Pain

Chapter 1 - Doomsday

~ BEFORE READING PLEASE NOTE ~ 

This storyline has been adapted from John Marsden's 'Tomorrow, When the War Began.' Some characters may represent characters similar to that text, as well as the basic storyline. I do not own the story or plot. 

This is the fourth book in a series, following book three 'Hunted'. All titles of this series are listed in an image attached to this chapter. 

Thank you and enjoy.

Pain - Book Four of Our Story

Prologue

Imagine you're completing a treacherous climb.

Beneath you, lies danger. Death lurks around every corner and waits for you to make the smallest mistake. Each night is sleepless and in the darkness, danger lurks. The darkness conceals all creatures of evil, including what you've become.

Then there's what lies at the top of the climb. Freedom, family, your home and life as it used to be and perhaps the biggest reward of all – safety. If you make the climb, dodging all the little rock showers that fall down on you and the boulders that threaten to crush you, you'll get all that.

Your body then starts to pull you down. The climb seems impossible. You're tired and all your limbs are drained from the energy they once had. The strength and determination that had caused you to begin the climb in the first place has vanished and you've become your own biggest enemy.

Just when you think all hope is lost, a rope is thrown down to aid you. You eagerly grasp it, your mind filling with hope. It begins to pull you upwards, taking you higher and higher. The rock showers have all but stopped and the boulders don't seem so bad anymore. Safety is near.

Then the rope gets cut and you fall back into the abyss of death.

That's the best metaphor I can give you when it comes to our journey.

The constant battle is the climb, with the war at the bottom of the cliff and the end of the war at the top. We were constantly climbing, getting more and more tired by the minute. Then came the rope thrown to us by my brother, Bailey and the prospect of staying safe in New Guinea before it was brutally cut and we were told that we would be returning to the war. We were too valuable to do nothing – evidently our lives were not.

The only way we'd ever be safe from the enemy is if the war was over for good and there was simply no way to know if that would ever happen.

The war had progressed to a point now where too much damage was done for things to ever be the same again. People had died. Once lives were lost there was no undoing anything. Even with the war over, we would be haunted by their deaths for the rest of ours and that was only if we survived ourselves.

Pain riddled our bodies. Travelling through our blood to the centre of our beings and plaguing us, leaving us with heavy hearts. It filled our minds and left us with horrifying dreams and an even worse reality. It hurt our relationships with those around us, leaving us alone and vulnerable. For some of us, it pushed us to the end.

If this war ended, there was no way things would ever return to normal. Something would always be looming over us, preventing us from moving on. Whether it be our dead friends or the guilt knowing that we had survived the war and they had been taken from the world prematurely.

Only time would tell.

Chapter One

Doomsday

General Parker didn't bother us again after giving us the news that we were leaving. All we knew was that we had a week to get everything sorted out, because at dusk on that last day we would be boarding a jet and being dropped straight back into one of the most ferocious war zones left in the country.