Fall

 It all started November 8th, 3 years ago. I had just got back home from school. I lived in an apartment with my mom, my mom was a reporter and she always was working on ‘the story of the century’ . She was to busy trying to get rich and famous to spend time at home, she wasn’t always like this after my fathers death she was never the same. I was in the living room working on an English essay and watching t.v , when all of a sudden the emergency broadcast alert went off but instead of the ‘this is just a required test’ going off the screen a evacuation notice flashed across the screen . We were supposed to go to quarantine areas that our local police with the assistance of the army were going to escort us to. If my mother hadn’t shown up and took me away I probably would have died like every good Samaritan that followed orders that day. The rain was coming down in sheets now, the sun had gone down several hours ago and I had given up on trying to get answers out of my mother. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the cool car window, an hour later my mom was shaking my shoulder. “Krystal, get up. Krystal, we have to go c’mon” she whispered in gradually increasing tones. “wha-” “SHHHH! We don’t want to be discovered, I have a friend who can help us but we have to be quite and avoid detection okay?” “Okay.” What was going on? First the evacuation warning and now this? My mom grabbed my arm and half ran half dragged my down the street, around the corner and into an alleyway. We walked up to a metal door covered in rust and condensation, my mom knocked 3 times. From our side of the door we could hear somebody undoing the locks and then from inside there came a loud BANG. The door opened shortly after, a scrawny man wearing a pair of spectacles over his large green eyes, and who had dark brown hair sticking up in all sorts of directions scrutinized us, after what felt like an eternity he opened up the door all the way and gestured for us to come in. I cautiously passed through the door after my mother and was stunned with what I saw in front of me; the room itself was only large enough for one person to live in but the size of the room had nothing to do with why I stopped. The room was covered in alien posters, models of space ships, and article clippings about area 51 and alien abductions. “Mom where are we?” My mom gestured to the stranger and said “ This is Jacob Bratten, I did a story about cra- end of the world fanatics a few months back, and I felt he might be able to help.” The man standing next to my mom awkwardly shifted from foot to foot and said in a rushed whisper. “We can’t stay here any longer it’s not safe.” “What do you mean the end of the world fanatic?!? It‘s not safe here! What‘s going on?!?” I couldn’t take it anymore my mom wasn’t giving me any real answers, what were we doing? Why didn’t we go to the quarantine zone? Was the world ending? Why did we need help from an alien freak? “SHH! Now isn’t the time but I promise you when we’re safe I’ll explain everything.” my mom said as she grabbed my shoulders and knelt in front of me. “We don’t have time, we have to go now.” Jacob said frantically. He picked up 3 back packs and gave two to me and my mom. Then he peeled back the gray dingy carpet and revealed a trap door. He pulled out a flashlight and we descended down the staircase into the dark. The flashlight dimly illuminated the dirt passage way, it was suffocating the walls kept getting closer and closer and the air was too warm and dry, I couldn’t breath I could feel the panic rooted deep in my body start to rise up and cause me to hyperventilate, it felt like something was trying to make my chest cave in, the pain was making it impossible to breath, the tunnel kept getting dimmer and dimmer and finally I heard screaming in the distance then everything went black. When I finally came through I was starring up at a metal ceiling, I could see the melted lines caused by a blow torch and count all the rivets holding the walls together. I sat up and evaluated my surroundings, I was in a room with 6 cots total. There was a door at the far side of the room, that when I walked closer to I could hear talking behind. I cracked open the door and peeked in, it was a kitchen; like the room I was in the floor was dirt but unlike the room with the cots there was a medium sized table big enough to sit four, a refrigerator hooked up to a generator. Next to the generator there was several propane tanks. The main difference between the room I was in and the kitchen was that in the kitchen there were four people. My mother, Jacob, and another man and women. As I stood there, I listened to them talk the man I didn’t know asked my mother how many countries had fallen and I stood there and listened as she listed all but three countries in Europe and two in Asia. Then the woman I hadn’t met yet quietly added the U.S.A to the verbal list of fallen countries. Just as she had said that my mom turned her head and saw me peeking through the doorway. He eyes widened and she stood up, she moved as if to walk towards me but she stopped short. Everyone else turned their heads to see what she was looking at, when they did I finally got a good look at the man and women. The man had short blonde hair and really dark eyes, The woman beside him had fire-alarm red hair with brown roots, her eyes were if not identical extremely similar. The moment of silence was broken when my mother said “Honey, you’re awake?” “Mom what’s going on?” The people in the kitchen all traded a look and then the man with blonde hair stood up with a grim look on his face and told me “The world’s ending.”

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