1- Before
Hope
Everything was cold. Everything but the chunky watch in my hand.
The metal seemed to be heated, and getting hotter by the second. Confused, I stared down at it as the cab peeled away with a squeal of tires against wet tarmac. For a second I watched the rapidly retreating lights and then I sighed.
How had I ended up here, standing in the rain outside my parents' house with a stranger's watch burning in my palm?
The bright lights of the street outside the cab's windows had streaked past just moments before—a blurry mixture of bright white and red lights and rain, that made it hard to make out anything specific in the street beyond.
It would have made me feel even worse if it wasn't for the cool glass pressed up against my cheek. The coldness of it helped eased the tears that had been running down my face since I had left Justin's apartment.
Three years down the drain.
Three years and nine months to be exact and for what?
For absolutely nothing.
I had always thought Justin was the love of my life. The man I would spend the rest of my life with. But that was back when I had been young and stupid. Back when I thought he had some ambition.
Back when...
It didn't matter what I had thought, and I would drive myself crazy with the what ifs if I let them take over. I loved him.
But I couldn't be with him.
I wanted to make something of my life, I wanted to explore the world and draw what I saw and he wanted to...
Well I didn't know what he wanted because I wasn't sure he did but it wasn't the same thing as me. He was too busy playing his computer games and moaning about the end of the world.
Like that was about to happen any day now. Crazy talk about brewing wars and secret government experiments. There had even been one about the government enhancing humans... making them into some kind of animal human hybrids that were going to be used as super soldiers. That one was my favourite because it told me just how bat shit crazy he was.
If I had to listen to one more conspiracy theory or plan for the apocalypse, I was going to lose the will to live.
The world was so full of beauty, it was just a shame that he couldn't see it.
So it didn't matter if leaving him and ending our relationship hurt something in my chest, I knew it was for the best.
We were just two very different people. And we were heading in completely different directions.
"Are you ok back there?"
The deep masculine voice of the driver had taken me by surprise and I squeaked before I could help myself. Lifting my eyes to meet his, in the rear view mirror I straightened before I nodded.
Strange that he was talking to me. Big city cabbies didn't usually do that. Not for anyone who wasn't a tourist anyway and one look at me and you knew I had been born here.
Plus I had mascara running down my cheeks and kept heaving with huge dry sobs, I wasn't exactly a welcoming sight and yet there he was talking to me.
And not just talking to me, staring at me with a weird look narrowing his eyes.
Letting out a shaky breath I forced myself to smile. "Yeah, I'm fine." A small shrug. "Never better in fact. Feels good to get rid of the dead weight, you know?" I grinned but he didn't say a word and just continued to stare. "I am off on a trip tomorrow. With my friends and family."
"Are you sure?" The line deepened. "I saw it fall from your bag when you got out."
"I-"
"It looks expensive. Maybe it was the boyfriends?"
"Maybe but-"
"I can take it back to the office and put it in the lost and found but it looks expensive and I wouldn't want it to be taken."
"Yeah maybe it fell into my bag, I'll take it back to him in the morning." Slowly I took the metal from him and closed my hand around it. I wasn't going to do any such thing but I would leave a message that he could pick it up from my parents house.
"I am sorry." He said softly and that made no sense to me. Why was he apologetic for me dropping something in his cab. "I hope you end up being ok"
"Thanks again." Standing, I shut the car door and stood there in the rain. Lifting my face to it, so it could wash the tears from my face. It flattened my dark red hair to my scalp but I didn't care. The wind and the rain felt good. Like they could wash away all of my troubles if I just stood out here long enough. Not that I would do that. I needed to get inside before I caught a cold or one of my parents spotted me and started to ask questions I wasn't ready to answer.
Plus it was chilly. Cold in fact.
And that's when I felt it. The lurch of my stomach, like the earth had tilted under my feet. Nausea swept up my throat.
The street lights so bright before, dimmed and then flickered on and off and the entire time the gold grew hotter and hotter.
"Ow." Shaking my hand I let it drop, watching as it fell towards the pavement in slow motion and the face cracked.
Then I was falling, falling and falling and falling.
And the dim lights above my head burst into life, so bright that they blinded me and everything went black. But the falling feeling remained. Like a dream only I knew I would never hit the floor or wake up. My body and soul was stretched and then scattered into a million pieces. A hundred million years seemed to pass but at the same time no time at all.
My eyes flew open. The darkness receded and I stared straight up into a sky that was not like any sky I had ever seen before. The dark clouds seemed to boil above my head. The pavement wasn't even pavement under my back. Everything around me was wrong, even the smell of the air. Which smelt like ozone and chemicals. Bitter and pungent.
I was awake and no longer falling, but I was no longer in front of my house either. In fact I didn't know where I was. Pushing myself upwards I looked around and instantly wished I hadn't.
The familiar street where I'd grown up was gone. In its place stretched a wasteland of crumbling concrete and twisted metal. Buildings that should have housed my neighbors lay in ruins, their windows blown out like empty eye sockets staring at nothing. Skeletal remains of cars littered the cracked asphalt, some still smoking with an eerie green flame that cast sickly shadows across the devastation.
The silence was absolute and wrong. No traffic, no voices, no signs of life. Even the wind seemed afraid to make a sound in this dead place. The air itself felt toxic, making my lungs burn with each breath.
"Are you ok?" A man rushed toward to drop to his knees next to me. "You can't be out here after dark Miss, it's not safe."
I looked at him properly for the first time. His clothes were patched and stained, his face gaunt with hunger and shadowed with fear. Behind him, other figures moved through the rubble like ghosts, scavenging for scraps in what had once been a thriving neighborhood.
He didn't need to tell me that. I could see it wasn't safe. I had been right in front of my parents home but I wasn't any longer.
No, I wasn't home, I had woken up right smack in the middle of what looked like a hell scape.
"What happened here?" I whispered, my voice barely audible.
The man's eyes were haunted as he glanced around nervously. "The bombs fell years ago. Changed everything. Changed us." His grip tightened on my arm. "Come on, we need to get you inside. The creatures come out when the sun sets, and it's getting dark."
As if summoned by his words, a howl echoed from somewhere in the ruins—long, mournful, and definitely not human. The man went rigid with terror.
"Run," he breathed.
That's when I heard it again, closer this time. And answering calls from the shadows all around us, as if we'd woken something that had been sleeping in the bones of the dead city.
Something that sounded very, very hungry.