I woke up on the warm sand of a beach. I'm alive. And soaked with water. I sat up and coughed, there was water in my throat. I had an excruciating pain in my head.
"She's awake." I heard a male's voice say. I turn around and see two guys who are probably around eighteen to twenty years old.
"Who the heck are you?" I say. One of the boys have brown hair and light skin which is inked with tattoos. The other boy has black hair with darker skin which is also covered in tattoos.
"I'm Zayn." The boy with dark hair said, "That's Harry." He pointed to the other boy.
"I'm Lacey." I sit up and then cross my legs, "What exactly happened and where are we?"
"Well," Harry started. He grabbed a pebble from the sand then got up from the sand. He threw it as far as he could, "We're guessing it's the end."
"The end?"
"Like the end of the world 'the end'." He said.
"Oh my god." I squeaked. I ran my fingers through my hair. "Why couldn't I have died along with the rest? I should've jumped in with my mother." My mother. My dead mother.
"And to answer your question to where are we...well...we don't really know." Zayn said.
"How come this place is still...here?"
"I do not know."
"We should move further inward. At night the water will move further up." Harry said grabbing a long stick from the sand. I got up and starting following Harry and Zayn. My legs hurt horribly but I trudged through the sand, anyways.
Harry stopped and stuck his arm out to prevent us from going any further, me slightly bumping into him. "There's something in the bushes." He whispered. I quickly ducked behind Zayn as Harry held the hiking stick like a baseball bat, ready to hit whatever was a danger to us.
The bushes shook some more and stopped all of a sudden. We stood still, not knowing what to do. Then, all of a sudden something jumped out at the bushes. I shriek and Harry swings the stick. It's stopped by a dark skinned girl's hand. The girl squints at us like she was unsure if we were real or not. "Oh my god." She whispers. She has a thin accent. "Stan, look."
A man emerges from behind her. He wears round glasses like Harry Potter with one of the lenses cracked. He holds a little girl's hand. She looks like a toddler. She has dark hair and blue eyes. She looked like the younger version of me. I smiled at her as she hid behind her father's leg.
"We're not the only ones." He says, relieved. He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.
>>>>>>
We sat on the grass listening to the distant waves crashing onto the shore. We were introducing ourselves. Harry went first.
"Harry Styles. Um, I'm twenty-two years old and I, uh, I'm from England." He played with a lighter in between his fingers.
It was Zayn's turn, "I'm Zayn. I am twenty two years old and I'm also from England." He didn't stutter as much as Harry. Then it was the little girl's turn. She at her father who nodded in encouragement, "What's your name?"
"Macie." She squeaked. Macie seemed afraid of everyone; she looked no one in the eye except her father.
"How old are you?"
"Three!" She smiled as she held up three fingers.
"When's your birthday?"
"December...." She paused to think. "Fourth?" Stan nodded and smiled at her.
The girl with dark skin looked around at us, studying our faces, "I'm Jayde Ballo. I am from Kenya and I am thirty-seven years old."
The man with the cracked glasses looked up at us, "I am Stan Jackson, I am a high school geography and science teacher. I am also a traveler. I am thirty-two years old and I am from New York." He nods at us.
My turn, "Um, my name is Lacey Ambrose. I am a college student. I'm from England, as well, and I'm twenty years old."
"How was England destroyed?" Jayde asked, curiously.
"Earthquake then tsunami. What about Kenya?" My curiosity starts bubbling inside me. I wanted to know the different disasters, as weird as that may have seemed.
"Burning meteors crashed onto Africa. They were everywhere." She stared at the ground remembering the horrible memory of the disaster. "And what about New York, Stan?"
"Earthquake. The ground split open and the magma from beneath the surface rose up and flooded. We ran to the provided lifeboats and made it here, just like Jayde did."
"I don't know how the fu-" I noticed that there was a child with us and corrected my language, "heck...I got here. I remember the tsunami taking me and I was knocked out."
"I took a lifeboat. Another wave took Zayn and I here and we found Lacey floating. Luckily, Zayn is certified in CPR." Harry said. He was playing with his lighter, not taking an eye off it the whole time. He kept rolling the wheel at the top to light it but failed. He tried multiple times, making the quick clicking noise.
"It's not gonna light." Zayn told him.
"Exactly. This thing right here," Click, "Represents me and the little burning fire," Click, "Represents my hope. Just as this lighter as no light, I have no hope." Click, "We're all gonna die. That what the end is. We aren't here to survive. We're here to suffer."
As silence fell, I thought about it for a minute. It shouldn't be like this and it doesn't have to be. I shook my head, "No," I spoke up. "We are all here for a reason. There is a reason we are the survivors. We have special features that we can and must do, even if we don't know we can. It may be a coincidence but we should change that.
We cannot lose hope. Even if we're dying at the bottom of a hole, we will not loose hope. It's all we have left. It's up to us to recreate whatever is left of this place." I pause,"And if we don't... then will suffer."
I ended my mini speech and everyone stared at me. Smiles grew upon everyone's faces slowly and they looked at each other.
Harry looked up at me as his lips curved up into a smirk. He rolled the small wheel at the top making the clicking noise once more, but this time the lighter was lit.
