Giddeon (Silver Strand Series) by G.B. Brulte, Greg Brulte, Gregory Brulte

bomb.
     
    It was so sad, but, I’ve seen a lot of sad.
     

     
    *****
     

     
    The next thing I knew, we left that deserted future and jumped backwards in time to just after the blast.   I saw all of the pitiful creatures that were burned and disfigured and trying to go somewhere, anywhere, to get away from their pain.   It wasn’t possible.   I saw the poor little girl crying on the ground, her hair and dress melted to her skin.   I went over and tried to comfort her, although I knew better than that… or, I thought I did.  
     
    She looked up at me with those beautiful, big dark eyes… she must have been turned away from the blast when it happened.   Her eyes were so dark they were almost black, and, I believe she saw me.   She reached out to me and kept saying a word over and over… I thought the word meant ‘Momma’ in her language.   I was so heartbroken and transfixed that I didn’t see what was happening behind me.
     

     
    *****
     

     
    I turned around just in time to see Greg fall to the ground and then watched the two of them disappear.   They disappeared right in front of me and left me behind!   I ran over to the spot where they had been and spun left and right, over and over, ‘round and ‘round.   I felt a growing panic when I realized they were gone.   Completely and totally gone.
     
    I didn’t know what to do.
     
    I could get back to San Diego easily enough… I knew that… but, I didn’t know anything about how to change times.   I closed my eyes and tried.   It didn’t work.   When I opened them, everything was just as it was.   Yellow dust in the air.   Zombies shuffling past.   An unpleasant smell permeating the area.   I tried again.
     
    Nothing.
     
    My heart was racing… I hadn’t been that scared since I was a little girl.   When I was a little girl and horrid things were after me…
     
    When I was a little girl… a little girl like the one burned so badly on the ground a few feet from me.
     
    I looked at her with tears streaming down her blistering cheeks and saw that she still had her arms stretched out in my direction.   She was again repeating that word, over and over.   I went back and knelt down beside her.   Her legs were broken and there’s no telling how far she had been hurled through the air.   Any of the smoldering corpses scattered around us could have been her mother… they all looked alike.
     
    I did my best to comfort her, but of course my hands just went right through the small body sitting there in the dirt.   I didn’t know what to do.   I was concerned about being stuck in another land and time, but, I was more concerned about her.   I stayed there with the child for a long, long while.
     

     
    *****
     

     
    Night fell.   No one came to help.   I’m sure it would have been suicide to do so, with the radiation levels.   I watched her grow weaker and weaker.   At some point, there was no more fluid left for tears, and she just looked at me with those big, obsidian eyes in the darkness.   I could almost see the stars above us reflected, there.   I held her as best I could, and I think she knew that I was trying to help.   Finally, she said the word one last time, and died.
     
    I cried and cried, and fell asleep holding her in my arms.
     

     
    *****
     

     
    I woke up in my condo.   Technically, I guess it was your condo, and everything was back to the way it was.   The little girl was just a dream.   A horrible, horrible dream.   I got up from the bed and went to take a shower, although I don’t really need to do things like that… but, for some reason, I could still smell smoke.   I had reached down to turn the water on when I noticed something strange.
     
    There, on my sleeve, was a hair.   It was dark and straight, and one end looked to have been singed .   I held it up to the light, and then to my nose.   I could smell the burned protein just a bit, and, I think I could even smell her tears.   I