Under The Rubble

• Curtis Goding, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2008

As dust filled the sky the enchanting rays of the sun were interrupted. The sinister and eerie tone of George Street was created by the sirens, the stench of death under your feet and the ever constant echo of screams from the buildings crushing in the blaze. For the first time in over 150 years no skyscraper nor house, no billboard or street light shone up into the watching eyes of the stars.

The date was the 5th of September 2008, the North Korean air forces undertook a pre-empted strike on the Americans, the threat of war had been but a taste on all of our lips. Everybody knew that the Koreans were armed and ready; the thought of a nuclear war, the last war for humanity gave me a chill down my spine. “A test,” said the American president George Bush, Sydney was merely a demonstration of the fury and power which lied on the Asian soil. They had no regard for human life, at the press of a button 3 million people perished without a trace.

Many people were outraged with the government one Michael Fisher became the leader of A.B.A (anti bombing association) with an astonishing 10 thousand people who signed up. The world, our world was sick of inhumanity and they fought to make a bomb free globe. they succeeded but at what cost even today, George Street lies in ruin, bodies still trapped under the rubble.

My name is Andrew Piper and that day my dad Edward and my mum Karen went into the city they were scheduled to have lunch at the exclusive La Fredrick restaurant on Darling Harbour at 1.30. They never made it. Like many others they were doomed, trapped in the car buried by metres of rubble on George Street. They told me it would have been a quick painless death, but can you imagine suffocating on concrete and plaster until you became weighed down by your own lungs. The lasts words I said to my mum were, “When will you be back?” little did I know or anyone else for that matter that my family became simple, a foster child. From that day I was forever lost in my thoughts and my dreams, constantly sinking into depression. As I lie here on the hospital bed, like a baby cub lost in the dark woods, all I can do is hold on.