Reviews

The camera of a news reporter captured a clear image of the famous entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the so-called “Rocky Steps”—seventy-two steps Sylvester Stallone had ascended in one of those Rocky movies. But Stallone’s/Rocky’s heroics were not visible now. Instead, misshapen corpses and individuals on the brink of death sprawled on the steps while maniacal people beat the flesh from their bodies. Blood dripped from the crude, primitive weapons some wielded. Other attackers simply slew with their fists.

“This is some sort of joke, right?” Robert asked, his voice sounding hollow to his own ears.

Taking a deep breath, he changed the channel again to CNN. He remembered his grandfather watching it when Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and wanted to see what they had to say. CNN would know what was happening. They would set everything straight.

At the bottom of the screen, a chyron bore the words Atlanta, GA. A light shower fell in the scene above it. A city street. Nothing remarkable about it… except a woman who stood in the middle of the road, shrieking and pulling out tufts of her own hair.

A car sped into the frame, crashed into the woman, and continued to plow forward until it jammed her into the side of a building. Weak cries escaped her thin, pale lips. Blood poured from her mouth and coated her chin.

The driver’s door opened. A man flopped out onto the ground. Long, unkempt blond hair hid his face, but he wore no shirt, so nothing concealed his large biceps or the barbed wire tattoo that encircled each. Flipping his hair out of his face, he reminded Robert of a deranged wrestler.

The mad wrestler rose to his feet and stumbled over to the woman pinned between the car and the building. Bending down, he picked up what looked like a jagged piece of metal, took hold of the woman’s right arm, and started hacking it off.