D-Day: A Very Short Excerpt

Adrienne Padilla. Recorded at the Upstate NY Refugee Center, Ithaca, NY, US. D-Day plus 7.

We were trapped in our office on the thirty fourth floor. We went to the windows when the dragon was first spotted, but not in time to see anything. Someone said it passed us over, flew toward the ocean. As soon as we heard anything, we heard its opposite. We knew One Vanderbilt had been destroyed; we could see the smoke out the western windows. We were watching to see what would fall next. Garrett said we were in the seventh tallest building in New York, so until the other six fell, we were safe. We speculated whether the people on the lower floors of One Vanderbilt had lived — the consensus was they probably had, although Maureen kept calling a firm on the fourth floor and getting no answer. We thought we should move to the lower floors, but from here, we could see everything. If we knew what was happening, we could make better decisions, we decided. What we meant was, we don’t know what to do, we will stay where we are until someone tells us.

We broke into four teams, one along each set of windows. It felt like children playing army, sending texts back and forth: All clear to the west. East view, report. Countering childhood monsters with children’s games. I was on the north side of the building, looking down onto Lexington. It was clogged with cars, both lanes trying to point themselves west, like crossing the river would keep them safe.

The dragon landed on Lexington. Our building shook, and I worried the glass would shatter. I worried because I thought it would draw his attention, and what I wanted was not to be seen. In the narrow corridor the road cut between buildings, he was massive. I worried that, without thinking, he would turn and his tail would swipe through the floors underneath us, bringing everything down.

I wanted to know what he was seeing, or what he was attending to. His head turned and cocked; his eyes swept slowly over the street. They were black, but within each black was a deeper black, a pupil, barely discernible. I watched what he was looking at, but I understood that I could not understand. My wife thinks our cat sees ghosts. He’ll be sleeping and suddenly wake, then dart out of the room. The dragon’s attention was like that, drawn by things I couldn’t see or sense. He started to move, walking down Lexington, trampling over cars like pebbles on a beach. He was oblivious to the people on the street, oblivious to their screams. Something caught his attention, the pitch or frequency of one cry. He looked down for the first time and saw everyone on the street. Everything in his way.

His body shuddered and straightened, his head rising into the air. I was sure he was tall enough to see me, eye to eye on the 31st floor. It was only for a moment. He drew down onto all fours, crouched and coiled to pounce. He faced the car-crowded street. Everyone running to get away from the ruins of One Vanderbilt who’d turned back when he landed, all stopped. They stood rapt, watching him.

I heard him draw a breath. Everyone on the street breathed in with him; he in readiness, they in anticipation, resignation to their fate.

Flames poured from his mouth. They had weight and mass. They were fluid, viscous like honey. The fire rolled down the street with force; cars were lifted. They flipped and their gas tanks exploded under the heat, little fires added to a larger fire. It swept everything in front of it. The flames ran the length of the block, coiled up like petal wilting, and disappeared. That, I remember, seemed impossible. My brain was adding a thousand things a second to the realm of what was real, what could be, but the thought that a force like that could exist one second and be gone the next was too much. In the wake of the flames, the street looked like a lava floe, currents and whorls where the flames reshaped it, studded with the burnt chassis of upturned cars. A layer of steam dissipated, and I saw remains for the first time. Charred bodies, echoes of human shapes. They were melted into the pavement and the asphalt, some waist-deep. They reached up, clawing at the sky, as if they were drowning.