Exum: New Earth

Chapter One

Maxwell Holter remembered seeing the edge of the reinforced dome and the sandy wasteland and the green grass of the inside. Many was put in cryopods or left outside to die in the flares and creatures that evolved to survive like the sandsnake, silver scorpions, or paraworms. Inside the dome you were safe and could live a relatively normal life. Home, job, family.... there were restrictions though. One bedroom in a home, two children maximum, even your job was picked for you.

He was a days journey out still, his whole team had died to the paraworms and he'd barely made it without getting infested. They'd all but made it halfway across the dessert when the sandstorm happened, they'd been collecting the paraworms for samples. By the time it was over, two members were dead in their safety tents and one hadn't made it in time and was cut up and suffocated by the storm. Maxwell couldn't save them or the samples and had to make the trip back to Exum alone. It was long into nightfall before he saw a intact house and a bed to sleep upon. Still he thought of three green grass inside the huge dome and the people walking the streets to shops and homes. It was pleasant there, you could almost forget that most of the world was dessert and wasteland- just dirt with no other flora or fauna and little remaining useful of the past human civilizations. He was a doctor accopanying those choosen to go on mission for samples or artifacts. This wasn't the first to go bad but it was the first of Maxwell's to be unsuccessful to this degree. Normally they might just find that the artifact had been taken by looters or destroyed in the near fall of the human race. This time there was death, 4- Evan, Daylia, Rayna, and Timothy.

He couldn't think of that now, he had to sleep. Even when he tried things filled his head- the roaring of the truck they'd used to get out and that Maxwell was still driving even with the windows busted through to get home, the screams from the safe tent he thought he was too far to get to in time so he hide in the truck with a blanket over him, the noise from outside the bedroom- there was a noise outside the bedroom!

Maxwell got up with his survival knife that he'd kept by the bed now in hand, readied for a fight. He slowly crept into the hallway and peered down to see a boy raiding the kitchen for non-perishable food- an act Max hadn't thought to do when he was searching for a bed to sleep in.

The person stepped out of sight so Max crept out a bit more and found himself tackled to the ground by the same scrawny teen he'd been spying on.

"What do you want with me!?"

"To be free of you. Literally, get off!" Max replied as an elbow was being jammed at his throat.

The other moved back slowly, "you're from Exum, aren't you? There's a wall of fire coming in a few days and i need to be in that bubble... what will it take."

"We can't take any-"

"Please. You're team died right? That's why your hurt and alone? And i bet you don't know how to stop the venom of a silver scorpion, do you?"

"Fine. Alright. I'll get you in. But we go in the morning.... and i need your name."

"Toby. Yours?"

"Maxwell. Now goodnight. " he said and went back to his bed, "and don't tackle me again!"

Toby slept on the couch, ready in the morning for when Maxwell woke up and started going through the house. He watched as Maxwell packed booked and a few trinkets that survived doomsday. He also happened to find a camera in what seemed to be a teen girls room and put it in his pocket. Without saying a word, Maxwell went out the door with Toby following him. They walked on the "path" Exum secured for hours on end. Maxwell shared his canteen of water and Toby shared the snacks he looted from abandon houses and stores.

"So you said a flare was going in a few days. How do you know?"

"Stayed at a wheather station for a while. I know machines and i can read so i figured out how to use it. Plus the satellite was already on and two people who worked their before we using it as shelter. They had a plan to get to the bunker downstairs. Not much room. I hoped i could get into Exum in time. I..I don't want to be out here anymore."