-Before-

Harrison had been wildly helpful in keeping us all under control, especially during the first few weeks. After the pillars fell from the sky we were unsure of what to do next. The cement had stopped shuddering, giving us a moment to breath. I held Liz to my chest, keeping her eyes off her brothers corpse, the half of it that was left. His blood coated the wall in an explosion of crimson, slowly dripping back down onto his cold, pale skin. I hate thinking about it but I see it every time I look into Lizeth's eyes. Poor girl. Me and Sammy did our best to keep her attention away from the entire situation. Harry saddled up quickly and took stock of what we would need, apparently reading and watching a bunch of apocalypse media helps you know what to look for in supplies and such. We set up a little camp and we all had our own jobs to keep ourselves busy mostly. None of us wanted to think too hard about what had happened, but at night, when most of us should have been asleep, when we no longer could keep ourselves busy with menial work, most of us cried. We cried for our families, for our friends. We sobbed for our lives, completely uprooted by this ungodly situation we found ourselves in after this catastrophic event. We couldn't stop ourselves once the tears started. Eventually we stopped having the strength to cry. I think I can speak for most of us in the group when I say that, for the most part, we had just topped worrying about finding anyone else, or creating something normal. There was one night where me and Harry had to stop Jace from... Well, him and Haley aren't together anymore.

Eventually, we decided, as a group, to head inside the door of the pillar that destroyed our friend. We headed downstairs. There was a large room at the bottom, with cold smooth cement floors, and rougher walls heading down the entire staircase. Smaller pillars lined the immediate area underneath the stairs, circular as opposed to the square monolith protruding from the ground that we came from. It took us all standing around gawking to realize finally that this planet wasn't for us anymore. The architecture her was unfit for human life. We stood on what appeared to be a stage-like structure, although there were no seats or audience placement to be found. Instead, there was three long rows of cement walls, standing at least twice my height and stretching far into the horizon. There was a quilt of fog laying over everything once you looked far enough in any given direction and it only let us see so far ahead before the concrete became fuzzy, but there were lights shining from facsimiles of stoops and porches, windows and door frames, that stopped the underside from being completely dark. Standing in the moist air turned my legs into cherry gelatin, like my mom used to make for us. I could feel a small pressure around my palm, barely a whisper of touch to me, but the white knuckles on Liz's hands showed how terrified she was. Tommy and Daniel volunteered to head out a little farther to check on the area as a whole and no one else was brave enough to go with them so we all sat on a nearby stoop-looking structure. It felt weird, we used to sit on steps just like these, not worried about anything, just enjoying our days. I never thought about the people who had spent time and energy, sweating through the hot days in the middle of town, building these steps. Now all I can think about is where these ones came from. Who made them? What happened? And why? what was the purpose of this, how did it happen, what caused it? Who all died because of this? walking down those stairs felt like we had made our final decision on whether or not we would survive this new world, although none of us could tell how long it would last before the answer truly revealed itself to us.

----------------------------------------

- Now -

The group dispersed taking a look around the room after the quake finished its redesign of the surrounding area. I handed Liz to Sammy, who took her eagerly, while I searched myself. I don't know if anyone else could hear it but I followed the sound of trickling before finding a small stream of water flowing down the slick walls. I can't tell how long its been running here but it doesn't seem long. "Hey Harry," I called, waiting for the sound of his shoes scuffling against the floor to continue my thought. "There's water." "There's water, yeah," he sounded surprised, the first sign of anything organic since we came down here that all of us could see. Gwen and Haley ran over, pushing the small canteens we'd found above against the wall, trying to catch some inside. "Now we don't know how safe the water is, we'll have to run up and start a fire soon to boil it, just in case." Harry had this way of being able to think the most critically out of all of us, because I was about to scoop some up for Liz when he said that, which made me think twice about letting her drink it right away. "Shit, didn't think about that." We took what we could grab, and Samantha even got Liz to splash a bit, which made all of us smile, but we decided we needed to head back to camp, before another realignment messed up our path back more than the first one had. Danny dashed ahead, continuing the job we've let him take over. When he came back he led the group through what felt like a maze, incomprehensible to me, but I've learned to trust his sense of direction. It didn't take long for him to lead us back topside, where we've been camping out this entire time. The only thing denoting that we we're above ground anymore were the few shafts of moonlight spilling through the small gaps in between the cement in the sky, and the dirt and packed sand of the playground. The grass has been dead for a long while now, but the playground we've set up as a small fort has felt more homely than any other place these past months. Haley started a fire, with Justin's help, and started boiling the water to make sure it was safe. The rest of us decided to head to bed. The first one to make the decision is usually Liz, who'll rub her eyes in strict protest, but almost immediately falls asleep once Sammy lays her in her sleeping bag. Sammy walked out and closed the makeshift door to the girls' bedroom before joining me on the top of the playground, the peak of the slide. I flick a cigarette out of the box, one of the handful I have left from the last trip into town, and offer it to her. She takes it and I call to Justin for the light, he grumbles something before tossing it up. I rub my thumb over the metal, still hot from starting Haley's campfire, and flick, burning the tip of my thumb. It hurts for a second, and I hold my hand too close to stop the breeze from taking out what's left of the oil, but it's worth it. The soft light flares up into a brighter hue as she takes a drag, her soft brown eyes stare down the barrel of paper, making sure it actually caught. I make sure to stop staring before she notices again. After a long drag, and extended puff, she finally breaks the silence. "She said something to me today," "Oh yeah? What's that?" "She said 'thank you' in just the sweetest voice you've ever heard." She leans against the railing, catching the small amount of moonlight we get in this area directly on her hair. The soft brunette of her roots teasing the stark black and green that she's had it dyed as for years now. "That's great," I respond. I'm ecstatic that she's starting to talk again, but I don't want to get too excited yet, nothing good ever comes from being excited about our future. "It'd be even better if she spoke to us regularly, but I'm happy she's making progress." Another drag from both of us, asynchronous and extended, allows silence to settle back over us, like the Cement over the sky. This time it's my turn to break the silence, "I'm glad we found some more water, I hope boiling it is enough to make it safe," it's been our ritual for months now. She talks, I talk, she talks, I talk. Always small stuff, usually about Liz or someone in the group. Not about us. Never about us. "I'm sure the water will be fine once Hale's done with it. You saw how she reacted to Harrison today?" she responds. "Yeah, I can't imagine Harry letting go, but like, she stepped in, actively. You think she's warming back up to him?" "I wouldn't, if he did that to me." "Makes sense, but they were dating before hand, plus I can't imagine you liking guys like him in the first place." "What do you mean?" "Like, the big athletic guys like him. Y'know? That work out and shit." "Aren't you a big strong guy like that?" "What does that ha-" The slide starts rattling, cutting me off, as Justin's head pops up from the bottom. "Y'all wanna come get some water or you guys gonna keep making out?" Even as dark as it was in the sky now, with the Cement covering the sky, only letting in a small fraction of light at any given moment, I can see her blush, and my guts feel like they're about to explode. "We're coming down," She yells down as she snuffs out the butt of her cigarette on the railing she was leaning against, and slots herself into the plastic tube, heading down in the quickest way possible. I take the stairs, too embarrassed to be seen with her too often. IT's like this weird dance, we both take care of Liz, we both spend a lot of time together now, but nothing has happened between us yet. I don't blame her though, there's not a lot of opportunities for things to happen when your life is a daily checklist of survival.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.