Oblivion {n.h.}

Epilogue.

"Shhh" I mouthed to my brother Jackson from across the room. He was pulling his stupid faces and not paying attention to the notes on the board.

My phone buzzes on my lap, pulling my attention down from my notebook.

A text message from our classmate Emily pops up onto my bright screen below my face.

"You hear about the virus that broke out this morning?"

"Sure did. Evil stepmom wanted to keep us home but Jackson insisted that since it was in America, weird." I explain how my brother thinks he's always right.

Whatever "virus" that had broken out in America was said predicted to start the apocalypse. Crazy shit on television showing people coming back to life as some may call "zombies" just to eat other people. When you're bit or scratched, you become one of them too.

Emily was an amazingly sweet girl. Her reddish-blonde hair and green eyes with soft freckles on her cheeks. We've been friends since the third grade, now seniors in high school.

We both grew up in South Shields and moved to London at the same time.

"You paying attention Dan?" My classmate Steven whispers into my ear.

I turn to face the older boy, his hazel eyes staring down at mine. His jaw is square and hair always in a perfect quiff, the guy could steal any girl's heart in a second.

"Was." I reply back with a disappointed smirk.

He flashes his signature mysterious smile, scratching the back of his head with his pencil and turning his attention back to the board.

Our teacher Mrs.Blackwell seemed as if she would never stop talking. Her old and tiny voice, mixed with calculus really made this class suck.

A police siren sounds outside of the school and I turn my head to look out the window.

Most people ignore it but I listen intently as the noise continues down the street, and then it's quiet again.

I brush some of my auburn hair out of my face and try to continue working out the problems on my worksheet before me.

Pressing my pencil to the side of my head, focusing only on the calculus problems before me, all of it seems jumbled and confusing; and I have no idea how to do any of them.

Something hits my leg and I push some of my hair behind my ear, looking under the table, seeing a rectangular pink eraser bouncing along the floor from the contact it had made.

It bounces along, hitting some guy near me in the foot, and I look up, to my fraternal twin brother Jackson, who covers his mouth with his hand as he giggles like a child.

I shake my head at him and narrow my eyes before looking for the eraser, the victim who'd been hit on the foot already having it in his hand and holding it out to me.

A shy boy named Alex, obviously not very happy about our banter during class time; his entire worksheet already almost done.

I keep the eraser and look up at the time to see just how long I have to stare at my paper until the bell rings and the school day ends.

Most people ruffle around with their stuff, a lot of them sighing and beginning to talk with each other; the clock only reading one more minute of class.

The Thursday comes to an end and Emily finds her way to my side as I exit the class room, Mrs.Blackwell still calling for us and trying to hand out the homework before everyone escapes it instead; which she fails at.

"Twitter is going crazy right now." Emily speaks, and I look down at my slightly shorter friend, "Em, didn't something like this happen like exactly last year? It's probably nothing." I reassure her, putting my textbook in my locker and turning around to face her.

"Danielle this isn't Ebola, it's way different." She shoves her phone in front of me, basically forcing me to look at the blue screen before me.

A man with white eyes and rotting skin strapped down on a table, shaking and violently trying to escape his restraints over a lab table.

I scoff in disgust and shove her phone back toward her, looking up to see the people passing by.

Brian Sophtin, football superstar and full time scholarship to UNI struts by, and I watch his every move carefully.

I tune out Emily's banter about the end of the world and smile at Brian cutely, his flashy smile making me bite my lip as I think about the party last month we'd hooked up at.

"Are you even listening to me?" Emily screeches, making me snap out of my thoughts, beginning to walk next to her again, exiting the building where the fall winds begin to swipe the air.

"Listen, Em, I'll make sure to watch the news during dinner tonight and text you if I see anything that worries me, okay?" I end the conversation there, hugging the girl I call my best friend before walking toward my car, where Jackson sits waiting for me.

A helicopter buzzes in the distance, circling an area of a neighborhood just blocks from the school, and I choose to ignore it as I make my way to my car.

The boy sits on his phone in the passenger seat as I put my keys into the ignition of my grey Silverado, and back out of my parking spot as usual.

"Man, shits getting real in America." Jackson states, not taking his eyes off of his phone, only turning the small gadget sideways in order to look at a picture or video.

"Probably terrorists again, let's be honest here." I tell my brother, driving on the busy road that leads to our home.

"Terrorists can do this?" He asks, nearly showing me the video on his cellphone before he quickly realizes that I'm driving and can't. "Don't think it's humanly possible to get shot in the chest eight times and still be completely fine."

I stay silent the whole drive home, Jackson rambling on about the situation as the seconds pass, only until we reach our driveway and get out of the car.

"Lisa, we're home." I call to our stepmother, gaining no answer from the woman at all, only footsteps upstairs.

Our home was huge, not to forget Lisa had already been fairly wealthy before she met Jackson and I's father; inheriting his money as well.

Our father died during his recovery of stage four lung cancer; don't smoke cigarettes, kids. He left us in the care of his bitch of a wife, Lisa, our mother nowhere to be seen since the third month of Jackson and I's birth.

"Lisa?" I call out again, marching up the stairs to see the tall brunette woman rummaging through the drawers in the living room.

"Oh, hi dear." She greets me emotionlessly, and I don't bother to respond or even ask what she may be doing up there, because quite frankly; I don't care.

Jackson sits in the loft of the first floor, his lazy body catching my eye from the couch, a snack already in his hands while he watches television quietly.

Of course; the news dances images across the flatscreen television, the only thing Jackson seems to care about at the moment.

"Look. At. This." He sternly points the remote at the tv, ordering me to watch right at the moment.

I step back to lean on the side of the couch, one of my legs on the floor and the other across the handle.

The words "Mentally disturbed man shot eight times in the torso, still standing and coming at police," slide across the bottom of the television screen and my heart lurches in my chest, seeing the man get shot in the torso that many times, still growling and lurking toward the police officers.

"Shit." Was all I could say, Jackson mumbling an 'mhm' beside me on the couch, and there was just something about this week; that told me things were changing.

Emily told me to text her if anything worried me; so of course that was the first thing I did.