Day 207 - Volcano

 VOLCANO

Prompt - Volcano : Write about an eruption of a volcano

The grey people.  With their grey possessions, boarding a grey train.  The ash was universal now.  It got into hair, eyes, mouths.  It was the surface you walked on, through, it was piled up against the walls, it blew in through doors and windows and through the slightest cracks.  The ash had been falling for... he stopped to try and remember how many days it had been now, but time no longer had any connection with reality.  All there was left was the ash, the heat, the noise, the vibration, the steady flow of the red-gold-white death and destruction that was now less than half a kilometre from the outskirts of the town.  That and the final few people.  The key workers who'd kept things going, the medical staff who'd remained, the rail engineers making sure that the line would still be clear, a few fire fighters to put out the blazes that were becoming more and more frequent as red hot gobbets of molten rock joined the ash fall, the police who'd been pointlessly assigned to stop looting a few stragglers who'd tried to resist the inevitable, and some of his own staff.  And him.  Like the captain of a sinking ship, the mayor had to be the last to leave.  Had to be seen to be last, for there were a few journalists too, and one camera crew too, although how their equipment continued to work under the descending blanket was a mystery to everyone else.

He looked around to see if there was anything left to be done.  The intense background rumble rendered shouting redundant, so he had to wave wildly to a couple of police and direct them to get those journalists on board.  Immediately.  Everyone else seemed to be doing as they'd been told.  The stationmaster came up and leant in close to ask if he could get his staff on now.  He nodded agreement, indicated urgency of movement.

There was another explosion of gloopy thunder that shook the land and rattled the structure of the station.  What little remained of the overhead glass shattered in the flexing of the metal frame, a few more overhead fittings fell down, the whole edifice leaned over a bit more.  It didn't have much longer.  It was time to go.

Once last look round.  His own staff were now looking at him expectantly. He waved them on, started walking towards this, the last train to leave the town.  Perhaps the last train ever.  From the town he'd been born in, had lived in for most of his life, the town that would soon become a modern day Pompeii.  Seventy kilometers from here, along those ash-submerged tracks, his family waited.  There was home now.