The Aftermath is Worse

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Terrance

I take one last look at the campsite before we leave it forever. I know it's not safe there anymore. But I really don't want to say goodbye. I was just beginning to grow attached to this place, and now we're leaving it behind.

I take note of the extreme temperatures. The weather has been on and off since the war ended. Sometimes it can be 150 degrees and sometimes it's -50 degrees. It sometimes even rains a bright yellow glowing substance (I don't even know what to call it). I glance at the temperature on the thermometer on the compass hanging from my neck. It's currently -38 degrees and all I have is jeans, a sweatshirt and a knit cap.

"C'mon Terrance, we have to leave," yelled Harley.

"I'm coming."

I just can't get into my mind that this entire forest will be glowing bright green with radioactive chemicals in just a few hours. But I suppose it's a good thing that Monique noticed it. Otherwise, all of us would probably be either dead or turned into some human-animal hybrid (which would be worse than dying).

We have to figure out how to stop this from spreading or we all die. (Not that that isn't inevitable already anyways). I can't think of anyway to stop this.

"Terrance, c'mon," yelled Harley again. "Time to go or time to die."

Harley is a great leader and all, but sometimes she's a little bit too demanding. She always wants others to obey, but she'll never obey anyone else. It bothers me with a passion. I'll never really understand her.

I stepped into the rusty, yellow RV and shut the door behind me. Kenneth was in the driver's seat with Elsee sleeping in shotgun with a fluffy blanket that I would kill for in this cold weather.

Thankfully, the RV is much warmer than the outside world. I'm guessing it's approximately 10 degrees in here. In a few hours, it could end up being 100 degrees.

I sit down next to Benson on the leather chair in front of the small wooden table. Monique and Randy are sitting on the other side of it. Randy is playing what looks like solitaire. He always has a deck of cards on him. A fourth of the deck is missing and the remaining cards are all at least partially burnt.

Monique is listening to heavy metal that I can hear blasting out of her earbuds of the first generation iPhone she's holding.

"I'm surprised you haven't blown your eardrums out yet," said Benson with a very attitudinal tone.

"It's rock n' roll, you're not supposed to have it on softly dumbass," replied Monique.

Monique is a really cool person once you get to know her. The problem is, nobody wants to take the time to get to know her but Harley and I.

I try to get along with Benson, but he's just so intimidating. Every time he speaks, it feels like he'll never stop. So, I usually try to ignore him when he talks.

"Well, if you're ears explode, I'll laugh," replied Benson in a matter-of-factual voice.

"Oh no, please don't laugh," said Monique with a very sarcastic tone. "You have the ugliest laugh."

Benson stopped talking after that. Monique is good at making people upset.

"Alright pack," Harley began. "We need to find a new campground. I say we just go forward."

She usually calls us the pack. Even though we aren't really a pack anymore considering that we are down to seven people. Originally, it was just Harley, Monique, Kenneth and Benson. But then it grew until there were seventeen kids. I was the twelfth person to join. Everything became happy again.

But then, the final bombs of the war were dropped. Six members of the pack were killed. And that left us with eleven people. Three kid; Pablo, Zane and Shauna all just left.

Literally, we woke up one morning to find a note. It said: 'We aren't sorry, you're all going to die and we had to leave before they killed us too." And that was that. But it sucks because Pablo was a really cool guy. But I guess he didn't think the same about me.

You know enough for now. I don't think I'm ready to talk about what happened to the other people. You see, after the war, everything became either mutated or destroyed.. We are the few survivors. We are the unlucky ones. We are the few who haven't been screwed-up in this unimaginably cruel world.

We thought the war was bad. But that was the easy part. Trust me when I say this, the aftermath is worse.