Dark Angel

Chapter 1

 It was a cold bitter morning, the kind that wakes you up before you're ready and sleep can't find you again. I stretched aching muscles, listening to my back pop. The sleeping bag didn't do much to stop the weather from seeping in and my bones were stiff from the chill.

I didn't expect to spend my 18th birthday in a sleeping bag alone. I guess most teenagers don't. In an abandoned convenient store on the corner of a town I didn't even know, I decided this was the place to rest. With the bell on the door to alert me of any newcomers, it was the safest place I could find. I got here almost a week ago, scavenging the surrounding homes and stores for any food or water left behind. No one knew that when the reckoning came they wouldn't get to return. This town was already culled over. Being in between Philadelphia and Trenton, the heavy foot traffic it had in the beginning meant that there was next to nothing left for stragglers like me.

The last time I saw another person was almost a month ago, which doesn't sound like much until you try to call for a dog and your voice is nothing more than a scratch from the disuse. The dog had also wondered into the town around the time I did, and he seemed fond of the food I'd given him, so he stuck around. His collar said Angel and I'd nearly choked, sure it was God playing a joke. He'd already sent down the angels, and now he was giving me my own. I took the collar off and tied a blue bandana around his neck, and now I just call him Blue.

The angels came almost half a year ago, wrecking havoc on earth. We'd always glorified them as holy beings, seeming to forget that they fought Gods wars for him, if there even was a God. Most who still believed in him thought this was our end, and judgement day was coming soon, but I'm sure that they're demons coming to make this world their own. Either demons or aliens, the votes still not out. I'd never seen one in person, but an old man I'd stumbled upon 2 months ago seemed to think that they were holy, golden hair and all. If they were holy, they weren't my kind of holy. Nothing as perfect as he claimed could be so ruthless as to wipe out over half the population in as little as a month.

It started with the natural disasters a year before they came, hitting all the major cities across the world. Then it was the plague, something no one thought could still happen. The avian flu to be exact. With everyone so close and birds everywhere you turned it spread like wildfire, and before long, a quarter of the world was being buried. When they finally did arrive, the angels massacred the world leaders, then everyone else they could find stupid enough to approach them. Now, 6 months after they first got here, and the news that still ran via radio claimed that there was no more than 3 billion people left. Probably less because there was no way to count the dead.

I was angry at first. Both parents were taken by the plague, and when it was just me and my sister Ruth, we decided to leave for a more rural area to avoid where the angels would most likely go. She's only 14, and when we got stuck in a riot outside Philadelphia for food, we got separated. I'd waited nearly a month at our agreed meeting place before I had to go, the only thing left resource wise being a granola bar and two cans of beans. I'd written a note and left it where she'd find it, right on the "Welcome to Newtown" sign. I was slowly headed north now, hoping Canada was in better shape than America. The only reason I was still in Pennsylvania was the off-chance she would catch up, but now it just seemed like wistful thinking.

Blue was resting at my feet, his big head alert for any newcomers. He was probably a guard dog before the arrival, but now he was a companion, only part-time guard. Blue in his prime probably weighed 150 pounds, but now he looked just over 100, muscles small from so little food. "You ready to go?" I asked, not expecting an answer. He turned and looked at me, his tail wagging a bit. I sometimes wished he could talk, just so I could hear my name again. Wren. It seems silly, but sometimes just hearing your name spoken by someone else is reassuring, like you matter and you're not alone. But I was alone with a black dog I called Blue and only a few days worth of food left. 

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I hope you guys like the first chapter! I will be trying to publish at least once or twice a week, maybe more depending on my schedule. I also have another story I'm writing on the way, though I may hold back on publishing so I can focus on getting this one going. Thanks! 

-Olivia