her back for the source of her injury. The touch itself did not incur pain. It was like dipping your hand into a wad of gooey, sun-warmed seaweed. She pulled away with a shudder in time to see her husband limping towards her, his face twisted in a contortion of horror. Not a member of the skinless army, his smooth skin and able body were a revelation among a world of the dead. Still crisp in his work clothes, his only apparent injury was a single scratch by his left eye. Silently, he bent to help her up, but she recoiled in pain.
"I know it hurts, but you must get up. We must find help."
"No, you go. I can't. Please leave me."
"Oh..." He dropped to his knees beside her. He was openly weeping now.
"It is alright. You can come for me later."
He touched her face and moved his hand up to stroke her hair. A chunk of it came off in his hands.
