Things Can Change Quickly

It was very dusty. Everyone was dusty. The American stood near the rubble that had been a large building with lots of bright neon signs on the street side. There was debris in the road. Obviously, there had been a miscalculation. With its empty space missing, the building's many stories had been reduced to less than three. To be fair, there was a lot of debris in the road as well. Just less than you might expect.  He stood there for a long time, at a respectful distance.

People, normal people, with grim faces, were starting to scramble up the broken boulders of concrete, through the dust and twisted and mangled rebar, in case there had been any survivors. He swatted a mosquito off his face. Most dangerous animal in the world, he thought.

"Go zai na li?" someone shouted.

"May yo, may yo dow da."

Everyone ignored him.

A lot of thought had gone into that building. A lot of thought and a lot of work. The scale of the city was hard for him to grasp in terms of human effort. People had lived in there, worked there, and slept there. It would have taken several hundred pounds of fertilizer to have had the same effect on that building.

No one bothered to take charge anymore. Their reaction was like ants on a kicked-over hill. It looked like Godzilla had attacked.

A man in dark blue flip flops spit bright red bin lang into the thick white dust. The dust contracted around it into a thin beady line. A helicopter thumped overhead. The American felt far from home.

Things can change quickly in this part of the world.