Everything had changed. Just a year ago everything was calm and as it should be. Bad was when the girl you liked didn't like you back or your parents were divorcing, but all of that seemed meaningless now.
The year was 2013 and fog had covered England for over a year. The country which had once been a refuge and freedom had been left for the dogs and they were feasting on us ravenously. Only America dared to try to through off those haunting hounds, but it was worried of joining us and being no more than rotting corpses. The world had been focused on us, our nation the United Kingdom. Small yet there we stood, grand and proud as hosts of the 2012 Olympic games. It was the day all had been waiting for, we had no idea how much we'd come to wish that the day had never come.
I can still remember that day as though it were a repeated dream. I don't think that any man in the stadium that day could ever forget it. The first day of the Olympic games had arrived after years of preparation. There was a humming of all those present as the big screens lit up. The games had begun. First up the men's 100 metres. We erupted as the athletes stepped out onto the track. Countries united by the resents of 8 men in shorts. As the men took to there lanes the camera man down beside them focused on each athlete in turn so their faces appeared the size of elephants on screens around the stadium. When he did the athlete would raise his musselly arm and wave at the crowd as though clarifying who he was. His home nation would stand and cheer encouraging their hope for victory. Until the camera fell onto the fourth lane. There he stood, a champion, though the race hadn't started. The stars muscles bulged, the tools of his trade. Everybodies hero - Hussain Bolt. We all knew his story. Ex cricket player who had taken up running as his coach had suggested. At his first Olympic appearance 4 years previously he had stormed the competition in this race and broken the world work without even break a sweat. This was then repeated by him just 4 days later in the men's 200 metres. When his face appeared on the big screen the entire stadium was on its feet. No group of people ever had or ever will create such a deafening noise again. It was as though electricity was running through us, powering our feet, our hands, our mouths. Confidence from this worldwide welcome showed in his face as the camera drifted onto the next 4 competitors. The athletes took their positions. Silence echoed around us. A had was raised, a gun fired. They took off like bullets, but my eyes were only on one man. He moved with the elegance of a ballerina yet the power of a lion. Behind me someone sniffed at his beauty. Bolt - his name stood true, easily three steps ahead of the competition.
Suddenly, an ear splitting sound deafened the audience and we all ducked our head as though expecting it to save us from the source of the noise. When I lifted my head a second later I saw the men on the track had stood still at its sound. They were looking around them, hoping for some explanation. None came. Men who seconds before had stood as heroes were now level with us, meir men. Everyone was looking around us not knowing entirely what had happened or what to do, but I think that part of us knew, to some extent, the source of the noise for we remained silent. After a few minuets the big screens around the stadium lit up again, though this time they brought no joy, no view of sports stars, but one of parliament - or what was left of it. Where the houses of Parliament had once stood was now a mass of rubble on the ground. Amongst the crumbled old brick a few motionless bodies could be spotted covered in blood. No presenter was on the screen, I wouldn't have heard there words if there was. The presenters were all here as were the best of our defences. People around were screaming and tears were upon nearly every face. Beside me my mother was as pale as the corpses still on the screens. Many people were scrambling over the seats and down the stairs to leave the grounds, others, like me and my mother, we glued to our seats. Those trying to escape soon gave up when the realised that after the police, security members and what i assume were members BI (British Intelligence) agents had left the grounds all exists had been shut off. We thought to keep us safe - how wrong we were.
People screamed, hid behind chairs in front or tried again to escape the stands, but now men identical to those on the grass below stood guarding all stair ways. I wished I could scream, but when I opened my mouth I found that my thought was dry and unable to form words. Blindly my left hand had wondered, searching for the hand of my mothers. When I found it she caught my gaze and, knowing we could die there, I stared back for a moment hoping my look told her that loved her when my words failed me. Something hard beat into my back breaking our gaze. I turned, a man with a white turban was barging his way through the crowd. As my eyes followed him I found this was true throughout the stadium. Tin soldiers were there, searching.
What seemed like years passed as we all sat there trembling. Until a gunshot was fired. The man at the centre of the ring had raised a hand into the air and fired a shot with the pistol which had previously been at his waist. A call for silence. It came instantly. The men who had been walking through the audience now joined there conrads hundreds of metres below, but they were not alone. Each was holding his gun to the back of someone in front of him. A voice rose "We are the Taliban" the man at the centre of the circle had began to speak. "We are here to carry out the the work of Allah. These people have sinned! they control and manipulate you and try to force you to follow their wrongs. By doing so they are spitting at Allah, they are cursing his name and for this they must be punished! They are killing the kingdom of Allah and so for justice we must kill them!" My sight was blinded by tears now but I was grateful to no longer be able to see for a few seconds later he resisted the names of those who would soon be rotting at his feet - this way I could pretend it was just a nightmare. At only the second name realisation struck the crowd. Politicians, royalty anyone with a position of power from any country was standing bellow. There were people from Kenya, Australia, Japan, China, America but mainly they were from the land where we stood the United Kingdom. After each name was called a series of gun shots were fired, followed by a gasp and cry from onlookers.
After what must have been at least half an hour the names stopped being called. Now I lifted my head from my hands and saw pools of red surrounding those laying on the grass, dead. "You are all cowards." The voice spoke again. "How dare you not watch as justice is served! Allah shall not allow it!" At this he held out his right hand and one of the Taliban members from the surrounding circle handed him his gun. He clasped it loosely in his right hand, pointed randomly at an area of the crowd and held down the trigger. With every breath I take I can hear the firing of that gun and the screams which followed. The direction where the gun was being fired was a motion of scurrying ants and blood.
I awoke from my fixation on these poor victims now, they had been dead since that murdering terrorist had held the gun. But I wasn't. Everyone around me was moving frantically towards the exit. A signal bellow had been given, open fire. The other men standing near him joined his course by firing at us, all of us. Slaughter. All order was lost. Rows of people were falling like rag dolls all around me.I'd been a atheist all my life but in that moment I longed for a God, some greater power to keep me alive. Something hit my feet, unfortunately my head was facing downwards to avoid seeing other tragedies. Familiar eyes were looking up at me but their reflections were fading as I stared into them. My mothers lips trembled for a second before falling limp and her face hell onto its side. We'd never been close, but in that single moment I longed for a life where we had been. Trembling, my legs began to kneel beside her until the chair behind me shattered into millions of peaces into my side. No time to shed a tear, it wasn't over for me yet. Weaving in and out of people I payed no attention to anything but my escape. The real world didn't exist, yet this was the real world, but how could it be? Something flew past my side as I scrambled over the back of a chair, but I had to ignore it. Onwards. One final push and the stairway was in front of me. Life was before me. Searing pain hit my leg, the force of which made me fall down those stairs. My body smashed into the concrete flooring. Nobody paid attention to my smashed body, but I'd be a hypocrite if I claimed that I would have done. Feet stomped around making it impossible for me to stand. Pain shot through my skull and black absorbed me.
I awoke. Around me was a deserted concrete cage. Blood was stuck to the walls, floor, everywhere as though it was a means of decoration. What had happened here? The answer struck me immediately. Guilt shot through my entire body at the thought that for a second I had forgotten. Blinking, I hoped I'd fallen into some alternative reality. I blinked, but when i re-opened my eyes all was the same.
A liquid took hold of my hands as I tried to stand up. Apparently the devils from the night before hadn't bothered to clean up. I continued my attempt at standing. Upon reaching my feet my left leg gave way so I flailed my arms around for the wall in order to prevent myself from returning to that lower level hell. My eyes searched my leg for the source of my stumble. Half way down my leg there was a tear in my jeans which a trickle of blood still flowed from. I'd been shot! There was a hole in me and I was sure that if I it wasn't for the blood I could have seen through from one side of my leg to the other. Having a weak stomach, which I had always despised, I clenched my fist against the cold wall so as not to vomit. For a second I paused, listening for any sound which might suggest that I was not alone. When none such sound came I began hobbling in the direction which the remaining half of the exit sign suggested.
Sunlight met my face at long last, but no hope did it give me. I had entered a grave yard surrounded by a land of ghosts. It was as though in those few hours of my unconscious state hell had grown and spread across the Olympic town. Just a day before a land of dreams, today a land of no man. The pathway in front of me was a path of bodies, men, woman, athletes, children. Again my stomach tightened, except this time I was unable to control it so my disgust erupted onto the stained pavement at my feet.
After recovering I journeyed on, though my leg protested with every step.Squinted eyes had guided my way as I preyed that no recognisable face would reach my gaze but I did not dare to check the lifeless figures in case. Silence echoed around me.
Signs from the rampage continued into the high street. Remains from cares stood abandoned in the middle of the road under circling gulls. Many buildings hissed at me as I limped past, its faint puffs of smoke trying to grabbed me and pull me into its ambers which looked like devils eyes. Hooded figures appeared occasionally appeared through smashed glass with expensive equipment in hand, but the hardly gave me a second glance. They new, the world new, I was broken. So there I stood a broken man on the first day of London's two year shadow.
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