A few green specks in the distance can be seen on the path as the sun sets. The locals pay little attention as far bigger worries are on their mind, living through the winter months with their meager harvest.
Only the boy senses something is up. A hero might call attention to others around them but they would not be in Boy’s situation. A villain might think of a way to capitalize on what is about to happen but Boy is not one to be greedy.
His only thought is to survive.
He scampers away from the only place he remembers; never looking back. He is right not to as the band of green specs slowly come into view and focus. Skin like parched desert and eyes of a scavenger. These are the Reptilians, a humanoid species, armed to the teeth that pillages forgotten towns like Exeter, well soon to be a ruins of Exeter.
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Boy dives into a familiar gulley by the boundaries of town. Screams can be heard but Boy scarcely has time to worry about the inhabitants as survival is the focus at hand. Soldier crawling, he creates as small a presence as he can. His eyes flitting around for any potential movements in front of him, melding into the darkness as the sun fully sets.
He spots a gap unknown or missed by others but he himself calls it home. The acrid smell permeates the air as the sounds die down, Reptilians appear to have succeeded in their endeavor. Boy crawls into the hole and takes deep breaths and calms his adrenaline crazed heart. While he might have appeared calm and workmanlike to anyone watching he was still just a boy starting his teens.
For a moment, he recalls the past, a kind elderly shopkeeper who had provided him scraps of food with a wink of acknowledgement of his circumstances and the many others with their small gestures of kindness. He sighs wishing he was a hero but faced with reality a sense of reality. This world he currently inhabits, he knows no such leader or heroic figure. Every person in Exeter was just fighting to survive up to this point. Their lives culminating in being ended at this moment.
The boy, a realist, knows why he survived and it eats at him. The world is not fair, not a battleground of good versus evil, but a place filled with real life dangers that will kill you.