How It All Ended

Chapter 15

For the first time in a long time, I was able to get a great night's sleep. That's because we all took advantage of the house's empty rooms. Shauna, Amber, and Gina slept in the beds upstairs, while I stretched out on the couch in the living room.

Amber walking down the stairs in the morning woke me up. "Sorry, Dom," Amber whispered.

"It's all right," I replied.

"That bed was ten times better than the garage floor."

I sat up, "This couch isn't half bad either. Are Shauna and Gina still sleeping?"

"Yeah."

"Let 'em sleep. They need the rest. Me and you, let's check out the rest of the house, see if we can find something useful."

"Okay, sure."

Amber and I walked down into the basement of the house, and we began to look around. Amber was rooting through some boxes that were stacked up against the wall.

"Find anything useful?" I asked her.

"Nah. Not yet," Amber responded. "Just old junk mainly."

I spotted something at the opposite end of the basement: a beige canvas bag that was hanging from the wall. "Well, look here. This can be useful." I tossed the bag over to Amber. "I got you a present."

Amber caught the bag and threw it around her right shoulder. "What do you think?"

"It's totally you."

"Thanks, Dom."

"Amber? Dominik? Are you guys down there?" Shauna called down the stairs.

"Yeah," replied Amber. "Just seeing if we can find anything useful before we go."

"Gina's getting ready right now. We're about to head out."

"Be right up," I responded.

"Hey, baby, what's your bag?" Shauna quipped when she saw Amber with the canvas bag.

"Oh, that was bad," I groaned when I heard Shauna's joke.

"Jealous?"

"Yep."

Gina emerged from the upstairs, ready to head out. "Everybody set?" She asked us.

"Yeah," Replied Shauna.

"Come on."

We had to head in the direction of the park to get to Gina's group. That meant having to keep a lookout for the gang that took over the park. If they were still in the area, we'd have quite a bit of detouring to do, because we didn't want to run into any trouble.

Shauna and I went ahead first to see if that group was still in the park. The gang wasn't there, but the group had torn apart both ambulances and the SUV. Panels, doors, and broken glass riddled the ground near the vehicles.

"Good thing we managed to get those first aid supplies," Shauna whispered to me.

I waved Gina and Amber over. The four of us darted through the park, then Amber, Shauna, and I followed Gina down a side road.

"Man, look at all the trees," Amber gasped.

"Or what's left of them," Gina said.

The trees in the area had turned into gray, withered husks with hardly any leaves left on them at all.

I just shook my head at the sight. It was pretty frustrating not knowing what the hell happened.

"Gina, you wouldn't happen to know what's going on? Would ya?" I asked our new friend.