The Attack

The Distressed: Chapter Four

3:34 AM CST August 16th

Katherine Song Li, professional actress at the Reagan Memorial Theater.

I thought the play would be a booming success, not a booming explosion disaster area.

I played the Fair Maiden's servant that she hired after she gained her fortune near the end of the play, so I wasn't even out on the stage when I heard the explosion. God, I'm glad I wasn't cast as the maiden. I wanted it really badly, but now the "maiden" is dead.

When I saw her dead body, limbs of other dead ones on top of her, makeup running down her face with blood mixed in, shrapnel ripping through her pale blue tunic, it reminded me of when I first heard the news that my father had died in Iraq. When we viewed the body, it was clean. But I knew underneath the rest of the casket was a terribly injured man who had accidentally stepped on a roadside bomb.

Inside the theater, I had curled up into a ball until the rescue crew came in after the second explosion.

I remember it vividly.

"Almost there," a female rescue worker shouted. Then, the second explosion went off, and I curled into my little ball again until it was sure every explosive device was gone.

They told me to call out for others, and the response was usually a brick falling on the ground or maybe the scratching of nails against wood as someone tried to escape from under set pieces and bodies. Once I heard a man whimper "God, save me."

When the rescue team came in to help me out, they pulled several dead or dying bodies, too.

"You're lucky," the paramedic said to me while he bandaged my scratched arm. "You were the only survivor that was backstage. God saved you."

"Yes," I said blankly as I stared into the distance, "I suppose I was saved."

I feel like the dead were saved. Saved from two hours of hell as I watched people die, moaning for their mothers and fathers, asking God to stop the pain, or crying for help. I tried to help Gina, a little girl who was making her acting debut.

"I'll make sure they help you," I said, tears welling up in my eyes. "I promise I-"

She breathed her last breath right there upstage.

"No! No! Gina... Stop dying!!!" I screamed.

"I really wish I was dead." I said.

The paramedic gave me a strange look. "What?" He said."

"I wish I was in bed." I said.