The Fire
Harmony Davis was afraid.
Harmony had been bitten by snakes and not batted an eye, seen her house burn down and not panicked, and been in the sea in a rowboat in the middle of a hurricane and taken a nap. The Middle Eastern woman had always claimed that it would take the end of the world to shake her composure.
The world, as she knew it, was ending.
Just a short half hour ago, she had been teaching algebra to a class of college students when the television had come on and she and her class had watched the live explosion of Hawaii. As the hubbub and tumult from the class began to rise, alternating bursts of sweltering heat and bone-chilling cold flooded in through the broken windows in the back. She knew she should have fixed those windows, she thought to herself as students began fleeing the room. Papers and books disintegrated from the sudden massive shift in temperature.
Harmony had snatched her purse and coat and dashed out of her Harvard University classroom door to the nearest bus stop. She had taken the bus to a direct train to New York City to see if she could root out some old friends of hers- friends she had not seen in nearly fifteen years.
She had broken off all connections when she moved to this prestigious college shortly after she left college, and simply didn’t have time for a social life, but she still knew how to find them. The nearest of her old network was located in a small office in NYC.
WE ARE NOW ARRIVING AT GRAND CENTRAL STATION. PLEASE COLLECT YOUR ITEMS AND PREPARE TO MAKE AN ORDERLY EXIT.
Harmony dashed through the endless maze of alleys that she had memorized years before, stopping short outside of what had once been the office of one of the most successful law firms on the east coast, and truthfully, the entire country.
It was a blazing inferno.
Flames leapt out of the skylight, devouring te roof. The front door, blackened and splintered, lay in fragments all over the front walk. The small firm had been the only building in the inner city with a small green front lawn. At least, it had been green. Now it was white and grey, coated with fallen ash.
“No!” Harmony fought back emotions, among them panic, confusion, anger, and utter despair. She took a deep breath to clear her head, and that was when the door of the art studio across the street was thrown open.
“Harmony! Harmony Davis! Is that you? Get yourself over here before you start coughing of smoke inhalation!”
“Shelby Mastin! I have never I my life been so happy to see you! Where’s your husband, Derek? Shouldn’t he be out here? Is he OK? It was his law firm, right?”
“Whoa, there! Yes, it was his firm; yes, he’s OK; he’s at home with a mild cold. Emily Meade, one of his employees, was the only staff member in. She and I had been transferring important confidential documents and financial records to our new climate-controlled storage facility. We, ah, managed to escape the fire into this art studio. Luckily, Emily knew the artist. From Detroit, I think, or some such thing. But that doesn’t matter right now. I’m surprised to see you, though. Where have you been? Oh, come on inside.”
As Harmony and Shelby stepped inside, a shorter redheaded woman hustled up, removing Harmony’s coat and purse and hanging them on vacant easels.
“Hello, I’m Lyric, Lyric Jordan. Can I help you? Is there anything you need?”
“Well, I came to get into contact with the old crew. The Mastins here were the closest. I’ve been out of the loop, teaching up at Harvard, she said glancing at Shelby with fear in her eyes. What do I do now? Where is”
“Shelby, I‘ve got the computer up and running. Hey, who’s this?” A tall blonde woman wearing a grey skirt and a dark green sweater burst into the room, hands trembling.
“A friend. She was trying to get into contact with the rest of us.”
“K, c’mon. The computer is up now, but with all this chaos, who knows how long the internet will last? We need to talk to the Woods, pronto. If anyone will know what to do, it’s Al and Paige.”
“Chaos?” Lyric wore a puzzled and concerned expression. “What else happened?”
Emily explained as her hands flew across the keyboard. “ Other than the fire at the firm, severe climate issues have been reported all across the country, and in parts of Canada and Mexico. It seems to be spreading out from the west coast. Due to these changes, paper everywhere has dissolved, for lack of a better term. Fires have broken out all over the city.”
“Where are the others? McNeely, Callihan, the Perrys, Cresses, and Coopers?” Harmony fired off the names one after the other.
“Phil and Brooke and their kids are with the Woods on vacation. We got a postcard from them dated a week ago yesterday. Autumn, Taylor, and Madi Cooper and her sister and new brother-in law are out in Honolulu. The Cresses live out on Staten Island. Emily’s husband Seth is on his way as we speak to pick them up.”
“Hawaii! Oh no! It blew up an hour ago! I saw it on live TV!” Harmony looked like she was about to scream.
If this shook Shelby, though, she didn’t show it. Lyric bustled off to put tea on the stove, and Emily hooked up a video conference to Alan Woods’s smartphone. She tried and failed once, twice, and then looked back at the others.
“Third time’s a charm,” she said, a hopeful expression on her face. The optimistic smile did not reach her eyes. She hit the key for the third time.
This time, Alan answered.
