In The Last Days

The Unexpected.

After lunch, they all went to their different classes, but she was free. So she went on ahead.

Nathan had wanted to skip but quickly thought better of it when he was met with four different pairs of eyes glaring daggers at him.

Rose found an empty class and sat down at the far corner. She dropped her bag and brought out a book, the book.

She placed it on the table and traced the lettering with her hand. She'd already named it and thought it was befitting.

Everything she'd seen and heard was mind-blowing and every word had been carefully written. She could only imagine the world's reaction to it. She knew she was blown away.

She heard a distant cracking noise and her fingers stopped at the edge of the book.

"What was that?" Rose dismissed it a second later and she took her pen to continue writing when the ground beneath her began to shake.

She gasped, standing up abruptly. The chairs and desks around her were moving, skidding on their own accord.

The marker board came unhinged and she could hear the car alarms going off in the distance.

Her eyes widened as the situation dawned on her. It was an earthquake.

The school's alarm went off and she could hear students panicking as they ran up and down the hallway.

Someone was speaking through the school's radio, but she could barely hear anything he was saying; the ground breaking to bits was deafening.

All she could hear was the chant going on and on in repeat in her head;

The wall is breaking, the wall is breaking. . .

The voice went on and on and she shivered at the meaning. She began heading towards the door and only stopped for a second to look out the window.

She immediately regretted it.

The ground opened up, not ten blocks away from her school, and swallowed an entire car park.

Rose ran out of the classroom, she needed to find her friends.

"Oh, God." She cried out. The teachers were directing the students down to the school's basement.

"Hurry up! Keep it moving!" They yelled over the increasing mass of students.

She needed to find the others, now.

A hand suddenly rested on her shoulder and she jumped in fright but was met with the worried stare of Elnathan.

She quickly hugged him and asked for the others.

"Where's everyone?!" She yelled over the mass of panicking students. He grabbed her hand and followed the crowd towards the basement.

"They've gone on ahead of us. We need to hurry now." He said in a fairly even voice and surprisingly, she'd heard him.

Debris rained down on them from the ceiling and she knew that if they didn't make it down in the next couple of minutes, they were done for.

After a few more minutes of shoving and groaning, they all safely got down to the basement and the principal locked the doors.

"Alright listen up everybody. The key is to remain calm. There is no reason to panic, we are perfectly safe." The student's body began to murmur in panic when the ground beneath them began to shake again.

Rose frantically searched for everyone else and when she couldn't find them she began to panic.

Where were they? Were they all alright? Were they safe?