I’m cold and the left side of my nose is clogged and there’s a bug crawling around on the floor that I can’t see properly. It skitters across the hard, damp concrete, a tiny blur of motion. I don’t have my glasses. I don’t have any tissues either. When the alarm sounded, I raced to the bunker with only my homework and pencil.

I inhale, exhale. The stale air breaks against the blockage in my left nostril and I grimace with discomfort. I wish I had a tissue to blow my nose, or to squish the bug. The insect gradually creeps closer and closer. Normally, I’d just get out of the way, but I can’t move an inch in this cramped room without bumping into Greg or Aunt Lucille.

Crash! The bunker shakes ever so slightly. I contort my body, trying to avoid the scurrying bug and tracking it with my fuzzy vision. It moves toward me, sensing a hiding place. My stomach twists with anxiety.

Greg stands up, the top of his fluffy, brown hair touching the ceiling, and steps forward purposefully. Tap, tap. I realize I’m fidgeting with my pencil and stop, just as Greg smashes his foot down on the bug. Now, it’s a blurry mush.

“Gross,” I say.

Greg shrugs. “It was bothering you.”

“It’s bothering me more now.”

Even these meager words echo back, unable to escape out our bolted door. Greg just shakes his head and sits back down on the other side of the room. I scooch away from the crushed insect, mildly nauseated, and tap my pencil some more.

“Do your homework, Sadie,” Aunt Lucille sighs.

I reluctantly return to the torturous boredom of my algebra equations. The bunker trembles again and the numbers are dislodged, swimming around in my mind. I chase them, collecting each divisor one by one and slotting it into place.

The gray graphite in my pencil matches the gray of our stone walls and the dull silver cans of unappetizing food stacked halfheartedly in the corner. Everything is quiet other than the scritch-scratch of my pencil clawing into the paper and our shallow breathing. The bomb sirens have long since gone silent—anyone who is not already in a bunker has certainly realized the danger. None of us speak.

When I am halfway through my homework, I hear the loud chimes of the all-clear bell. Tucking my pencil behind my ear, I leap to my feet, avoiding the bug-spot on the ground. Greg and Aunt Lucille follow as I ascend to the surface.

I step out onto our house’s ground floor. The air is fresher than in the bunker, but filled with tiny particles of dust and the unmistakable scent of smoke. The bell continues to ring, broad tolls obscuring the telltale whistle of sharp metal against air, which grow louder and higher as the bomb tumbles to the Earth—

The world pitches sideways and my vision goes black for a moment. Light returns along with excruciating pain as I find my legs pinned under a heavy beam of concrete. I hack up dust until my cough slips into a scream.

My eyes focus on the bright, orange flames devouring the polished hardwood floor. I spot a tiny bug scuttling away from the heat, desperate for safety. Vaguely, I wonder if there’s an infestation beneath our feet or in our walls or in our ceiling. We should call the exterminators.

I scream again, tears streaming down my face. The concrete beam crushing my bones won’t budge. My vision spins like a carousel to the music of the all-clear chimes. The insect crawls steadily toward the bunker as the fire closes in.

Another bomb-whistle. I desperately scan the wreckage for Greg and Aunt Lucille, but I find no one. All I can see is the black that fills my vision and shifts to gray, to nothing, as my world explodes.