Recap
With a turn toward my destination I freeze. Right in front of me is a rat. Breathing heavy and licking its personal Stabbys.
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I freeze. What else could I do? Not freeze and get used like a gristley chew toy? Nope. Nope..nope. Mamma didn't raise a fool. I know when to freeze and when to run the fuck out of dodge.
The only reason I haven't been mauled and punctured yet, is the green circle under me. It's sparking a little at the edges though. As I observe my situation and calm my racing heart, I notice the rat inching closer. Bit by bit to my growing horror it touches the circle below me and causes it to spark.
The circle, a bright green affair visible through the Mist, slowly seems to lose its glow as the rat intrudes. The rat, a nasty affair, is looking at me with murderous glee. I guess the rat is hungry and I'm the snack before the meal. The tasty one that gets demolished before food.
With a jolt of sparks the circle is dimmer than a nightlight. A spark hitting my pants and a jolt of weird tingles flowing through me. It snaps me out of my musings.
With what is a few seconds left to escape or die I move into action. A quick look in my pack and I grab a can of food. Its weighty, the size of my hand and circular. A good average to get some damage with a throw.
Being awesome I tossed it with a speed I didn't think I could. Not before now and not after my fall from grace. It flew, my hopes and dreams with it. Hoping my hopes and dreams don't weigh it down I watch it fly toward the rat. It's right where I want it when the rat ducks and the can goes flying behind it.
Most assume that a frontal assault with a surprise attack and a full beatdown from a hockey stick is what I was going for. Most are wrong.
“Squaakk!” That is what I was going for. A bird behind the rat got smacked in the face with the can. Here's hoping my hopes and dreams made that can heavier than it was. I wanted that to hurt. And it did.
“SQUAAKK!” With that loud exclamation it charged.
Right in my direction. Right toward the rat. With the first deep puncture it was game on. A fight started that took both rat and monster birb away from my immediate area.
With an uncleancing of everything clenched, not too much though, I observe the monsters do their thing. The sounds and the crashings between them soon draw in every other monster in the area. Rats, birbs, roaches, ants, cicadas, flies, sooo many others too.
With the gigantic cluster fuck of a brawl ongoing, none seem to notice as I slip away. Quickly and quietly making my way to the connecting green sidewalk.
I turn around and continue heading onward. I decided to try and get through to the end of the day today. I woke up around noon, so I got approximately five to seven hours before the sky darkens and night falls. Walking onward, I cross another block and continue to the suburban areas where there's less buildings, with a bit more space between the houses.
The college is pretty much an edge between urban and suburban. It's not long after that I find more monsters though. The blessings minor as they are show me some unbroken safe zone walkways.
I want to meet up with my family. They're not that far away, more like a good three hours or so by walking, give or take an hour. They're like about a half an hour or so to an hour away just driving normally in a car. But I can't really do that right now because these Mist animals, they're definitely going to chase me and, you know, kill me most horrifically.
I mean, I would definitely do that if I can get a truck, a bus, something big, something with a good bit of mass going 60 miles an hour, faster even. If I can get those things up to speed quickly, with all that momentum, I'm pretty sure I can crush anything that's in my way. As long as the tires don't pop, the thing doesn't go sideways, and doesn't crush me in the process of flipping over. That happens. That happens a lot.
Some idiot trucker or bus driver or someone with a big car decides, hey, I'm going to run over that thing, maybe the sidewalk or some tiny little hill of dirt.
Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it does not. Definitely does not. So walking it is. With intermittent races of death. I'm a fan of racing. It's fun normally. This is not normal… nope.
I'm not a fan of racing between these protected fields. The last time I did it, I almost died three different times. I lost my bag, tripped twice and almost became monster chow. Let me tell you, it's not fun.
Opening up my phone, I try to see if there was reception, but everything's down. It's been down since yesterday. Only my call to Alyssa got through. A complete absurdity but I chalk it up in the good luck column.
It's under surviving the rat and the 3 near misses but above my loss of carry bag. She's important but not…that…important. Not more important than me surviving. Definitely more important than a bag though.
First thing I tried was getting reception when I went to the pink monstrosity that was the bedroom in that apartment to sleep. Nope. Nothing. Nada. Niet. Well except for Alyssa.
I can't believe that the architecture of the power, the electricity, and everything would stop so suddenly. I mean, even without care, it should run pretty autonomously for at least two or three days at the least. No internet, no connectivity. I believe the grid should be barely functional because of the plumbing. At least the water and stuff worked while I was taking a shower yesterday and brushing my teeth this morning.
No signal. No power when I try to plug my phone in and charge it…yeah, not fun, not fun at all.
As I muse on the current fate of the world, and my future, I head to another dead end, in a sense. Everything's still wide open. There's still walkways and everything, the protective field once again cuts out.
It's not such a large cut as last time. It's more like somebody decided to draw a circle, erase from top down and left to right. Then, in one of those erased sections from left to right, drew tiny little circles in between. That's what I see here. There's a good four meters, so about 12 feet, give or take, between me and the next large protective field.
And there's these tiny one and a half feet wide, so about half a meter or so, wide circles of green, just dotted between these. So, I guess I have to play deadly hopscotch, or something like that. At least these circles are bigger than the rat one was, it was a foot...Maybe.
Looking around, I see... I don't see many of the Mist animals, just a rat or two. The birds are nowhere in sight, thank the gods. Those things are fast, hit hard and will decimate me.
No cockroaches, cicadas, flies or moths, just two rats to my left. They're even walking away, so I decide to just sit and wait for a bit. I'm not fighting a rat, much less two… no way, no how. The last time I did it, it was pretty much half dead already. And the next time, I used a bird to distract it.
Waiting about half an hour, give or take, the rats disappear. In the meantime I contemplated the answers to everything happening. I got somewhere. Not much though.
Looking up, I don't see birds, clear red sky all the way, looking back, no bugs, nothing. Taking a step out of my protective zone, I sprint pretty quickly, while trying to keep quiet. Don't want to attract everything over, even though there's nothing nearby.
Slightly jog-walking in my sneakers, I make it to the first circle. The first safe circle, between the sidewalk and the next sidewalk. Looking around, frantically, to make sure that nothing is once again coming to kill me, it's a desert town. Not a tumbleweed in sight.
So, I decide to repeat that, but slower and quieter, so I just walk a few steps, and I'm in the second circle. Continuing on, nothing seems to want to kill me. As long as the Mist animals are not looking at me, they probably don't want to murder me and eat my intestines for breakfast, it seems.
I walk calmly forward and it's clear roads all the way. So, that's pretty much the standard. It seems like the first crossing was an anomaly. Too many bugs, and too many Mist animals there, to make it smooth and safe. The next five different crossings, perfectly fine. It seems that the quiet times are going to continue.
About two and a half to three hours later or so, I get close. I get close to home. Things are getting eerie. I was looking around, trying to spot somebody, somebody to help me out, or if I can help other people out, but there's nobody here. There's no one else.
It's like everybody just disappeared. I mean, that's weird. I know a lot of people don't want to fight and should be in the safe zone. I know that but a few should and there's no one here. A great majority of the people in Itla are fighters. Where are they?
I know it's the apocalypse and all, but nobody should just be disappearing left and right. Or is it because it is the apocalypse that weird things are the new normal?
The doors and windows are shut and closed. There's no shadows walking in them. No one was looking outside and no one was here. Now, I might be going crazy, but this might be important. Where is everybody?
Did the warriors and soldiers go to the safe zone? Is that it? They don't want to fight anymore. They want to rest and recover their sanity that was lost during the war…. That makes sense.
The question though is did they disappear on me, secreted to the safe zone, or did somebody come by, drive all these animals away, and rescue them? Because I see no animals, and I don't see any blood on the floors, and no people. Maybe…. It's definitely possible that they got help.
A bit later I made it to my family's house. It's not that big. I'm not a millionaire. If I was, I definitely would be going to one of those private schools and just enjoying life. Even with the injuries those first rate schools would have been happy to welcome me. Well… my money anyway.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
We're working class, give or take. Most people in my family don't need to work, and will be perfectly fine for a good five, or so, years. Work is needed and necessary, as per my parents, because it helps to reduce boredom. That's pretty much it. And I agree with them.
Looking over at my house, it's well taken care of. White with blue accents and a maintained garden. It's our house. It's home. It's where I belong. Where I'm accepted no matter what happens. I love it here.
I love the place, my home though is with my family. My home is where my family is, but I've made a good many memories in this place. So, it's in my mind.
If you make that many memories, and you live that long somewhere, it's like it imprints itself into your body, and your memories and your soul. You do the same with the house. A little scratch here, a little scuff there. A fallen glass here. A little bit of blood dropped over there. It happens.
You leave marks on and in each other, and I think that's a good thing. It helps ground people. It makes people calm. If you're like billionaires and millionaires, where they just keep moving, and are always busy, always dealing with one thing or another, they just don't have the calm and the patience that some others do. They don't have that grounding influence that is stability, that is necessity, you know?
They have huge houses and most of it is not marked, it's not lived in. It's there, taken for granted and it provides no suitable lesson on need and necessity. It stunts emotions, there is no wonder in a house of cold and stone. Where no loving parents help you walk. Where maids and caretakers look after you.
It's not home and it's not family. That's just a rich prison. Well, moving on. I go on tangents sometimes and talk to myself. Not that I care, but people don't like other people talking to themselves. It just seems a bit weird.
But, hey, I do it, so I don't care. It seems this apocalypse is making me talk to myself a good bit more. I grab the key hidden in the flower pot to my left. It's the eighth flower pot from the end, and it's not under it. It's not in the dirt. It's in the actual clay itself right behind the pot. So, putting my hand behind the pot, I flick open a tiny covering and pull out the key.
Putting it in, I open up the door and start looking. I want to find my family. It's important, I'll say. Here's hoping that they are all here or in the safe zone.
There's no one on the bottom floor near the main living room, bathroom or the kitchen. No one there. No one in the backyard either, just looking through the backdoor window. Heading on up after locking the front door I find it empty, once again. Big nothing. There's no one here. No mom, no dad, no brother, no sister. No one. I feel jittery. A slight bit of worry grapples with my confidence in my family surviving.
I can rationalize all I want but worry grips me. Where are my parents? My siblings? I know that they are fighters. They are tough. They would fight and want to survive and grow. A naivete that they will be strong. I contain the slight anxiousness and head to one other place they may be.
I head on back down and try the basement. We have our bunker. Well, it's not a bunker per se, but a basement in a sense. It's a pretty good shelter. Two feet of concrete everywhere, lined with steel. My parents spent a pretty penny on it, but we didn't think we would actually use it. So, pretty sure they might be down there. Heading on down, I see that it's closed and locked, so I knock on it and I hear muffled voices coming from inside.
Yelling out: “Hey, it's me, open up.” the voices calmed.
“Who are you? Honey, is that you?” My dad and mom asked together, causing the words to jumble a bit. I could still hear them though.
The moment I heard that a good bit of stress melted away and my subconscious worries disappeared.
I responded back with a relieved tone of voice. “Yeah, it's me. Open up, will ya? Are, sister and brother there?”
Opening the door takes a bit of time so in the meanwhile the conversation continues.
Leitane my mother responds with “Yeah, Jake and Martha are here.”
I ask with a confused “Didn’t he say he wanted to be called John? Did he change how he wanted to be called again? Isn't his name Matthew Winry Enkaloa! The nickname should be Matt or Win or even Quinn.” My voice filled with a feeling of absurdity as I yelled back questions.
Exasperated frustration builds when I heard my brother decided to change his nickname, again.
My sister Martha says “Nope, and yep, he wants to go by Jake now.”
“Well, okay.” I say slightly exasperated and ask about my sister “Dad when did Martha pop by?”.
“She's been here from the start ” replies my father, Vincent. “She was home and so was everyone else when the sky turned red.” My father states and continues on with “We were worried. You're the only one away and though close it takes a bit to come home from the dorms.”
I hear a slight quiver in his gruff voice when he continues. “We… We trusted that you could take care of yourself. You're……you're a tough girl and we know that. We knew you'd be perfectly fine.” My father speaks for all of them.
Jake my brother continues with "And, uh, the first thing that you would do is come home and try to find us. So we decided to just stay put, keep ourselves safe, so we'd be here for ya. Are you feeling okay, Isabelle?”
“I'm feeling fine, Jake. I'm really okay.” I replied with a slight tremble leaking through.
I wait a while, while they work on the numerous locks to open up the door into the bunker. I continue chatting with my family. My dad and my mom are trying their best opening the door so my sister and my brother start jabbering at me.
My brother, Jake, starts off with, “We went down immediately as the sky turned red. So what happened in the apocalypse? Did, uh, did animals mutate? Did, uh, screens start popping up for everybody and we missed out?”
As I thought about the craziness he was spouting he went on “Uh, did the sky start falling down? Did aliens pop by? What's happening? Uh, you know, spaghetti monster or something?”
“Well first of all, stop with the crazy. Second, none of what you said happened to me except for the mutated animals. Finally, I am hoping that nothing called the spaghetti monster pops up, that would suck.”
With a bit of hope and a weary soul I tell them “I have a story to tell you guys a bit later, but for now, let me actually get in there. Let me relax a bit and then let's talk, okay!”
“Okay, whatever you say, sis, whatever you say.” Jake said
I hear a click and the door pops open. It was huge, thick and filled with a bunch of different locks. As my parents open the door and I run in for a hug. As my head hits them, I start to calm down and pull them in closer.
Seeing my parents and just the sheer relief of being with my family made me feel slightly weak in the knees. Everybody crowds around and tries to comfort me. All of them seem haggard. My dad is six foot one, pretty well built with brown hair, bluish green eyes with a pronounced jaw. He's a sturdy person. Not many scars, but he has a few on his arms and legs that are pretty faint. His face looks worry worn.
My dad has a nice brownish red mustache and very sharp eyes tinted reddish due to crying and tear stained cheeks and just looking over me. My mother looks like she went to hell and back with her eyes slightly sunken in and stained cheeks.
She has purple eyes with a reddish tint here and there also from crying. She has reddish, orangish hair falling to her back. She's not as tall as my dad, but she's up there also. My mom is six foot, so pretty tall. She's also a sturdy type of person. Tall, slender, but sturdy. Strong, too. Stronger than my dad and he's huge.
A strength of personality and physicality is how I would describe my mother. She draws you in and you love her for it. Me, my sister and my brother are pretty much a mix of my mom and dad.
I'm the tall, sturdy, wide and strong one with back length hair with the purple eyes that I got from them. At least I used to be , before the injury, but now I am getting close to what I was before. Except for the multicolored eyes.
With my sister being tall, with blue colored hair. I think she dyed it again. It used to be green the last time I saw her, about a month ago. With brownish eyes. Pretty tall. Five foot eleven, give or take. Shortest of the family, but I think she's gonna get up to six.
She's growing. Tall, with defined muscles. She definitely works out. And she tells me that all the time. Says that it helps keep healthy for the future and it's a hobby. I think she has a complex and wants to fight it by working out. I suggested a therapist when we were alone but got nowhere. A stubborn girl.
My brother looks like my dad but with brownish skin like mine and purplish eyes like my mom. He is slender and tall. He is a bit more pudgey than muscular with flexibility and speed. All of us look like a mix of our parents and ancestors. We have pretty diverse genetics in our family.
We've been places, you know, and so have our ancestors, it seems. My mom is paleish like a slightly darker skin than peach, medium fair skin type, with my dad brownish like a Vesartian but fairer and lighter like copper but flesh type. I'm amazing and so is everyone in my family.
Everyone stops crowding me and we all head in after spending a few moments helping lock the door. I sit with everyone on the couch and just relax. My dad hands me a hot chocolate, even though it's pretty warm out. I take a sip. It is absolutely delicious. My favorite; a mix of caramel, chocolate, and a bit of milk. Makes a pretty tasty drink.
As everybody sipped their drinks and calmed down, they were looking at me. There was confusion in their eyes. I could see it plain as words on paper. Their eyes just kept moving between my hands, my pants, and my face, overall just looking at me.
The first thing my mother Leitane asked was what the heck happened to your eyes?
“I don't know”, is my answer. “My beautiful purple eyes frickin' turned into multicolored ones. I'm here trying to not freak out and just go with the flow right now, but this is confusing, you know.”
At my answer, my brother started poking at my hands and the tools I had within them. And he started asking, “Well what's up with the metal hockey stick with the blood on it and the frickin' huge tooth dagger?”
A little embarrassment snuck in when I answered.“I honestly forgot that I had them in hand. Sorry, let me put them away.” I get up and toss the tools of murder and self defense in a pile in the corner.
“Oh, the dagger's called Stabby. That's my name for him. And I got him from a fuck-off roid rat that I had to kill yesterday. And the stick helped me kill that roid rat. At my words, everybody just went silent and stared at me. Being stared at felt weird. They were looking at me like I was crazy. And I did not know how to feel about that, because that's weird.
And then as their looks slowly started to change, their looks became confused, worried, with a little bit of frustration and anger thrown in. My first question for them was, "Any questions about what happened?” My sister chimed in pretty much exactly at the same time with, “ Yes, we have a lot of questions for you, Isabelle.” Everyone was a step behind but they also continued the sentiment “We have a lot of questions for you.”
And as that sentence fell a silence almost took hold of everyone.
Breaking the silence with a sledgehammer I start off with: “Let's start one by one, and let's start from dad.”
My dad was looking pensive. He didn't know what to make of the truth bomb that I just dropped. He was quite confused, acceptably so. The first thing he asked was, are you okay?
And then he continued on with, are you hurt? Then a few more questions followed. “Did anything cause you pain? Are you fine, both emotionally and physically?”
Within the blurb of words and during the silence afterward, I could feel the concern in his voice, the slight trembling of his tone. He looked like he was about to jump and just hug me again. But he stayed calm, he stayed in his seat on the couch, and was focusing on me, like everybody else in my family. My brother, my sister, and even my parents, were all just focusing on me, worry present in their eyes.
“I'm fine”, I say. I keep my voice calm. I look at them with complete confidence and sincerity. My hands start shaking just a little bit as I think about what happened with the Roid Rat.
I held my weak and non cooperating hands and kept them still. I looked them straight in the eyes. To my family I say “I'm fine and you do not need to worry”.
And yes, it's a lie because I'm not fine. Not one bit, nuh uh, nope, nope, nope on a stick through the spaghetti monster's eye. I'm Freaking Out. 155%. It's the damn apocalypse around here. There are rats, larger than the cockroaches which are about half the size of me, who knows what else, and they're all pretty Dang MurderousTM. Of course I'm not fine.
But they don't need to worry about that. I need to de-stress. For now, I'm getting better. I'm relaxing with my chocolate. I'm getting better. So yes, I smile pretty and keep my emotions contained.
I say “Of Course I'm Fine” and I keep my mask on. A smiling mask of absolute sincerity and trust. Because that's who I need to be right now to make sure my parents and my siblings don't freak out. Even though I am Absolutely Not Fine.