Surviving the Smoke

Ch2 - Lets go back a few

Chapter 2 – Lets go back a few

Before I get going on what’s happening right now, I’ll let you know what happened in the past.

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So ‘once upon a time’, I was a happy child. With a normal family, and a normal life. Everything was great, until my father left to go to war. A few years before I was born, England was getting angry with China and didn’t like how they were advancing in weaponry much faster than the rest of the world. So they declared war on China and Canada was forced to fight alongside Britain. Over 40% of the population was forced to fight. After five years of war, China finally won. They held their ground and when everything was done with, they were very angry. Canada tried to plead innocent and forced into battle but China wouldn’t have it. They decided that the only fair way of punishment for Canada is to kill every survivor who fought in the war for Britain, and ‘smoke’ Canada and most areas of England.

Millions of Canadians (including me and my entire family) were herded into any large enclosed areas like libraries, large shopping malls, etc. Then once everyone was gathered there, they high-jacked the venting systems, sending carbon dioxide into the air. They also sealed any openings where oxygen could come in… Anyone who was lucky enough to grab a few breaths of the oxygen that was left survived. Those survivors were sent to POW camps. Some escaped, others were not so lucky.

I watched everyone I ever loved suffocate to death in front of me. Some sort of luck or a miracle saved me and I lived. I can’t remember much of what happened after the Smoke Screen (as us survivors called it) because I was only 6 years old when it happened. I’m not sure exactly when I was moved to a jail in what used to be beautiful British Columbia, but all I know is that two years ago, when I was 12, I was still in that same cell with Alexa since… Forever ago. Luckily we were taught how to read and write when we were young, so we would practice with stones together every day, and listen to the guards (who were always missing their shifts and taking days off with no substitutes,) talking to keep up our education. And as it turns out, we weren’t the only ones doing so. We would see lots of other kids partnered in the cells using rocks on the ground to write things on the walls and floors.

Alexa and I would always talk about plans of escaping, but we were never serious about pursuing them. I mean, where would we go once we got out? How would we eat? Where would we live? One night we didn’t have to escape though. We were let out by four young boys looking for trouble and more members for their gang. Chris, Andrew, Dustan and Jack.