The group of decathletes was in the third of five legs of competition. The sun beat down mercilessly on the few runners still outside. The leader was already well inside and almost finished with the gymnastics section.
The crowd outside began screaming and the tall dark haired leader of the group paused briefly as the crowd began to panic. He had noticed the sky had turned a harsh red color and then he heard the noise of crashing rocks.
The crowd didn't make it through the doors, and the last athlete, instead of running, dove into the stadium as a flaming rock crashed down, closing off the exit, or entrance to any remaining living spectators.
The last athlete looked up sorrowfully. "All gone."
The other decathletes stopped short as they headed for the obstacle course. One of them was at the parallel bars right below the open glass skylight. She did a perfect landing just beyond the limit of the skylight's farthest light, and in crashed a flaming rock.
The crowd was screaming and ran out into the smaller tunnels, leaving it totally deserted, and a few smarter people inside the large arena. One girl sat crying and hugging her knees in the corner. The ceiling above her was cracking and she was sobbing too loud to notice. The lead decathlete was paying a little attention still and he saw the small figured curly blond haired girl huddled in a sobbing mass under the cracking weight of the buckling ceiling. He tore across the gym expanse, dodging judges chairs and scooping her small body into his arms and leaping out of harms way just as a heavy piece of cement came crashing down, destroying the aluminum bleachers she had just been sitting on.
Vincent cradled the girl in his arms as the other decathletes huddled around him. Each one had a different expression, changing from thanks to terror as he panned the view of their faces. Bry, his roommate, stood closest, and smoothed the hair from the unconscious girl's forehead. She had a light bruise on one temple, and she looked rather peaceful. Tiff, Diane, and Nicole stood at the innermost as the rocks continued to rain down on the building. None of the boys would have let them out had the girls wanted to, and the building shook. For a few breathless moments Vincent thought the entire building would collapse.
Then everything was silent. The few adults in the room were gasping for breath, holding their hearts, and eventually keeling over and falling stiffly to the ground. Vincent hugged the girl tighter to him where he kneeled in the center of the other nine decathletes. Vince thought for an awful moment about the crowds of people that had been outside when the rocks had begun to fall, but quickly turned his mind away from such things.
Tiff began to cry. "Tiff, what is it?" Vince asked, the only one able to get up the courage to speak.
"My parents were out there."
Vincent grimaced. He had talked his parents out of coming to the Alaskan competition by sure luck, or was it? But he knew that many of the other competitors had not, and entire families had come to see the progress of their kin. George, who did not shed a tear and had been just behind him in the running, he knew to be one of those who had his entire family present. He thought he could make out similar expressions on the faces of Mark, Bobby, and Danny.
"Look, I know a lot of us had family out there…"
George snapped. "Shut up Vince, we all know you didn't. Just shut your trap!"
"But we have to think about ourselves now. We have to survive, so that they have not lived in vain."
Bry looked up. "You sound as if, this is happening elsewhere." He said aside to him.
"I don't doubt it."