It's really nice to be back guys, hopefully not too many of you have left. i'd like to preface that this is a slow chapter...

Chapter One

Lauren was running home from school, clutching the marked paper in her hand tightly. She was so excited about that was on the paper that she didn’t think about the fact that her lively hands would wrinkle it. It was only a block left to daddies house, and as she ran she fished her key from her pocket and held it readily in her free hand. She imagined the smile on his face once she flew into his arms as she did every day when she saw him. She imagined his smile growing, his crooked smile revealing his inconsistent teeth as he took the paper from her hands and read the 100 on it.

Through the door she exploded, at first fumbling with her key in excitement and anticipation. Her dad was at the couch, reading the newspaper and stroking their cat, Pluto. Once he heard the door reached he looked up and their eyes met. In that second Lauren’s emotions elevated to a euphoric state like it always did when she saw her dad and before she even realized it she was running head over heels at him. He was there in time to catch her and spin her gracefully high his head. This was one of the few times she was glad that she was small for her age.

“Look, look daddy, I got an A on my first test!” She exclaimed giddily. “It’s my first test in highschool, and I got a perfect score!”

His eyes went form her face to the test as he grabbed the paper form her, just as she imagined. He skimmed through the test, looking briefly at the questions and answers before looking back at her and kissing her forehead.

“That’s my girl,” He said, tussling her hair. Lauren, still overjoyed, squirmed from his grasp and snatched the paper, headed to the refrigerator to mark another moment in time. As she ran paced the paper under a magnet she thought about how good it would be to ace every test the way she did that one. She’s not a straight A student, or at least she wasn’t in middle school. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t try, as she was often out of school for sicknesses or too tired to do her work. But so far she’s turned in almost every assignment, and plans to keep it that way/

After the test was hung, she took her backpack and ran to her room, ready to get started on her homework. Daddy gave her a smile as she passed him in a dash for the steps. Hopefully, she would keep getting A’s so daddy would stay happy. She didn’t like it when he was upset.

*** ***

Wyatt was absentmindedly petting the cat while reading a newspaper article on the new vaults that were opening up all around MIchigan. He heard that the vaults “are the safest place in America” fortified and heavily concealed underground. That they were a surefire way that when the bombs dropped, you’d be ensured easy living, even up to a hundred years within its confines. Wyatt sighed heavily to himself. The thing about the vaults were, they weren’t cheap. In America, even safety wasn’t free. You had to pay to use the bathroom in most major buildings, and the price for everything was only rising over the years. Wyatt, having not earned a college degree, worked in a car manufacturing plant, and every day when he acme home he would worry that he’d get that dreaded note that he’d been laid off. All around Detroit, the factories and corporations were replacing their human workers with robotic counterparts. With the efficiency and certified hard work the robots can put in, why waste your time with the unreliability of humans and their laziness.

Just then his daughter came trough the door, and all the worrying and fussing had vanished, at least for the moment. She always had a way of doing that, making him forget about the worries and the problems. The only other person who could do that was Lily, his wife. But now that she’s gone Lauren was the only women in his life.

They talked for a while about her test and then she ran in the kitchen before going upstairs. He put the paper down and rested his head on the couch, hand still on his cat, who slept peacefully on his lap.

When he woke up, the cat was no longer on his lap. Judging by the spectrum of orange and pink light creeping through the window, it was getting late. Probably around seven thirty, so he got up, stretched, and headed for his room. ON the way, he stopped and opened his daughters door to check in on her. He was sitting sideways on the bed, some gaming device in her hands. He smiled at that. When he was younger, all he used to do was read. If he wasn’t looking at textbooks, he was reading books of his own choice. That was how he met his wife, in a library. To see a girl that reminded him so much of her without so much as a book in her room, always made him smile.

He closed the door and walked to the bathroom, getting ready to go to bed. Tomorrow, he would have to get to work early. As of October 23rd, his shift started an hour early.

Little did he know, as of October 23rd his life would change forever.

WELCOME BACK

Hope you had a good time.

Anyway, on to the story at hand, in short, it's nicely written, doesn't seem to be a lot to complain about at first glance.

One change is that your daddies when I think you meant daddy's. But whatever, characters have depth and emotion. Alternating person perspective, I see, interesting. I wonder if you'll keep it that way, the daughters perspective followed by the fathers perspective opens up a lot of possibilities and I look forward to see what your going to do with them, have to say, best written one yet, keep it up.

Good Luck.

Thank you Ytt, look forward to the next tomorrow at the latest. And it'll pick up in the next story, I promise.

Chapter 2

Lauren sluggishly shuffled across the living room floor to the kitchen and reached through the cabinet for some Instamesh. She hated eating the processed junk, but it was the only thing she had time for today, because she needed to take her pills today. Once a week she would grab two extra containers out of the bathroom when she woke up, and now both were uncapped in her hands. She reached into the fridge and grabbed some Nuka-Cola, then popped one of the pills into her mouth. This one was the daily dose of vitamins with some chemo-theraqeutic minerals that helped her immune system fight the bacteria. After she swallowed a mouthful of the Cola she waited for it to travel to her stomach before taking the second. This one was bi-weekly, and it was used to counteract the other pills, and fought the side effect of the chemo, which was hair loss, pale skin, and rashes. The second pill always made her nauseous for a while, so she sat o the couch and rested her head on the back.

Pluto, her cat, jumped up on to her lap, purring soothingly. Sliding his slender figure under her hand the way cats do when they want attention. Time went passed as she collected her thoughts. She was used to the feelings, she had leukemia all her life, but that didn’t mean she liked having to deal with it. It got tiring after a while, but it didn’t get in the way all too much. When the worst of it passed, she got up from the couch and walked out the door on the way to school.

*** ***

Wyatt picked up the lunchbox containing his Blamco Mac and Cheese and Pork ‘n’ Beans. It was around 12:30, his lunch time over at the Cortana Car Factory. He was one of the assembly men, who worked the conveyor belt, applying parts here, disassembling them there. He used to work alongside other men, who became his friends over the years. Now, half the workers were replaced by robots. Mr. Handy’s now levitate the factory where men once stood. He rarely spoke at his job now, and the lunch room was empty save to two other people. One of them, Barney, he actually knew. He was the oldest remaining worker at the factory. They talked as Wyatt heated his food.

“So how’s Lauren?” Barney asked, nibbling at his sandwich.

“She’s good, holding in there. As for myself I can’t complain.” He noticed the slight shaking in Barney’s hand as he raised the sandwich to his face to eat it. The man was getting old. It was a wonder he was still in the factory. All all people to layoff it would be him, what with his age his accuracy and touch must not have been what it used to. Maybe it was his age that kept in in the factory. That he was more of a relic now than an actual asset. An antique that had been around for so long you keep it just for the namesake. Wyatt went so far as to wonder if the board of executives were still human. Maybe the robots were replacing tho whole company. The food was dne, he took it out and laid it on the table. “Tired of this job, thats for sure. And these automated machines that we work with now don’t help. You try to talk to one of them?”

“Yeah, and the damn thing almost scorched me to death,” Barney spat, taking another mouse-sized bite.

“Yeah, pretty soon this place will be fully self-sufficient,” Wyatt said, before taking his own bite. They ate in silence for a while after that, listening to the commercials playing on the TV in the background. That’s all TV’s played now, commercials. Then, the screen flipped to a news screen. Wyatt half-listened to the reporter, probably another reminder of the imminent war to come, and to stay safe in the coming weeks, blah, blah, blah. One of the robots began to stop working and spoke.

“Security operation 1.14 initiated. Catastrophe hazard. Code Red mode activated.”

All around the factory the machines began to say that, repeating it and repeating it. They began to flash their lights red move about. Barney was still eating, he hadn’t risen, but his eyes were fixated on the TV.

“Wyatt, I think you should turn up that TV,” he croaked. Wyatt obliged, turning it up. What he heard shocked him beyond anything he’d heard in his life.

“This just in, China has fired, I repeat, China has fired! As of 12:15, China issued its first nuclear missiles on America! As of right now we are returning fire, but for those of you who are by your TV’s, please head to safety. Head to the vaults, or your basemants, or out of town. We have confirmed Washington D.C. is on the list of impact zone cities, as well as New York, Dallas. No warnings have been given that it will hit Michigan. We have approximately thirty minutes till first impact.”

Wyatt was on his way out now, on his way to Blue Maple Highschool for his daughter, who likely didn’t know what was about to happen. He needed to get to his baby girl, make sure she was safe. He didn’t care to say goodbye to Barney, but ran outside where he found others pooling into the streets, looking at the sky. Some were pointing, some were murmuring. He scanned the sky, looking for it, then he found it. Right above the horizon missiles were flying, about the size of belugas*. He counted seven of them, scattered about dotting the sky like blotched inkspots. He began to run.

*** ***

Lauren was confused, tried, lost, and most of all, scared. She wanted her dad. She didn’t like the state of panic everyone was in, scattering about in the streets. She saw the dots in the sky. The missiles. She knew what was happening, but she didn’t know where her dad was. She was on the verge of tears now, so lost, no one to calm her down. Then she figures her dad must be at work, and ran in the direction of the Cortana Factory.

Her hands were beginning to break out into a sweat as she ran. Her long lack hair got caught on her now sticky face. With each step her bookbag jumped up from its disproportional weight. The tears that had once welled up on her eyes were gone, her sadness now replaced by stark fear. She had no idea if she would run into her dad, it was so hard to see with all the people milling about. Some walking, some jogging, some screaming, and every time Lauren looked back, the rockets were closer. She continued to run, waving through everyone, once again grateful for her small size, until she ran into Kater street. On the corner she saw daddy, panic stricken face searching for her before resting on her face. They pushed through the crowd, headed towards each other. As Lauren ran she tripped over something big, but somewhat soft and fell. She looked behind her at the large lump of mass she tripped over, a boy.

Her hands reached at the boy’s arm and she hauled herself up before trying to lift him off the ground.

“Come on, get up! Get up I can take yo to my house!” She yelled. Hands wrapped around her from her sides, the she was lifted off the ground with astonishing force.

“Dad,” she yelled. “We can’t just leave him here!”

“Its ok baby. The boy’s dead.”

Only then did she look at the boys disjointed face. The eye that was receded deep into its socket, the smashed face and distorted, red flesh where his lips used to be. She would never forget that boy’s face. Never.

As you all can see, I changes the name because I fell its less rushed and more fitting. Also, http://cache.virtualtourist.com/1553704-Travel_Picture-Detroit_skyline_at_sunset.jpg

Chapter 3

The first one fell before they made it to their house. It fell sooner than they Wyatt expected. He thought he’d have time to collect their things from the house. Get food, water, clothing, something. Just in case one landed near them. He was so distraught, so disoriented. He wasn’t sure what he should do. What if they packed their things and left out of Detroit only to be bombed on the way out of the city, in mid voyage in some random area in America? What if they left and Detroit didn’t get blown? How would they survive out there in the middle of nowhere. They would have nothing to live off of after the first week. But on the other side, what if he stayed and a bomb did drop? Then there was the vault, which was probably crowded to the brim.

These questions plagued him as he ran with his daughter tightly gripped in his hand to his house. Torn between what decision to make, which would be best. Picking his poison, his daughter’s poison . . . but the first one fell before they made it to their house. It landed with a deafening whistle, like a dog whistle at first. Then, as the ears adjusted to the new and alien sound, the roar and thunder of the impact was heard. It was at least a hundred mile from them, but he saw the mushroom cloud billowing, debris and dust flying quickly in all directions, heading towards them ferociously before suddenly subsiding, before the fallout started. Everyone stopped, everything stopped. All the commotion, the noise, it had all stopped for a precious few seconds. At first it was so eerily silent, but now they resumed the screeching and running, even more frantic and frenzied than before. Wyatt continued to the house, we was on the block now. All he had to make sure of was that he didn’t lose his daughter.

He bashed the door open even though there were keys in his pocket.

“Lauren, get your bags. Pack your things,” was all he said before running to the basemant to get his bag. He hurriedly threw in the food that he had prepared months ago for when the day came, if it ever came. Then came the clothes, both his and hers, before he ran upstairs straight to his room. He burst through the door and headed strait for the dresser, grabbing one single picture, one of his wife, Lily, and him smiling in front of a large valley. When they went to the Grand Canyon. His bag was full now, but he needed one more thing: a Glock 26, with laser sight. The one thing he didn’t throw away from his old days as a gangster. Lauren hadn’t seen it to his knowledge, but now it was necessary. With all his belongings gathered, he ran for his girls room, only to be lifted off his feet with astonishing velocity and into the wall. He was dazed for a couple seconds, but his adrenaline overpowered his dizziness, and he was up with his daughter in his arms before the next minute.

*** ***

A crowd had formed in front of Vault 144, and none of them were happy. The area was in a never ending uproar. A horde of civilians had all but clogged up the Vaults entrance, which was remotely located on the outskirts of the city. Wyatt caught bits an pieces of the protests.

“OPEN THIS F***ING DOOR!”
“LET US IN. THERE ARE KIDS OUT HERE!”
“WE DONT HAVE MUCH TIME!”

The bombs were coming more rapidly now, another dropped each minute, but not one since the last one back when hey were in the house. Wyatt imagined where Barney was, in the Cortana Car Factory, still sitting at the sofa, staring dumbfounded at the screen. With no one to hobble to, he was helpless. The people outside continued to yell incoherencies and obscenities outside. Wyatt looked down at Lauren, who look back at him, eyes pleading with perspiration, with a woeful anxiety. Her face was slightly grimy now. They had been waiting outside for the past hour, hoping against hope that the doors would open. That the citizens of the underground haven would welcome the people of Detroit with open arms and smiles. That they would all be ushered to their new sterile and unused rooms unlike to man motels him and his daughter had been in before they settled down. But none of that happened, there was a chance that they didn’t even hear the cries of despair coming from up top. Wyatt picked up his daughter and hugged her tightly. He was kissing her cheek when she lifted her face off the crevice in his shoulder, her face emotionless. Her eyes though, they were glimmering and in her eyes Wyatt saw the reflection and knew. He knew what the black shape was that was sinking in the ocean of blue-gray sky, lower and lower it went. Wyatt turned to look at it directly.

The size of it was astounding at such close distance. It was long, thick, and black with a crimson tip that blended with the sunset. It fell slowly for something its size, but Wyatt could make out that it was headed for the skyline, only a few miles from where they were. . .

Any comments anyone?

Intresting story, I'll look forward to additional chapters.

Though, the story did remind me a bit of my old one with them heading towards the Vault and all... but you did a much better job with it.

Chapter 4

Usually when devastation happens, its either one of two things: fast or short. When a volcano erupts, the time span of the eruption usually lasts for a long time, sometimes up to an hour of volcanic ashes and lava spewing and flooding, burning everything it touches. Or it can be fast, like when a tsunami hits an unsuspecting country side, taking out whole villages and towns in one fell sweep. Both are two opposite cases that ensue in two opposite timeframes, but what happened in Detroit Michigan on October 23, 2077, was both slow and fast. Wyatt had never seen something like it, nor had his daughter. Once the rocket hit the ground it erupted from the bottom up in a wall of flame, traveling up and outwards at first. All the buildings for the first block had exploded immediately, before the fire had even touched it. A wall of smoke, ash, and flames were being propelled towards the populace. People were screaming, running, but at the same time, everything was moving so slow. Everyone seemed to be running in slow motion, the noise drowned out.

Wyatt hadn’t realized that he wasn’t moving until his daughter shook him, almost knocking him off the ground with startling force. She was screaming now, and as Wyatt watched her, small specs of dust and debris began to fill the gap in between them, blot her face out of his sight until all he saw was brown, all he could breathe was brown, and then he was airborne. Falling upwards, then downwards, then upwards, spinning in the air. Everywhere he looked he saw brown, little rocks and big ones, sometimes the occasional body. While in the air he was even smacked by what he though was a rock, but he later realized to be a hand. Not long after he was in contact with a solid surface, a wall. He smacked against it, then tumbled down to the ground. He had no idea where his daughter was, or where he was for that matter. When he opened his eyes, he noticed there was a roof above him, from what used to be a whole building. And as he looked on, he noticed that the roof was falling down on him. He closed his eyes, and everything went black.

* * * * * *
Lauren could not breathe. Her vision was fading in and out on her, but she could see enough to tell that a persons arm as in front of her, coming from somewhere on top. She saw red drops falling from the hands middle finger, a pool of blood on the ground below. Except the ground wasn’t the ground, but a bright colored fabric. Pink cotton, it looked like. Lauren tried to look down, and managed to see blue, from what looked to be denim. Then she realized, with shocking horror, that she was laying on a body. And also, above her was another body. All around her were bodies, dead bodies. Her bookbag began to make noise as well, a meowing noise from a cat. Pluto, the cat she’s stuffed in her bag back at the house. She didn’t care much for Pluto at the time though, for her main focus was escaping the stack of bodies, finding a way out. She began to shift her weight from side to side, attempting to shake the body off of her. All she managed to do was make a fissure in which more toppled over her. Her breathing was rapid, labored now. He was coughing, and wheezing, and struggling. Writhing and yelling, punching until she at last reached her hand out into the open air. From then, she pushed away bodies and fought her way out to the open air, where he breath was cut short by the very element. The air was now putrid, and it stung her lungs to breathe it. She took her shirt off and folded it around her mouth. Once it was secured, she climbed down the sea of corpses until she made it to the ground safely. Then she remembered her father. Oh, her lovely father. At this she fell, she fell back to the ground, on all fours, and cried.

So does anyone have any suggestions as to where I should go next? I have a grand plan in mind already but I would like to see what you guys, the readers, are interested in. Also, I am the type of person who needs feedback, or else I'll doubt myself about it, so if you guys could please share a couple words before I have an anxiety attack. :vaultboy:

Very nice, very nice indeed, so the world has ended. And a new one has begun, so let give some of my advice on the very few, potential flaws of this story, however, I'll let you be the ultimate judge of your work.

As people often say detail is important in a story, you want to be careful, too much and it'll make the story restraining, or even boring. It's important to re read and cut back on some of your adverbs/adjectives, especially ones that are just repeating themselves. Even some of the descriptors can go, you make think by doing this that it won't have enough description and people won't be able to get a clear picture in their head. And that's true for a lot of these stories. But sometimes less is more and readers are very capable of imagination, so you don't need to describe everything, we can fill in blanks(as longs there aren't too many). That being said...



We can safely assume that since Wyatt, being much older than his daughter, having not seen this before, than neither has his daughter. Exceptions apply, but I think you could have removed the whole "nor" part and maybe switched with "his daughter stared in wonder" or take it all together.



Smoke and ash are pretty much the same thing(well similar enough) and so you can take out one. Too many adjectives is limiting, just two will suffice in most situations.


This is just plain awkward. You already people where running and everything was slow, and then you repeated it...Maybe if you just rephrased it to:

People were beginning to panic, screaming and running, it should have sounded loud, but it didn't. It was like the sounds were coming from the end of a long tunnel, barely audible. The world slowed to a crawl, time seemed to stretch and the moment lasted for an eternity...and then he snapped back to reality. The screams penetrated his ears, people sprinted pass him, he realized his...

Maybe over the top, but you get the picture.


I don't think their is a "later" for Wyatt. Being blasted into the air can leave one daze I hear, at any rate you wouldn't have time to realize what was hitting him with the speeds you implied. You could say "thought was a rock but seemed a little to soft" and leave it to the reader, that's just one option.


Too many adjectives, get rid of "coughing" or "wheezing".

So basically to sum it all up, the only problem would be your tendency to add more adjectives than needed. So keep it up,

Good Luck.

Thanks a whole bunch, Ytt. Now I know what to look out for in the future. I see you didn't have anything to say about the last part, which I take as a good thing. Even though the cause may be that you just didn't read it yet. I'm glad you mentioned the adjectives because I was debating weather it was overkill or not. This was my first time doing the actual explosion, and I felt it needed even the acute details. I wasn't sure how much was too much, and took a lot of the things you corrected from another book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. So it means alot that you corrected alot of the stuff that I got from there which means either its something that its not my style, or something im not doing right. The only thing I really want to justify is this:

Wyatt had never seen something like it, nor had his daughter.

I only added that because I wanted the reader's to remember that the girl was there, but I guess looking back it wasn't necessary.

I could justify all these, but I'll just leave it as is and improve on it in the future. I'm working on the next installment now, hopefully I can get it done before mom comes home. :sweat:

Here it is in all its glory. Thanks to wasteland scholar for giving me the in text hyperlinks.

After what seemed like an eternity, Lauren slowly arose from the ground, sniffling uncontrollably. Her knees and hands were now blistered and misshapen, clumps of tarmac resting in her palms due to how long she had been on the ground. Her throat was sore from the crying, and her eyes stung from a mixture of tears and other unknown chemicals that now lingered in the air. Reluctantly, she looked behind her at the large pile of bodies stacked on top of one another, and dry heaved. She would have actually vomited had she had anything in her stomach. She packed some food in her backpack, but thought better than to eat it at the time. A low, green fog had come over Detroit, and because of it, she couldn’t see more than a few meters in front of her.

With nothing of use behind her she walked on, following the road. You could see where destruction had taken its toll. Every minute Lauren would see another dead bodies off the side of the road, as if they had been shamelessly discarded by the hands of fate. She saw burt cars, still in flames. She could smell the burnt flesh as she walked. It wasn’t until around eight minutes of undeterred walking that she was stopped short by a noise. It sounded like a far away hissing, as if she had intruded on something’s unmarked territory. Some animal, some . . . beast. Through the fog she could make out a silhouette of what looked to be a human being. This did not ease her diluted mind, and she began to back away slowly.

“Zombies.” She uttered to herself silently, her voice muffled by her T-shirt. The silhouette, which was once trudging slowly, began to increase his speed until he was running. Then, Lauren was running in the opposite direction, head over heels. Gasping for air now, her mind racing.

“Get away, get away! Running zombies.” She screamed mindlessly until she was gripped up from behind and turned around. She was kicking and screaming for a short period of time before she realized that she didn’t feel teeth on her. She opened her eyes and looked at her skin, which was devoid of bite marks. Then she looked at the person’s face, which was like hers and not . . . zombie-like. She breathed out a sigh of relief and let her shoulders slump in the mans arms. His face was one of concern.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He asked, turning her around in his arms, examining her, then setting her down on the floor. Lauren nodded, and he let her go. Then she did something that neither of them had prepared for. She wrapped her arms around him and cried, cried to this complete stranger she didn’t even know. Cried to him like he was her father. At first, bewildered, the man raised his arms in shock. Then, slowly, his arms fell and he accepted her embrace. After some time he pulled her away and looked into her green eyes.

“I’m going to take you with me. I’m going to take you to safety. Everything will be all right.”

* * * * * *

It was some time before Wyatt had came to, and even more time still before he could fight his way from under the rubble. During that time he had realized he could no longer move his right arm. He must have dislocated it when he hit the building, or worse. After retching, due to the putrid smell of the now dead world, he set out, following an old road that lead to nowhere in particular. He tried not to think about his daughter, besides the fact that maybe she survived. Maybe, she had made it somewhere safe by now. On an on he walked, clutching his left arm. He had a slight limp on his right leg too, but his focus was on http://www.fblock.com/Nepal2006/Pictures/IMG_0340_s.jpg. He kept his eyes on the two yellow stripes below his feet as he walked.

He walked for a long time. He walked until his feet began to blister and his head went fuzzy. He walked until he began to cough, and blood began to show at his feet. He walked until he ran into http://farm1.static.flickr.com/15/91718466_d414fd3304.jpg, seemingly untouched against the explosion. It was nightfall now, and there were no lights coming from the building. He went to the double doors and opened them. All he was greeted by was blackness. He stumbled around in the dark for a second, his brain was beginning to fail on him now. He thought he saw a light at the back of the building. As he stumbled through the darkness, he bumped his bad leg on something hard and fell, yelling in agony. He hit the ground with impact, and when he looked up, his vision was fuzzy and somewhat fading. He tried to get up but couldn’t. From the light not too far away, he heard what sounded like footsteps coming up from stairs. As the door opened, he blacked out.

Have a post up either tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a picture of the main characters and some stuff. Enjoy.

http://lisafoxromance.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/thomas-jane.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45016000/jpg/_45016719_popplewell_getty.jpg

http://www.havetravelfun.com/images/2001/scotland/scotland01043.jpg

http://www.twinwolf.net/~tsb/old%20house.jpg

http://www.ilovephotoblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/detroit_01.jpg

Bump to remind the host

Thanks, and I by far have not forgotten this. Its just that one of the assets of having your own fanfic is that it can be put on the back burner if you have RP's to attend to. But I will have the post up by tonight hopefully.

When he came to, he was looking up at a cracked ceiling. There were shadows that seemed to be creeping across the ceiling coming from a corner in the room. A desk light. A man approached him in a white t-shirt, stained with blood. He had a face mask on covering his mouth, some ace wrap in his hand, and pliers in the other. He began to lift up Wyatt’s arm, which was facing the wrong way, with his palm facing behind him. Wyatt felt no pain though, and when he called out in query, no sound came out. In fact, he wasn’t even sure his mouth had moved. He tried to look at himself, but to no avail. He must’ve already been given anesthetic. The doctor, who he now saw to be female by the bun in the back of her head, but the pliers somewhere out of his peripheral, then pulled something out. He saw a piece of glass and rock with blood covering the whole thing. It looked like it came from his leg.

Then, the doctor jumped as it noticed Wyatt was in fact awake. After some time, she recovered and got a needle from somewhere near her and stuck it somewhere on Wyatt’s body. Then his eyes closed.
* * * * *

When he woke up again, he could actually feel his body, but then wished he didn’t. He ached in places he didn’t think he should. He rose slowly from the bed he was on and got up very slowly. He found some clean clothes on the floor in a corner waiting for him and dressed very, very slowly. After he was dressed in his jeans and shirt, he found his shoes and left the room.

The people were everywhere. They took up the whole basemant of a considerably sized house. Bodies coughing, much commotion. Men and women and children, on the floor talking, grieving, dying. Among them were three that looked to be in charge. Two people in lab coats, both with gray hair and blood stains, and a young brunette who wore simply a white shirt. All were waling among the room, tending to petty wounds, asking children if they needed anything. He realized that he had been rescued and taken to a shelter.

He found an area that wasn’t taken and sat down, wincing at the pain in his arm muscles as he leaned against the cold wall. Almost as soon as he sat down, the gray man was in front of him.

“So, you’ve come to.” He said, crouching on one knee. Wyatt nodded, and through a sore throat, muttered a “thank you.” The mere use of his voice was a relatively new action to him now, and it surprised him how raspy his voice became. He cleared his throat.

“We found you upstairs, passed out. There was a trail of blood behind you, did you know you were bleeding?”

Wyatt shook his head.

“You’ve been here for a good week. You were the first here, you know . . . or, you were the first here that survived.” They both looked away, thoughts of what the world has been reduced to creeping back into the foreground. Wyatt thought about Lauren.

“Here, I’m sure you want some real food,” the man said, reaching a paper bag from his pocket. It was pork’n’beans and a spork. “There’s food in that room there, so don’t worry ‘bout goin’ hungry. My name’s Dean. You can call me Mr. Van Damme.” He extended his hand, and Wyatt shook it.

* * * * * *
A Week Ago

Lauren had walked with the man for some time, before making it to the subway tunnels. That was where they lived. During the walk, he found out the mans name was Jesse, and that he was twenty, younger than her dad. The walk wasn’t as depressing as it was when she was alone, and there were small flakes of ash falling like snow from the sky. It was hard, holding the stranger’s hand the way she held daddies, but she didn’t cry. She was too dehydrated for tears. Besides, the stranger was somewhat comforting. Soon, they were at the tunnel entrance, and shortly after, they were behind closed doors, and Lauren was staring at a hispanic woman with a think, pale face. She looked up at Lauren, and her face went dark. She rushed from her small makeshift kitchen counter and ran to Lauren’s aid, speaking obscenities that Lauren recognized to be Spanish. “Ay dios mio look at this poor bebé. Oh, are you okay? Déjame conseguiralgo de comida, you’re probably so hungry.” She had bum rushed Lauren and was now turning her about her feverishly. Then, she looked u at Jesse. “Where did you find her? Did you ask her is she was okay?” All this was said in a heavy accent. The boy, who had now taken off his helmet, and who Lauren noticed looked just like the girl, replied in the same Spanglish. “Yes, I found her. She’s fine, hermana. Ser feliz está viva.” He had bedraggled brown hair, and has a clef on his chin with dimples.

“It’s okay, baby, there’s a bed over there. You go get some rest. You hungry?” She prodded her towards a tough, springy mattress and shoved some broth into her hands as soon as Lauren hit the bed. Lauren looked about, checking her surroundings. It was a small, wrap around room with a long row of counter’s, a fridge, a table, and two seats. There were two other rooms, one behind Lauren, and one in front, but they were dark and Lauren couldn’t see through. She ate, as the two people talked in their Spanglish, then went to sleep. She noticed, as her eyes were closing, that both were watching her as she slept.

Next post hopefully sometime in the next 24 hours.