SOJOURN

Chapter 3: Saskia

"What the hell happened here?"

Saskia had been glad to be out of that bus. She'd hated enclosed spaces; she always had and that bus was a place of death. She'd woken up from the crash with a pain in her skull and the body of Jamie Riche draped over her, broken glass embedded in his neck. Saskia knew she'd never be able to get that image out her head; the glass sticking out of his neck, the blood running down his face...

But maybe now she was starting to wonder if maybe she was the one who'd died.

Because the city outside was not the Melbourne Saskia had moved to.

The streets were littered with trash. Not the occasional plastic bag or cigarette butt; great piles of garbage that piled up against the buildings in small dunes, dunes that people could easily hide in. Plastic bags blew in the breeze like tumbleweeds.

The buildings were smeared with graffiti, there windows ether smashed or smeared with dirt and newspaper. They were more like skeletons of buildings then real things.

Cars were here and there; most were in parking positions, but others were in the middle of the road as though they were still driving to work or home; all had there tyres punched, there windows smashed or glazed with dirt, paint stripped. Two were on fire.

A tram stood at a tram stop, frozen in place, doors wide open. It'd received the same treatment as the cars.

Power cables draped from above like vines in a jungle. Small fires burned like little orange bushes.

There was no movement, save for the drifting of bags and the flicking of fires.

Flinders Street was totally deserted.

It was like a scene from The Tribe or maybe The Scorch Trials, but with less sand.

"Holy shit." said Ty, dropping to the ground. 

"This is weird." said Michelle as she jumped out of the bus.

Saskia turned towards her. She never really like Michelle; Michelle tended to treat herself with a sense that she was above everyone else.

"Really? That's all you can say? Weird? The city's a mess, everyone's gone, the bus's crashed...and all you can say is this is weird?!" Saskia said, sounding quite hysterical. 

"You're forgetting that the sun's gone too."

"What?"

Michelle pointed up and Saskia craned her neck up to see.

The sky was its normal sky blue. But with two differences. The sky wasn't a deep fathomless blue. It looked more like...like a roof. Somehow looking straight up at the sky was normal, but when Saskia looked at it from a more angular point of view, it looked more like a dim blue wall in the distance.

Also, the sun was gone. Saskia searched the sky, looking for the sun. Maybe it's behind a building, she thought, but the more she searched the more she began to realise that the sun wasn't there.

"This is impossible."

Saskia hated the word impossible. She lived for the possible, for science, technology and everything it offered. To her, the impossible was a thing of the past. The future dreamed of in old sci-fi movies was now; people just didn't realise it. Virtual reality headsets were sold to the public, holographic projectors were in every high school classroom, solar power was rapidly gaining influence in Australia and communication was the best it would ever possibly get.

Saskia loved technology. Loved might not be the best word for it, but she did. She was a great netball player and while she loved playing netball, technology was what she wanted to do.

Most teens have a few backup plans for what happens if they don't get the uni course they want, but Saskia didn't. She'd planned her whole life out for herself; get into uni with a course for graphic design, design the next big thing software-wise, live a happy life. She'd even planned the year when she wanted to start dating again. If she ever did.

There was thump behind her as Jackie, closely followed by Charlie, fell down beside them. Why two ten year olds were on the bus in the first place was a mystery to Saskia. The twins stood next to each other, hurling together like penguins. There older brother Hugo followed them, falling over clumbsily and skinning his knees.

"What's happened here?" he said.

"Dunno." said Sprocket, walking across the street. He held up his phone "I'm not getting any signel."

Saskia held out her own phone. No bars. No service. Nothing

"How can you be in a city and not have any service?" she said.

"Maybe this isn't real. Yeah, this is just a dream. A really, really crazy dream." said Hugo.

"If this is your dream, can you dream me up some sunscreen?" said Michelle "My skin's burning."

"If this were a dream, then why aren't i waking up?" said Sprocket; he was pinching his arm and leaving a lot of pink marks in the process. Nothing was happening. 

"Ok, so this is not a dream." said Ty.

"Of corse this is a dream." said Saskia angrily. She then processed to start pinching. She pinched her arm until her skin turned pink and raw. 

Nothing.

The floor was't dropping away or dissolving into a hospital clinic or a darkened bedroom. 

It's not a dream.

This is real.

GRRRRRRRR.