BANG! “We need to hurry! Now!” I yelled over my shoulder to the group of people I was leading out of the now burning building. This was our life now, running from the bombers everywhere we went. They always seem to find us. BANG! They were getting closer now. “Quickly!” I turned down a hallway. We ran to the far door. “Into the tunnel! Hurry! Hurry! Mike, Sally, Hannah, Charlie, Chloe, Sam… Where’s Nick!?”

“I’m coming!” He had just turned the corner into the hallway. I could hear the bombs coming even closer now.

“Hurry, they’re almost on top of us!” Run! Then just as I thought he would make it, he tripped. “Get up! You need to get up!” He looked at me, the sadness in his eyes was scared me. Go he mouthed. Then BANG!

I suddenly hear a terrifying scream, a scream that I would never hear stop ringing in my ear, and then I realized it was coming from me. The heat was too much too much to bear as the hallway started to burn. The light was blinding. I went running to him, but I was suddenly being pulled through the door, into a dark tunnel that would give us the protection we needed. “No! Let go of me! We have to save him! We have to!”

“Mina, he’s gone. There is no saving him now. I’m sorry.” Bobby, the second oldest of our group, said.

“But he can’t be gone. He can’t! I promised him I would keep him safe. He can’t be gone!” I slowly started to fall to the ground when Bobby caught me. “We have to keep moving, or else we too will die.”

“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” I whispered.

Bobby just ignored me. When I wasn’t moving from my spot, refusing to go any further without Nick, he slung me over his shoulder, and I went numb.

I remember feeling the rhythm of Bobby’s step, swaying back and forth. I remember hearing people talk, but not what they were saying. My mind just kind of shut down, some people might even call it shock.

At some point, I must have blacked out, because I was waking up in a room I don’t remember coming to. It was one of our hideouts in the tunnel, and I recognized the pictures on the walls, the paper strewn across the table in the center of the room where we did all our planning. I looked around, and everyone must have still been asleep. There were far too many empty cots, just another reminder of everyone who was gone.

Then it hit like a bowling ball to the gut. Nick. Who knew that one name could cause someone’s entire world to go upside down, spinning in a tornado going around and around and around, only to be thrown into a sea to sink further and further into the murky darkness, until you hit rock bottom. I could not help but wonder why his life had to be taken. Why did my little brother have to die? Why would God do this to me? After everything I was doing, why did he take my brother from me!? Then the tears came, and they didn’t seem ever to stop, just a waterfall of emotion cascading down my face, gathering into a pool on my pillow, or what was left of the pillow.

I could not understand why God would take Nick from me. Not after everything we had been through for Him. The last two years we had to run and hide, secretly spreading the word about Christ. Trying to escape the bombers, who were trying to kill us, because we believed in something so marvelous, that it made them full of jealousy and hate, or at least that’s what we told ourselves. I had promised that I would take care of Nick. I promised our parents and him. How could I have let this happen to him!? How could God let this happen to him!?

I laid there silently for what felt like an eternity, questioning myself and God, when out of the corner of my eye I see the light. I turn to look at it. What I saw made my heart jump ten feet out of my chest.

There he was Nick, standing there with guy I had never seen before, but felt like I had known all my life. When I turned to look at them, they smiled. Nick smiled! It had been a long time since I had seen that lopsided, gappy toothed, grin. I couldn't help but smile back. I sat there, just staring at them. Nick looked so happy and at peace. The man with him held a sense of love and kindness about Him. They started to blur, so I wiped the last of the tears away, but when I looked back, they were gone.

I knew then that everything we were going through would be worth it. God didn’t take Nick to torment me; He had taken him to give him peace. All the pain we have gone through, all the running, hiding, hoping, and praying, is worth it.

“Everyone up!” I yelled. “We have work to do!” They all sat up and looked at me as if I was crazy, and in a way I was. “I said let’s move it. Our work is not finished yet!.” Then the loudest noise we had ever before heard deafened our ears. “They must have found us again,” someone said, then…
BANG!