Escape (Book 1 of the Gods' series)

Chapter 1

All I know for a fact is that it started as a normal day, me Charlotte Bourne, 16 years old, short brown hair, and green eyes, going on a normal school trip to a normal historical war centre, or so I thought. Grinthorpe Historical war Centre was based in the quaint little town of Beverley in East Yorkshire, England. The coach of around 50 people sluggishly pulled into the car park. Looking out of the window, I noticed the car park was a barren desert; there was a single car that looked abandoned. The coach squealed to a halt and all of the students waited for our teacher to tell us what time to be back, but looking at her gently snoring with her auburn hair shielding her face, I didn’t think she would be telling us anything for a while. The driver of the coach looked at her, then at us and grunted, “Be back by 4pm."

 When we got into the centre we all split up. I decided to skip all of the paper documents and go straight to the outdoor section where there were shelters, they were interesting for about 10 minutes, but then I got bored with every one except an ancient Greek shelter that was nothing but a few planks of wood in the shape of a right angle leaning against a vertical step. I read the description next to the shelter;

‘From the storm war of Poseidon, storms, tornadoes and a small tsunami hit Greece, these were used to protect people in their homes, feel free to enter.’

I looked around; there were only three people nearby, all of whom I knew. There was Dylan Waters, a quiet boy in my form, (who I had known since I could remember,) his family were friends of mine, he was tall, just bigger than me, and had messy brown hair and sea blue eyes, and although he was quiet, he was also very popular, and a bit of a heart-throb (for most girls anyway, not me). Then there was Jessica Thompson, a girl who wasn’t in my form, but someone I knew, sort of, she had dark blond hair that was at least shoulder length and perfectly straight, her eyes were a dark hazel and she was an average height for a girl of 16 (I- sadly- was not an average size, I am 5 foot 10 inches tall) she always seemed quite sure of herself, and wasn’t exactly the nicest of people, well, she wasn’t to me. Finally there was Aaron Smith, he wasn’t tall, but he wasn’t small, he had jet black hair that was in a windswept style and blue-white eyes, he was a sort of Emo - Goth type person and he rarely talked, nobody really knew his background story and he was very much like me on the popularity scale, we were probably both about a 2 out of 20, Jessica and Dylan were both, like, 19/ 20. They were lucky.

I took the risk of climbing inside the shelter. It was small, but not claustrophobic. I hoped I wouldn’t get picked on. But I didn’t, 2 minutes after entering; Aaron sat next to me, soon followed by Jessica and Dylan, both flirting with each other; disgusting! I was going to make small talk with Aaron, but something caught my eye before I could, it was a huge boulder hurtling through the sky right towards the shelter, and us. “Move!” I cried as I shoved Jessica closer to Dylan and moved myself closer to Aaron, the boulder hit and crushed the shelter, it just missed me, but it caught the corner of Jessica’s mini-skirt, (not hurting her, but ripping the skirt, upon which, she nearly cried.) I could see cracks snaking through the ground underneath us, I could hear rock underground crumbling, we were going to fall, “Hey, I don’t mean to alarm anyone but the ground underneath us is crumbling and we are about to fall.” I commented on it casually, which it wasn’t meant to be, I mean, we were about to fall into the deep unknown, how could you be casual about that? But I guess the others didn’t know that, “That’s impossible, the ground is solid.” Jessica sounded confident in what she was saying, I had to correct her, “Jessica, most places have a thin layer of ground over them, and underneath is a cavern, this is one of those places, but see, I don’t know what is underneath us.”

The ground started to fall apart, bit-by-bit, then the whole ground disappeared and we were falling. Jessica was screaming, so was Dylan, in a weird boy way, I just did what Aaron was doing, closed my eyes and stayed quiet; waiting for the impact of whatever was beneath us to hit, the adrenaline made me unable to keep my eyes closed and as I opened them, the world around me went black.