The End of the Beginning

Chapter One

- For Maya,
May this story bring joy into your life.

Chapter One

           'Tell me what you want to do.' The help icon in the top right of the page keeps distracting me, my focus drifts from my thousand-word essay to the little lightbulb too often. How am I ever going to get this done? I know for sure that I'll fail if I don't get it in by the end of the day. I slam my laptop shut and lean back in my office chair with my hands clasped around the back of my head, my long, black hair sweeps off of my shoulders onto my back. I knew it was a mistake that I got accepted to this college. My dorm was empty, my roommate is never here, and the house down the block seemed to be having yet another party. I'm just trying to pass the test of life, and life right now happens to be Physics 414: Introduction to General Relativity. I don't know what I'm going to do, but right now, I'm not going anywhere. 

              I rush to put my uniform on and grab my books, I make sure to snag an orange from the front desk of the laboratory before I enter the room. I close the door quietly behind me, careful not to make a noise. "Mr. Parkins, you're late yet again." I hear my professor call from the front of the room. "Yes Dr. Müller sir, it uh... Won't happen again." "You've said that the last three times, now get to your seat." I stumble to get there, on the way tripping over the small staircase and landing flat on my back, my books scattered everywhere. 

             The entire class laughs at my incompetence. I notice a hand retract from my side. "Oh, look here, it says property of Noah A. Parkins. What's the 'A' stand for? Asshat?" He snickers and turns the pages of my notebook. "You've got some great notes here, mind if I take this?" He turns and sees me trying to get up, meanwhile shoving his foot into my chest. I wince in pain. "Give it here, Kurt." I reach my hand up to grab my notes and he yanks it away from me. He's bigger than me so I can't really do anything about it. You know the type of kids who are like three-hundred pounds but they're just strong, yeah that's him. I hear a voice coming from the person above him. "They're not yours, and you might as well give them back before I report you to Müller for cheating." He throws them down on my face before giving me yet another boot to my ribcage. 

              The class dismissed and everyone rushed out the door, everyone except one. "Hey, are... are you alright?" It was the same voice that got me out of the situation with Kurt. "Yeah, yeah. I think so. I'll have a bruise or two though, it's nothing really." I sat there mesmerized at her beauty. "You really should get that checked out, I wouldn't bet on it for sure." She was kind, I was immediately hooked. I traced her with my eyes, she was dazzling. She leaned over to grab some of my books, her silky black hair smelled like strawberry Twizzlers. "Thanks," I muttered as she grabbed her bag and started to head out the door. "I never did get your name by the way..." She turned around and blushed a little. "It's Lillian." 

              I walk outside and sit on the grand marble staircase of the school's Library, it's been under construction for a while now. Stupid meth heads blew up the informational text section on the second-floor last year causing the roof to cave in on top of five people, killing them. Rumors are that it will forever be haunted by the group that were playing Dungeons and Dragons that day on the first floor of Dean Rice's Library. I reach in my bag and grab my physics book, I make out a small piece of paper that had fallen out of the front cover and landed on the step next to me. 202-555-0101 YOU'RE WELCOME – Lillian <3. Holy crap, I got a girl's phone number, and I didn't even try. 

            It's been a week since I met her, and I aced my Multivariable Calculus test, my Advanced English test, and I got the second highest grade on the Physics test. She seemed to be my good luck charm, I wouldn't even be able to make grades like this even if I studied for a solid month. Every time I look at the note she hid in my book it gives me butterflies, I haven't seen her since the day of the incident against Kurt. I wonder what she does. As I'm looking at the note again I see there are small dots and dashes on the back of the paper. 

-- . . - / -- . / .- - / .---- -.... ----- ----- / .... --- ..- .-. ... --..-- / .--- .- -. / ....- --..-- / -. . .- .-. / - .... . / --- .-.. -.. / .-. .- .. .-.. .-- .- -.-- .-.-.- / .. / .... .- ...- . / ... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / - --- / ... .... --- .-- / -.-- --- ..- .-.-.- 

It reads: "Meet me at 1600 hours, Jan 4, near the old railway. I have something to show you." 

            It's already four, where is she? I had already been standing there for a little over half an hour, not entirely sure what would happen to me, or anyone else for that matter. I check my watch, it's four-o- five. Lillian walks out from a denser part of the forest that surrounded the tracks and station, she was wearing Aviator sunglasses, a green army jacket, brown crew neck shirt, black jeans with a tear in the left knee, and a pair of combat boots. I've got to say, she was glorious. "Well, what the hell are you waiting for?" She hollered. "We have some business to attend to." 

             To be quite honest, I never knew what we were getting into, but I must have known it wasn't that bad because I went along with it anyway. I followed her into an abandoned train about a quarter of a mile down the tracks, and by the looks of it, some others had been here as well. "I guess others have had their share of graffitiing these walls, huh?" I chuckled a little at my remark, I guess she wasn't amused. "Right through here." She said through the next car over. We walked through the old passenger train steadily, but avoiding all the leftover garbage and creatures that roamed the place. She opens a door and leads into a dark room, calls me inside, then shuts it behind both of us. 

                 Say, what goes through a guy's head when someone leads you into a dark room and shuts the door behind both of you? My heart beats faster in the dark, my breathing, denser. "You're going to be alright. I'm no harm and neither is the dark. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't have done it this way." I bump into something following her deeper into the car, knocking several metal things over in the process. "Welcome, to my secret place..." She flips some switch on the middle of the wall about halfway through the car and several LEDs flicker to life around me. 

               I could not believe what all of this was, and I thought everything was lost when the new life had started. There were works of literature, paintings and small sculptures, and even pictures of families that I had never seen before. There were pots and pans that were made from cast iron, something that didn't exist anymore. There was a deadly disease that wiped more than half of the population that we called 'The Virus'. Ever since then, people have been trying to repopulate it again and form society anew. "It's cool, right?" "Yeah," I said. "It's cool, but why are you showing this to me?" She pulled a small chair from behind a small pile of road signs and gas prices. "Well, it started a couple of years back with my father and I."