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Chapter 2: Wasteland

I opened my eyes. I was in a daze. It was a few seconds before I remembered what happened. I attempted to lift myself off the ground, but my leg was in excruciating pain. I glanced down and saw blood oozing out of an open wound. It hurt like hell. Where was I? I looked around for sign of the plane or any civilisation. All I saw was a silhouette on the floor. The landscape around me was barren. Somehow it didn't feel like just the Australian outback. The Sun was out, but somehow it was dark.  My intial thoughts were that I was in a desert, but I soon realised that I was not lying on sand. I was lying on red ashes. Remains of this place.

I had another attempt of standing up, but this time it was successful. I approached the silhouette cautiously,  not that I could do it any other way, considering the fact that I had to limp. I was anxious and hopeful at the same time. My shoulders relaxed the second I heard the familiar groaning voice of Lily coming towards me. She climbed up onto her feet, somehow, impossibly, she was unharmed.
"Thank God you're ok. I have no idea what the Hell is going on but I don't think we made it to Sydney." I pulled her into a tight hug.

She didn't pull out until she saw my wound. She gasped loudly. "What happened to your leg! We need to fix it up as soon as possible. Have you seen the plane? We can't be the only survivors." 

I felt overwhelmed. I couldn't explain it. The searing heat of the sun pressed upon my skin, and I realised we couldn't stay out her for very long. Unless we started moving, searching, we wouldn't survive for longer than a day. And so we walked. Lily supported me as I limped. I used the Sun as a measurement. It was rising from the east, so we headed in the other direction. 

The wind blew harshly throughout the day, steadily sweeping away the dust to the west. We were about to stop for a rest when we saw something on the horizon. As we slowly made our way towards it, we could begin to make out what it was. It was a small village, with just a few partially standing wrecks which I assumed were houses. We slowly approached the town, looking out for anyone who could help. Lily opened her mouth to shout out and call for help, but I covered it with my hand.

"No." I whispered urgently. "Let's just scout it out first, whatever happened here, it isn't good, and we can't call out in case whoev- no-whatever did this hears. So we snuck around, well, maybe not very stealthily, but a damaged leg generally does that to you.

The walls of the closest house were almost completely gone. The remains were no higher than half a metre off the ground. It was made up of grey bricks, which looked like someone had not got the right jigsaw piece and had just forced one into the other. There was stone rubble all over the floor, and most of the furniture was snapped or crushed. One cupboard was still in decent shape, despite a massive dent in the top of it. I shifted the stone from the cupboard to make a clearing to open it. As soon as I opened it I realised we had hit the jackpot. Whatever did this, it didn't want to destroy everything. It only wanted to wreck, ruin. It didn't care about canned food.

We found a backpack in another draw, and filled it with as many cans as we could carry. We were so excited by our find, when we climbed back out of the ruins, we completely forgot to try and be stealthy.

"ROAR!" shouted a strange voice inside my right ear. I quickly spun around to see a small boy, probably around the age of 8 or 9

"Who are you?" demanded the little kid. His voice was edgy.

"Woah there. Calm down. We won't hurt you. Here, I'll just reach into my bag here and get a can of food for you to have." I said in a calm and quiet tone of voice. I unzipped the backpack and pulled out a tin of pineapple. I threw it to him lightly, and he caught it with ease. I complimented him on his hand eye co-ordination.

"Thank you sir. Anyway, where are you from? You're certainly not from around here, you don't sound like it."

"Oh, I live in England, in the United Kingdom. It's on the other side of the world, in the nor-"

"I know where England is, I'm not stupid. Anyway, I'm Andrew. But you can call me Andy. I'm 11, but everyone always thinks I'm younger since I am so small." he replied.

"I'm Alexander, this is my little sister Lily. I gestured to her. I didn't want to ask, but I knew I was going to have to sooner or later. "Hey, Andy? If you don't mind me asking, where are your parents?"

"Oh, they went out to stay in Sydney for a few days, they left me with Aunt Lorie." he says matter-of-factly. His tone darkens when he goes on to say "When I woke up this morning, Aunt wasn't here. No one was. The whole town is empty. It's kind of scary actually. Mr. Alexander, can I stay with you until we find my Aunt again?" he asked, looking up at me with his shining green eyes. He had short messy brown hair, and a grin that would make the grumpiest person laugh. His shorts made visible his bony legs. He was extremely thin. He would starve quickly in this world unless someone looked after him.

"Of course you can, we'll find them. But for now, we need to find some food and water. I reckon your Aunt might have gone to Sydney to find your parents, so we should head there. What do you say?" I answered.

"Yeah! I know where we can get some nice fresh water, and some canteens to fill up with it." he replied, his eyes widened with excitement. 

We needed to get to the city and find more survivors and supplies. I felt horrible lying to Andy but if my assumptions were correct, then his Aunt had already been swept away by the west wind.