Apocalyptic [Inactive]

As each survivor broke out across the narrow street, the storm battering and blasting at them with every single step, even forcing the new girl and her dog to stumble and fall at one point. Lightning struck the point she had been standing literally seconds ago and Scarlett grimaced, gaze quickly flicking over to her metal shopping trolley. If she didn't die in this short, extremely dangerous expedition, then it was a miracle sent straight from God. Bella padded over to her side, sensing her anxiety and fears, and she looked down at her faithful friend. "I guess this is it then." She whispered, looking out onto the rapidly decreasing environmental situation. "Better now than never, I guess."


The rain struck her as soon as she opened the door to the grocery store, buffeting her hair away from her face with an extreme strength. She shivered, took a deep breath and sprinted out across the road, pulling the cart behind her and Bella running by her side. Scarlett gasped at the biting clashes of the rain on her skin, the deafening clashes of thunder dangerously close above her head, and the trolley acting like a child at Disney Land. The cans and drinks were careening around in the cart, clattering with a noise she was sure must be dreadful, but as she couldn't possibly hear it, it wasn't a problem. Her biggest problem was making sure the cart didn't go flying away in the storm, and also that she was able to get inside to the safety of the school before a bolt of lightning managed to find her.


The other girl and her wolfdog were still lying curled up in the middle of the street, shying away from the black mark of road dust now permanent. Scarlett groaned and leaned down, struggling to shout down at the young woman. "Get up! Come on, we've got to get to safety! Come on!" She screamed, letting one hand go of the trolley so that she could grab her under her arm. Scarlett dragged the girl to her feet and stumbled the remaining distance to the safety of the school. She could make it. She could-


Lightning struck the ground immediately beside the trolley just as she pulled herself, the cart, and Tami through the door, quickly followed by Bella and the wolfdog. Puffing from exhertion, Scarlett instantly collapsed to her knees and breathed a silent prayer in relief. She had made it. Bella growled and came up to lick her on her face. Rain dripped from her soaked hair and clothing onto the carpet, but at the moment, all she wanted to do was rest. "Mr. Wright? Could you do us the pleasure of showing us where we're all supposed to be hiding? Please?" She asked, relief that she had retained her life evident in her tone.
 
Ari watched as Scarlett broke across the street, pulling the metal shopping cart behind her. She twirled her hair around her finger nervously. The metal cart would surely attract a bolt of lightning. She hoped the girl and her dog made it across ok; Ari had always had a soft spot for animals.


Her heart lifted when she saw Scarlett lift Tami by the arm, hurrying her inside. Someone had saved her, at least. That lightning strike had been too close for comfort. As the two girls and their dogs rushed the door like football players used to, long before the world had ended, another bolt of lightning struck besides the cart.


This one was close enough that the light was nearly blinding; Ari stumbled back, closing her ears. She clapped her hands over her ears, her hair standing on end. She faintly heard the doors open then close. She opened her eyes again to see that the two girls were safe, as were their dogs. Breathing a sigh of relief, Ari noticed that the cart of supplies had made it inside as well. That would certainly be helpful, if Scarlett decided to share.
 
Mr. Wright watched each one as they made mad dashes across the street. Finally, they were all over, the last two soaked through and had just barely made it before the true hell of a storm would kick in. He reached down to help them up and then turned to lead them to the safety of the gym. "This way." He led the way, but anyone could tell that he was worried. He was thinking about bringing strangers in among the students. The idea made him very uncomfortable. He stopped them just before he opened the door to the gym. "There are a handful of students here, so... Keep that in mind." Then he walked through the gym doors holding it open behind him.
 
As they were walking, looking around around at the rest of the group, a question grew on him, these people still had survived, why not others? He spoke up. "So...for the most part...who has seen survivors, anyone...Good, Bad, psychotic? I mean, looking at where each of us came from, and seeing how many people each of us ran into. It will be wildly inaccurate, but we may just get an idea of how limited the population is. I mean If someone walked from New York all the way down the east coast and saw nothing...well then we have a problem. Also anyone heard anything further into the interior of America? Or did someone come from that way? though I'm assuming with the wild weather we're having here... Tornado alley might be just one wind wrecked plane."
 
Rick was startled by how close the last lightning bolt was. If the safety on his M9 hadn't been on, he would've shot himself in the foot. As Rick stood to see how close it was he caught a glimpse of movement through one of the windows. Well, more like a shadow moving from one side of the window to the other. But, it was the closest thing he had seen to a human in years.


"Well, I'll be damned." he said, nearly stumbling at the sight. He began thinking over his previous decision of not going to the school because he wouldn't risk it for comfort. "It's not just for comfort anymore; it's a possibility for finding another survivor."


He pondered on the subject for what felt like a decade but in reality was probably 2-3 minutes, and made a decision. "If I'm going out, I'm going out for a cause." He said, and then turned to the hole in the wall. After weeks of seeing no one in this godforsaken city, he had finally gotten a spark of hope.


Rick crawled through the hole in the wall and immediately began his journey across the street and to the school, dashing from house to house, hoping it would reduce his chance of being hit by lightning. He heard thunder, but no lightning, thank god.


Rick arrived at the school and found the nearest door. After trying to open it, he realized it was locked. So, he broke the window and unlocked it. Simple enough. Hopefully, no one heard it. He gathered himself, and withdrew his knife from his boot.
 
Ari glanced at Mr. Wright, her lips set in a thin line. She shifted the weight of her backpack slightly, glancing around her at the hallways that were once familiar. "So, how long have you all been here?" she asked him. "How many of you are left?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know how many the group had started with. That answer was something she wasn't ready to deal with.


Ari knew she wasn't the one Mr. Wright was worried about; chances are, she had known at least half of the kids still here. Mr. Wright knew she wouldn't hurt them, but of course it made sense he was wary of the others. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and desperate measures sometimes made people crazy. Ari hoped to hold on to her sanity as long as she possibly could.


In response to Jacob's question, Ari shook her head. "I was born and raised in this town," she said. "I didn't have to travel anywhere to get here, and I wasn't even aware there were still survivors here in town. I have no idea about the rest of the country." She remembered hearing somewhere that it took twenty-seven unrelated people to have an uncorrupted gene pool. That was before the apocalypse; it was weird that the number was odd.
 
"I came from New York." Scarlett replied, lugging the heavy trolley behind her. One of the wheels must have broken when they journeyed out into the storm, and Bella continued to jump up and scratch at the sides, asking to get in. The poor thing was exhausted, eyelids half closed, shivering from the cold. She stopped for a moment and placed her down in there amongst the cans of food and bottles of drinkable liquid. It made no easy work. "Before that though, I came from LA. Traveled across the middle of America after having escaped on a plane from Australia. It was a long journey but I stopped at Disney Land in Anaheim to see if there was anyone there. No kids or parents using the now free rides. I did however, meet a small group of college students who were looking for a safe place to settle down for a while. They had a working car, food and water and there were six of them. For a while, they were the only people I was able to meet. I stayed with them, met Bella who was walking alone on a road, and we made it three-quarters across the country. Almost every city or town or village we passed was a complete, destroyed ghost town. No one there. Or they just didn't want to come outside and say hello. Sometimes, there was a straggler walking on the side of a highway but they wouldn't stay. I thought that the world had truly come to an end. Once you start walking across this damned earth, you realize how much of an apocalypse this truly is. It's like there's no one left. Seven billion people and we'll be lucky if there's still a thousand.


"I split with the group when the car began to run out of food. They were all friends and they needed to ration it between them. I left willingly and took Bella with me. They drove off and seven days later, I found out what happened to them. There had been an earthquake that I could feel miles away from them on the first night. The car was almost completely swallowed by a ginormous crack in the earth. I knew they were all dead because, I could see them. When I reached Manhattan, I had to swim to find some safe ground. That place was wrecked by hurricanes and serious flooding. It looked like the lost city of Atlantis. At night, sometimes I swore I heard someone crying or pillaging the surrounding area. When light came though, it was just dead bodies outside, or suicide victims lying in their beds. That place was almost completely empty. Except for the animals. I don't know how Australia's really faring. I escaped there in the first few weeks, so Australia might not even exist anymore. I just don't know. But I truly thought that I was probably the only person left on Earth after all of that. Now, though... I think it might be possible some people are just hiding. Not a lot though. You gather that once you see the bodies."


As Scarlett described what she had seen to be the fate of the world, the storm settled right on top of the little town. The wind screamed audibly outside and the rain pelted down on the school, threatening to break and collapse it at any moment. The group of survivors didn't need any light overhead. The bolts of lightning that flashed outside were enough to guide their way. In either case, they wouldn't have been able to turn on any lights at all. The power had been cut off weeks ago, drowned out by water and electrified by a past storm. Her thoughts strayed to the three students who she had met just minutes before the storm struck and sadly, she knew what their fate must be. Their choice of road direction had led them back in the direction from which she had come. There was no shelter there that could protect them. Three more numbers were to be added to the countless list of casualties due to the apocalypse.
 
"I dreaded an answer like that...he said setting will down, immediately the westie was running back and forth between the two dogs ready to play...but realizing both were tired just followed Jacob. "I'm going to guess...for areas in the US... the Apalachian mountains, they're not on fault lines...the act like a wind break...so Someone in West Virginia may still be alive. Their probably stuck in a coal mine...but even one earthquake... you're dead. low lying areas are now flooded, so...wipe the most populas areas in China...India..." he stopped in his tracks, "thats...2 billion people right...there..." looking down and trying to remember his geography class he took God knew how long ago. even if it was a semester ago... it felt like an eternity. "Hurricanes probably took out most of south east asia... tsunami's south east asia."


He rested against the wall for a second as the gravity of the situation hit him. "Maybe Switzerland is intact.... it's in a mountain valley... but who knows... people near mountainous regions...maybe they're in caves? but that...again from what you're telling me about earthquakes...tectonics have been thrown out the window." Shaking his head, "Then again...i'm a biology major...not a geologist I can't make that call."
 
"Can we not talk about that in front of the kids?" He wasn't sure that they could handle it. The teacher called them kids, but the youngest one was 14, in this world, 14 might as well be a full grown adult. "The first days, most of their parents came and got them, or other relatives, but there are always a handful whose parents just can't make it, even before times were bad...a bunch of us teachers waited around for parents to come, but eventually, the others had to go and find out about their own children and families. I chose to stay. I didn't realize how long of a wait I'd have, and now we're just a family."


"Lots of the kids left on their own," He rubbed a hand over his face, tilting his glasses and righting them again. "...I don't know about the rest of the world, and honestly don't want to know. We have to focus on what's here and now..." He grew silent as they entered the gym.


What's sad about the dogs was that as the food grew less and less, the dogs started to look more and more like survival...like food. He hoped it wouldn't come to that in the end, but there was that possibility.


He looked down into the concrete pool at the huddled groups of kids. They were minus three members now, and Logan knew that they were dead. He should have been more forceful about making them stay. It was too late to think about that now, but every failure to protect the students weighed on him. Ari could see for herself that there was only a handful left. She probably knew some of them since this was her hometown.


He climbed down the pool ladder and reached up to help bring down the heavy cart of supplies. When everyone was inside, he would close up the pool with the remote, making the floor close over top of them providing another barrier from the storm, but also cutting off the light. That's where the candles and flashlights would come in handy.
 
Ari listened to Scarlett's story with a heavy heart. She was shocked to learn exactly how far she had traveled - and even more so to learn how much more she had survived. It was incredible; Ari was sure she would have died early on, if she had been traveling in uncharted territory. The only reason she had lived as long as she had was because she knew the town so well.


Peering down into the pool, Ari was overwhelmed with sadness. Not many students were left; none of her friends were. There were just a few students she had seen around school, or she had spoken to once or twice. She followed Mr. Wright down the ladder, ready to help with the cart.


Her upper body strength had improved immensely. It had to; it took a lot to fire her bow. The weak died in this world; she had learned that a long time ago. Running, fighting, climbing, and swimming took a lot of effort now, much more than it ever had before.
 
Rick wandered through the hallways of the school, hearing the faint voices of other people. Do I go for the friendly approach or the hostile approach? Rick was undetermined on how he would approach them, but he knew he had to approach them.


"Hello?" he shouted, looking for someone to answer. Rick moved through the halls, slowly and steadily, holstering his knife. Eventually, Rick stumbled across the cafeteria. "It's a long shot, but it'll do." He muttered, and opened the doors. He didn't know if everyone was hiding due to a large thunder storm or anything like that, but he'd try to find some answers if he had to.


After stumbling around with no light in the cafeteria, it was quite evident that no one was in there, so he moved on. "Well, the next most certain place one would hide in this place would be a gymnasium." He stated, and attempted to follow the voices through the echoing halls. He knew survivors were here somewhere, and damn it he would find them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 3 (members: 0, guests: 3)
Back
Top