Lucas could hear the thundering of the buildings as they fell, one after another. He could see the frightened people trying to run away from the destruction, screaming and yelling, some crying. He could taste the dust that rose from the falling buildings. He could smell the smoke from the raging fires, eating whatever was in their path with fiery jaws. He knew, in the end, there was no hope. Towns would be destroyed, forests would be gone, and very few cities would be still standing. The bombs would rain down, the sickness would spread, and people would die.

            He knew because he had to live with it every day of his life. He had to see the after-effects of the war, because it was the world he lived in. The government was slowly trying to build itself back together, but with only one third of the world’s population still alive, there wasn’t much to build from. There was no widespread way of communication except for word of mouth, and without any other way to communicate; Lucas could tell the makeshift government they were building wasn’t going to last long. Transportation was also diminished, since the streets in the still standing cities were covered in rubble, and many cars had been smashed, blow-up, and who knew what else. Having a car didn’t matter anymore. The only way to get around was by foot, which carried risks.

            World War III wasn’t only fought with bombs and soldiers. It was fought with a virus that could sweep through a population and kill or mutant every single person before any scientists could even figure out what was happening. And that was what happened. The virus was released on multiple major cities in the U.S., and just like it was designed to do, it killed. It killed millions of people in the blink of an eye. When the U.S. government finally realized what was going on, they set scientists to try and find a cure, and then they did the exact same thing, releasing a different virus on Russia and Korea. It was even more devastating. The war was neck and neck. What one side could pull off, the other side was determined to do the same with an even greater amount of destruction.

            After a few years of the war, both sides were on their last legs. Lucas couldn’t remember who had launched the last bomb or thrown the last punch, but all the countries around the world collapsed. The U.S. was left with only a few cities standing, a demolished government, and radiation and sickness still trapping most of the country.

That was why Lucas felt trapped. He was trapped in the city where his family had moved a couple years into the war, because they deemed it safer than living in their house that resided on the outskirts of town. Lucas hadn’t wanted to move. He loved their old house more than anything. There wasn’t that much light pollution, which made it a good place to look at the stars, his favorite pastime. Looking back on it now, Lucas realized that if they had stayed, he still wouldn’t have been able to see the stars. The sky was a permanent gray, and Lucas couldn’t even remember what it looked like when it was blue. The world before the war seemed like another life, one that he wished he could get back to. But he couldn’t, so he had to make due trying to keep his family alive, go to the one school in a fifty mile radius that still stood, and survive. Pushing through the hardest parts in life. The ups and down, the twists and turns. He just had to keep fighting.

“-was estimated that seventy five million people died during the course of World War II-“

Lucas could remember his mom’s voice when she told them that they had to move. It was filled with worry, concern, fear. It had trembled when she mentioned the war, and Lucas could picture her hazel eyes glistening with tears that had yet to fall. Lucas could still hear his younger brother, Chaz, crystal clear. His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke of the war, as if he knew that it could destroy their family just as well as everything else. That was true, though no one wanted to admit it. For a child so young, he was only in fourth grade when they moved, he acted like he knew exactly what was going on. Chaz was the opposite of his dad, who had steel blue eyes, cold and hard, trying to hide the truth. His dad was like a rock; unbreakable. He was determined to keep his family safe from whatever was out there, no matter what it took. Lucas’s dad scared him, he didn’t know what had overcome the kind, gentle-hearted person that he had once knew. When they moved, Lucas had only been in eighth grade. Old enough to know what was going on, young enough to not understand the meaning.

The move was scary for Lucas. He had never lived or even been near a big city before, so it was shocking to see the towering buildings that were crumbling slowly, waiting for a fly to land on them before crashing to the ground. It seemed like that was all it would take. A stray fly to land on the top, and the entire city would come falling down. It scared Lucas. He couldn’t sleep for nights on end after the move. But even if the city did fall, they would have been safe in a basement that they discovered. It was musty, and reeked of dead rats and mice, but it was safe. It was there that Lucas’s family stayed for almost an entire year, waiting for the worst part of the war to end. Once it did, they crept out of their haven, and discovered just how bad things had gotten.

Mutants roamed the streets. Dead bodies lay piled on every corner. Every step taken was one step taken towards an uncertain future. His mom and dad argued over whether to return to the basement and cower there for a longer amount of time. His dad didn’t want to; he claimed that there was a safe place among the destruction of the city. They would find an abandoned apartment, clean it up, and live there. Things would get better, his dad said, it was only a matter of time.

Despite the fright of the city, Lucas came to enjoy it. His family did find an apartment, and it was only a few blocks away from the high school. A year passed, and news of the high school reopening circulated through the streets. By then it was less dangerous, people had been out killing the mutants and dragging dead bodies to someplace where they could rest in peace. So Lucas decided to go to school. By then he was a sophomore, and thankfully while they had been hiding in the basement he had been doing school work, which meant that he knew more than some of the others.

It was on one of the days when Lucas was out wandering the streets when he stumbled across another kid his age that he hadn’t seen before. Lucas could remember that day crystal clear.

“Hello?” Lucas called out, creeping towards the person digging through a pile of rubble.

The person looked up, and Lucas realized it was another kid his age. The boy had ash covering parts of his face. Specifically, there was a patch of ash that created a spot around one of his eyes. Lucas couldn’t help but smile at the boy standing there in tattered clothes with an uncertain look in his eyes. “Hi?”

“You look like a panda,” Lucas said, trying not to laugh and appear rude.

“A panda?” The boy furrowed his eyebrows which were covered by a lock of brown hair.

“Yeah, a panda,” Lucas replied.

“Ok…” the boy halfway turned back to the pile of rubble, still eyeing Lucas. “Who are you?”

“My name is Lucas,” Lucas said, “I’m going to the high school here. What’s your name?”

The boy didn’t answer.

“Can I call you Panda?” Lucas asked, “you know, since you’re not telling me your name or anything?”

The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Alright, go ahead.”

There was a ringing, and it took Lucas a second to figure out what was going on. As he faded back into reality, he realized it was the bell. The school bell. He was in history class. Right.

Lucas shoved his notebook into his torn black backpack and stood up. The other kids in the room were leaving, most of them seniors, except for one student that he recognized as a junior. Lucas stood up, and his gaze landed on the window.

Through the blinds, he could see the ruined parking lot. It was covered in ash, a few crushed cars, and chunks of concrete. Past the unused parking lot was the old band field, also covered in a layer of ash and dead grass. That was what World War III had done. It had destroyed almost all the good things that remained in life.

Lucas tore his gaze away from the window and turned towards the door. He was the last  one out of the barren classroom. The room almost scared him- dirt tainted walls, no friendly posters, creaky desks… it seemed abandoned. Haunted. Most of the rooms at Oak Valley High School were like that. No one had bothered to try to make them look nicer, the teachers only cared about giving the kids a decent education. Maybe the teachers had hope that the next generation would put the world back together. Unlikely, but it was hope. Something that seemed too scarce these days.

Stepping into the hallway, Lucas strode off, through the thin stream of people. If the war hadn’t happened, the hallway would be more crowded. Instead of Lucas being able to have his own personal bubble, he would probably be trying to shove his way through the mass of students. But not anymore.

He walked past the green and blue lockers, some of the metal doors hanging open and falling off their hinges. People had tried to break into the school to find food and water during the war, without success. Like the classrooms, no one had bothered to try and fix it.

As Lucas strode down the hallway, he caught sight of a girl walking the opposite way. She was short, had a mass of black hair that bounced with every step, and carried a notebook clutched up against her chest. When the girl spotted him, she changed her direction to walk towards him. Lucas tried not to groan. He didn’t like the girls, but they liked him.

“Hey Lucas, did you hear about the football game last night?”

Lucas stopped and looked down the hallway longingly. Why did Tracy have to stop him…?

The games weren’t actually games against other teams, they were scrimmages. There wasn’t another school for miles. In fact, Oak Valley was one of the few high schools that existed.

            Without waiting for a reply, the girl continued, “Mark’s team won, but Alex’s team just gave up without a fight! It was so weird. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Alex, but I’m planning on it at lunch.”

            “Ok, good idea,” Lucas said, stepping back. “I need to go.”

            “But-“

            Before Tracy could say anything else, Lucas darted away, trying to get away from her. With any luck, she wouldn’t follow. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he found that he was right. She had started back down the hallway, disappearing into a small cluster of people.

            Lucas sighed, relieved. Looking up, he realized he had almost reached the commons. Hanging on the wall above the archway was a torn paper banner, reading, “Go Owls! Beat the Gators!” The words were written in blue and green marker, with some of the words smeared from water. The top right corner was loose, flapping in a draft. He wondered why no one had bothered to take it down.

            When Lucas returned his gaze to where he was going, he spotted a boy leaning against the lockers up ahead. He instantly recognized the overgrown crew cut hair and shabby dark red jacket.

            “Panda!”

            The boy looked up, his mouth a thin line and eyes seeming far and distant.

            “Hey, are you ok?” Lucas asked once he reached his friend.

            Panda just shook his head, returning his gaze to the floor.

            “Hey, come on, I know something is wrong.”

            With a sigh, Panda looked up, his cold blue eyes focusing on something behind Lucas. “It’s nothing, I’m fine.”

            “Really?” Lucas arched one eyebrow. “You can’t lie to me.”

            Panda looked at Lucas. “Ok, I’m just having a hard time at…” he swallowed, “home.”

            After Lucas met Panda, whose real name was Eric but didn’t like being called that, Lucas helped Panda find a place to stay. His parents had died during World War III, leaving him an orphan to roam the streets. Thankfully, Lucas helped him find an empty apartment only a couple of blocks away from the school. From there, Panda had moved some furniture, redecorated as much as he could, and called it his home. Lucas admired what his friend had done- living on his own in a dangerous world, with mainly mutants as a concern- that took some guts.

            Instead of deciding to press him on it in the hallway, Lucas said, “let’s go to the Commons and talk.”

            Leading the way, they continued to the commons. It was a spacious area that had some plastic benches and trash cans. Only a few people passed through, since most of the classrooms were on the other side of the building. Lucas guided them to one of the hunter green benches pressed up against the brick wall. He dropped his backpack on the floor with a thud, and sat down, Panda following suite.

            “So what’s wrong at home?” Lucas asked.

            Panda looked down at his hands that were twisting in his lap. “I don’t have a home anymore. I couldn’t help it. There was a mutant and I ran. I can’t go back.”

            Lucas could feel his eyes widen. A mutant! Those things were menacing, and Lucas had only seen one from a block away. That had scared him bad enough. “Did it come into your apartment?”

            Panda nodded gravely. “It practically bashed the door in. I don’t remember much, I was so scared… but I made it out of there and now I don’t have a place to stay.”

            Considering the thought, Lucas suggested, “you could stay at my place.”

            “No,” Panda said without hesitation. “I can’t put that burden on your family.”

            “But-“ he said, protesting as Panda rose to his feet, “Chaz loves it when you come over! Can’t you just stay a few nights until we find you a new place?”

            Swinging his backpack onto his shoulders, Panda grunted and started striding away, towards the door to the outside world.

            “Wait!” Lucas jumped up and followed his friend, grabbing the boy by his skinny shoulder.

            Panda looked back at Lucas, a distant look in his eyes again. “No. I can take care of myself. I’ll find someplace to stay.” Panda broke free from Lucas’s grip, continuing on his way.

            “Panda… I can’t let you roam the streets! We’re seniors, we get to graduate in a few months! Can’t you just stay with me for a few days so you don’t have to worry getting to school and doing homework? Please?”

            Panda stopped dead in his tracks. He looked over his shoulder and spoke, his voice grave. “What does graduating mean anymore? The world is in ruins. A diploma won’t get you anywhere.” With that, he continued out the door, ditching school.

            The bell rang, and Lucas stood in the middle of the Commons, watching his friend leave. Panda was right. What did graduating matter anymore?

꠵꠵꠵

            Lucas could feel his eyes starting to close, and he snapped them open, trying to drag his mind into the present. Thankfully it was the last class of the day. All he wanted to do when he got home was go to sleep, but Chaz would need help with his schoolwork, and Lucas had his own homework he had to take care of.

            Just as Lucas was about to glance at the clock on the wall by the classroom door, the bell rang. He gave a sigh of relief and let his pencil fall out of his grasp. It landed on the desk with a click.

            Doing the same as the rest of the students in the room, Lucas shoved his notebook in his backpack, and threw his pencil in. He probably wasn’t going to be able to find it tomorrow… oh well. Before he got out of his seat, he pulled his iPhone out of one of his pockets. It was useless for texting and calling, but it still worked for listening to music, so he took advantage of that. He unwound the headphones and stuck them in his ears.

            As Lucas was about to rise out of his chair, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked over and saw it was a piece of small torn paper sitting on the corner of the desk. That hadn’t been there a minute ago… he reached out and grabbed it. Had someone left it there? Or had it randomly fallen out of someone’s backpack and somehow landed on his desk? He looked at it. The front side was blank, but on the back there was scribbled writing.

“Stargazing tonight?”

            Lucas let the piece of paper fall onto the desk. How could someone know? Lucas and Chaz used to go out and look at the stars when they lived at their old house before the war. Sometimes Lucas would bring his telescope out and they would take turns looking through it, but on other nights Lucas and Chaz would sit in the front lawn and look at the stars with an unaided eye. They were stargazers, as their mom teased. But no one except for Panda knew that. And he wasn’t in the same class as Lucas. How could someone know, and why did they leave the note?

            Lucas decided to shrug it off for the time being. He picked up the note and shoved it in his letterman jacket pocket, and then got up and pulled his backpack on. With that, he strode out the door and down the hallway.

            While he walked, he considered everything waiting for him at home.  Since there wasn’t a middle school in the area, Chaz had to study from some textbooks they had grabbed before the schools closed. That meant that if he needed help with a subject, which was usually math, Lucas had to help him. Lucas had to help Chaz with his schoolwork just about every day, but he didn’t mind. Then there was also Lucas’s own schoolwork he had to take care of, and if they were running low on food, he would have to go scour the streets for some, which was a rare occasion when he did find any that was edible. Usually he headed to the black market and traded for food. His mom worried when he went there, but she realized that was what he had to do to help keep the family stable. His dad could care less.

            Lucas pushed open one of the glass doors that led outside, and he trotted down the cracked steps. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and whirled around, feeling like he was about to be attacked. He bit his lip when he realized it was only a girl whose name escaped him. Trying to be at least halfway polite, he pulled out one of his ear buds.

            “Hey Lucas, what’s up? Did you talk to Tracy earlier?” The girl started walking beside him, and Lucas hoped she didn’t plan on staying with him for long.

            “Yeah,” Lucas said, just wanting to get the preppy girl away as fast as he could.

            “So you heard about the football game then,” she replied, looking up at him, her face covered in makeup. How and why did girls still bother to put makeup on even after World War III? Did it matter how people looked?

            Lucas nodded as they walked down the sidewalk. On either side, there was a row of dead trees, their branches reaching out towards them like skeletons. It made Lucas shiver, he couldn’t rid the uneasy he feeling that crept up on him so easily these days. The streets covered in ash, the damaged buildings, and the destroyed cars that littered the streets like leaves on the ground during fall. The city seemed so abandoned, even though it was better than it had been. At least some people had decided to drag most of the dead bodies out of the street. But not all.

            The girl went on talking and when they reached the end of the sidewalk, Lucas decided to interrupt. “I need to get home.”

            She stopped talking, and the look on her face made Lucas think that she had forgotten that he was even there. Typical. Before she could say another word, Lucas stepped into the street and strode away. With his luck, she wouldn’t follow.

            He continued, and glanced over his shoulder. The girl had turned away and was heading down the sidewalk the opposite direction. Good.

            Lucas sighed, and looked down the street. A small group of students stood clustered on the other side of the road, laughing and talking. There was a girl further away, probably heading to whatever she called home. Lucas put the ear bud back in and started towards his apartment, zoning out and listening to his music.

꠵꠵꠵

            At last, he was home. Lucas stood in the dirt stained hallway with the wallpaper peeling off the walls, wondering how he had come to accept it. Before they moved, Lucas never would have come near a place as disgusting as this. Now, he welcomed it, as opposed to other places he had seen.

            Lucas pulled out his ear buds, turned his music off, and wrapped the ear buds around his phone and stuck it back in his pocket. His mom didn’t like to see him listening to his music, she thought it was disrespectful. Lucas didn’t see why it mattered, but he did it to please his mom anyways. He pulled open the door with a faded silver tag that read 306 and stepped inside.

            Directly inside was the living room, where there were two dingy, stained couches perpendicular to each other and a wooden coffee table in between. Opposite of the couches was small TV that didn’t even work, but no one had bothered to move it out of the way. Sitting on one of the couches was Lucas’s dad, who was facing away from the door, and it looked like he was reading through a stack of papers.

            On Lucas’s right was the kitchen, where his mom was. She was scrubbing one of the marble countertops that stretched around the corner of the room. She always tried to keep in pristine condition, along with many other things. In the sink was a stack of plates, ones that she probably had yet to wash. At the end of the counter was the refrigerator, bare of any magnets except for one that Lucas had found while looking for food and had given to Chaz. It was a blue fish with white fins. Chaz had loved it. In the far corner of the room was the creaky wooden dinner table. It sat in the dim shadows, since the blinds on the windows were closed. His parents didn’t like to see the ruined world below. At first Lucas had protested because it made the apartment dark, but now he had grown used to the little light that made its way inside the apartment.

            Turning to his left, Lucas headed down a narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms. The first door on the wall to his right lead to his parent’s room, and the second door lead to his room. However, he passed it, and went straight to the last door, Chaz’s bedroom. The door was shut, and Lucas knocked.

            “It’s me,” he said.

            “Come in,” a voice called out.

            Lucas pushed open the door and was greeted by sunlight that filled the room. Chaz, unlike his parents, actually kept his window blinds open. The light highlighted the drawings taped to the walls, and the papers scattered across the floor. Chaz was sitting on his bed shoved up against the wall in the corner of the room, bent over his math book. He looked up at Lucas, his innocent brown eyes practically pleading Lucas for help.

            “What’s got you troubled?” Lucas asked, shrugging off his heavy backpack and dropping it on the carpet by the door. He stepped over to his brother’s bed, and plopped down on the blue and black bed sheets next to his brother.

            “I don’t get how to make a box and whisker plot, and where the heck the whiskers are supposed to go,” Chaz moaned, throwing his pencil down.

            “Chill out,” Lucas said, picking up the pencil and giving it back to Chaz. Chaz didn’t reach for it. “Knock it off, you’ll understand it once I explain it. You catch on quick, you know that.” Chaz could be moody, in fact, two out of three days he usually was in a bad mood because he needed help with his work.

            Grudgingly, Chaz picked up his pencil, and listened as Lucas explained how to make box and whisker plots. When he was done, Lucas stood up and was about to leave, but Chaz spoke up.

            “Lucas, wait!”

            Lucas turned back to see his brother looking at watching him, the freckles on his face standing out against his pale skin. “Yeah?” Lucas said.

            “Can Panda come over sometime?”

            Lucas sighed, not being able to help it. He had completely forgotten about Panda. Another problem added onto his plate, when all he actually wanted to do was sleep. But no, he probably wouldn’t be able to until midnight, at least. Maybe later depending on how long it took him to do his homework.

            “Is something wrong?” Chaz asked.

            Lucas shook his head. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I’ll talk to him soon.” Before Chaz could say anything, Lucas turned and left, grabbing his backpack on the way out. He slammed the door shut, and instantly regretted it. Now one of his parents would probably yell at him, or at least know that he was in a bad mood, and probably yell at him later. Just what he needed. One problem piling on top of another.

             *Thank you for reading, sorry that it's so long, the next chapters will be shorter. Please review, I'd appreciate critique and other thoughts because I strive to make my writing better!

 

 

2: Chapter 2

            “Why?” Lucas closed the door behind him and let his tired eyes gaze around the room.

            The bare walls, the scratched wooden desk sitting in the far corner, and his unmade bed shoved in the opposite corner, with the black blankets how he left them after he got up in the morning.

            Lucas dropped his backpack by the door, which landed with a thump on the stained carpet.

            “Why can’t I just relax?” Lucas sighed, pulling off his blue and green letterman jacket. “There’s always something I have to do.” He laid the jacket across the back of his desk chair. Just as Lucas was about to sit down on his bed, he remembered the note he found and had put in his pocket.

            He walked back over to his desk and reached into his jacket pocket. His fingers rubbed against the small shred of paper, and he grabbed it and pulled it out. The words were still there, as clear as day.

            Who would know? It just didn’t make any sense. The note only brought back memories that had seemed like another lifetime…

            “Can we go out now?” Chaz whined, grabbing Lucas’s arm.

            Lucas stopped in mid step and turned to his younger brother, jerking his arm away. “Yes, just give me a minute, will you?”

            Chaz shrank away, and Lucas continued to walk to his room and shove some papers in his backpack. Then he turned his gaze to the telescope propped against the wall in the far corner. It was a well-respected instrument, one that unlocked his mind to amazing possibilities that lay in the night sky. After zipping up his backpack, he picked it up gently, carrying both the telescope and the stand cradled in his hands.

            “Chaz! Let’s go!”

            Lucas strode out into the living room and down the hallway. Standing by the front door was Chaz, an eager smile crossing his face from one ear to the other. As usual, Chaz pulled open the front door and Lucas stepped outside, walking carefully down the steps to ensure that he didn’t drop the beauty that he held.

            Once they were in the front lawn, Lucas laid the telescope down, making sure not to move the finder scope. Then he unfolded the stand, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see Chaz watching as he got everything set up.

            After everything was ready, Lucas stood up and turned to Chaz. Even in the dark night he could see his brother’s excitement: the smile, his shining eyes. “So what do you want to look at?”

            Chaz turned his gaze from Lucas to the stars above. He pointed, and following his finger, Lucas figured that he was pointing at a bright star that rested above the flat horizon and rolling fields. “That one.”

            “Ok. Let me find it…” getting down on one knee, Lucas pointed the silver telescope in the general direction of the star. Then he glanced through the finder scope, lining it up with the star that his brother had been pointing at. After checking it through the telescope, he looked over at Chaz. “You ready?”

            Chaz nodded, his eyes wide as Lucas moved to the side. The young boy took Lucas’s spot, and there they sat, shoulder to shoulder, in the cold night under the star’s protecting eyes. Just being kids looking at the stars.

            Lucas set the note on his desk and went to sit on his bed. He’d go out to scavenge for some food or go to the black market, and then when he got home he could get started on his homework. It was ironic. Who would have guessed that even after the world had practically ended that teachers would still assign homework?

            With a groan, Lucas got up and pulled open his bedroom door, then stepped into the hallway. He walked towards the front door, and before going out into the hallway, he mumbled, “I’m going out to look for some food.”

            No one replied, so he took that as an ok and stepped out the door into the filthy hallway, wishing that he could be doing something more enjoyable than going out into the polluted world.

꠵꠵꠵

            The air was cold, and the breeze didn’t help. Lucas wished that he had been thinking and brought his jacket. Unfortunately he hadn’t, so he was left to scour the streets while shivering.

            Lucas had been out for almost thirty minutes, and hadn’t found any food or anything worth trading for at the black market. Then again, he wasn’t trying very hard. Sleep was beginning to plague his mind, and he could barely keep his eyes open. It looked like he was going to be going home empty handed.

            A rattle at the end of the alley made Lucas look up, suddenly more alert. His hand began reaching for his pocket where he could feel his knife resting. If it was a mutant…

            Lucas had been wandering down a side street, minding his own business when a loud clang caused him to look up. At first he didn’t see anything, but as he watched, a figure rose up out of a pile of junk at the end of the street. It looked human… but it wasn’t.

            The man’s clothes were torn. The shoulder of his shirt was flapping in the wind, revealing pale gray skin. His face was also gray, and a large red gash ran down the side of his cheek. A splash of blood looked like it had dried on his forehead, and he opened his mouth. A moan escaped his lips.

            Who was this man? What had happened to him? Lucas watched, perplexed, as the man stretched up to his full height and stumbled forwards towards Lucas. He took another step, staggering drunkenly.

            It clicked in Lucas’s mind. It was a mutant. One of the people that hadn’t been killed by the disease that had been unleashed during the war. Instead of killing, the disease had mutated them. It destroyed their brain, and in the last step of the process, it sentenced them to the long wait of being a brainless zombie that meandered the streets with only instincts to guide them.

            Without waiting another second, Lucas turned and ran. He never wanted to see another mutant again.

            Tensing his muscles and preparing to run, Lucas watched. After a second he spotted a large rat that ran across the alley. With a sigh, Lucas relaxed. No mutants, thankfully.

            He continued to wander down the alley

, keeping his eyes peeled for a can of fruit or a piece of meat. Chances were that the alley had been combed multiple times by many different people, but he still had to look.           

            Ash layered the ground, and faded graffiti covered the concrete walls of the buildings. A green dumpster lay on its side further down, the black lid torn off. At the end of the alley was a chain link fence, torn down and trampled in the middle. It had probably happened a year or two before the war ended, when things were truly bad.

            Lucas shivered as he walked. There wasn’t a breeze in the alley, but it was engulfed in shadow. Then again, everything was engulfed in shadow, considering that the sky was gray and the sun was only a blurred circle.

            Movement caught Lucas’s eye. Something had moved at the end of the alley, near the corner of the building. Another rat? Or something else?

            A piece of paper floated to the ground, and Lucas dashed forward. Something told him that a person was there, and a real person, not a mutant.

            Lucas jumped over the flattened section of fence and stared down the corner of another alley where he had spotted the movement. There was no one in sight, but the bright white piece of paper stuck out like a sore thumb against the light gray ash. Lucas bent down to pick it up. The front was empty. On the back were the words,

“Not stargazing tonight?”

            What the hell? Who was leaving the messages? Lucas was determined to get to the bottom of it. But not right then. He needed to get home and do his homework. But he would find out sooner or later. He knew that much.

꠵꠵꠵

            Lucas stepped into the apartment, and closed the door with a click.

            “You’re home just in time,” his mom said.

            Lucas looked towards the corner of the room where his family sat at the dinner table. “Is dinner ready?”

            His mom nodded from where she was sitting.

            He strode over to the table and sat down at his usual spot, at the short end across from his mom. His dad and brother sat on the long ends.

            After serving himself a piece of bread and a spoonful of fruit along with a several pieces of chicken, Lucas began eating.

            "I've been thinking," his dad started.

Lucas looked up, setting his fork down. Chaz and his mom also raised their gaze.

"There's an old farmhouse about an hour outside of town. No one lives there. But the ground looks like it would be good for growing. We could grow our own food, maybe get some livestock. We wouldn't have to worry about being safe and searching for food. We could survive out there on our own."

Before Lucas could think through what he was about to say, he blurted out, "I wouldn't be able to go to school."

His father’s cold brown eyes met his gaze, "yes."

"Then I'm not going," Lucas stood up, pushing his chair back with a loud screech.

"Lucas-" his mom started.

"Sit down," his dad growled, "you'll be going regardless."

Lucas remained standing. "But what about Panda? How would he survive? He depends on us! On me!"

Lucas's dad just shook his head. "Sit down."

Lucas glared at his dad, and slowly, he sat back down. Would his dad actually think about moving them back out to the country? Sure, it would be like living in their old home… but Lucas had made a place for himself in what was left of the city. As much as he never thought he would say it… he liked it there. He didn’t want to leave.

 

Thank you for reading! I hope you liked this chapter of Welcome to the New Age, I would appreciate critique or any comments you have on this story. I will update more often now that school is almost over, so if you like this story keep an eye out for the next chapter soon!

3: Chapter 3

Hi, and thanks for reading this chapter! I'm welcome to helpful feedback, and I'd love to hear what you think of this chapter. I'm always looking forward to improve as a writer, so feel free to review! Thank you for reading!

Lucas sighed. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fight he had had with his dad at dinner the previous night. If they moved… he shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it.

            The air was cold, and Lucas wished that he had thought of bringing a jacket. It was after school, and he was out searching for food or someone to trade with. He didn’t feel like walking ten blocks to the black market where he could usually trade. He was too tired, and it was too cold. Plus, the wind was beginning to pick up.

            He kicked a pebble across the street, and watched as it landed in a pile of ash. The streets were never going to be clean again, at least not in Lucas’s lifetime. Maybe in a hundred years or so, but Lucas only expected to live to be about forty, maybe fifty. Not only had the war killed off billions of people, but it had reduced the life expectancy.

            Looking up to the tops of the towering buildings and the gray sky, Lucas spotted the sun between two buildings, one with an entire corner missing, and the other building still mostly intact. The sun was only a hazy glowing circle in the gray sky, dim and small. Lucas knew that outside of the atmosphere it was still the same as it was before, but he couldn’t help but believe that it too had changed along with earth and life as he knew it.

            For a minute, Lucas stood, rooted to the spot, lost in thought. What would life be like if the war hadn’t happened? Would he still live with his family in their old house, safe and sound? Would he still be with his friends, having fun and playing football? Would they be thinking about college, or already be sick with senioritis? Where would Lucas have gone to college? Before the war he hadn’t given it much thought, he was planning on thinking about it later on in high school. That chance never came. It didn’t matter anyways; any college that he would have wanted to go to was probably destroyed now. But what about Lucas’s friends? Once the engineered virus spread to the U.S. he had lost contact with them. Everyone burrowed in their homes, hoping that they would live to see another day. Had any of Lucas’s old friends lived to see another day? Or had they all… died? The thought of them being gone… it scared him. The people he had come to know so well, only to be wiped off the face of the earth just like that. How?

            They knew that school was going to be canceled sooner or later; it was only a matter of time. They tried to act normal though, enjoy the limited time that they had left with each other.

            “Lucas! Pass it here!”

            Lucas looked over his shoulder at Martin, who was speeding after him, an evil grin spread across his face. He thought that he could get the ball from Lucas, but he was wrong.

            Without a second thought, Lucas threw the football across the lawn to where Jack was standing, ready to run. Jack caught it, and charged off towards the far end of the yard where the “goal” was.

            “No!” Martin yelled from behind Lucas.

            Lucas smiled, and was about to start laughing as he watched the plan they came up with be executed so perfectly, but then he was shoved to the ground, and  Martin fell on top of him. For a second Lucas couldn’t breathe, but he elbowed Martin off and gulped in a breath of air. “Really? Get off!” He mumbled, trying to squirm his way out.

            “Goal!”

            Lucas managed to get out from under Martin, and sat up, then looked across the yard. There was Jack, the kid made out of what seemed like pure muscle, holding the football above his head with Alex standing beside him, looking defeated. “Victory!” Lucas cried out, a smile spreading across his face.

            He looked back at Martin, who had gotten to his feet and had a grass stain on the side of his white shirt. “You just wait until tomorrow,” he replied, still smirking.

            “Oh really? You sure you’re not going to end up on the ground again?” Lucas said, rising to his feet.

            “If anyone’s going to end up on the ground, it’s gonna be you, Lucas.”

            Lucas raised his eyebrows. “Only if you can put your money where your mouth is, Martin.”

            Martin opened his mouth to respond, but Jack called out from across the yard, “are you girls done fighting? Let’s go eat!”

            Casting a sideways glance at Martin, Lucas took off across the grass, heading towards the house where their other two friends were waiting. His feet pounded against the ground, and he couldn’t help but enjoy himself. There was nothing better than having a good time with his friends.

            That had been the last time he had seen his friends outside of school. That had been the last time that they had truly had fun. Then the war decided to control everyone’s lives, limiting what they could and couldn’t do. It wasn’t fair.

            The sound of metal clanking against metal reached Lucas’s ears. He looked up, trying to figure out where it was coming from.

            Halfway down the side street he spotted a pile of rubble sitting in the shadow of a building. He watched for a second, trying to spot any movement. He spotted what he was looking for.

            There was a person, hunched over, scrounging through the pile of rocks and debris. The person then slowly looked up, and stared at Lucas. There was a wild look in the man’s eyes. His hair was tangled and uncut. Red scratches and gashes covered his face, and a layer of ghostly white ash had settled over the front of his blood-stained shirt. His arms were also layered in the haunting ash.

            Lucas took a step back. Something within was telling him to run. Run because the man that was staring at him from down the street was a mutant. A mutant that appeared to be looking for his next snack, and wasn’t afraid to kill in order to get it.

            “Stay back,” Lucas whispered, his timid voice seeming loud in the unearthly silence. His hand dived into his pocket and he grabbed his knife, continuing to step back.

            The mutant only stared at him.

            In his head, Lucas counted. Five… four… three…two…one. Without a second thought, he whirled around and took off down the street the way he came. His heart hammered in his chest, as if trying to escape. His mind raced, trying to calculate where he needed to go and how fast. No matter what, he couldn’t look back. He could most likely out run the mutant, but if the mutant had a weapon, then Lucas was in trouble. He needed to focus on getting away, alive. 

            Above the pounding of his feet on the pavement, Lucas heard a strangled yell. A yell that might have been trying to form words, but couldn’t quite manage to do it. Lucas surged forward.

            He took turns down random streets, adrenalin driving him. Beads of sweat started to form on his face, and he felt his shirt cling to his chest. His breathing was choppy, and his heart was still racing. Had he lost the mutant?

            Lucas decided to risk a glance over his shoulder. The desolate street half-covered in shadows lay behind him, void of life. Lucas stopped dead in his tracks, and gave a sigh of relief through hampered breaths. He was safe. There was no way that the mutant could have caught up with him. He leaned over, hands on his knees, starting to attempt to regain control of his breathing.

            After a few minutes, Lucas looked up. Down the street sat an old yellow taxi, the hood smashed in. Lucas knew that taxi… it was the one across the street from where Panda’s apartment was.

            Sure enough, across the street was the red brick building that Lucas had entered many times. The doors that led to the lobby were closed, the glass broken from the windows. Tiny shards caught glints of the pale afternoon sun, and weakly reflected its light towards Lucas.

            Was the mutant still there? The mutant that had taken Panda’s apartment? Lucas’s gaze traveled up the side of the building, to the row of windows that belonged to the second floor. One of those windows belonged to Panda’s room… Panda’s old room.

            What if the mutant was gone? Lucas was sure that Panda wouldn’t have come back and checked, his friend was too set in believing that the mutant wouldn’t leave. But what if Panda was wrong and his apartment was abandoned and in perfectly good condition? It was a chance that Lucas was willing to take.

            Setting his jaw, Lucas strode across the street to the lobby doors. He pulled open one of the doors and stepped inside.

            The inside was dimly lit, and torn papers littered floor that was dusted in ash. Stuffed chairs lay torn open, the white stuffing spilling out like guts. Lucas ignored it and headed for the stair case.

Panda lived on the second floor, room 204. He had a good view of the street from his room, which was good and bad. It let light into the apartment, but the view only succeeded in depressing both the boys further. Panda always kept the blinds pulled shut tight, just like Lucas’s parents. Lucas couldn't blame him.

Lucas reached the top of the stairs and hesitated before creeping down the hall. Did he really want to do this? His sweaty hand gripped the handle on his switchblade, and he continued down the hallway, stopping at a door halfway down with the faded label of 204.

Lucas laid his head against the door, pressing his ear to the cold wood. It sent shivers down his spine, but he wanted to make sure that he couldn’t hear anything from inside. Sure, the mutant could be sleeping, but at least this gave Lucas a chance to prepare.

Hearing nothing, he slowly pushed the door in. It swung open easily, and Lucas peeked inside. The place was trashed, even more so than usual. Blood stained the carpet, still a bright red. The place stunk like someone hadn't taken out the garbage for a year, which was unusual. Panda always tried to keep the place looking neat. He said it was the least he could do.

Lucas stepped inside, straining his ears to hear breathing. For a moment it was silent, and then the floorboards moaned softly.

Lucas caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye, but before he could react, it was too late. In less than a second he was on the ground, and his left shoulder throbbed with pain. A wave of a gruesome stench washed over him, and he could feel his switchblade slipping from the grip of his sweaty fingers.

“No!” He yelled, struggling to get away from the monster that seemed to have collapsed on top of him, pinning him to the ground, trapping Lucas under its massive body.

The mutant grabbed his leg, and something soaked through the fabric of his jeans. Lucas tried to kick, but only struck air. This couldn’t be happening. He was being attacked by a mutant!

Finger dug into the flesh of his leg, and Lucas yelled, kicking with his other leg, doing whatever he could to get free of the monster’s clutches.

His foot struck something solid. The hand on his leg disappeared, and Lucas fought even harder, adrenalin surging through his body. He had to get free. He needed to get away.

The mutant released something similar to a roar, and smacked Lucas across the face. A warm slime covered his tender face, and Lucas closed his eyes, feeling the switchblade in his hand. His hand pinned to his side.

Shifting its weight, the mutant seemed to be struggling to get up. Any second now… there! Lucas whipped out his hand and flipped open the switchblade, stabbing it blindly in the air. It made contact, and dug into soft flesh. The mutant screamed, and something wet soaked Lucas’s hand. He pulled away, managing to roll out from underneath his opponent.

Before Lucas could pull himself together, a fist connected with the side of his face, and his head jerked to the side, and pain shot through his jaw. For a second, all his mind could register was pain. Then more pain, as something ripped into his stomach, spilling a warm liquid over his side.

“No,” he panted, using the last of his energy to drive the switchblade upward towards where he thought the mutant was. Thankfully, he was right, because it connected with flesh, and then he felt it rip through the flesh and into something harder, possibly bone. He kept driving it upwards, his eyes shut tight, pain surging through his head. After his arm couldn’t hold out anymore, he dropped it back to his side, where he lay. Whatever he had stabbed his knife into fell down with his arm, and then everything was silent.

Lucas lay on the floor, feeling a liquid seep through his shirt. Pain pounded in his head like someone banging on a table, the sound never ending, just repeating. It was too much… but he needed to overcome it. He had to get up, get out of the apartment, and get home. He needed help, and the only place he could get that was home. And first, he had to get home.

Lucas pushed himself onto his hands and knees, the searing pain in his side only growing worse with every movement he made. Then, opening his eyes, he spotted the mutant laying on its side, half of its face gouged out. Lucas jerked his head away, but it wasn’t soon enough. Whatever food was left in his stomach wasn’t going to be there long.

Closing his eyes again, Lucas flipped shut the switchblade, and staggered to his feet, leaning against the wall. Risking one last look, even though he didn’t want to, he glanced at the mess at his feet.

The mutant, dressed in shredded clothes and covered in slime, lay dead on the floor, a pool of blood forming around its head, dripping out of its gouged in face. The blood soaked into the carpet, and dragging his gaze away, Lucas stumbled out the door. Through a painful daze and a distant feeling, he made it down the stairs and collapsed outside of the apartment building. The rough surface of the road cut into the palms of his hands, and the world seemed to start spinning out of control. He felt his stomach gurgling, and the dying stink of the mutant seemed lodged in his nose.

“No,” Lucas moaned, “I need…” he didn’t manage to finish his sentence before a wave of blackness washed over him.

4: Chapter 4

Hi, thanks for checking out Chapter 4 of Welcome to the New Age! I welcome helpful critique and comments, so don't be afraid to review! In the meantime, enjoy!

            He peeled open his eyes. The first noticeable thing was his pounding head. The second was the light streaked across the white stained ceiling.

                “Urgh,” he groaned, closing his eyes. If only he could go back to sleep. He felt like crap. What time was it anyways? What day was it? He opened his eyes again and turned his head to the analog clock sitting on his nightstand. It declared it to be two twenty-five, and most likely in the afternoon seeing the light on the ceiling. But… wasn’t he supposed to be in school?

                Lucas tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but pain shot through his side. He gently eased himself back on his bed and the memories came rushing back at him, bringing a bad taste to his mouth.

                The mutant. The stupid choice he made to go to Panda’s apartment. The stench was the worst part of the entire encounter, aside from the injuries. And the gore. Actually, the entire situation was the worst part. Everything was equally bad. Everything he’d done, stabbing the mutant, killing the beast that had attacked him. That was something that Lucas could do without thinking of for the rest of his life.

                A loud creak alerted him to someone entering the room. Doing his best he could to look up, Lucas spotted his mom striding towards his bed, her usual crystal blue eyes rimmed with red, and splotches covering her face. A curl of hair bobbed outside of its place within the bun twisted to the back of her head.

                “Lucas, you’re awake,” she sighed, kneeling down beside his bed.

                “Yeah, I guess I am,” Lucas answered, wishing that he wasn’t the one his mom had been grieving about. If he acted ok then maybe it would show her that there was nothing to be upset about.

                “Why… what happened?” She dug her hand under the covers and wrapped it around Lucas’s hand, smashing his fingers in a too tight, worrisome grip.

                “I…” Lucas looked down at his chest, and then back up at his mom, who was staring at him intently. He took a deep breath. “I decided to go to Panda’s apartment. He told me a few days ago a mutant had taken it over. I wanted to see if the mutant was still there.”

                A tear escaped from the corner of her mom’s eye. Another tear followed it, and another. Soon they were rolling down her rosy cheeks, like unstoppable boulders rolling down a mountainside.

                Lucas bit his lip. “Mom. Stop. I’m fine, I’m here. It’s gonna be ok.”

                His mom buried her face in her hands, the silver ring on her finger catching a glint of sunlight. A sob racked her body, and she shook her head ever so slightly. “Lucas.” She took a deep breath and pulled her face out of her hands. “I almost lost you. It’s not ok. Do you have any idea what that would have done to us?”

                Lucas realized that his mom was right. The hint of betrayal in her voice rubbed it in, and Lucas winced, realizing the stupidity of what he had done. The worst part must have been that there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say to try and make it better, try to repair his mistake. His actions created an unrepairable dent on the wall. It would always be there to stare him in the face.

                After a minute more of crying by Lucas’s bedside without saying a word, his mom rose to her feet and left, letting the door shut softly on the way out. Great, now that Lucas had a burden resting on his shoulders…

                Before he could even begin to contemplate his actions and their affects, his door opened once again. This time, a looming figure stood in the doorway, and a wave of fear passed over Lucas. If he thought his mom was bad, well then his dad would be hell.

                The man strode up to his bed, towering above, looking down on his son. Lucas only barely met his gaze, afraid to anger the man further.

                “You can’t keep making stupid choices like that, Lucas. Choices that could cost you your life. Are you such a stupid and oblivious teenager that you can’t realize that? Good thing that the war did happen, because I wouldn’t trust you to go off and live on your own in a few months. When are you going to grow up?”

                His face burned. The anger swelled in his chest, but Lucas wasn’t angry at his dad, he was angry at himself. He could make excuses all he wanted to, but his dad was right. It was his fault for not stopping to think things through, it was his fault for almost being killed. There was no one he could blame except for himself.

                His dad stared at him wordlessly for a minute, and Lucas suffered under his gaze. Then the man left, and Lucas let out a whoosh of air that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Now that his mom and dad had made him feel guilty, all he needed was Chaz to come in, which would be the worst. Lucas loved his brother so much, and wanted Chaz to view him as a person to look up to, to want to be responsible, caring and kind when he grew up. But this wasn’t going to demonstrate that. It demonstrated his carelessness, his stupidity. If anything, Chaz would look at Lucas to learn from his mistakes. And that wasn’t the way Lucas wanted to go down.

                Looking up, Lucas jumped a little when he noticed Chaz standing in the doorway, his eyebrows furrowed and mouth slightly turned down.

                “Hey, come on in,” Lucas said.

                His brother didn’t move, but eyed him uncertainly.

                “Chaz, I don’t bite, you know that.” He tried to keep his voice light and happy, but it faltered a bit at the end. Why was his brother acting like this? What was so wrong with Lucas that his brother didn’t even want to be near him? “Chaz, please, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with me?” No comfort remained in his voice. He wanted the truth.

                Without a word, Chaz stepped forward, and crept towards his bed. He held up a small dirty mirror that Lucas didn’t notice before, and Lucas reached out and took it. He held it up to reflect his face.

                Red scratches covered his face, marking his cheeks, forehead, and chin. A long, redder gash lay slashed across the side of his face, along his jaw. Lucas’s usual silvery blond hair was more of a light ash gray now, and flecks of red dotted it. His blue eyes were rimmed with red, and disgusted at what he’d become, Lucas put the mirror down. “I’m sorry,” he said.

                For a minute, neither one of them said anything. They just basked in the silence, alone with their own thoughts. “It’s worse than that,” Chaz whispered.

                Worse? Lucas didn’t doubt that. “Yeah, so I’ve noticed. I can barely move-“

                “No. Look at your stomach, your arm. It’s worse than you think.” Chaz’s voice was more solemn and serious than Lucas had ever heard. Sure, the kid had seen some grueling things when they were cowering in the basement during the war and after they came out, but somehow it never seemed to affect him like it was now. Maybe before Chaz didn’t realize that what he’d seen could affect him. His family. Maybe Lucas was what jerked him into the unwelcome and hazy reality.

                Doing as Chaz suggested, Lucas pulled back the bed covers covering his torso and pulled up his shirt. 

                There was a wound about five inches wide and seven inches long. It still pulsed with a small amount blood, and Lucas could see the places where the skin was torn and ripped off. Next to the wound were two long scratches, stretching across most of his stomach, lengthwise. They were no longer oozing with fresh blood, but when Lucas touched them with his hand, a burst of pain startled him, and he flinched, only bringing more pain upon himself. “Whoa,” he said. No wonder it hurt so much to move.

                “Your arm too,” Chaz whispered.

                Since Lucas’s left arm seemed to be fine, he looked down at his right arm, lying next to his body on the bed. What seemed like a long red trench overflowing with blood traveled up the length of his lower arm. He couldn’t tell how deep it was, but he didn’t really want to know. “Wow…” Lucas didn’t know what else to say. If he didn’t move, the only pain he had to suffer was his pounding head, and now that he knew what his face looked like, he registered the stinging coming from all the scratches. “I guess I got beat up worse than I thought.”

                Chaz nodded, and reached up to grab Lucas’s hand. Before he actually reached his hand though, a yell echoed through the apartment.

                “Chaz! Go get your brother some wet cloth!”

                Chaz’s hand dropped back down to his side, and Lucas sighed. “You better go.”

                Chaz nodded and turned away, leaving his room without a look over his shoulder.

꠵꠵꠵

            Just for being stuck in his room for barely twenty-four hours confined to his bed, Lucas couldn’t stand another minute. He kept thinking of all his classes that he was missing at school, and all the homework being assigned while he wasn’t around. It was a nerve-racking thought, and it was driving Lucas crazy. But no matter how badly he wanted to go to school, he couldn’t, because he couldn’t even get out of bed without doubling over in pain and feeling like he was about to pass out. Even worse, he couldn’t even do the homework he had because of his arm. Any time he threatened to try and lift it, pain that felt like a fire raced up the gash, quickly changing Lucas’s mind of moving.

                There was a knock on the door. After Lucas woke up the day before and had some uninvited entrances, his family decided to knock and give him some respect. Lucas didn’t know if it was an effort that one of his parents stressed on the family, or they did it willingly, but it didn’t matter anyhow.

                “Come in!” Lucas called out, his hoarse voice almost stopped in his throat.

                The door swung open, and in stepped his mom. She had come in and wrapped Lucas’s wounds with some old ripped pieces of shirts the day before since they didn’t have any bandages or gauze, but she hadn’t said a word. Lucas didn’t bother try and talk, he felt too ashamed of what he did. He still did, but he was coming out of the shock of it now.

                “Lucas, I need to talk to you,” she said, sitting on the end of his bed, staring at her lap.

                “Go ahead,” Lucas said, feeling something bad coming.

                “How did you get back from Panda’s apartment? That’s quite a few blocks away…”

                Lucas tried to think back to that day. He faintly remembered the mutant attacking him, and shivered, but beyond that haze he couldn’t remember anything other than waking up the day before. “I don’t know,” he confessed.

                His mom looked up, and laid her hand on his leg hiding under the covers. “Lucas, you have to. I need to know.” Her eyes her marked with desperation: slightly wide, showing more white than usual.

                “Mom, I told you, I don’t know. I remember being attacked by the mutant and then waking up here.”

                His mom shook her head, and her hair fell away from her behind her shoulders. “We found you in the lobby. Your dad did. He was going out to see if you were nearby, since you weren’t back yet, and you were lying in the lobby on the floor, your clothes shredded. Do you remember that?”

                Lucas shook his head. “No. Maybe I was in shock and walked back somehow. I don’t know.”

                The grip on his foot tightened. “You couldn’t have walked back. It’s too far-“

                “Mom! I’m telling you all I know, so leave me alone! I’m telling you what I remember, not what you want to hear, ok? And I’m not going to tell you what the truth isn’t.”

                His mom didn’t even reply. She just got up and left, letting the door slam shut.

                “Fine,” Lucas muttered, “if you don’t want to hear the truth.”

꠵꠵꠵

                Lucas groaned, his eyes heavy with sleep, yet he was unable to sleep. He couldn’t lay on his stomach like he usually did, and he couldn’t really lay on his side either. That meant that he had to lie on his back, and that happened to be the one position he couldn’t fall asleep in. Sure, he managed to get a bit of sleep the nights before, but the amount that he needed.

                He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock. There was no point; he couldn’t see it in the dark anyways. He sighed. It had been what, five days? Five days that he hadn’t moved from the spot he was in at that very moment. Breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed were nice, but he couldn’t take it anymore. He was the type of person who had to be up and moving around, and this had been the longest he'd been confined to one place before. But no longer.

                With his good arm, Lucas pulled the covers back, gently kicking them off his feet. His stomach had a large piece of damp shirt pressed down on it, and he knew that it was slightly soaked with blood that he couldn’t see in the darkness of night. His arm was also wrapped in shreds of shirt that were still dry, thankfully.

                Taking a deep breath, Lucas managed to push himself into a sitting position, ignoring the pain searing through his side, telling him to lay back down. Then, with another deep breath, Lucas rose to his feet, his legs seeming to shake with the heavy load they were being asked to carry. For a second he thought he was going to fall, land on the floor unable to get up until morning when someone would rescue him, but he managed to stand. He took a test step, and then another. His balance seemed to steady a little, but even in the dark night he could see red pulsing in the edge of his vision as his head swam, buzzing like a nest of bees.

                “I can do it,” he mumbled to himself, his voice cracking slightly. Not exactly the confidence and calmness he hoped he would have.

                After taking what seemed like ten minutes, Lucas reached his door, and he pulled it open slightly, stepping into the hall.

                A wave of cool air greeted him, and he shivered, but breathed it in, glad for some fresh air. Better yet, the air would be fresher if he stepped out into the hall…

                Steadying himself against the wall, Lucas hobbled down to the door of their apartment. Every step he made seemed to echo in the empty and deathly quiet apartment, but he persisted. He reached the door and stepped outside.

                In the hall, the rank and musty smell greeted him, and usually Lucas would resist it, but this time he welcomed it. It brought him back to the real world, the real dead world. The world that lived outside of his room, outside of their apartment. It was nice. A dose of reality.

                Lucas leaned on the wall outside of their apartment, catching his breath and trying to steady his head.

                “Lucas.”

                Lucas’s head jerked up, red filling his vision for a second before deciding to reluctantly clear. The room seemed to spin, and he braced himself against the wall. Across from him, he could make out the figure of a man leaning casually against the wall. “Who are you?” Lucas managed to grunt.

                “I work for EARTH. You do too, you just don’t know it yet. Here, take this.” He stepped towards Lucas, an old plastic shopping bag dangling from his grip.

                Lucas grabbed the bag, almost pulled off balance by its weight. “What’s… EARTH? Why are you giving this to me?”

                The man chuckled, and spoke once again, his voice reminding Lucas of a growl. “You’ll find out soon enough. However, a warning: despite how you might be compelled to believe that you don’t work for anyone, you do. What’s in that bag proves it. If you want more of what’s in there and you want your family to be taken care of, then you work for us. However, if you decide you don’t actually need what’s in the bag, then so long.” The man started walking down the hall, and he disappeared into the creeping shadows within seconds.

                What the…? He turned back to the door and slipped inside, banging the bag against the doorframe and not being as stealthy as he would have liked to be. What was in there anyways?

                Leaning against the wall, he fumbled through the contents of the bag, his hand feeling the smooth surface of what might have been an apple, and then feeling the dimpled surface of what could have been an orange. Then his hand brushed against something that felt like a bandage, and he gripped a smooth bottle that sounded like it had pills in it. Whoever the man was, Lucas didn’t want to get on his bad side.

                Lucas gently set the bag on the floor and limped back to his room, hoping that he might finally be able to get some sleep.

꠵꠵꠵

                Lucas was lying in his bed, flipping through his physics textbook when someone opened the door. He looked up to see his mom.

                “Hi, is there something I can do for you?” Lucas said, a bit of lighthearted humor in his voice because he finally managed to get some well needed sleep.

                “Yeah, there is. Where did you find or get that bag of food?” She stood by the door, not bothering to venture towards him.    

                Lucas was momentarily confused. What bag? Then the memories of his night outing returned. The man handing him the bag. “Uh, I don’t know. I only got up to get some fresh air and sitting outside our door was that bag.”

                His mom didn’t look convinced. “So a magical bag of food and some gauze and bandages just showed up out of nowhere?”

                Lucas sighed. “Look, I don’t know! I just went out there and found it. I don’t know anything else.”

                His mom crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. You aren’t even supposed to be up anyways.” She turned and left the room.

                Lucas couldn’t help but roll his eyes. What had he gotten himself into?

 

5: Chapter 5

Thank you for checking out chapter 5 of Welcome to the New Age! Please leave a comment or review, I'd like to hear what you think about my story and if there's anything that I can improve.

            Lucas swung his backpack over his shoulder, wincing as he did. His stomach still hurt, but not as bad as before. His arm remained wrapped, thankfully because Lucas didn’t want to see the gash as it healed. It hurt, but he could manage. Most of the scratches on his face had faded, which everyone had expected because it was a week after his attack.

            During the week of recovering, Lucas had done essentially nothing. He only lay in bed; ate in bed, got up to go to the bathroom, and that was all. He’d read some of his textbooks a few days during the week, but in the end didn’t see the point. Being gone for a week had set him too far behind in school to rely on a textbook to keep him caught up. Hopefully his teachers would cut him some slack and give him a hand, because he desperately needed it. Visiting all his teachers to get make up work would also take up his entire lunchtime, unfortunately. The stupid sacrifices he made for school. School remained the one thing that still kept him going though, so Lucas didn’t complain. He tried not to anyways.

            Running through a mental checklist of all the stuff he needed in his backpack, Lucas stood in his room. Once finished and satisfied that he hadn’t forgot anything, he opened the door and stepped into the hallway. It was barely seven, and usually Lucas left without saying goodbye to his parents or Chaz, because they were still asleep. But today, it was different.

            He spotted his mom in the kitchen, busy cooking something. A sweet smell drifted out of the kitchen towards him, and Lucas wished that he didn’t have to go to school right then so he could stay and eat whatever his mom was making.

            Lucas wandered down the hall and into the living room and kitchen area. “I’m leaving,” he announced.

            Chaz jumped up from the couch and ran towards him. The boy stopped before flinging himself around Lucas for a hug though, remembering his brother’s injuries. Lucas smiled. “Don’t worry; you’re too short to do any damage.” Chaz wasn’t actually very short, since he only stood five inches under Lucas, and he was around 5’4. Lucas wrapped his arms around his little brother, and over the boy’s shoulder, he saw his dad watching him from where he was sitting on the couch. Lucas gave a small smile, and his dad nodded.

            At last Lucas pulled away and looked down at Chaz.

            “Promise me you won’t go do anything stupid, ok?” Chaz said, his voice quiet.

            “I won’t. It would hurt too much to do anything like that anyways.” He glanced in the direction of his mom, who was watching him. Her face was serious, with no humor or traces of happiness within. What had gotten into her? Was it watching Lucas walk back out into the world, where he had the potential to make more stupid decisions? He wasn’t going to, he had learned from his mistakes. Couldn’t anyone trust him?

            “I better go,” he said, taking a step away from Chaz and towards the door.

            Chaz’s smile vanished and was replaced with an innocent and pleading face.

            “Chaz, you know I have to. I can’t miss another day.”

            His brother nodded and Lucas turned around and pulled open the door. With one last look over his shoulder at his family, he walked out and closed the door behind him. Then he stood, alone in the hallway. He had cut himself off from his home, severed his link for the day. He couldn’t return until the end of school. And that seemed like a long, long ways away. But before he got to school, he needed to worry about getting down the stairs without creating any more pain than he was already in. And his twenty pound backpack wasn’t going to help.

꠵꠵꠵

            After what seemed like an half an hour but was probably closer to five minutes, Lucas reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the lobby. It was still in decent condition, with some missing furniture and broken vases, and some glass shards swept up into one corner, plus a torn rug in front of the desk. It was better than most places, at least. Lucas walked through and pushed open the door to the outside world.

            The chilling morning air struck him like a bullet. He shivered. When had it been this cold? It was spring! Why did it feel like late fall?

            He pushed onwards, but wished that he had brought a jacket. He didn’t realize that it would be this cold. Oh well, too late now. Lucas walked along the sidewalk, looking up at the gray sky and dimly shining sun. His shoes slapping the pavement were the only sound in the area, and as he looked around at the scorched buildings and rubble piled in the street, he decided that it was safe to say that there wasn’t another soul in sight, human or otherwise.

            As Lucas walked, his mind wandered to the day ahead. Everyone was going to be asking him questions, but he knew it would mostly be the girls. The girls drove him crazy almost every day. It had all started back when Lucas played football. Being one of the best players on the team, he should have expected it.

            The bell just rang for lunch, and everyone jumped out of their seat, packed their backpack, and rushed out of the room. Lucas was right there with them, ready to go have lunch with his friends. He walked through the hall, impatient with the slow moving crowd. Couldn’t they hurry up?

            “Lucas!”

            Lucas turned to see one of his friends pushing past people to reach him. It was Martin, his beefy football player friend. “Hey! What’s up?”

            “Just the usual,” the boy replied, smirking. “Anyone asked for your autograph yet?”

            Lucas remembered the game from the night before. It had been intense, with both teams tied. One more goal would determine the winner… and the loser. Things had been starting to go downhill for their team, and time was running out. However, just in the last minute of the game, Lucas managed to get the ball and score a goal, which made them the winners. Their team had won again, just like all the other games. So far, they remained undefeated. After the game, everyone on the team agreed that without Lucas, they would have lost. That Lucas was the team hero. He tried to brush it off, but he did have a little pride. He just wanted to make sure it wasn’t too much.

            “No, not yet,” he replied. “So are we going to stop by your locker or go straight outside?”

            “Locker,” Martin said.

            The girls still hadn’t gotten over his football player status, and it probably didn’t help that Lucas had “good looks” as Panda claimed. With blond crew cut hair that badly needed a haircut and brown eyes that his parents claimed looked like the color of chocolate shavings, Lucas figured that he looked like any other guy. Not fancy, not cute, just normal. Somehow, other people didn’t agree.

            Lucas turned the corner, and the school lay across the street, the red brick building looking like it had just been dropped in by a helicopter, without caring if it matched the rest of the city or not.

            He crossed the street, along with the other students arriving. Lucas walked up the pathway bordered by dead trees on both sides, towards the main doors. The school used to be in great condition back before the war. A bright, almost neon green lawn, trees with branches that seemed to spread over a mile, and an optimistic sign that designated the school as Oak Valley High School hanging above the doorway. Now, everything was covered in ash, faded, and essentially dead. It fit in. It was the new world. The new age, the age after the war.

            Lucas trudged up the steps and pulled open the heavy doors that led inside. He winced with every step he took, his stomach not letting him forget what trouble he had gotten into.

            Inside, it took a second for his eyes to adjust. Blue and green lockers lined the edge of the hallways, and some kids hung out in groups along them, and others were busy getting their stuff from their locker to their backpack. Nothing had changed. It was just the same as before Lucas had been attacked. Why it would be different, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like the world had stopped just because he had gotten hurt.

            Wandering down the hall, Lucas came to the commons. Bricks covered the lower half of the wall, and the rest of the wall was painted in wide stripes of blue and green. On the far side sat the office and library, and to his right across the wide open area were the lunch room doors. In the far left corner lay the doors were Lucas and Panda used to hang out before school, waiting for the bell to ring. Panda wasn’t there. Had he returned to school? Or was he still out looking for an apartment to stay in?

            Shaking his head, Lucas moved on. He took a left down a hallway that led to his first classroom. With any luck, he wouldn’t run into any of the girls, and he could get to his class before the bell rang and he could ask the teacher about what he missed.

            Lucas strode down the hallway, keeping his eyes on the floor. From the corner of his vision, he saw a girl that he recognized striding down the hallway the opposite way as him. If he just acted like he wasn’t there, maybe he would be left alone…

            “Lucas!”

            Biting his lip, Lucas looked up. The girl came rushing towards him.

            “Where have you been? What happened? Are you ok? Why-“       

            He wasn’t going to put up with it. “Shut up and leave me alone,” he growled.

            “Lucas! You don’t talk to me like that!” The girl, Kristy, squealed.

            “Yes I do,” Lucas muttered. “And I could talk worse to you if I wanted to, so you better get out of my way and leave me alone.” With that, Lucas shoved the girl out of his way and strode onwards.

            “Hey!” He heard Kristy shout. He ignored her.

            Ok, so Lucas did feel a little bad about pushing her, but she deserved it. She just needed to get out of his way, period. No questions asked. But she would ask questions later, and that was when Lucas would deal with them. Not a second sooner. For now, he had other problems to deal with.

            At last, Lucas reached his classroom. The door was unlocked, and he stepped inside. The teacher was sitting at her desk in the back of the room, and looked up when he entered.

            “Hi,” she called out.

            “Hi,” Lucas replied.

            “Do you want me to help you get caught up with what you missed?” She asked.

            “Thanks, that’d be great,” Lucas replied. At least that was one thing had gone right so far.

꠵꠵꠵

            The lunch bell rang. The sound of chairs scraping against the tile floor filled the room, and Lucas packed his stuff away and stood up, pulling the backpack straps over his shoulders and feeling its heavy weight settle on his back. Then he followed the rest of the swarm of students outside into the hall, going with the flow.

            Even after only four classes, Lucas’s head throbbed, and he just wanted to go home and sleep. The only problem: he couldn’t. He came to school, and he planned on staying the entire day. No exceptions.

            Scanning the hallway, Lucas wondered where he was going to eat lunch. He and Panda usually hung out together and ate, but since it didn’t look like Panda was at school today, so that wasn’t an option. Maybe he would just skip lunch. He had to go get caught up and filled in by his teachers anyways.

            As Lucas ambled along with the rest of the crowd, and his gaze wandered over to the broken vending machine. A boy was leaning against it. Lucas couldn’t believe his eyes.

            “Panda!” He pushed through the crowd and grabbed the boy’s shoulder.

            Panda looked up, his eyes rimmed red and hair filled with dirt.

            “Hey, what’s wrong?” Lucas didn’t realize that his friend would be in such bad condition after searching the streets for a place to live… in fact, Lucas realized how good of a life he lived compared to what Panda was going through. Lucas had a good apartment and his family had a good stock of food. But Panda didn’t have any of that. He was just struggling to survive.

            “I didn’t know if I’d see you again,” Panda replied, his voice hoarse and raspy.

            “Well I didn’t know if I’d see you again either.” Lucas replied. “Are you ok?”

            Panda shook his head. "Do I look ok?" He coughed and then continued. "I'm alright. Just... just tired."

            Lucas knew that Panda was lying. It would take an idiot not to realize that. “So did you find a place to stay?” He asked.

            “More or less,” Panda replied. “It's just a small hole in the rubble of a broken building. It's hardly what I would call shelter, but I'm better off than most.” Panda paused for a second, scanning Lucas’s face. “What happened to you?”

            He shrugged his shoulders. “Long story.” A long story that he didn’t want to say. He didn’t want Panda to know his stupid mistake.

            “Ok. So what are you doing for lunch?”

            “I have to go talk to my teachers. Want to come?”

            Panda nodded. “Sure.”

            The hallway crowd had thinned out to only a few people, so Lucas and Panda headed down the hall towards Lucas’s closest classroom. Curious about how Panda was faring, Lucas decided to ask a few questions.

            “So how far is your place from here?”

            “Only a block,” Panda muttered.

            “You know,” Lucas looked at his friend. The worn out look in his eyes, the way he dragged his feet… “you can stay at my place for a few days. My parents wouldn’t mind. Chaz would love it.”

            Without almost any hesitation, Panda agreed. “Thank you,” he said.

            “Not a problem.” It was a lie. Everything in life was a problem. But it was still nice to pretend that it was no big deal.

꠵꠵꠵

            Lucas stood in the commons, waiting for Panda. He decided to wait at their normal spot, and sure enough, Panda came striding towards him, both hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.

            “Ready?” Panda asked.

            “Yeah.”

            They started walking down the hall to the main doors, and Lucas’s mind traveled to the homework waiting for him within his backpack. Even if he was superhumanly efficient and didn’t waste a second, it would still take him at least until midnight to finish all the stuff that he had been assigned. And that estimate was if he started exactly when he got home and if he skipped dinner. Which was wasn’t going to happen. And he mostly likely would have to help Chaz with his math and then Panda and him would probably sit around and talk.

            They stepped out the main doors, and the frigid air greeted both of them. Lucas shivered in his long sleeve t-shirt. Panda threw a sideways glance at him.

            “Are you cold?”

            Lucas nodded. “Yeah. I forgot my jacket this morning. Imagine that.”

            “You know, I can tell that something is wrong, Lucas. I’ve been your friend for a few years, and I know that something happened and you aren’t telling me. What’s that long story of yours?”

            Lucas sighed, and looked over at Panda. “You really want to know?”

            His friend nodded.

            “I went over to your apartment and got attacked by a mutant, that’s what happened. My arm and stomach got torn up. You satisfied?”

            Panda didn’t speak, but only looked at Lucas with a tight lipped expression. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

            “You don’t say,” Lucas said, his voice full of forced sarcasm.

            “I mean it.” Panda shook his head. “You could have gotten killed.”

            “I did it because I’m your friend. Isn’t that good enough?”

            They continued to Lucas’s apartment in silence. Once in the hallway outside of his apartment, Lucas spoke, the forcefulness in his voice gone. “Prepare yourself for Chaz. He’s gonna be so glad to see you…”

            Lucas pulled open the door and yelled, “Hey! Chaz! Guess who’s here!”

            The teenagers stepped inside, and sure enough, from down the hall came Chaz, running full speed towards Panda, a smile plastered across his face. Panda opened his arms, and Chaz launched himself at the teenager, and they embraced. The scene made Lucas smile. It was just how things should be. Everyone should be happy.

                

6: Chapter 6

 

Thank you for checking out chapter 6, and as always feel free to review!

It could have been before the war. Chilling out in his room with Panda and Chaz, who were laying on the floor playing Sorry. Lucas watched from his bed, trying to work on the massive mound of homework spilling out of his backpack. He finished his history homework a few hours ago, and now his physics homework was being a pain. Physics remained his favorite subject, despite all the work that he had to put into the class. The knowledge was worth the effort.

            “I’m going to win…” Chaz teased.

            Lucas looked down to see Chaz’s green players almost all home on the board. Panda’s yellow players still sat scattered around the board. The win would be Chaz’s, as usual.

            Panda groaned. “I thought the older kids were supposed to win. This isn’t fair!” He cried out, shaking the dice in the cup and then rolling them. He gave another groan when both of them showed ones. “Are you kidding me?”

            From the opposite side of the board, Chaz laughed. “Bad luck,” he said, smiling.

            “You sure as hell got that right.”

            Lucas returned his attention to his homework, a smile on his face. Seeing those two together never failed to make him smile. But the war brought them together. If the war hadn’t happened, then Lucas never would have met Panda. What would his life be like without Panda? Lucas didn’t know Panda for as long as some of his old friends, yet he trusted Panda more. Why? Was it because of the destruction that brought them together made them closer than he was with any of his old friends?

            “I won!”

            Lucas’s attention snapped back to the board, and sure enough, Chaz had won. No surprise there.

            “Again? Really?” Panda groaned, hanging his head in shame.

            “Good job, Chaz. You better go get ready for bed now,” Lucas said.

            Chaz looked up at his brother. “Aww,” he moaned. “Can’t we play again? It’s only nine thirty!”

            Lucas shook his head. “Nope. Besides, isn’t beating Panda once good enough for you?”

            His brother looked down at the board and fiddled with one of the players. “Yeah, I guess,” he decided.

            “Ok. Good night!”

            Lucas and Panda watched as Chaz got up and left the room, leaving only the two teenagers. For a moment neither of them said anything, and then Panda spoke up.

            “I didn’t realize how much I missed him.”

            Without a second thought, Lucas blurted out, “you can stay here Panda! You don’t have to leave tomorrow, it’s ok with my family as long as you help search for food and stuff-“

            Panda only shook his head. “No,” he said sharply. “I don’t want to put that burden on your parents. It’s enough for them to have two kids; they don’t need another to worry about.”

            As if searching for a reply on the far wall of his bedroom, Lucas replied, “but… my parents worry about you when you aren’t around. You’ve already become part of our family.”

            Taking a deep breath, Panda shook his head. He didn’t say anything, probably because he didn’t know what to say. Panda started packing the game board back in its box, and from the intense gaze Lucas could tell that Panda was formulating a response. The only question remained to be if he would actually say it.

            “Well tell them to stop worrying. I’m not part of your family, and I never will be.” With that, Panda finished packing the board in the box and stood up, holding it in his hand. He looked at Lucas, his eyes almost pleading, not matching the stone coldness in his voice.

            Panda didn’t mean what he said. Lucas could read his friend like a book, and his eyes were screaming at him that Panda didn’t mean a single word that he said. The only thing he needed to do was to persuade him to go with what he truly wanted to. “Please,” Lucas pleaded, “just think about.”

            Panda didn’t respond, and set the game on his desk. Then he turned back to Lucas, and they only stared at each other for a moment. Panda’s overgrown crew cut hair that seemed duller than the last time Lucas saw it, and the small, almost not-noticeable red scratch on the side of his jaw. Was trying to live on his own really worth it?

            “We could try to fix up one of the other rooms in the apartment-“ Lucas started, only to be cut off.

            “No. I told you already, I can live on my own. Besides, those rooms are in shambles.”

            It was true. Some still carried the rotting stench of something that had died in there; other rooms were missing a wall, ceiling, or floor. Most of them were trashy. Plus, they could only access the first two floors of the building because in the stairwell for the second floor up were rotting dead bodies… and no one wanted to go near them. Including Lucas and Panda.

            “Fine,” Lucas sighed. “I need to do my homework.”

꠵꠵꠵

            Lucas was engulfed in darkness, laying on his bed and wishing he was asleep. It had to be around midnight or one in the morning, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. It was in the early hours of the morning, and that was all he needed to know. He groaned and stared at where the ceiling was, but couldn’t see in the darkness. It was interesting to not be able to see anything, but feel and be alive. Maybe that was the way it was to be blind. Lucas shivered… blind like the people that had wandered too close to where the bomb was dropped in the middle of the city. At least he wasn’t one of those people. He had a family that needed to be taken care of. He couldn’t just leave them, or go get killed or get poisoned by radiation. He had to stay with them. They needed him.

            Suddenly, the thought of the war seemed to crowd his mind, and he began to feel claustrophobic with how everyone relied on him, and how important he was to them.

            “No,” he whispered, jolting upright, sending his head spinning and missiles of pain launching up from his stomach. He closed his eyes and took a minute to recover, then swung his feet over the edge of his bed and stood up. He could hear Panda laying on the floor sleeping and softly snoring.

            Staying close to the wall, Lucas journeyed around his room to the door. He reached the door and slipped outside into the inky blackness of the hallway. From there, he traveled to the next door. He opened it and stepped outside, finally free of their apartment and the people within it.

            “Lucas. You’re back.”

            The voice caused Lucas to jump back, pressing himself against the door. “Who’s there?” He asked, his voice quivering.

"It's me, Lucas." A man stepped out of the shadows crowding the wall  to where Lucas could barely see him. Sure enough, even in the dim light, he appeared to be the same man who had given him the bag of food and other supplies.

"What do you want with me?" Lucas hissed. Maybe it wasn't too late to turn and run inside...

"I'm here so I can show you the EARTH headquarters. Are you going to come with me, or flee back into your room?"

Lucas shivered. It was almost like the man could read his mind! But... Should he go with the him? He had given Lucas food and that proved to Lucas his loyalty. And that food was desperately needed... "I'll come," he decided, stepping forward.

"Good." Even through the murky darkness, Lucas could swear he saw the man smile. And to Lucas, a smile didn't seem to fit the man unless it was an evil smile. He wore a long trench coat that hung down to his knees, and a black fedora that shaded most of his face. "Let's go," the man said, starting down the hall to the stairwell.

Lucas followed, and shivered in the chilling darkness that wrapped its fingers around him. Go figure, he was barefoot and only wearing a pair of shorts... And now he was going to venture into the undoubtedly cold night. Exactly what he wanted to do.

Before he reached the end of the hall where the man was holding open the door to the stairwell, a thought almost brought him to an abrupt halt, but he managed to continue, to show he wasn't afraid. But... This was a stupid idea. A stupid idea like the one that had almost gotten him killed with the mutant. Should he continue? Into the darkness, sparsely dressed? With a strange man he didn't even know?

He had no choice. He'd already accepted whatever lay ahead.

"After you," the man said when Lucas stopped in front of the doorway.

Lucas glared at the man through the night, but the man paid no attention. Reluctantly, Lucas stepped forward into the rank smelling and room of no light.

Instinctively, Lucas reached out a hand to search for the wall, search for an object that told him he wasn't in a massive room with no walls and no way out. His hand brushed a solid wall. He let out a sigh of relief, and continued to where he knew the stairs were, holding his breath so he wouldn't have to breath in the death infested air. Laying on the stairs that led to the third floor was a small pile of rotting dead bodies, one of them a mutant and the others regular people that were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Behind him, he heard the footsteps of the man. Slowly, Lucas ventured to the stairs and cautiously stepped down, his hand gripping the railing as if his life depended on it. They both continued down the stairs in silence, and after what seemed like a year, they reached the bottom.

            “Follow me,” the man demanded, shoving past Lucas and out the door of the lobby.

            Lucas followed close behind, wishing like nothing else that he could have shoes. Tiny pieces of rock and glass poked him even inside the lobby, and when he stepped out it was ten times worse. Pebbles and sharp rocks stabbed his soft flesh, and he flinched with every step he had to take. On top of that, the freezing cold air also wrapped itself around him, and Lucas couldn’t help but shiver and let his teeth chatter. The man trudging along ahead of him was oblivious.

            “Wait!” Lucas called out, finally willing to swallow his pride. They hadn’t even been outside for a full minute, but Lucas was almost begging mercy.

            “What?” The man grumbled, turning to look at Lucas.

            “In case you can’t see in the dark, I’m not exactly dressed properly for being outside,” Lucas responded, hobbling closer to the man, using his hand to guide him alongside the building.

            At first, the man didn’t reply, and Lucas thought he wasn’t going to, until he spoke up once Lucas reached him.  “You should have thought of that before we left.” With that, he turned and continued to trudge down the sidewalk that was crowded with dark outlines of rubble in the lightless night.

            With a sigh, Lucas followed, his feet becoming numb with pain as he picked his way down the sidewalk, across the street, down another sidewalk, and around a corner, deciding to not say another word to the man in case he was beginning to think that Lucas was a wimp. Which he wasn’t.

            “We’re here.” The man stopped under what Lucas thought looked like an awning that belonged to a shop. The windows that lined the front of the shop had been blown out, and so had the glass that covered most of the door. The man pulled open door, and motioned Lucas inside.

            Should he go inside? What if there was a trap that lay waiting for him? Darkness engulfed whatever lay past the shop entrance, leaving Lucas feeling vulnerable and, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, scared. He was scared for his life. Like he decided when he was walking down the hall to the stairs, it was a stupid idea. He could get killed and his family would be all alone, with only his dad to fend for them. Chaz would try to help to, and his dad would let him. His mom would protest, but Chaz would try to act strong like Lucas and go out into the world anyways. Lucas didn’t want that to happen. He wouldn’t be a rabbit running into the jaws of a steel trap.

            “What’s in there?” Lucas asked, staring at the mystery man where he figured his eyes would be beyond the shadow of his fedora.

            “Nothing. The shop was looted about a year ago. Nothing except for broken shards of glass, tipped over shelves, and trash are in there.” He continued to hold the door open for Lucas.

            “So why are we going in there?” Lucas glanced at the dark opening waiting to swallow him whole.

            “Because it’s how we get to where EARTH is.”

            Before any protesting thoughts could formulate in his mind, Lucas held his head high and marched inside despite his stinging feet and numb skin.

            For a few seconds, he couldn’t see anything, and then slowly and by a miniscule amount, his eyes adjusted enough so he could see the faint outlines of objects. To his right sat a counter and what was left of a cash register, and in front of him were tipped over shelves, some small stick like objects that were probably cigarettes, and pieces of wadded up paper and who knows what else scattered across the floor. Whatever the shop held before the war, it didn’t hold now. Perhaps it was a small gift shop or a bookstore or some other type of family owned business. It didn’t matter now. Whatever they sold must have been good enough for everyone to loot and leave nothing but trash.

            “Back here, kid.”

            Through the darkness, Lucas saw the man slide behind the counter and bend down. Curious, Lucas followed him and saw a large black gap in the floor yawning in front of him.

            “You go down first,” the man said, stepping back so Lucas could climb down, which he didn’t plan on.

            “No,” he replied, turning to the man. “You go first.”

            “Get down there,” the man growled from under his fedora, “or I’ll shove you down there myself without any regrets.”

            Ok, Lucas understood why the man wore the fedora. It was perfect for when he needed to make threats. The shadow forced a harsh, secret look that created the type of person that Lucas didn’t want to mess with. Taking a shallow breath due to the fear clutching his throat, he responded. “Ok.” Unsure of what to do, Lucas got on his hands and knees and crawled towards the hatch. Hopefully this wasn’t going to be a mistake. 

7: Chapter 7

Thank you for checking out Chapter 7! I really appreciate it, and I welcome reviews and helpful critique so I can become a better writer. Thank you once again!

            The gap in the floor stared at Lucas. Should he? Should he trust that the man standing behind him wouldn’t wait until he had climbed down the ladder and then shut and lock the door, leaving him trapped in total darkness? Lucas had no other choice. He would go down the ladder one way or another.

            He swung his lower legs into the darkness and found the rungs of the ladder. Somehow, he managed to slide his body down and he began to climb down the ladder. The rungs were cold, his feet were cold, and the musty damp air of the basement clung to his body. He couldn’t help but shiver.

            One rung after another. Above, the man, to Lucas’s relief, climbed down onto the ladder as well, shutting the door to the hatch, trapping them in a world without light. All Lucas could do was to keep climbing down, down to where ever the ladder took him. His hands became slick with sweat. It became harder to keep his grip on the ladder. How much further would it be? With every step down, Lucas’s hope for it to be the last step increased. And at last, his foot hit solid ground.

            He eagerly let go of the ladder and stepped back, making sure there was room for the man, even though Lucas couldn’t see him. He heard the click of shoes hitting smooth concrete, and knew that the man had made it down.

            “So now-“ Lucas started, only to be cut off when blinding lights flickered on. Lucas bent over, the light burning his eyes. He used his hands to cover his face, wishing someone would tone the lights down.

            “Man up, Lucas,” the man said, patting him on his bare back with a clammy hand. Slowly, Lucas pulled his hands away and stood straight up, his head still swimming from the intense lighting. But to his shock, they weren’t alone.

            A crowd of people surrounded them, forming a semi-circle. They were of all ages- late teens to early forties even. Their clothes varied from camouflage shirts and cargo pants to scruffy and torn shirts and jeans. And they were all staring at him.

            “Lucas, welcome to EARTH,” the man standing beside him said, motioning with his arm to the group of people surrounding them.

            Lucas turned to look at the man who had guided him through the night, forcing him through the city with hardly any clothes and shoes. The man who had forced him to join the “organization,” if it could be called that. 

            The man was indeed wearing a black trench coat and a fedora. A thin and scruffy beard covered his chin, and the upper part of his lip. A pointed nose stuck out from the shadow cast by his hat, and Lucas could barely make out the fierce stare directed at him. Just as Lucas had suspected, the man seemed to be a determined leader without any fears.

            “Now that everyone has had a chance to see who you are,” the man looked out at the crowd, “they can leave.” He growled the last part of the sentence, giving an order, not a choice.

            Lucas shivered, and rubbed his hand over his bare arm, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. There he was in front of a crowd of people that would no doubt be judging him, and Lucas only wore a pair of shorts. Not the way to impress people or make a very good first impression.

            The people slowly turned and wandered away, back into the shadows that hung around the edges of the large concrete room they were in. The single bulb in the middle of the ceiling flickered.

            “Emily, Tucker, step forward,” the man said standing beside Lucas said.

            From out of the shadows stepped two figures. One, a girl, who Lucas almost thought was a man because of the short cut scruffy brown hair tucked around the sides of her head, glared at Lucas. She wore a black, long sleeved t-shirt that hung off of her skinny frame and a pair of faded, cut up and torn jeans.

            The man walking beside her was almost the opposite: he wore camouflage shirt and pants, and Lucas could see the shining toes of his combat boots poking out from under his pant legs. The grip of a handgun stuck out of one of his pockets as well, and his hand guarded it, never straying very far from his side. However, when Lucas’s gaze reached the man’s face, he was shocked. It didn’t seem to match the rest of his harsh outfit. His face was round and smooth, and he had almost baby-like features with a small nose, soft jaws, and a blunt chin. Not the man that Lucas expected to see in a military uniform.

            “Lucas, meet Emily and Tucker. They’re brother and sister, and the two leaders of this small combat group, other than me.”

            Neither of the two seemed ready to shake hands. In fact, they didn’t. They only silently stared at Lucas, and he could feel their gaze almost piercing right through him. They seemed about ten years older than Lucas, at most in their late twenties. 

            After what seemed like an infinite silence, Emily spoke, facing Lucas. “I’m in control of the battle plans, or mostly who we attack and when. I find their location, their vulnerabilities, and their strengths.” Once finished speaking, she resumed her tight lipped attitude. Lucas could feel he wasn’t getting the full story. He turned to Tucker.

            Tucker seemed more willing to talk, despite his military style. “My sister does the framework for me. I control the details, mainly the battle strategies. I’m also in charge of training the rest of the group, so they know how to fight and don’t get their asses kicked.” He finished and looked to the man.

            It occurred that Lucas didn’t know that man’s name. He knew Emily and Tucker’s name, so why wouldn’t the man give him his name? Before he could speak up, Lucas blurted out, “What’s your name?”

            Lucas received a narrowed glare, and he wanted to shrink into a small ball and pretend he hadn’t asked the question. Unfortunately, he couldn’t. Before his mind even registered any motion, his head jerked to the side and his face stung like it had been set on fire. What… the taste of blood entered his mouth and what had just happened clicked into place. The man had slapped him. Hard, at that. Swallowing, not only his bloody spit but his pride, Lucas looked back up. His gaze first flitted across Emily and Tucker, who’s expressions hadn’t changed, and then at the man.

            Even though his face was as blank as an empty canvas, Lucas understood that he had crossed the line. It would be best if he shut up and did as told. “If there’s anything you should learn, Lucas, it’s to not ask questions and follow orders. Got that?” The man snarled.

            All Lucas could do was to nod, afraid to say anything. Afraid that his voice would crack and he would appear weak, which didn’t appear to be in his best interest.

            “Now that that’s out of the way, follow me.” The man strode off across the cement room, and Lucas along with the siblings followed. They passed through the shadows, and down a dimly lit hall, with doors flanking both walls at even intervals. Each door was the same, without a chip or a dent in it. All uniform. It would be easy to get confused.

            The man opened one of the doors and Emily and Tucker stepped inside. Lucas followed, only to find he had stepped into a tiny office, with a metal desk in the center of the room and a small filing cabinet in the back left corner. The man stepped inside, and walked around the desk to the filing cabinet. He pulled it open, shuffled through it, and pulled out a manila folder.

            Lucas opened his mouth to ask what was inside the folder, but caught himself when he remembered what happened a minute before when he decided to ask a question.

            Returning his attention to the man, he watched as he closed the filing cabinet and set the folder on the desk, and then looked up at Lucas. Emily and Tucker followed his gaze. “The objective of EARTH is to wipe out the groups that are planning to try to take over the world, or gain control of the city. It’s not like any of them would be successful, but we are there to ensure that they aren’t. Once we have enough of the groups wiped out, the idea is to begin building the city back up, wiping out the mutants, and beginning to restore it to how it was before the war.”

            Lucas let the information sift through his mind. “But… this is only one city. There are a lot of other cities out there. How do you expect to wipe out all the evil groups?”

            The man gave a small smile. “I have men in other cities to create other EARTH groups. They operate according to how their progress is moving, and we operate according to how our progress is.” He reached down and picked up the folder. “This will tell you anything else you want to know. It also contains all the information we have on you and your family.” He offered the folder to Lucas.

            Lucas stared at the folder. Did he really want to look in it, and see all the information that they had gathered on his family? To see how close they had been watching him? He already felt violated, but knowing that everything they knew about him was put into words… in fact, they most likely knew him better than he knew himself. He didn’t want to look. Not yet. “No. I don’t want to see it.”

            The man chuckled. “Whatever works for you.” He set the folder back on the desk. “I’ll leave it here for whenever you feel ready to look at it.” With that, the man pushed past and left the room, leaving Lucas alone with Emily and Tucker.

            He looked at the two. They stood side by side, watching him. Emily spoke. “Next time you decide to drop by, don’t forget to get some clothes on.” A cruel smile spread across her lips, and she walked out, followed by Tucker. Lucas stood alone in the room for a second, and then turned and followed them back into the larger room. The man stood by the ladder, and almost shamefully, Lucas walked over.

            “I’ll escort you home,” he said, “since I doubt you could manage yourself if you forgot to put some clothes on.”

            Lucas bit back a reply, wishing they would stop giving him a hard time about that. He didn’t know he was going to end up walking a few blocks! He only got up and went out in the hallway so he could get a breath of fresh air. Besides, it was the middle of the night. What could anyone expect? He climbed up the ladder, and at the top shoved open the door to the outside world. A wave of cold air struck his bare skin, and he managed to pull himself out onto the floor of the shop. The man followed, and his practice showed as he easily crawled out.

            After both of them stood up, the man nodded towards the door. “Do you know the way back?”

            Biting his lip, feeling like a total idiot, he replied, “no.”

            The man shoved past him and out the door. Lucas strode quickly after him, tiny pebbles stabbing his sore feet. After a few blocks, they reached what Lucas recognized as his apartment building.

            “We’re here,” the man said. “Feel free to come back. Only at night, however. That folder of yours will be waiting.” He strode off, back into the darkness.

            Lucas could only shake his head and wonder what he had gotten himself into.

            After about ten minutes of clambering around in the darkness of the stairwell, Lucas eventually reached the second floor and wandered back down to their room. Their room was at almost the end of the hall, which made it convenient if a mutant or man with the intentions of killing made it into their building.

            He opened the door and stepped inside, then headed for his room. Once he reached his room, he made sure to close the door softly, with only a barely audible click. Then he continued to his bed, but didn’t reach it.

            His feet hit something hard, and with a startled yelp, Lucas went crashing to the floor, landing with a loud thump.

            “Watch where you’re going, will you?” A voice moaned.

            Duh. Panda was lying on the floor. Why hadn’t Lucas remembered? “Sorry,” he whispered, climbing back to his feet.

            “Whatever. Where were you?” Panda asked, his voice sounding too loud in the dark silence of the room.

            “I went to the bathroom,” Lucas replied, flopping down on his bed and crawling under the covers.

            “No you didn’t,” his friend said, certainty in his voice.

            “Panda, just shut up and go to sleep,” Lucas snapped, unable to help it. He had just been through what seemed like hell in the middle of the night, and he didn’t want to have to argue with Panda. All Lucas wanted to do was sleep.

            Grudgingly, Panda mumbled, “fine. Whatever.”

            With that, Lucas pulled the covers over his head and easily slipped into a dark and quiet rest.

8: Chapter 8

 

            A beeping filled Lucas’s ears. What could it be? The gray walls seemed to box him in, the shadows growing with every second that passed. A small red light flashed from the ceiling, the flashes becoming faster and faster with each passing second. The only thing that clicked in Lucas’s mind was a bomb. It had to be a bomb.

            “Shut that thing off!”

            He jerked awake, and faint light greeted him. The beeping continued. “What?” Lucas asked, rubbing his eyes.

            “Turn that off!”

            After rolling onto his side, Lucas smacked the top of his alarm clock and the beeping ended. He sighed and returned to his original position, lying on his back. “Is that better?” Lucas called out, staring at the ceiling.

            Panda didn’t reply.

            Rolling his eyes, Lucas sat up and saw Panda lying on the floor, a pillow covering his head. “That’s one way to deal with it, I guess.”

            “What time is it?” Panda asked, his voice muffled by the pillow.

            Glancing over at his clock, Lucas replied, “six. We need to leave in an hour.”

            “What?!” Panda yelled, throwing the pillow off his head and jerking upright. “You wake up a freakin’ hour before school starts? You’re insane!”

            Lucas couldn’t help but grin at his friend’s reaction. His brown hair was sticking up in clumps, and his eyelids still drooped with sleep. “Yeah, I do. So get up and get dressed. You can borrow my clothes.” Lucas swung his legs off the side of his bed and shuffled over to his dresser. He grabbed the first shirt and pair of pants he could reach, and then left his room, closing the door behind him. With no doubt, Panda was still sitting there, probably thinking of going back to sleep. It was only a matter of time before he would decide to get up.

            He reached the bathroom, and got dressed and washed his face. The memories from the night before slowly faded back into his mind. The man. Emily and Tucker. The walk through the cold dark night to reach the EARTH hideout. Everything about the memory seemed like a dream, but it had to be real. His feet still ached. Then he remembered tripping over Panda. Lucas would have to figure out a way to answer his friend’s questions, but with any luck, Panda would just forget the whole incident. However, the likelihood of that actually happening was low.

            Finished in the bathroom, Lucas went back to his room. Panda had laid down again, but Lucas wasn’t sure that he was asleep. “Are you awake?” he asked.

            Panda mumbled something, so Lucas took that as a yes. Stepping over his friend, Lucas grabbed his empty backpack and all the textbooks piled beside his bed. Somehow, he had to shove them back into his torn and ripped bag. Hopefully he wouldn’t just end up ripping the backpack further.

            “Lucas?”

            Lucas turned his head to look at Panda, who was lying on his side and watching him. “Yeah?”

            “Where were you last night?”

            Of course Panda wouldn’t forget. Of course he wouldn’t just let it go. “I just went to the bathroom.”

            Panda shook his head, “no, you were gone longer than that.”

            Under his breath, Lucas cursed at Panda’s stubbornness. He needed to do his best to convince his friend that he hadn’t gone anywhere far. “How would you know? I thought you were asleep. Besides, you can’t tell time in the dark.”

            Panda rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I know that you hadn’t just gone to the bathroom though.”

            Choosing not to respond, Lucas zipped up his backpack and swung it over his shoulder, testing its weight. Not too heavy, but it still was more weight than he would prefer to carry given how the gash on his stomach felt. “Come on Panda, get up. While you get dressed I’ll get us breakfast.” Lucas waited for Panda to kick the blankets off his legs and scramble to his feet. “Good,” Lucas said, “now the entire waking up process is about ten times easier.”

            Panda only looked over his shoulder and glared at Lucas. Lucas couldn’t help but smile at how grumpy Panda was in the mornings. He could be a pain in the butt, but it was funny to watch.

            They walked out into the hall, and Panda headed for the bathroom and Lucas went into the kitchen. Usually all he had for breakfast was a spoonful of cereal and called it good, but today he decided that he should actually pull out bowls and have a real breakfast.

            He grabbed the bowls from the cabinet above the counter, and he grabbed the box of stale cereal from a cabinet under the counter. In less than a minute two bowls of cereal sat on the counter along with two spoons to top it off.

            “So we’re having cereal?” Panda mumbled, his voice unenthusiastic.

            Lucas looked over his shoulder, and the boy shuffled towards him with a shirt that seemed to sag on his thin frame and jeans with a massive hole in the knee. “You couldn’t have picked any worse clothes,” Lucas remarked, grabbing the bowls of cereal and bringing them over to the dinner table.

            “Well I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t take any of your favorites,” Panda replied, sitting down and staring at the dry flakes of cereal sitting in front of him.

            The reply made Lucas chuckle. “Favorites? You think I actually have any favorite clothes? Wow, that’s rather sad.”

            Panda smacked Lucas lightly on the arm. “Oh shut up, let’s just eat.”

            Both of them started crunching down on their cereal, the conversation lost. A few minutes passed, and Panda spoke up again.

            “So really, where were you last night?”

            Lucas had to act like he only went to the bathroom, nothing more. He needed to be consistent. “I just went to the bathroom. We already talked about it and I told you. Do you have short term memory loss or something?”

            A flash of annoyance showed in Panda’s eyes. “I’m not stupid. You were gone for at least twenty minutes.” He set his spoon down and glared at Lucas.

            Lucas rolled his eyes. “Dude, you were dreaming. I wasn’t gone for twenty minutes; at most I was gone for five.” He returned to eating the tasteless cereal.

            His response was returned with a glare from Panda. Lucas watched his friend from out of the corner of his eye, hoping that he would just pick up his spoon and start eating again. At last, that’s what happened.

꠵꠵꠵

            After another long morning at school, the lunch bell rang. Lucas sighed with relief; his head felt like it would explode at any second. Taking his time, he packed away his notebook and textbook, struggling to shove them in his overstuffed backpack. Finally, he got them in, and he stood up and swung his bag over his shoulder, the last one to leave the room.

            In the hallway, he kept an eye out for Panda. Panda was probably waiting at their usual spot, in the Commons. For lunch they usually just went to the vacant lunch room and ate whatever food they brought with them, or else did homework. The place was empty because the school didn’t serve lunch.

            Lucas sighed, and reached up to rub his forehead. School + lack of sleep = nothing good, that was for sure. At last, he turned the corner into the Commons, and there, standing by the door to the lunch room looking like a sullen teenager was Panda. Lucas strode over and his friend looked up. “Let’s go.” Without waiting for a reply, Lucas pulled open the door and stepped inside.

            On the far wall of the cafeteria was a row of dirt-plastered windows. Lucas and Panda never sat near them. Instead, they sat in the corner furthest away from the windows, and they always sat with their back turned. The windows only reminded them that nothing was the same anymore, and that it might never be.

            They reached their usual table, and Lucas set his backpack on it and then sat down. He dug through all the stuff within it and pulled out his AP Calculus textbook and his notebook. He hadn’t even had a chance to start on the homework he had been assigned yesterday, so he needed to get to it.

            Looking up, Lucas watched Panda flop down in his usual seat and groan.

            “What’s wrong?” he asked, “anything other than school?”

            “Nope, you nailed it.”

            Lucas started on his homework, and they sat in silence, only the whispers and dull laughs from the rest of the cafeteria filling their ears.

            “Do you remember when the sky was blue?” Panda asked.

            Lucas looked up, and found his friend staring directly at him. To be honest, he didn’t actually remember what a clear blue sky looked like. When he saw it in photos, it just seemed normal then, but when he thought about the sky being blue now, he just couldn’t picture it. “No,” he admitted.

            Panda leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Me neither. I don’t even know what normal is anymore.”

            For a minute, Lucas just continued to do his homework, but what Panda said had struck him in the heart. Normal. It still existed, but in very small amounts. Normal was still life before the war. People were wrong when they said that normal was how everything was now. They had given up hope. Setting his pencil down, Lucas returned his gaze to Panda. “Normal is still what it was before the war. Don’t forget that. When people say the world we’re living in now is normal, they’re wrong. They’ve given up hope. So don’t say that the life we live now is normal. Ok?”

            Panda looked shocked at his statement. “But… ok, I guess? But here’s one problem: we can’t exactly return the world to its state before the war.”

            The gears in Lucas’s head started spinning. Ideas began forming and growing. “Exactly my point,” he said, “if that’s the mindset that everyone is going to have, then no, you can’t ‘save’ the world. But if we could just wake everyone up and show them that if we cleaned up the streets, started fixing up the apartments and shops, and worked on fixing up the electrical lines and stuff, then we can save the world! It can work if we try hard enough! I can already see it!” He exclaimed, picturing the city with people out in the streets moving rubble, carting it off the road, and people clearing out all the dead bodies from alleys and buildings. There was hope!

            “Uh… Lucas?”

            Lucas dragged his mind back to the present, where they were sitting at lunch. Panda was staring at Lucas as if he had morphed into a mutant during his speech. “What?”

            “Have you lost it? Look at the world we live in. People are afraid to leave their apartments, mutants freely roam the streets, and there’s a lack of food and water, for starters.” Panda crossed his arms across his chest and arched an eyebrow. “Maybe you should think about the basic flaws first?”

            The great ideas that had crowded his mind a moment before suddenly vanished. Panda was right: no one would help because they wouldn’t want to use up energy supplied by the scarce food and water in the city. If Lucas managed to overcome the problem, he might be able to actually put his plan into action. In the meantime, he may as well just forget it.

            “Sorry to ruin your spirits,” Panda apologized, most likely seeing the droop in Lucas’s face, “but I didn’t want you to get carried away.”

            Rubbing his forehead, Lucas looked down at his notebook in front of him. “No, it’s alright. Thanks for dragging me back down to earth.” Earth, the corrupted planet with dust and junk filling its atmosphere, slowly freezing the planet while other planets watched, barren of life, and most likely grateful. “Anyways, I need to get to work on this math.” He picked up his pencil and tried to regain his focus. It wasn’t coming.

꠵꠵꠵

            Numbers and symbols were scribbled on the whiteboard at the front of the room. The teacher droned on, speaking a language that Lucas couldn’t comprehend at the moment. It was the language of math. Lucas liked to do math on most days: follow a set of rules that were always there and usually worked. It was straightforward. But today, everything that was straightforward on most days seemed to be bent out of shape and twisted at weird angles. And go figure, the two strange notes he found on his desk and in the alley about stargazing plagued his mind. The most nonlinear things his mind could think of. But not only was Lucas thinking about them. He was thinking about who could have left them. And he already had a person in mind.

            Currently, Lucas sat in his last class of the day, the same class that he had found the first note in. Looking at the places that other students were sitting, Lucas drew the conclusion that a beefy looking guy sitting at the front was responsible for the note on his desk. No other students sat at a position where they would walk by his desk on the way out. So now that Lucas had figured out the suspect of who had to have left the note, it was only a matter of getting him to admit it. A plan that Lucas’s mind was already focused on.

            If Lucas got out of the classroom right once the bell rang, he could reach the door within a few seconds, since he was sitting in the back. The wall across from the classroom was a row of lockers, so Lucas could wait there for the guy to come out. Once the guy came out, Lucas could confront him and tell him that he knew he had been the one to leave the note. And if the guy didn’t admit it? Well, Lucas would take care of that if it came to that.

            With a plan in his head, Lucas only needed to wait for the bell to ring. He kept watching the clock, zoning out to what the teacher was saying completely. Only a minute before the bell rang did he look at the whiteboard and see the words “Homework: pg. 549 #4-8, 15” scribbled on the board. Jotting it down, Lucas shoved his notebook and textbook into his backpack and prepared to jump out of his seat. Any second now…

            “BRRRING!”

            He leapt out of his seat and as he strode to the door, he swung his backpack over his shoulder, snaking his arm in the loop and pulling it onto his back. Just as planned, he was the first one out the door.

            The hallway was mainly empty, except for a student all the way at the far end towards the commons. Lucas strode across the hall and stood in front of the blue lockers, watching each of the students that filed out of the classroom. He tried to look like he was only waiting for a friend, not waiting to pounce on prey. He only had to wait for a few seconds. The guy came striding out and started down the hall without even looking at Lucas. Perfect.

            Lucas strode up to the guy. “Hi,” he said.

            The guy, being at least three inches taller than him, looked down. “Is there something I can help you with?” His face showed no recognition of who Lucas was.

            “Yeah. You left a note sitting on my desk about a week ago. Would you mind explaining it?”

            “A note?” The guy shook his head. “I don’t even know who you are. Why would I leave a note on your desk?”

            Lucas bit his tongue and clenched his hands into fists. They guy could play stupid… but Lucas was going to make him talk one way or another. “Don’t play stupid with me. Why did you put that note on my desk?”

            “Leave me alone,” the guy growled, “I don’t know who you are and what note you’re talking about. Buzz off, shorty.”

            That pushed the limit. Lucas felt his anger hit another level, and in one quick movement he had the guy pinned up against the lockers. He heard gasps from around the hallway, but no one tried to stop him. Good. “Why did you leave that note on my desk?” Lucas asked again.

            The guy didn’t respond. He only wore a tight lipped expression and narrowed his eyes at Lucas.

            “Fine.” Without a second thought, Lucas reached back and punched the guy hard, right in the jaw. He heard a small cracking sound, but ignored it. His fist stung, but he pulled back his arm again. “Tell me about the note.” After a moment of silence, Lucas unleashed all his fury. His threw punch after punch, and the guy didn’t even move. Lucas was lucky that he still had the strength of a football player. Without it, his plan wouldn’t be going down so well.

            “Jay! Stop! Stop! Leave him alone! Jay!” Someone screamed from down the hall.

            Lucas turned to look, and found it was a girl named June who he knew from literacy class. She sprinted towards him, her eyes wide once she turned to see the guy, who was apparently Jay. Lucas stepped back, lowering his fist and looking at Jay’s bloody face and eyes glaring at him. Lucas could feel something coming, and he didn’t want to be around when it happened.

            June reached Jay, throwing her arms around him. She was short like Lucas, and almost had to stand on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “Are you ok?” She whispered, looking up at the boy’s blood stained face.

            He only nodded, and forced out the words, “You won’t even be able recognize that idiot once I’m through with him…” his gaze focused on Lucas, who stood across the hallway, becoming aware of all the students standing by watching.

            June looked back at him. “No Jay, let’s just go. Forget about him.” She grabbed his hand and started walking down the hall, with Jay reluctantly following for a few steps. Then he stopped and turned to Lucas.

            Every instinct told Lucas to run, but he couldn’t move. He had just beaten the guy up, and now the guy was coming back for revenge. He couldn’t run. It would make him look like a coward. He had to stand up and deal with it.

            Jay stepped forward, and before Lucas could even prepare for it, he was spinning towards the ground, pain shooting through his head and red flashing before his eyes. He hit the ground and a whoosh of air escaped him, and for a second Lucas was unable to breath. He felt like a fish out of the water, flopping on land.

            “Well aimed, Jay,” Lucas heard June whisper as they wandered off down the hall.

            Lucas groaned. That plan backfired by a lot.

 

Thanks for reading! I would love to hear what you people think, so if you have any feedback I'd like to hear it. Thanks once again for reading!

           

 

9: Chapter 9

 

            Lucas let the door slam shut and he staggered down the concrete steps, away from the school. Behind him, he heard the door open again, and Panda called out,

            “Hey! Lucas, what happened?”

            He ignored Panda, and continued down the sidewalk bordered by dead trees. His knuckles screamed at him, and his face felt as if it were on fire. He was probably bleeding, except he couldn’t feel it through his rage, shame, and stupidity.

            A hand grabbed his arm. “Lucas, stop. What the hell happened?”

            Despite what the “smart side” of Lucas was telling him, he continued onwards, ignoring Panda. It hurt him that he had to ignore his friend. Lucas wanted to tell Panda what happened, but he knew how he would be scolded him. Lucas wasn’t in the mood for that. He already was scolding himself, beating himself up over his choices, and the last thing he needed was for Panda to repeat everything he already knew.

            They crossed the street and Panda spoke again. “I can tell that whatever you did wasn’t something smart, Lucas. So you can make me guess or just tell me.”

            Lucas stared at his feet and continued walking. The anger he had previously pointed at Jay had disappeared, and pointed in a different direction. It pointed at himself, for the stupid choices he made that he could have easily avoided. There wasn’t a need to punch Jay, or beat him up because he refused to admit to the notes. Lucas could have walked off, or threatened him some other way. He didn’t have to bring it to punches. There was a family that depended on him, and if Jay had decided to actually punch Lucas back and start a real fight, Lucas would have been screwed. Jay was much bigger, stronger, and could easily take Lucas down.

            “Lucas.”

            He looked up at last. Panda walked beside him, watching him. Concern seemed to make his eyebrows sag, and a pair of blue eyes searched Lucas’s face, trying to figure out what was going through his mind. The usually bright freckles splattered across his face seemed faded, lost in the faint layer of ash and dust among other grit layering his face.

            “Yeah?” Lucas responded, his voice cracking. There wasn’t only his family to worry about, there was Panda too. Panda was his best friend, and he cared about Lucas like he was part of his family. None of his stupid actions and choices were easy on Panda either.

            “Are you ok?”

            Lucas shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. He could assure his family and Panda all he wanted to so they wouldn’t worry, but in the end, he would still be hurt and broken inside. There was just one mistake after another piling up within, dragging Lucas down, weakening his shield. He was tired and sick of it. All he wanted to do was to admit that he wasn’t ok, he did hurt, and he didn’t want to go on. He just wanted to give up. “No.” His voice quivered. Whatever wall that held back all the emotions that were breeding inside him had started crumbling, brick by brick, and it would only be a matter of time before he couldn’t hold them back.

            Panda wrapped his arm around Lucas’s shoulder and they stopped by the side of a building that still managed to rise above them, even though it was crippled and broken. “I won’t say anything. Just tell me what happened.”

            Taking a deep breath, Lucas started. “I guess I got a bit mad and started beating up some guy named Jay. Then his girlfriend came over and I stopped… and then he got his payback.”

            Panda’s jaw dropped. “Jay? The Jay? Are you kidding me?”

            Lucas furrowed his eyebrows. “What? You know the guy?”

            “Well yeah,” Panda paused, his eyes wide. “He’s the one and only. Have you been so oblivious to not hear that he used to be the best football player and wrestler? If you’re going to pick someone to mess with, he should be the last one. I can’t believe you didn’t see that coming,” Panda shook his head.

            “Whatever. I learned my lesson. Let’s go.” He looked down the street and spotted their apartment building. Chaz would be lying on his bed working on math problems, and his mom would probably be doing dishes and his dad would be out at the black market or lying on the couch, asleep.

            They continued walking, and when they were about to step inside, Panda stopped Lucas. “Hold on a second.”

            “What?” Lucas just wanted to forget what had happened. He just wanted to act like it didn’t happen at all.

            “You might want to wipe the blood off your face before you go inside.”

            Lucas reached up and felt blood trickling down from out of his nose. “Thanks. You go inside; I’ll be there in a minute.”

            He watched as Panda pulled open the door and disappeared, the door closing with a whoosh behind him. Now that he was gone, Lucas leaned up against the wall of the building and sighed. He was so tired. His energy seemed to have seeped out of him.

            Slowly, he sunk to the ground and wiped the blood away from his nose. A tear managed to escape from his eye, and he wiped it away too, just wishing he could hide somewhere where he wouldn’t have any responsibilities and he didn’t have to worry. It just seemed too hard.

            His gaze traveled down the street, drifting over the piles of chunks of stone and concrete and the smashed forms of old cars that hadn’t been touched for years. Across from him was a two story building, but an entire side was blown out, rendering the building unstable and useless. Ash and dust layered the sidewalk in front of it, only disturbed by a set of fleeting footprints. A small piece of paper danced across the street in the breeze, almost straight towards him. If it was what he thought it was…

            He pulled himself to his feet and trotted after the shred of paper that had been carried by a gentle breeze in the opposite direction. He grabbed it, and standing in the middle of the street, he turned it over and read the words scribbled hurriedly on the back.

            “Lucas, it's been EARTH members leaving the notes. Don't worry about it anymore. Don't get into any more trouble than needed."

            His hand closed into a fist, trapping the note within. Of course. So what were the notes about? Why did they bother and leave the meaningless notes? It had only gotten him into trouble. Had it been a test to see how he would react? Or was it to make sure that he was ready? Lucas wanted answers. He planned on getting them. “Tonight,” he muttered. “I’ll pay a visit to EARTH tonight.”

            With that, Lucas shoved the crushed piece of paper in his jeans pocket and headed inside the building, away from the cold despair that hung in the breeze blowing around him.

꠵꠵꠵

            It was quiet. Lucas had textbooks, notebooks, and notes spread across his bed, and he sifted through them, muttering under his breath, reciting history facts, physics equations, and mathematical rules to remember.

            “Have you turned into a homework zombie over there?”

            Lucas looked up to see Panda sitting at his desk, with a binder opened in front of him. He was twirled around in the desk chair, facing Lucas with a thin smile.

            Lucas laughed. “I don’t know, you tell me. Do I look like the living dead doing homework?” Panda always managed to brighten the room with his jokes, lightening the mood and taking Lucas’s too serious mind off of whatever too serious problem it was contemplating.

            “Well you sure looked like it when you stepped out of school today.” Panda’s voice still seemed light hearted on the outside, but Lucas could hear the crisp tone lying underneath.

            “Yeah,” Lucas replied, with nothing else to say. He didn’t want to think about it. The thought of his idiot choices brought a bad taste to his mouth.

            The smile on his friend’s face disappeared. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

            A sigh escaped from inside Lucas. So maybe he hadn’t. A bit paranoid, some stupid ideas that led to trouble… he usually stayed away from the trouble; tried to get all his homework done, and take care of his family. That hadn’t exactly been the agenda lately. EARTH had destroyed that peacefulness… “No, I’m fine. What would make you say that anyways?”

            Panda swirled around in the desk chair for a minute before responding. “Well, you usually wouldn’t pick a fight, or decide to go into a room where you knew a mutant was. But, you know, that’s not too out of the norm, right?” Sarcasm drenched the last sentence, but the rest of his statement went without humor.

            “I’m just stressed out, ok? I’ve had a hard time lately, and I guess it’s just getting to me. I just want to finish this school year. Once it’s over and we don’t have to go to school I’ll be back to normal.” It wasn’t totally the truth, but it was close enough. Panda would believe it.

            The shabby looking boy stared at Lucas for a moment, his face blank, as if deciding whether Lucas was telling the truth. “Fine. But try to keep that stress level down, ok? I don’t want you getting into more trouble than you can handle.”

            At last, Lucas had a chance to drag the point of the conversation elsewhere. “That’s why you’re here. Someone has to keep an eye on me.”

            Panda fell for the bait. “Sure,” he said, rolling his eyes, “you’ll be lucky if you make it through the rest of our senior year without getting killed, you know," Panda said, chuckling. "Really lucky."

            That made Lucas smile. “Only a few more months. What could go wrong?” He let the anger and mistakes slip away, and he finally started to relax for the first time that day.

꠵꠵꠵

            Lucas peeled open his eyes. There was nothing to see except for blackness, just as he expected. The perfect time to pay a visit to EARTH. This time, instead of being shell-shocked and embarrassed, he planned on getting answers. And he wouldn’t leave until he got them.

            He kicked the covers off his body and searched around at the end of his bed for a shirt and pair of jeans he’d left there before he went to sleep.

            Fabric brushed his hand, and he grabbed the shirt, and after a minute of figuring out what was what, he pulled it over his head and searched for the jeans. He found them with ease and pulled them on, and slid his feet into shoes and crept out of his room and out of the apartment.

            The hallway was dark, almost pitch black, but not quite. A trickle of light managed to slip in from somewhere, illuminating the way towards the stairwell just enough that Lucas didn’t need to brush his hand along the wall as a guide.

            The stairwell was also dark, but after a trip up and down from the previous night, Lucas knew the drill well enough to manage to get down without tripping and crashing down the stairs. At least it was only one flight. One more would just be too much.

            At last he reached the lobby, and he headed for the door and pushed it open. A gust of chilling wind pushed against him, telling him to go back inside where he would be safe and sound. Lucas refused. He knew what he had to do. There was no turning back.

            Pausing for a minute to look around and survey the night landscape, Lucas figured it must have been a full moon because of how the sky seemed to glow through the junk in the atmosphere, lighting the world more than he was used to. It seemed otherworldly. And it would have seemed calm and peaceful except for the wind throwing trash across the street and stirring up ash and dust, casting it into the air and through the lurking shadows of the buildings.

            Because of the cold, Lucas wrapped his arms around himself and ventured down the street in the direction he thought he recalled from the night before. Or was it the other direction… Lucas stopped and looked over his shoulder, down the street. Maybe it had been to the left. But he could have sworn it was to the right…

            “Hey stranger, need some help?”

            Lucas jumped and spotted the man standing further down the sidewalk ahead of him, his trench coat flapping in the wind.

            “Did I scare you?” His voice seemed eerily cold like the night.

            “Yeah. Now take me to EARTH.” Lucas didn’t want to spend any more time in the dark streets than he had to. Mutants were known to prowl more actively during the night, and Lucas didn’t want to see another one of those for a long time.

            “Follow me.” The man started down the street. Lucas jogged to catch up, and they walked side by side down the streets of rubble and broken buildings to the small raided shop where something much deeper and darker lurked.

            While they walked, Lucas kept an eye out for landmarks to see where they were, but everything seemed so different and strange in the dim light, it was impossible to tell anything about the familiar land that seemed so foreign.

            After a few minutes of crossing streets and turning corners, they had arrived. The man pulled open the door and Lucas followed. This time, the man went down the hatch behind the counter first, allowing Lucas to follow behind. As soon as Lucas closed the hatch door, the lights flicked on. For some reason, they didn’t seem as bright as before. Maybe Lucas didn’t feel as exposed as before.

            They reached the bottom of the ladder, and the man guided the way into the shadows at the edge of the room and into a dimly lit hall. He stopped at the fifth door down on the left, and stepped back, looking to Lucas expectantly.

            “What?” Lucas said, not understanding what the man was asking of him.

            “Go ahead,” the man offered, “open it.”

            Eyeing the man, Lucas turned the brass knob and shoved open the door. Inside, a lamp flickered from the ceiling, casting strange shadows upon the desk positioned in the middle of the room. There on the desk sat a manila folder, exactly as Lucas had seen it the night before.  That was the folder that held all the secrets to his family, his life, and EARTH. Did he dare open it? Lucas didn’t travel all the way for nothing. He stepped forward and picked it up. As casual as he could, he flipped it open. His eyes scanned the first sentence on the first page that presented itself, and his jaw dropped. How could they know?

           

Thank you for reading I hope you like it!

10: Chapter 10

 

            Lucas read through the first page in the folder. It was about his old home, complete with a picture, plus an amazing heap of other information. Just reading about it brought back strong memories, memories of playing in the yard with Chaz or his friends, of camping in their spacious backyard during warm summer nights. It brought back the memory of when Lucas had broken a vase while chasing Chaz through the house and had put the blame on his younger brother. Lucas had never been discovered for that. All the good and bad times…

            He turned to another page that had a picture of him clipped to it. He scanned over it, reading all the information they gathered on him. His height, his weight, his age, his daily routine, his grades… how had they managed to obtain such information? Lucas shivered at the thought. The EARTH members were not people he wanted to mess with if they could find out so much information.

            The next few pages had facts about the rest of his family, and there was even a page for an Eric, with the name Panda in small letter underneath. Lucas skipped over that page.

            There was a page on the apartment they lived in now, and a page titled “Incidents.” It caught Lucas’s eye, and decided to give it a quick read. He stopped short once he realized what it was. It was a document of all the mistakes he had made: going to Panda’s apartment to be attacked by a mutant, and there even was a short paragraph about him getting beat up after school that day. How did they know? Lucas wanted to find out.

            He turned to the man standing in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. “How did you give me the notes in school? How are you tracking me in school? What are the notes even for?”

            The stream of questions elicited a chuckle from the man. “I’ll tell you once you finish looking through the file.”

            “No,” Lucas protested, “I want to know now.”

            The man’s voice turned to a growl. “Wait.”

            Lucas turned back to the folder and continued to look through it. There were a few more pages of random information about his family and his life, and then the pages changed the topic to something else. “Blood Red Earth,” one page read. Lucas scanned over the page, reading about a group that had plans to take over the city, and with any luck, more cities and then North America. Lucas rolled his eyes. How stupid was that? There was other information about how many group members there were, how they fought, and how the group was organized.

            He flipped through more pages with the same type of information but about different groups. At the very end, on the last page, a group that caught his eye. “RWO: Rule the World Organization.” The title lacked creativity, but from what Lucas read, they were the fiercest of all, and had the most potential. Kidnapping people off the street, keeping them in an old jail and then transporting them to some facility where they were brainwashed and turned into super soldiers and made immune to the radioactive chemicals that remained in most of the country and on many other continents. It made Lucas shiver to think about that. If RWO wasn’t stopped soon, they could cause some lasting damage.

            Flipping shut the folder, Lucas turned to the man.

            “Are you finished?” He asked.

            Lucas nodded. “So now will you answer my questions?”

            “Yes,” the man said, pulling his fedora down further on his head. “I’ll start with the notes.” He gazed around the small office room for a moment, and then continued. “The notes were to make sure that you were the right one. It seems twisted when I explain it, so I won’t bother. It’d blow your mind too much.”

            Blow his mind? Lucas had dealt with plenty of things that had blown his mind before, and he survived. Why would the man think Lucas couldn’t handle whatever he was going to tell him? “Try me.”

            The man laughed and shook his head as if Lucas had just told a good joke. “No, I’ll spare you. Moving on, it wasn’t Jay who we told to slip you the notes.”

            That would have great to know before he’d gotten a punch delivered to his face. “Oh really?”

            “It was someone we told to give him the notes. Jay knows nothing about it.”

            “And I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who it was that gave him the note?”

            The man shook his head. “No. I have to keep you out of trouble.”

            Lucas sighed and ran a hand over his oily blond hair. “So now what? Why did you recruit me?”

            All you need to know is to meet here two nights from now at 11pm. Be sure you actually come dressed and ready to fight. There will be a battle. There’s no time to chicken out. You must come.” The man turned and disappeared down the hallway, leaving Lucas standing in the room with a folder in hand under the flickering light. A battle? He was going to join in a battle even though he had no idea how to fight or what he was supposed to do? Lucas could get killed! What about his family? He had to worry about them. If he was injured, his dad would have to pick up all that weight. He couldn’t do that to his family.

            Lucas threw the folder on the desk and darted into the doorway. “Wait! I have a question!”

            The hallway was empty. The man had disappeared, and Lucas was left with more questions than  answers.  

꠵꠵꠵

            A stone skittered across the street. Lucas looked over at Panda, who had kicked it. He stared at the ground, black circles resting under his eyes.

            Lucas probably looked the same way. He hadn’t gotten a full night of sleep for three nights because of his EARTH meetings and trying to finish his homework. Barely seven hours of sleep to fuel his body that had been going for seventeen hours. It just didn’t seem right.

            “Hey.”

            Dragging himself out of his thoughts, Lucas returned his gaze to Panda. Another long school day had passed, and since the pantry was beginning to run low, Lucas and Panda decided to look for stuff that they could trade at the black market. Mostly they gathered metal, because it seemed abundant enough and they were usually at least a couple of people looking for it at the black market. “Yeah?”

            Panda shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Are we just going to stand here or what?”

            “No,” Lucas shook his head, “let’s go. Sorry.”

            They walked down the street, avoiding piles of large shattered bricks and ashes. They passed a spot on the sidewalk stained a dark red. Lucas shivered. The killing of a mutant? Or a mutant killing its next meal?

            “You know, Lucas, I can’t keep staying at your apartment,” Panda mumbled.

            Lucas sighed. Of course, this conversation would come up again. “Come on, it’s ok as long as you help look for food. Besides, you keep the morale of the family up. Chaz stays happy; my mom loves to see you….” His dad didn’t care one way or another, but he liked to see that everyone else was happy. It seemed to be his job to take care of the family physically and mentally.

            Panda shook his head. He didn’t respond, so they walked along the sidewalk in silence. They stopped in front of a crippled building, and glanced at each other. The building was probably already empty, but it never hurt to look anyways.

            “Is something wrong?” Panda asked as they stepped inside.

            “No.” It wasn’t the truth. Why were they looking for stuff to trade if EARTH had his family covered with supplies and food each week? Did Lucas just have to act like he depended on trading? It was the only choice. “I was just lost in thought.”

            When Lucas looked over to Panda, his friend had an eyebrow raised. “Right.”

            For a few minutes, they searched through the building, without any luck. Everything had been taken, so they decided to start walking towards the black market and pick up anything that seemed decent along the way. Most of the people at the black market would take wood, metal, or other knick-knacks that could be valuable. No one took money, money had no meaning anymore. Only goods and services did.

            After wandering along for three blocks, only finding a couple of boards of wood and a few pieces of broken glass, some electrical wires, and a couple of large sheets of metal, they decided to talk again.

            “So, what do you want to do when we get back to your place?” Panda asked.

            Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “Eh, I don’t know. I still have a ton of homework to do. I should probably work on that.”

            “Lame,” the boy moaned. “We should do something fun.”

            “Fun? Like what? There’s nothing fun to do anymore. No TV, no video games, no computers…” Lucas let his sentence in a long drag of silence, all the activities he named sinking into each of the boys, bringing back yearning memories of when life wasn’t a fight to survive. When they had the time to sit around and spend time doing stuff for entertainment.

            “No, we don’t need that stuff to have fun,” Panda said, waving his empty hand. “We can have even more fun without that junk.”

            “Oh really?” Lucas raised an eyebrow. “How sure of that-“ Panda cut Lucas off.

            “Look!” he hissed.

            Following his friend’s finger, he spotted a girl walking along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. At first, he didn’t recognize the short brown hair, the shredded jeans, and too large t-shirt hanging off the thin frame. As Lucas was about to ask who it was, something clicked in his head. The girl walking down the hallway, calling out for Jay. The girl across the street was June, Jay’s girlfriend. “Oh…” Lucas said.

            “Yeah. June. She didn’t seem too happy when she saw you two days ago, so maybe we should pretend we don’t exist…” Panda said, but Lucas wasn’t even listening. He was already striding across the street towards her.

            “Lucas!” Panda hissed, trotting after him.

            Lucas headed straight for June. He wanted to apologize and say sorry, and maybe he could manage to get on the girl’s good side. Just maybe. “June!” He called out.

            She looked at him, and the deadly glare began. Maybe talking to her wasn’t such a bright idea…

            “Hey, it’s me, Lucas. I don’t think you know me, but I wanted to say sorry for punching your boyfriend a couple days ago.” Wow. That couldn’t have come out any worse. Lucas bit his lip and hoped that June would accept it.

            For a second, she only stood and stared at him. “Go away and leave me alone,” she growled.

            Whoa. Lucas didn’t expect her to be so hostile. He was just trying to say sorry! “Ok, I just wanted to say I didn’t mean for what happened -“

            “I don’t know if you heard me,” June snarled, “leave me alone.”

            Lucas heard Panda’s quick breathing behind him and knew that he had arrived. He felt a tug on his arm. “Lucas…”

            “Ok, sorry,” Lucas said, starting to back away.

            “Good. If I even see you again, you’ll be sorry,” June threatened, striding off without a glance over her shoulder.

            Lucas and Panda watched for a second, and Panda whispered, “Geez, what was that all about?”

            “Me or her?” Lucas asked.

            “Both.”

            Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “Beats me. Let’s go. Daylight’s burning.” They turned and continued down the street, but Lucas couldn’t shake a weird feeling that had come over him while talking to June. Her hostility, and the glare she gave him… what the heck was that all about? It was like she hated him for something else he had done, not just beating up her boyfriend. Whatever that was, Lucas couldn’t even fathom a guess.

           

Thank you for reading!

11: Chapter 11

The factory building loomed above them. Large concrete walls with only a row of small windows at the top created the four sides of the building. Lucas always expected to see a plume of smoke drifting out of the smokestack, but there never was. 

            “Let’s go.”

            The building was home to the black market, where people traded one person’s junk for someone else’s junk, or for cigarettes or drugs. Some people didn’t have anything better to do with their life.

            Lucas and Panda walked along the chain link fence with barbed wire curling over at the top. Many dents had been put into it, and there was hardly a section of fence where it was straight and unharmed. A few meters ahead, someone had cut out a large section of the fence, creating a passageway into the parking lot that surrounded the building.

            “I hate this place,” Lucas muttered. The outside looked quiet and undisturbed, but the inside was a whole other ball park. Yells bouncing off the walls, cigarette smoke hanging in the air, the smell of pot and dead rats among other stuff filled the building. It wasn’t Lucas’s crowd. The unintelligent people, the ones that were addicted to drugs like bugs to light. Some of the people there weren’t stupid, they were smart, but used their intelligence in the wrong way. Lucas could only shake his head at them.

            “Hurry up,” Panda hissed. “Let’s not hang around here longer than we have to.” Panda carried some small chunks of wood and a large metal sheet. Lucas carried the same material. With any luck, someone would offer a decent trade for what they had gathered.

            They ducked through the hole in the fence and strode towards the door in the side of the building. It seemed so innocent and unimposing. Just a regular metal door on the side of a monstrous building. There was nothing wrong with that, but Lucas dreaded every step closer that he had to take. “You can open it,” he told Panda.

            Panda twisted the knob and the darkness and stench welcomed them as he pulled it open. Panda looked over at Lucas. “You first.”

            With a sigh, Lucas stepped inside, and the usual sounds greeted him. Men laughing deep bellowing laughs, furious yells, drunken voices carrying through the air. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the vendors lined up in rows, with trash and broken bottles littering the aisles. Flies buzzed about, and he noticed a man at one of the nearby tables trying to stomp on something, unsuccessfully. A large gray rat ran out from under his vendor, across the aisle, and through the next vendor, causing a racket.

            “Let’s get this over with,” Lucas muttered, and both of the teenage boys started down the aisle, trying not to breath in any of the contaminated air.

            While they walked, Lucas let his gaze wander across the people sitting behind tables or whatever they used as a vendor. There were only men. He figured that was a good thing; the women were smart enough to stay away. Some of the men were overweight, with long shaggy beards, and others were skinny and had only the minimal facial hair. Most of them were missing more than a few teeth, and the teeth that weren’t missing were yellow. For most of the men, their eyes were bloodshot, staring wildly at whatever random noise or motion captured their attention. It reminded Lucas of how primitive society really was when you stripped away the people that knew how to cover up the other people. Lucas shook his head, and locked his gaze on the aisle ahead of them. Panda walked by his side, doing the exact same thing.

            They wandered up and down the aisles for a few minutes, listening to the drunken sounds and trying to see through a hazy smoke that lingered in the building.

            “Hey! Kids!”

            On their left sat a man behind a “table”, which was only a piece of wood resting between two old tall speakers. The man himself had a decent haircut, with only small half curls of brown hair resting on his forehead. His eyes weren’t bloodshot either, which made Lucas sigh inwardly with relief. He didn’t want to have to deal with a drunken guy.

            “Hi,” Lucas said, standing in front of the vendor. Panda stood beside him. “What will you offer for this stuff?”

            The man seemed to sit in thought for a moment, resting his chin in his hand. “Well, that’s some good wood and metal there. It looks like it’d be decent fire material. What are you looking for?”

            Lucas ran through the list of stuff they could use in his head. Food was always at the top of the list, but was the really necessary now that EARTH would deliver bags of food from now on? Could Lucas dare ask for something else that sat lower in the list? Such as clothes, medical supplies, soap, or another water purifier?

            “Food,” Panda said.

            Lucas turned to stare at his friend. What did Panda think he was doing? Lucas was the one who made the decisions!

            “You’re in luck,” the man said, baring his disturbingly yellow teeth in a smile. “I’ve got plenty of it. You boys wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

            They shook their heads.

            “Damn. Oh well, I can always get one off of someone else. Now give me a sec…” he bent down and rummaged through boxes that Lucas could barely see the tops of. He gathered stuff in his hands, and then set it on the table. A few cans of peanuts, another few cans of carrots and green beans, some glass jars of fruit, and last but not least, two jars of honey.

            “We’ll take it,” Lucas said, dropping the stuff he was holding onto the table and snatching up the food. Panda did the same, and both of them held the jars and cans of food pressed up against their chest.

            “Good doin’ business with you,” the man called after them as they walked away down the aisle.

            Neither of them bothered to respond. Now that their mission was over with and successful, they just wanted to get out of there.

            They strode down the aisle, and headed for the door. Lucas’s gaze wandered to the men sitting in their vendors. None of them had memorable faces, they all seemed to blend together. Except for one man.

            He sat in a chair, and had his feet propped up against the table. His hands sat folded across his bulging belly, hiding under a white t-shirt that had turned more brown than white. However, the man watched as they walked by, his beady eyes and slicked back hair sending shivers down Lucas’s spine. He seemed like a con man- and nothing good could come out of that. A sly business man.

            Someone nudged Lucas in the arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

            Lucas realized it was Panda. “Yeah, I’m with you on that.”

            They continued walking, but the man’s face remained burned into his mind. There was something about the way the man watched Lucas as he had walked by. As if Lucas was an animal in a cage and the man was contemplating on buying him or not… Lucas shivered. It was best if he just forgot it.

꠵꠵꠵

            The darkness from outside had begun to seep inside Lucas’s room. Lucas sat on his bed, propping himself up against the pillows, and Panda laid on the floor, on top of the sleeping bag he slept in.

            Despite the fact that both of the teenagers should have been doing homework, neither one was. Instead, Lucas rambled on, talking about something that happened in class a day ago, that didn’t really matter, and Panda listened. Lucas’s mind, even as he talked, kept going back to the fact that that very night he would be going into battle with other EARTH members. He couldn’t sit still as he thought about it. He’d never really fought before, at least not in a sense where he had actually been fighting and not just beating someone up or being beat up himself.

            What if Lucas ended up getting hurt during the battle? How could he explain that to his family? Or worse, what if Lucas died? Certainly, the EARTH members wouldn’t let that happen, would they? He had a family to take care of-

            “Lucas? Are you ok?”

            Panda looked up at him with quizzical eyes and raised eyebrows.

            “Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” Lucas lied, hoping Panda would believe it.

            “You sure? You’re having some sitting still issues.”

            Exhaling, Lucas found that his friend was right. Lucas kept fidgeting, playing with hands, changing his leg position, rubbing his head… “Sorry. I guess I’m just anxious about a test I have tomorrow.”

            Panda smirked. “Feeling the need to study?”

            Before Lucas could respond, the door to their room burst open and Chaz stood in the doorway. “Hey? Can we play Sorry?”

            With a glance at the clock, Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “Sure. Grab the board and let’s get started.”

            Chaz grabbed the board off of Lucas’s desk and flopped down on the floor next to Panda. Lucas slid off his bed and sat next to Chaz. In a few minutes, the board had been set up and the three boys were ready to start.

            “I swear I’ll win this time,” Panda said, watching as Chaz pulled the first card off the deck.

            “Yes! A one!” He cried out, moving his first player.

            Panda sighed. “So much for that.”

            Lucas sat back and grinned. Playing Sorry had to be the best way to get his mind off of stuff. It was also a good way to have fun. Now that it was Panda’s turn, he pulled a card off the deck. “Are you kidding me? A twelve, and I can’t use it?” He threw the card across the board.

            Unable to stop himself, Lucas burst out laughing. After glaring at his friend, Panda joined in laughing too. Only Chaz sat there, watching the two older kids. “What’s so funny?” He asked.

            Meeting eyes with Panda, Lucas replied, “if only you knew.”

꠵꠵꠵

            A cooling breeze made Lucas shiver. He was more nervous than he had ever been- creeping through the dark city so he could go fight in a battle. What if he got hurt? He didn’t even know what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know how to fight! What had he gotten himself into?

            For some reason, the night seemed lighter than usual. Maybe it was clouds reflecting what little light there was, or maybe some other crazy reason was causing it. However, it enabled Lucas to see better than usual, and he was grateful for it.

            He turned the corner, scanning the street. There wasn’t another living soul. A rusted car sat across the street, or at least what used to be a car. From the bomb and people taking whatever they could, it was more of just the car frame, with wire spilling out from the inside and the faint outline of the guts of the car spilling out from under the hood.

            The war had reduced people to savages. The terror of not being able to survive overruled the common sense that they had been living with for so long. It was panic, get food, shelter and water, or die. Some people were willing to do whatever it took to make sure they lived. Even if whatever it took was killing people, families, and slimming down another person’s chance so they could have a better chance. At least Lucas’s family wasn’t like that. They stayed out of the way, and let other people do their thing. If someone already had food, they weren’t going to steal it. They would play by the rules. Rules that didn’t seem to exist anymore.

            Movement caught Lucas’s eye. He scanned the dark street, searching for a person. Quickly he found the person. It was someone walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. A girl… with short cut hair. June? Lucas peered through the darkness, trying to decipher the faint figure. It had to be.

            More movement caused Lucas to turn his head. Sneaking behind June was another figure, but the person was acting stealthy, not wanting to be noticed. He could tell it was a man… a man carrying something in his hand. Concentrating, Lucas realized what the man was carrying was a knife. And he was following June.

            “June!” Lucas started sprinting across the street. He could see June turn her head and maybe look over her shoulder at him. Her movement didn’t seem alarmed, but calm. Why wasn’t she surprised? Or worried?

            Lucas crashed to the ground, and something jabbed him hard in the stomach. He cried out in pain, feeling his mouth fill with something that wasn’t spit, and he felt a fire burning on his insides. What the hell? He wanted to struggle and get up, get away, but his head buzzed, ached, and moving was just too much trouble. What was going on?

            Someone grabbed his arms and yanked them behind his back. Lucas didn’t struggle, he was still preoccupied trying to clear his head. “Urgh,” he groaned, trying to spit out the blood filling his mouth.

            “Shut up,” someone grumbled. A cold metal clicked against Lucas’s wrists, and when he tried to move his wrists, he found he couldn’t. What the heck?

            Before Lucas could even react, pain exploded in his face, jaw, nose, and blackness swirled around the edge of his vision.

            A cruel feminine laugh. Someone calling out for him. A gunshot.

            The blackness swallowed him alive. 

The factory building loomed above them. Large concrete walls with only a row of small windows at the top created the four sides of the building. Lucas always expected to see a plume of smoke drifting out of the smokestack, but there never was. 

            “Let’s go.”

            The building was home to the black market, where people traded one person’s junk for someone else’s junk, or for cigarettes or drugs. Some people didn’t have anything better to do with their life.

            Lucas and Panda walked along the chain link fence with barbed wire curling over at the top. Many dents had been put into it, and there was hardly a section of fence where it was straight and unharmed. A few meters ahead, someone had cut out a large section of the fence, creating a passageway into the parking lot that surrounded the building.

            “I hate this place,” Lucas muttered. The outside looked quiet and undisturbed, but the inside was a whole other ball park. Yells bouncing off the walls, cigarette smoke hanging in the air, the smell of pot and dead rats among other stuff filled the building. It wasn’t Lucas’s crowd. The unintelligent people, the ones that were addicted to drugs like bugs to light. Some of the people there weren’t stupid, they were smart, but used their intelligence in the wrong way. Lucas could only shake his head at them.

            “Hurry up,” Panda hissed. “Let’s not hang around here longer than we have to.” Panda carried some small chunks of wood and a large metal sheet. Lucas carried the same material. With any luck, someone would offer a decent trade for what they had gathered.

            They ducked through the hole in the fence and strode towards the door in the side of the building. It seemed so innocent and unimposing. Just a regular metal door on the side of a monstrous building. There was nothing wrong with that, but Lucas dreaded every step closer that he had to take. “You can open it,” he told Panda.

            Panda twisted the knob and the darkness and stench welcomed them as he pulled it open. Panda looked over at Lucas. “You first.”

            With a sigh, Lucas stepped inside, and the usual sounds greeted him. Men laughing deep bellowing laughs, furious yells, drunken voices carrying through the air. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the vendors lined up in rows, with trash and broken bottles littering the aisles. Flies buzzed about, and he noticed a man at one of the nearby tables trying to stomp on something, unsuccessfully. A large gray rat ran out from under his vendor, across the aisle, and through the next vendor, causing a racket.

            “Let’s get this over with,” Lucas muttered, and both of the teenage boys started down the aisle, trying not to breath in any of the contaminated air.

            While they walked, Lucas let his gaze wander across the people sitting behind tables or whatever they used as a vendor. There were only men. He figured that was a good thing; the women were smart enough to stay away. Some of the men were overweight, with long shaggy beards, and others were skinny and had only the minimal facial hair. Most of them were missing more than a few teeth, and the teeth that weren’t missing were yellow. For most of the men, their eyes were bloodshot, staring wildly at whatever random noise or motion captured their attention. It reminded Lucas of how primitive society really was when you stripped away the people that knew how to cover up the other people. Lucas shook his head, and locked his gaze on the aisle ahead of them. Panda walked by his side, doing the exact same thing.

            They wandered up and down the aisles for a few minutes, listening to the drunken sounds and trying to see through a hazy smoke that lingered in the building.

            “Hey! Kids!”

            On their left sat a man behind a “table”, which was only a piece of wood resting between two old tall speakers. The man himself had a decent haircut, with only small half curls of brown hair resting on his forehead. His eyes weren’t bloodshot either, which made Lucas sigh inwardly with relief. He didn’t want to have to deal with a drunken guy.

            “Hi,” Lucas said, standing in front of the vendor. Panda stood beside him. “What will you offer for this stuff?”

            The man seemed to sit in thought for a moment, resting his chin in his hand. “Well, that’s some good wood and metal there. It looks like it’d be decent fire material. What are you looking for?”

            Lucas ran through the list of stuff they could use in his head. Food was always at the top of the list, but was the really necessary now that EARTH would deliver bags of food from now on? Could Lucas dare ask for something else that sat lower in the list? Such as clothes, medical supplies, soap, or another water purifier?

            “Food,” Panda said.

            Lucas turned to stare at his friend. What did Panda think he was doing? Lucas was the one who made the decisions!

            “You’re in luck,” the man said, baring his disturbingly yellow teeth in a smile. “I’ve got plenty of it. You boys wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

            They shook their heads.

            “Damn. Oh well, I can always get one off of someone else. Now give me a sec…” he bent down and rummaged through boxes that Lucas could barely see the tops of. He gathered stuff in his hands, and then set it on the table. A few cans of peanuts, another few cans of carrots and green beans, some glass jars of fruit, and last but not least, two jars of honey.

            “We’ll take it,” Lucas said, dropping the stuff he was holding onto the table and snatching up the food. Panda did the same, and both of them held the jars and cans of food pressed up against their chest.

            “Good doin’ business with you,” the man called after them as they walked away down the aisle.

            Neither of them bothered to respond. Now that their mission was over with and successful, they just wanted to get out of there.

            They strode down the aisle, and headed for the door. Lucas’s gaze wandered to the men sitting in their vendors. None of them had memorable faces, they all seemed to blend together. Except for one man.

            He sat in a chair, and had his feet propped up against the table. His hands sat folded across his bulging belly, hiding under a white t-shirt that had turned more brown than white. However, the man watched as they walked by, his beady eyes and slicked back hair sending shivers down Lucas’s spine. He seemed like a con man- and nothing good could come out of that. A sly business man.

            Someone nudged Lucas in the arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

            Lucas realized it was Panda. “Yeah, I’m with you on that.”

            They continued walking, but the man’s face remained burned into his mind. There was something about the way the man watched Lucas as he had walked by. As if Lucas was an animal in a cage and the man was contemplating on buying him or not… Lucas shivered. It was best if he just forgot it.

꠵꠵꠵

            The darkness from outside had begun to seep inside Lucas’s room. Lucas sat on his bed, propping himself up against the pillows, and Panda laid on the floor, on top of the sleeping bag he slept in.

            Despite the fact that both of the teenagers should have been doing homework, neither one was. Instead, Lucas rambled on, talking about something that happened in class a day ago, that didn’t really matter, and Panda listened. Lucas’s mind, even as he talked, kept going back to the fact that that very night he would be going into battle with other EARTH members. He couldn’t sit still as he thought about it. He’d never really fought before, at least not in a sense where he had actually been fighting and not just beating someone up or being beat up himself.

            What if Lucas ended up getting hurt during the battle? How could he explain that to his family? Or worse, what if Lucas died? Certainly, the EARTH members wouldn’t let that happen, would they? He had a family to take care of-

            “Lucas? Are you ok?”

            Panda looked up at him with quizzical eyes and raised eyebrows.

            “Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” Lucas lied, hoping Panda would believe it.

            “You sure? You’re having some sitting still issues.”

            Exhaling, Lucas found that his friend was right. Lucas kept fidgeting, playing with hands, changing his leg position, rubbing his head… “Sorry. I guess I’m just anxious about a test I have tomorrow.”

            Panda smirked. “Feeling the need to study?”

            Before Lucas could respond, the door to their room burst open and Chaz stood in the doorway. “Hey? Can we play Sorry?”

            With a glance at the clock, Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “Sure. Grab the board and let’s get started.”

            Chaz grabbed the board off of Lucas’s desk and flopped down on the floor next to Panda. Lucas slid off his bed and sat next to Chaz. In a few minutes, the board had been set up and the three boys were ready to start.

            “I swear I’ll win this time,” Panda said, watching as Chaz pulled the first card off the deck.

            “Yes! A one!” He cried out, moving his first player.

            Panda sighed. “So much for that.”

            Lucas sat back and grinned. Playing Sorry had to be the best way to get his mind off of stuff. It was also a good way to have fun. Now that it was Panda’s turn, he pulled a card off the deck. “Are you kidding me? A twelve, and I can’t use it?” He threw the card across the board.

            Unable to stop himself, Lucas burst out laughing. After glaring at his friend, Panda joined in laughing too. Only Chaz sat there, watching the two older kids. “What’s so funny?” He asked.

            Meeting eyes with Panda, Lucas replied, “if only you knew.”

꠵꠵꠵

            A cooling breeze made Lucas shiver. He was more nervous than he had ever been- creeping through the dark city so he could go fight in a battle. What if he got hurt? He didn’t even know what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know how to fight! What had he gotten himself into?

            For some reason, the night seemed lighter than usual. Maybe it was clouds reflecting what little light there was, or maybe some other crazy reason was causing it. However, it enabled Lucas to see better than usual, and he was grateful for it.

            He turned the corner, scanning the street. There wasn’t another living soul. A rusted car sat across the street, or at least what used to be a car. From the bomb and people taking whatever they could, it was more of just the car frame, with wire spilling out from the inside and the faint outline of the guts of the car spilling out from under the hood.

            The war had reduced people to savages. The terror of not being able to survive overruled the common sense that they had been living with for so long. It was panic, get food, shelter and water, or die. Some people were willing to do whatever it took to make sure they lived. Even if whatever it took was killing people, families, and slimming down another person’s chance so they could have a better chance. At least Lucas’s family wasn’t like that. They stayed out of the way, and let other people do their thing. If someone already had food, they weren’t going to steal it. They would play by the rules. Rules that didn’t seem to exist anymore.

            Movement caught Lucas’s eye. He scanned the dark street, searching for a person. Quickly he found the person. It was someone walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. A girl… with short cut hair. June? Lucas peered through the darkness, trying to decipher the faint figure. It had to be.

            More movement caused Lucas to turn his head. Sneaking behind June was another figure, but the person was acting stealthy, not wanting to be noticed. He could tell it was a man… a man carrying something in his hand. Concentrating, Lucas realized what the man was carrying was a knife. And he was following June.

            “June!” Lucas started sprinting across the street. He could see June turn her head and maybe look over her shoulder at him. Her movement didn’t seem alarmed, but calm. Why wasn’t she surprised? Or worried?

            Lucas crashed to the ground, and something jabbed him hard in the stomach. He cried out in pain, feeling his mouth fill with something that wasn’t spit, and he felt a fire burning on his insides. What the hell? He wanted to struggle and get up, get away, but his head buzzed, ached, and moving was just too much trouble. What was going on?

            Someone grabbed his arms and yanked them behind his back. Lucas didn’t struggle, he was still preoccupied trying to clear his head. “Urgh,” he groaned, trying to spit out the blood filling his mouth.

            “Shut up,” someone grumbled. A cold metal clicked against Lucas’s wrists, and when he tried to move his wrists, he found he couldn’t. What the heck?

            Before Lucas could even react, pain exploded in his face, jaw, nose, and blackness swirled around the edge of his vision.

            A cruel feminine laugh. Someone calling out for him. A gunshot.

            The blackness swallowed him alive. 

12: Chapter 12

 

            A faint buzzing reached Lucas’s ears, and he couldn’t tell if it was from his head or something else. A sharp pain in his skull tried to convince him not to move. What the heck? He peeled his eyes open, and for a second, Lucas wasn’t even sure that he had opened them until he detected a faint light. The light managed to illuminate the ceiling, which was stone gray. After a few seconds, a reek entered his nose, and it reminded him of dead bodies and trash that was long overdue for being removed.

            Struggling to sit up, Lucas felt a hard, concrete floor underneath him. It was cold, and sent shivers up his spine. Once sitting, he glanced around. Three concrete walls surrounded him, and the wall behind him was made up of bars, like on a prison cell. A prison cell? What was going on? Where was he? He managed to peer through the darkness and saw that across an aisle outside of his cell was another cell.

            “No,” he moaned, rubbing his eyes, wishing he could piece everything together. Maybe he was just having a bad dream.

            He pulled his hands away from his eyes and found that nothing had changed. So where the hell was he? The buzzing in his aching head was starting to drive him insane, and his stomach was screaming in protest because of the awful smell.

            Lucas crawled to the nearest wall, and propped himself up against it. What was the last thing he could remember? They had gone to the black market that day. A man offered a good trade, and as they walked out Lucas could remember seeing a strange man who was watching him. After that, Panda and him had gone home, eaten the little dinner that was served, and gone into Lucas’s room. They had talked, and then Chaz came in and they played Sorry. Then… it struck him.

            Seeing June across the street. Someone following her. Running across the street to warn her, but landing on the ground. Someone pulling his hands behind his back and clicking cold metal on them-hand cuffs? – And then being smacked in the head and hearing a laugh. A feminine laugh. Someone had called out to Lucas. Who could it have been? Panda? No… Lucas hoped it wasn’t Panda. He hoped that whatever had been bestowed upon him wouldn’t be the same for his friend.

            Somewhere nearby, Lucas heard a cough.

            Did other people reside in the rest of the cells? In the dank and pressing darkness, were there other people, sitting there just as he was? Lucas wasn’t the only one?

            Using the wall as support, Lucas managed to rise to his feet. His legs shook like he hadn’t walked in a year. He took a deep breath and pushed away from the wall, but kept one hand on it to ensure that he wouldn’t fall. For a moment, he thought that his legs would fail him, but surprisingly, he remained standing. He took a step in the direction of front of the cell, which went well. In a couple of steps, he reached the front of his cell.

            Gripping the ice-cold bars, Lucas leaned towards them and strained his eyes through the darkness that gobbled up all the details. From what he could see, a row of cells lined the other side of the aisle. In the cell directly across from him, he picked out a figure in the darkness, sitting in the middle of the floor, legs crossed. Almost as if he was meditating… but not quite. Maybe he was praying?

            “Hello,” Lucas whispered, afraid to speak any louder in the silence that melded with the darkness.

            The figure in the cell didn’t move. Lucas didn’t know if the man hadn’t heard him or if he chose to ignore him.

            Just as Lucas was about to open his mouth to grab the man’s attention once more, he could see the man’s head move. A shape of a face stared at him through the shadows. “Good-bye,” the man whispered.

            Lucas’s eyebrows furrowed. Why did the man say good-bye? It didn’t look like either of them were going anywhere anytime soon. “Where do you think you’re going?”

            Through the gloom, the man’s mouth moved. “We’re going to be loaded onto a bus soon. Then we’ll be changed, and send off to fight in a war. If that isn’t a reason to say good-bye, I don’t know what is.” His voice was husky and loud as he made his statement, allowing others to hear.

            A sobbing echoed from down the aisle. Lucas didn’t bother to look. He stepped away from the bars and leaned back against the wall. A war… his legs dropped out from under him. He crashed to the ground, his head banging on the concrete behind him. Moaning, he rested his head in his hands and tried to take it in.

            A war. They were there to fight in a war? What war? As far as Lucas knew, there wasn’t any war taking place. Or was there?  He shook his head, trying to calm himself. Worrying wasn’t going to help. What would help was if his headache would go away.

            Tired, he scooted away from the wall and lay down on his stomach, resting his head on his arms. Sleep plagued him, and closing his eyes and sleeping to relieve his aching mind and weakened body seemed like a great idea. With little effort, he slipped away into a restful and needed slumber.

꠵꠵꠵

            The warm night wrapped itself around Lucas and Chaz. They stood in the front yard, Lucas’s silver telescope pointing towards the stars that hung in the sky above them. There wasn’t even a slight breeze to disturb the calm of the crickets chirping, the owl in the distance hooting, and a dog barking far away. The night was just how Lucas wanted to spend it with his little brother.

            “Come on Luke,” Chaz whined, punching Lucas’s leg.

            “Chill out,” he replied, stepping away from the telescope. “I have to get it set up first.”

            When Lucas looked down at his brother, Chaz wore a frown and had his arms crossed across his chest. Lucas couldn’t help but roll his eyes. He had such attitude despite being young. “Don’t rush me. If you do, it’ll take longer.” He leaned forward to look through the telescope, and after a few adjustments and without a word from Chaz, he took a few steps back. “Ready?”

            “Yeah!” Chaz jumped up from where he was sitting in the freshly mown grass, staring at the starry globe that surrounded them. His brother carefully peered through the telescope, barely touching it.

            The sight made Lucas smile. It must have been the first time that Chaz had seen The Pleiades constellation, a group of seven tightly packed stars which turned out to be a lot more than seven when viewed with a telescope. Just seeing the stars and knowing that the Sun wasn’t the only star that was actually out there… that earth wasn’t the only planet orbiting around a sun… it struck Lucas down with awe each time. Being able to tip his head back and be surrounded by the stars and knowing that there actually was stuff that wasn’t just on earth. The thought was priceless. The feeling was something that words and pictures just couldn’t describe.

            After a minute, Chaz pulled away from the telescope. With wide eyes, he looked at Lucas. “Are there other planets like earth out there?”

            Lucas smiled and nodded, imagining the countless planets that could possibly be out there, beyond what even the most advanced telescopes and scientific equipment could even spot. “Maybe not quite like earth, but there’s plenty of other planets out there. Some might even be better than earth.”

            Chaz turned his gaze up to the stars. “I want to be an astronaut. I want to explore other worlds. Do you think there are aliens out there?”

            Lucas mimicked his brother’s actions, admiring a thick banner of stars that crossed along the zenith. “I’m sure there are. Even if there aren’t aliens, I’m sure there’s life. It might not be intelligent, but this universe would be a waste of space if we’re the only ones.” Just a bunch of trashy humans, polluting their planet without a second thought, wasting life without realizing just how unique it is. They could be the only life in the universe. But before they could even begin to reach a higher intelligence, new technology, and most of all, more knowledge, they would probably end up killing themselves. “Or maybe we are just the only ones,” Lucas whispered.

꠵꠵꠵

            Sleeping seemed to help Lucas’s head, as it was no longer buzzing or aching except for a small trace. He sat propped up against the back wall in his cell, thinking. Thinking about his family and his fate.

            Lucas had to escape. He couldn’t go fight a war. His parents, Chaz, and Panda needed him. What would they do when they woke up and found that Lucas wasn’t in bed? Would they think that he had left? Gotten sick of everything he had to do and ran off, trying to relieve the pressure?

            No. He shook his head. He had to escape. He had to show them that he would do whatever it took to get home.

            But how could he escape? He didn’t bring his knife with him when he had gone out to meet the EARTH members… or did he?

            Lucas shoved a hand into his jeans pocket and his fingers wrapped around the handle of his switchblade. Perfect. He pulled it out and hid it within his lap so only he could see it. Now if Lucas remained lucky he could pick the lock on his cell. Only if it was the right type of lock.

            He pushed himself to his feet and strode towards the front of his cell, his hand wrapped around the switchblade. With a hammering heart, he stepped forward and pressed his forehead against the bars, trying to see the lock. It was… the wrong type of lock. A combination lock. Of course.

            Would Lucas ever see his family again? Should he just give up hope now and save himself for later? It seemed like a knife was being twisted in his heart. He couldn’t just forget about Chaz, Panda, and his parents. They wouldn’t forget about him. Panda would go out searching for him, day after day, and probably skip school too. Lucas’s parents would tell Panda to go to school, and say that Lucas would turn up soon enough. But would that be true? Lucas didn’t even know where he was. He didn’t think that he could be far, but having been around his area of the city quite a bit, he didn’t think that there was any place with jail cells in the basement.

            Lucas turned around and leaned back against the bars. The uneven coolness spread across his back. He sighed. Maybe the man across the aisle was wrong. Maybe they weren’t actually going to fight a war. What kind of crazy idea was that anyways? They weren’t soldiers. Even though he wanted to dismiss the idea, a feeling in the pit of his stomach wouldn’t let him.

꠵꠵꠵

            Yet another guard escorted a man down the aisle. Lucas listened as their shoes tapped against the floor. He would be soon; the guards were only a few cells away.

            Should Lucas protest? Should he try to fight the guard that came to take him away? Maybe they were releasing people. Lucas watched yet another guard walk by. A holster sat on his hip, and a gun sat within it. Trying to fight probably wasn’t a good idea. But would the guard actually shoot him? If they were under orders, then maybe he wouldn’t. Then again, Lucas didn’t know anything about what was going on, so maybe resisting wasn’t such a good idea.

            A pang of guilt stabbed Lucas. He didn’t know how much time had passed since he had been taken. He didn’t know long he had been knocked out for, or how long he had slept for. Whoever was taking care of the entire operation knew what they were doing. They knew how to keep everyone in the dark, literally and figuratively. They knew how to get the advantage and leave everyone else at a disadvantage.

            Staring out into the aisle, Lucas watched as the man in the cell across from him was led out of his cell. The man was short and scrawny, with a scrubby beard and shabby looking clothes. As far as Lucas was concerned, the man was crazy. During the times when Lucas was awake, he could hear the man mumbling under his breath. The entire time he just sat in the middle of his cell, in the same position without moving. Head down, legs crossed, hands in his lap. To Lucas, it looked like the man had given up hope.

            For a minute, there wasn’t any sound. No one sobbing, yelling, or banging on the cell doors. Another guard came down the aisle. This time, he stopped in front of Lucas.

            Lucas couldn’t see his face in the dim light. There was probably a scowl plastered on his face, hating his lousy job of moving prisoners back and forth.

            Lucas stood up and grabbed the bars of the cell.

            “Get back,” the man growled.

            He didn’t budge. He wanted to see what would happen.

            “I mean it.” The man reached for his side and pulled out the handgun, pointing it straight at Lucas’s face, only a few inches away.

            Reluctantly, Lucas stepped back into the middle of his cell. So the guards weren’t afraid to use their guns. And they didn’t have much patience either. Just one more thing that Lucas wanted to test…

            The guard proceeded to open Lucas’s cell door. Lucas watched and waiting, counting in his head. He tensed his muscles, ready to make his move any second.

            The door swung open, and the guard took one step into his cell. Lucas sprang forward, colliding with the guard, who didn’t budge. Something hard smacked into his side, and he collapsed onto the floor, stunned from the pain. The guard easily grabbed his arms and pulled them behind his back, clipping cool metal onto them. “Get up.”

            Without waiting, the man jerked Lucas up and he tried to get his feet. Then the guard shoved him out of his cell, but paused in the aisle. He reached into Lucas’s pocket and pulled out his switchblade. “Thanks,” the man mumbled in his ear. “Now walk.” With another rough shove, they started down the aisle lined with cells shrouded in darkness.