THE LONG ROAD AHEAD

S1 EP1 "Exposition"

Season 1

"Exposition"

Jacob's chest heaved heavily from the pain. For a second, he forgot where he was, and even now while he was looking around, his surroundings were unfamiliar. All around, aisles of the sports goods were covered in fallen equipment. Some cabinets were smashed with pieces of the ceiling that plummeted towards the floor. Jacob knew that there had to be unlucky customers underneath the debris.

Jacob, staying seated, turned his head to see he was leaned against a wall that miraculously remained untouched. It was as if Jacob was given a chance. He wasn't religious. There was no miracle involved here. Jacob must have picked a really secure wall to lean against.

The Marine felt an aching pain in his leg. Jacob looked to see what happened and saw that a sharp piece of glass, perhaps from a window, had nestled itself into his right knee.

Fuck, he thought.

He tried to move his leg a little but as soon as he did, an icy cold pain shot up to his thigh. The pain was unbearable and made Jacob close his eyes, not caring about anything at that moment.

Jacob let his thoughts return to him. Thoughts of his wife and son. Thoughts of the war he was supposed to be deployed to next week. Thoughts of...

"A fucking war zone, ain't it?" said an irritating voice.

Jacob opened one eye and saw a young kid, perhaps twenty-four looking back at him, kneeling next to him. Jacob closed his eye and tried to fall asleep again.

"Hey mister, is you dead?"

Both of Jacob's eyes flew open and he felt very irritable.

"Goddamn it! What do you want?"

The kid fumbled backwards in fear. He thought about his answer and after awhile, he shrugged.

"I don't know," he started, "it's just that I didn't realize there were more survivors."

The innocence in his voice made Jacob surrender.

"Kid, what's your name? You got one?"

"Yes sir! Tony. Tony Brooks."

Tony's shirt was green with a single vertical orange stripe.

"Do you work here, Tony?"

"Yeah sir!" replied Tony obediently.

"Ok, enough with the first day employee shit. The name's Ryan. Jacob Ryan."

For awhile, Tony didn't say anything. He just continued to stare at the blood-gushing gash in Jacob's knee.

"You need a doctor or something."

"What? Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do. Is there a hospital around here?"

Tony gave Jacob a dark look.

"I don't think that's gonna solve that there problem."

"What do you mean? Why the hell not?"

Tony gave a look that suggested the answer was quite obvious.

"Well, besides the power going kaboom, which powers the doors, we're sort of in the midst of a damn apocalypse."

Jacob scoffed. "You're joking."

"Well of course I am! And all the debris is part of a new promotion."

Jacob once again surveyed the store. Damn, the store looked worse than before.

Everywhere, the store was dusty and littered with dead bodies. The upper half of a man was separated five feet from his bottom half.