There is nothing to compare to the sound of bombs.
They boom into existence, and you hear it before the ground rumbles. Here in this bank vault, twenty teens huddle, even the 'tough guys' look scared.
Oh why did I beg my mom to take the bus today? Maybe I wouldn't be here, in a bank vault, surrounded by my classmates and a bank employee. Maybe I'd be at home, safe and sound.
Jackson and Andrew are discussing math, calculating how many quarts of air we have left or whatever.
Girls sniffled, and we waited. Someone's timer went off.
"Two more hours." Jackson reports. Still the bombs fall. At some point, Ashley crawls to the corner and throws up.
After an eternity of loud destruction, once again, the phone reports that we have one hour.
And finally, silence.
It's almost half an hour before we need to breath fresh air. Everyone is breathing harder from lack of oxygen, the smell of puke stinging our nostrils and throats. Others gag at the stench.
Survival mode has set in. We force ourselves to steady our heartbeats. Even Ginger cooperates.
Finally, Jackson climbs the stairs and unlocks the door to the vault, and Timothy and Andrew help him push open the door.
"If those were any type of atomic missile or bomb, we can't go outside because of radiation poisoning." Andrew reports.
Fresh air rushes in, and we quickly get to our feet. Sharah and I are both wobbly, the lack of oxygen making our thoughts fuzy.
Everyone scrambles to the stairs, and we quickly get up them.
The three boys who opened the door are staring at the remains of the bank around us.
"So much for poisoning." Emily says, looking at the shattered windows, and the cracked walls.
The air is dusty.
Some of us breath it in.
And the affects of whatever the dust was take control of several kids. They begin coughing, gasping for air as their eyes water.
Then the thrashing. It was horrible to watch.
They jerked around, not seeming aware of their surroundings.
Emily falls forward.
The cracking sound of her skull on the marble bank counter will never leave my mind for the rest of my life. The dull, sickly thud. I retched.
Finally, only seven of us are standing, unaffected by the dust. Why?
"It's the zombie apocalypse." Jackson says.
"Zombies arnt real. This is something else entirely." Timothy disagrees.
Jackson leans fown and touches the necks of every student that is still, still lying on the ground, include Emily.
He pressed two fingers to Eric's jugular.
Shaking his head, he anounces, "no pulse."
They are dead.
But why not us?
YOU ARE READING
Storm Star
Fiksi IlmiahNine teens, chosen for some mysterious purpose, the survivors of "the wipe-out" as that day was called. A post-apocalyptic world is all that left. And the aliens who came.
