✎ | The Evolved

1 |☢| Victor

Author's Note:

Hey guys! Here's the first chapter of The Evolved! I hope you'll enjoy it so be sure to Vote for it, and add it to your Reading List (Add it to your Private Library too, so you can receive notifications when I write!)

Be sure to leave a comment or suggestion! It would mean the world to me to hear your feedback!

Let's see what happens in the world where the humans are Evil... and Evolved...

- Fan ^.^

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One

Victor

1

"VIC!" SOMEONE SHOUTS MY NAME from across the street.

I turn. There is a boy, my age, waving at me. I nod back. I know him. He's Ash, my best friend.

My only friend alive.

Ash's the only person alive, living in the nearest five miles.

He is dressed in a torn up, dirty black hoody, like me, with the G missing off the GAP logo, so it read AP. I should be studying for my APs if everything is normal.

Of course, it isn't. Nothing is normal.

He wears a pair of shorts, muddy, with patches of red, permanent stains. I have no doubt in thinking what it is. It is like my clothes, full of blood stains. Bizarrely, he has somehow scavenged a pair of sunglasses, although one of the lenses is cracked, and it messes his sandy gold hair, making it stick upwards, so it looks as if he has just woken up.

I have known Ash since kindergarten. He still has that boyish, childish face that I remember so well. But that was back in the old days, the Before-Evolution-Times. Yeah, that's what we call the normal days – the BET.

I jog up to Ash. He is standing still, not moving. Strange, I think.

Ash seems troubled. I can see it in his eyes.

The Sun bore down, burning our skins. It has grown progressively hotter after the BET. It's something to do with the Sun at its phase of growing, meaning it grows larger, and therefore emanating more heat and light. The sky shines red, but not the sunset healthy orange-red. No, the blue sky that was in the BET is now a blood red hell.

I shade my eyes from the Sun. Damn, I think, where did Ash find those sunglasses, I'm going to need one.

"What's up?" I push my greasy black hair out of my eyes. It is way too long, and dirty, and it's pissing me off like crazy these days. With the Sun, now a big red mass of orange flame burning down at, like, sixty thousand degrees, I feel like a roasted potato every time I walk outside. Plus, I'm outside about ninety-percent of every freaking day, scavenging for food and water.

I also can't cut my hair. There isn't one pair of scissors that haven't been jammed up someone's chest, broken, or stolen in the nearest ten-mile radius. I've actually been stupid enough to search.

My hair's also dirty as hell. I was told in the BET days that if you don't wash your hair for enough days, it self-cleans itself. Either we've been told lies (most likely true), or hair just doesn't do anything now we are in the Evolution-Times, because I haven't washed my hair for like one and a half years.

Up close now, I can see panic lit up in Ash's golden eyes. His eyes are the same color as his hair, just a shade different in some areas. It's weird. I haven't seen Ash like this since he watched his parents die in the hands of the Evolved.

"Listen Vic," Ash's voice suddenly catches in his throat.

I don't know what's going on with him.

"Dude, are you okay?" I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling it tense up beneath my grip.

"I saw someone," he says.

I freeze.

I spin around, as if expecting someone to be lurking around the rust-covered, white SUV lying on its side, on the empty road.

"No, Victor." Ash pulls me around.

I turn back. There's no one lurking around the truck. Ash is gesturing with his index finger at a hollowed-out skyscraper to the left of us. The skyscraper was used as a mall, more than 80 stories high. But now, the only visible indication of it being a mall is a ripped flying banner, and the recognizable sign on the roof that should read MANHATTAN MALL, but some of the letters was wiped out in a bombing by the Evolved, so it now only reads MAN ATT MAL.

Ash seems to be pointing at the roof. I follow his finger.

There.

There!

Someone is standing at the top of the mall, right next to the first big M.

The figure isn't moving, just standing there. I can't see what it's doing, as only a silhouette shows against the orange glare of the morning sun, but the figure seems to be staring off into the nearby sea – the Atlantic Ocean.

"Ash, we have to - "

I didn't finish the sentence.

There is suddenly a loud crack. It shatters my ear drums. For a moment, I'm completely dazed.

The ET is usually relatively silent, apart from the occasional cries of some animal, or human, dying, and the distant drones of the Evolved aircrafts.

The sound frightens me so much that I don't move until Ash suddenly slumps onto me.

I look at him. "Ash," I start to push him off. His eyes are glazed over, and his mouth hangs open. I feel him limp against me, his body a dead weight to me.

Suddenly, a second crack split the air surrounding me.

What's going on? I think, before a searing, red-poker like pain stabs me in the upper thigh. It feels like someone stuck a burning screwdriver into my leg. My nerves scream as I lose control of my body. Then I am sprawling, with Ash still on top of me.

Something in Ash's back pocket juts into my upper thigh, and I grunt in pain, trying to roll him over.

I try to sit up, but find that I can't, as whatever the thing in Ash's pockets stabs me every time I try to roll over.

My brain is not working, and I can't think clearly of what's going on.