The Land Before Tomorrow

Chapter 5

When I arrived at the gates a guard waited there for me. He guided me in the direction of a long black car. He did not move with the normal pep of an Akmondeza guard, he moves slowly and sadly. 

When I got in the car I noticed there was someone else. I didn't know who it was but she was beaming. So glad that she got picked to go to a new world. I would be that excited too, except for the fact that I'm never going to see Carter again. The car starts to move. We are leaving the gates. We are still underground but we are on our way up the exit tunnel. I see a small light at the end of the- at least two miles long- tunnel. When we get to the end, we have to go through a huge set of doors. When we are finally through the doors, the sunlight is blinding. I had never seen anything so bright. The limo driver asks if we would like the windows open, and we agree. When the windows open, the air smells so sweet. I had never breathed or smelled anything so... 

Pure...

The only word I could mutter was "wow," I'm so used to the air in Akmondeza. Underground the air is always stuffy and stale. We don't have free-flowing air that smells so good. 

When my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, the overground did not look as good as it smelled. It was brown. Everything burnt, rubble everywhere, rivers of red flowing heavily. That was very confusing to me. Why would water be red? Isn't it clear? I came to the conclusion that it was just what overground water is like. We kept driving, and slowly things started to become greener. We encountered this bright green coating on the ground. It looked like a green carpet. Then the driver started speaking, he told us it was grass. "Hi, Girls," he said. 

"Hi!" The girl next to me responded excitedly. 

"Are you excited  to go to your new life?" 

"Of course!" she replied. 

"My name is Jorge by the way." 

"I'm Elanor," she said with an optimistic smile

"I'm Totyana, but you can call me Tot," I said.

"Well hello, Tot. Are you excited to go to your new life?" 

"Yes," I said. I'm not actually excited, but I'm pretty sure he is an Underground worker, and if he reports that I said I'm not  excited, I could be killed. 

"These tall green bushy things are called trees. And the green carpet on the ground is called grass."

"Oh my! That is so interesting!" Elanor said. Quickly flower buds and vines started to cover everything, and we started to enter a new city. Jorge drove us to a building. It looked very old, and not nearly as nice as the other tall, shiny, reflective buildings around us. I had never seen anything like this town. The streets were clean, people were wearing bright-colored, questionably styled clothing, walking around on the street. I wondered why they weren't at work. They all had fake smiles plastered on their make up caked faces. More guards escorted us inside the dark building. I saw the other eight raffle winners in line there. Some leaning against the walls, the others sitting in chairs along the wall. They would take them in a room through a door one by one. It was all white in there, with bright lights. Suddenly, I realized.