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Elisabetta looked up, blinking, trying to gather her senses. Her head pounded. Her entire body ached. She lay backward on broken concrete, facing up. The sky was barely visible through the smoke.
Her brain struggled to function. The American bombers had gone. The attack was over. She had no idea how long she had been lying here. She could hear faint wailing. She tried to move. It hurt, but her legs and arms weren’t broken.
She sat up slowly, feeling her face. Warm blood wet her hands. Her arms and legs were gashed. Gray soot covered her clothes and body. She couldn’t breathe, her nostrils were full. She snorted black snot. Her mouth tasted gritty and dirty.
She staggered to her feet, looking around in horror. San Lorenzo had been leveled. She could see through to the next street. Fires flared and burned in the rubble and ruins. People and authorities were trying to put out the flames. Shops had been reduced to piles of brick, marble, stone, and twisted metal.
Carnage surrounded her. Severed limbs lay in the street like so much meat. Men, women, and children lay dead among the debris and rubble, bleeding from gruesome wounds. Hospital personnel and authorities ran back and forth with stretchers and black medical bags.
Blood was spattered everywhere. Everyone’s clothes were soaked and stained, torn and shredded. Some people were still alive, moaning and crying, writhing in agony from mortal wounds. Among them was the detritus of human life. A spiral-bound notebook. A brown purse. Horn-rimmed eyeglasses. A briefcase.
The woman next to her lay motionless, her gaze fixed heavenward. A little boy lay next to the woman. Blood matted his hair. Tears dried in rivulets in the grime on his face. His lips moved, and Elisabetta realized he was alive.
She staggered to his side, kneeling down. “Are you okay?” she asked, and the little boy’s eyes fluttered open, a bloodshot dark brown. His mouth formed words she couldn’t hear. He raised his arms weakly, melting her heart, and she scooped him up.
“Mamma,” the little boy whispered hoarsely.
“Okay, okay.” Elisabetta scanned his little body for injuries. There were cuts all over him. She spotted a jagged shard of glass in his thigh. Blood leaked from the wound, flowing steadily down his leg.
“Help!” Elisabetta called out, hoarse. The medical personnel didn’t come. Everyone alive was screaming for help. She started to remove the shard, but stopped herself. Instinctively she knew it should stay in place. It was plugging the vein. She had to stop the bleeding. He could bleed to death.
“Mamma, Mamma, Mamma,” the little boy whispered, over and over.
“I’m here,” Elisabetta said, frantic. She held the boy in one arm and clawed at her shirt with the other, ripping off her sleeve. She rested the boy on her lap, used both hands to twist the sleeve, and tied it quickly around his thigh, making a tourniquet above the shard of glass.
“Mamma,” the little boy whispered, his eyes rolling back in his head. He must have been going into shock.
Elisabetta yelled for help again, but the medical personnel were busy. She remembered the hospital wasn’t far. She could get him there. She gathered him in her arms, struggled to her feet, and started making her way. The boy went limp, and his lips kept forming the word Mamma, over and over.
“Help!” Elisabetta called out, stumbling through the rubble. Electrical wires sparked. Wood burned and smoldered around her. Gray smoke obscured the way.
She tripped and almost fell. She held the little boy to her chest. His legs dangled. His feet were bare. Blood dripped from his thigh wound, but less than before. Her tourniquet was working.
She kept going, calling for help. There was no path, no street. She passed mangled bodies amid the debris of buildings, collapsed walls, and crushed cars. Moaning and screaming emanated from piles of rubble, where people had been buried alive. She saw a crowd collecting at the end of the street. It looked as if there were authorities there, too. She headed in that direction and kept going. The crowd was shouting at something she couldn’t see. She was almost there.
“Mamma . . .” the little boy whispered, and all of a sudden, his body went limp in her arms.
Elisabetta looked down in fear. His head drooped over her arms, his neck stretched. She kept going, holding him tighter. Tears spilled from her eyes.
“Help, please!” Elisabetta wailed, and heads turned in the back of the crowd. The faces were grimy and bloodied, their expressions dazed and deranged.
“The King is here!” shouted a man.
“What king?” Elisabetta asked, feeling as if she were walking in a nightmare. The little boy sagged in her arms, lifeless.