Next day, Doctor Zeilke’s Clinic, 3rd Story up, 4:36 p.m.

Zoie lay awake in a hospital bed, sincerely bored with no one to talk to (Zoie’s parents had gone on another walk), watching the television program overhead.  CNN news was on; seeing as Zoie could not find the remote to switch the channel.  Perhaps the most boring television news, CNN was reporting on a never-ending loop the shooting two days ago; the one she had experienced.  The one where she had been shot.  The one that nearly scared her to death, as if she already wasn’t.  Especially since she had recently had surgery to remove the bullet.  To Zoie, everything was a blur and seemed to blend together.  She remembered walking out of her parent’s house down to the corner store since they were bickering as usual.  She had opened the door for a rude, half-drunk man (something she’d never forgive herself for doing) and watched him storm inside.  She recalled cursing the man and entering the store, slamming the door behind her, twisting around, and heading for the freezer section.… By which point the man had drawn a blackish object from his inner pocket.  Blindingly bright color appeared… the male cashier was on the ground… ear-splitting noise blared through the room… Zoie remembered screaming… the man turned… whatever was that awfully loud noise he had made?

Gun shot, idiot, thought Zoie.  He shot you with a bullet.

            It was then an RPG rocked the very air and smashed through a window a floor below, flew across the room, and erupted in the opposite wall, inspiring a chain-reaction explosion. 

It’s a wonder how anyone can possibly survive.

Wooding Park, Washington.

            “Well, Arthur, you and I will often decide to differ, but we both know—and Doctor Zeilke knows—that I support and help Zoie more than you”—

“Molly!  Would you please drop the subject!  Zoie will come out of this fine; we will talk to her about it and start her on a new life.  How does that sound?”

“All I was saying was that”—

A deafening noise wrung the atmosphere.

“What was that?” questioned Molly, her voice shaking.

“What was what?”

“Are you deaf, Arthur?  The noise!”

“Probably just a car alarm or something”—

Precipitously, chips of solid concrete, shrapnel, fire and rock showered above all three persons.  Under sheer weight of the objects, every person was simultaneously killed.  Perchance a block away, wheels screeched and engines roared, confirming someone’s departure.