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Chapter One
I wake up in my bed to the smell of breakfast downstairs. It smells so much better than the one Hector cooked at the police station. The scent of eggs, bacon, and home fries fill the air. How did I get back here? Why am I in my bed? Why did my friends bring me back to the fallout zone? I don’t quite understand how, or why, I’m back in my neighborhood, in my bed. They’re going to have to explain to me what we’re doing back here. I grab my head; it hurts like a piano fell on it. My chest—I was shot, but I don’t see the gunshot wound.
Chapter Two
This day is getting stranger by the minute. My parents are home, and my dad wants to spend more time with me. We’re not arguing, and Nate wants to go fishing. What’s going to happen next? As I sit here thinking about all this, a golden retriever that looks exactly like my dog when I was a kid comes running from outside into the kitchen to my dad. My dad begins rubbing his head.
Chapter Three
I drive around my neighborhood for a while before getting dizzy again. I must have briefly lost consciousness. I wake up, and I feel a heavy pain in my chest. I am lying there on my back, and I realize after the initial shock that it is more discomfort than pain. Did I crash the car? I can barely open my eyes. I can barely move. Was getting into the car a bad idea? Did I just injure myself even more? I can’t move. Am I paralyzed? The last thing I remember was taking my mother’s car. This is not good. One minute, I was driving along, and the next, I am lying flat on my back.
Chapter Four
The next morning, I wake up when the sunlight pierces through the window and hits directly on my face. I stretch my arms and then scratch the back of my hand because the IV made it itchy. I need to use the bathroom, so I sit up on the bed. Then I stand up for the first time in over a month. My legs feel a little weak, but I quickly adapt to strengthen them. I take the stand for the IV, and I roll it into the bathroom with me. As I use the bathroom, I cannot stop thinking about how weird it is.
Chapter Five
It’s been a few days since I woke up, and I am feeling much stronger than when I first came to. This is day four of my being conscious. I can’t stop thinking about when they are going to walk into this room to interrogate me. I feel a lot better now, and I wonder if Allie will remove the IV from me? I am doing well, considering I had surgery to remove a bullet from my chest. I am just glad I was not awake for any of it. I’m becoming increasingly concerned with the thought of what the soldiers are after. I’m preoccupied with thinking about it, to the point that it is stressing me out. I cannot shake the feeling that this has something to do with the Sanctuary. Are they working with Tyler and his group of psychopaths? That is a scary thought. If they are helping Tyler, there is no hope for the world.
Chapter Six
I am bored out of my mind. I spent the day yesterday talking with Allie, getting to know her. I learn that she survived the initial radiation sickness, but her parents and brother did not. This explains why she is gluing herself to this place. She has no one to go home to. There is only so much we can talk about before we run out of stories or touch on a subject that takes the fun away. For me, it was Mr. Jenkins’s and Eric’s deaths.
Chapter Seven
The next morning is here, and Allie leaves the floor. I could not return back out their yesterday because we spent the rest of the day talking. I am a day behind on my plans. Now I have less time to find everything I need to escape this place. I need to get out of here today before they come for me tomorrow. I need to get out there now, but Allie may want to talk again today and come right back upstairs. I take out my map, and I head to one of the rooms. I need to take a look at the activities outside to make sure I will not get myself captured. We were lucky at the Sanctuary. Kirsten and Quinn saved us when we got caught, but if I get caught here, I will be on my own.
Chapter Eight
This water is good. I’m so thirsty, and I feel like drinking the entire cooler. I’m happy I made it back before Allie returned. The water is cooling me down after walking around in the heat. I sit at the nurse’s station to catch my breath and rest. The soldiers have forced me to delay my plan; I have to wait for Allie to come back before I can go drop off my bag at the gate and go back to search for water. I take out my map and lay it out on the desk. I stare at it, trying to figure out the best possible location for water. Don’t they have bottled water? What do they give the soldiers to drink when they are out in the field? One of these buildings should have water. I wonder where the mess hall is. They will definitely have some water there. I did not think to mark down where it is located when I was looking at the map. I could go back to the military police building to look at the map, or I can do it by trial and error and search building by building.
Chapter Nine
The soldiers march me into a building adjacent to the administrative building. There is a soldier standing guard in the front. They walk me to a back room where there are some holding cells. They look like cells that the military police probably used to detain people. They open one of the cells and push me into it. I take a seat. I am in complete disbelief and despair. In my depression, I get up and run to the cell door as the soldiers walk away.
Chapter Ten
Time goes by slowly. It feels like I have been stuck in this room forever with nothing to do but think of all the variables. I am beginning to come to terms with the situation. I also understand that my parents did this, not me, and I understand that now. I just don’t know if everyone else will see it that way. The Bolsheviks did not let the czar’s children live. They killed all of them. That was a long time ago, and humanity has evolved, I hope. If we do not learn from our past history, we are doomed. It appears that my parents did not learn from the past. The atomic bomb led to nuclear weapons being created all over the world. How could they not learn this lesson? The one good thing is, the nuclear threat is over.
Chapter Eleven
I have become fixated on finding my friends, not just to be with them, but to get my hands on the blueprints for this doomsday machine. It was supposed to save the earth, but it destroyed it instead. It has become that much more urgent for me to find them. This machine must be erased and destroyed. The facility that it is housed in must be burned to the ground, and any information about it must go up in flames. I will make it my life mission to destroy this machine. It saddens me to know that doomsday was brought on by my parents, and they are the angels of death.
Chapter Twelve
We are running in the woods for a long time. I am not sure how long or how far, but we eventually come to a river. We need to stop and figure out where we are. The good thing is, this is a big city with lots of hiding places. I don’t know who the winner was from the firefight. If it’s Colonel Zhou, he will come after us, but he will not harm us. If Pavlov is the winner, we are in grave danger. He will shoot on sight. We need to stop and think about what we are going to do. Allie is keeping up. She has a lot of stamina and will do well out here.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, I wake up to the noise of a commotion outside. I open my eyes and stretch my arms, and I look at the bed. Allie is sleeping peacefully. I sit up, and I look at the window. I stand up, and I stretch again before walking to it. I look outside, and I see Colonel Pavlov. He is holding the kid we saw yesterday by the shoulder, and the mother is pleading with him. She points to the building that we are in, and Pavlov lets the child go. The child and the mother runoff, and Pavlov and his men walk toward our building. Pavlov is coming. How the hell did he find us? I turn to Allie and shake her to wake her up.
Chapter Fourteen
The neighborhood is quiet, and the house is even more silent. We play cards and talk into the evening until we both get tired of playing. We sit there quietly, waiting for the right time to make our exit. We hear someone at the rear door, turning the doorknob. We look at each other and pick up our guns. I raise the weapon because I hear footsteps in the house. I get ready to shoot, and then I see Brian.
Chapter Fifteen
“Get up!” commands another voice. Both Allie and I get to our knees, and then we stand. There is a man about two to three years older than me standing there, pointing his weapon at us. In our hurry to get to the ground, we failed to notice the cabin on the other side of the woods. A middle-aged man steps outside of the cabin with a rifle in his hand. To be fair, the cabin is well hidden. If you were not looking for it or paying attention, you would miss it.
Chapter Sixteen
It’s early in the morning again. The sunlight pierces through the window, shining directly on my face. Today is the day Allie and I will head back to the woods. We must make it to I-85 before Cassie reaches it.
Chapter Seventeen
We’ve been walking for several hours. The heat is now at its crescendo for the day. It must be between noon and one in the afternoon. We’ve already stopped numerous times to drink, but I’m tired. We need to take a twenty-minute break to get back some of the energy we lost. I’ve been mostly quiet this entire time, but Allie and Trevor have been talking the whole way. I give them their space so they can get to know each other. I am also learning a lot about them as well, listening to their conversation. Like, I did not know that Allie’s best friend died in a car accident, or Trevor narrowly escaped death from a rocket-propelled grenade attack.
Chapter Eighteen
I’m up early today. I got enough rest overnight. It is very early in the morning, so it’s still cold out. It is twilight, so the sun should be out soon. The fire is still going, and I keep it going by feeding it more wood. I look over and see that Allie’s sleeping bag is empty. I know where she is. Trevor’s bag is a double bag, and both of them are squeezed into the bag overnight. The warmth of the fire feels good. I don’t want to get up yet. If I get up, I will be in the cold until the sun rises. Even then, we will be cold for a few hours.
Chapter Nineteen
We are well on our way to the meet up with Nate, Cassie, Kristen, and the rest. The car windows are down. I guess people got a lot more exercise before everything become electronic. The car is an old one. I have to manually lower its window, but it is worth it. The wind is blowing in our faces. It’s hot, but I prefer to have it blowing over me as we drive through it than to walk in the heat and not feel it at all. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I felt the sensation of the air like this. What we need are sunglasses. The wind is drying out my eyes. I will need to pull into the next shopping mall we see to get myself a pair.
Chapter Twenty
We’ve been driving for hours. Trevor and I switched places after I gave him a short lesson on driving a stick shift. It is slow going, though. The road is such a mess. We are driving through an obstacle course with no end in sight. We’ve had a few pockets of good, clear road, but they have been few and far between. The good thing about having an old car is the analog clock. The time is not accurate on it, but the hands are moving, so we can tell that we’ve been driving for more than five hours. We are ahead of schedule to meet up with my friends.
Chapter Twenty-One
Our journey takes us closer to our final destination. We’ve had a smooth ride since we lost the Sanctuary’s truck. We’ve navigated the obstacle course of cars. Sometimes, other objects have been left on the road, and we must move them out of the way. Moving the road hazards slowed us down considerably, but driving is still much faster than walking or bicycling. The Sanctuary’s truck has a metal frame on the grill that is designed to push things out of the way, so they can just plow through most of the obstacles on the road. We will need to do the same to the next vehicle we get so we can move that much faster.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Each time I am out in the dark with no moonlight, it is always a frightening situation. It’s a good thing the new moon only lasts a couple of days, or it would drive me mad. The walk in the dark seems long to me, but I finally reach them. I hope they can listen to reason if things are not right with these people. They turn on their flashlights, and we can see each other now. It would be odd looking for each other in the dark if we did not have the functioning lights courtesy of Mr. Jenkins and Trevor’s dad.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The next morning, I wake up to a well-lit room. The sun is piercing through the window. I stretch my arms, and then I sit up on the bed. I hear talking, so I leave the room and go downstairs. I notice that the house is bigger than I thought. There are a lot of empty rooms in the house. When I get downstairs, mostly everyone is already up. I don’t see Lana, though. Daryl and Mitch come into the house with a pot of food. I just hope it’s not rodent stew. Sharon goes into the kitchen and comes back with some bowls. She takes them into the dining room and put them on the table.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We’ve been on the road for at least three hours, and we’re inching ever closer to our destination. Trevor’s behind the wheel. I do not feel like driving anymore. I only put in an hour and a half this morning. I’m sitting in the back, and Allie is riding shotgun. The ride is quiet. We are not saying much. The experience at Mitch and Sharon’s house is good for our morale. It gives us hope that the world still has some good people left, even if Lana is a bit eccentric. My only hope is that people like Tyler and Pavlov will eliminate each other and leave the plane for the Mitches and Sharons of the world.
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