The girl ran through the streets in a panic, holding her dog close to her chest as her eyes were clenched shut. She tried her best to block out the screams, the screeching of metal against stone, the booming thunder of explosions and bursting tires. She just had to make it home, that was all. It was just a nightmare, and as soon as she opened her door she'd wake up.
Fifteen more steps, and she could open her eyes again. She'd measured this path in her head so many times in case of an emergency, but this was not what she was expecting. Dust caught in her lungs as her chest heaved, her muscles burned as she stumbled, and coughed. Within a second, she had hit the ground, twisting herself upon instinct to protect the dog within her--
The dog was gone. Her heart threatened to shatter her ribs as she scrambled to find him, groping the pavement and soil within her reach. Had she dropped him? She didn't remember letting go of him, she was sure there was no way in Hell that she would have loosened her grip.
The approaching roar of an airliner engine brought a sinking acceptance to her mind. She had to open her eyes. She had to see. She had to find him. She peeled her eyelids apart with what felt like all she had left, just in time to see the massive jet that deafened her dive overhead by what must have only been yards as it glided towards the ground. More screams rang out as it vanished behind neighborhood rooftops, replaced by a pillar of fire like she'd never seen before. She lifted a hand to adjust her glasses, and froze as soon as it hit her peripheral.
Her attention locked onto her palms, horror clogging her throat as she saw them coated with dark soot. Realization bashed into her skull, filling her eyes with tears as the final images of her classmates surged to the forefront of her mind like an unwanted monsoon. She refused to accept it, she must have only dropped him! He had to be near, he just had to be! Please, God, he was all she had!
"Spike!" She cried out in desperation, her voice hoarse and cracking as the tears and fear finally cascaded outwards like an ocean behind a dam. Rationality crumbled while her heart shattered, and her gut churned as if in preparation to evacuate whatever lunch she had brought herself to eat.
That's when she felt it, a tearing sensation deep in her core. It felt like every part of her was being thrown into a blender filled with ignited napalm, and every sensation except the pain was registering. Her nerves dried, her bones blistered, and her skull was clogged as if by a flu. The world around her started to fade, her vision falling as the once deafening sound of the end of days fell away into the cold silence of a cruel winter night. She barely glanced forward in time to see her parents approaching her, crying her name. She reached a hand out to them in desperation of feeling their presence one last time, unable to hear her own broken scream as the hand she outstretched began to blow away like ash.