It was quiet.

He stood just outside the city on a dirt road, looking east. They sky was perfect blue. The sun was out. Warm.

His fingers trembled, his fingernails caked with dirt and blood.

All that was left to do was wait, but it was killing him slowly and he didn’t want that. It was supposed to happen fast, blindingly fast, but everything seemed to be reduced, condensed, sluggish. Time had buckled and broken, it seemed.

He should never have made it this far.

Any minute, the sirens would begin and then the jets would follow.

He held the key in his hand, dangling on its pretty red chain. Something so destructive shouldn’t be so beautiful, he thought, and his mind wandered to the mushroom clouds that would be ballooning over the city any minute.

Any minute.

He turned his green eyes to the skyline he would never see again, then to the sky. The sirens turned themselves on, and he knew it would be soon.

But he was ready. He had made his peace.

Any minute, and it would all be over.