Chapter 1
“But I don’t understand”, she said with a quizzical look on her face
“Look, all that it means is, were alone. That’s all”
She looked at him again; her eyes had faint recollection of hope in them. They started to walk by the derelicts of a former domain, Greg heard a noise. He shot to the ground pulling Catherine with him, as 3 million years of evolution had told them to hide when danger was about. He listened, it wasn’t like a noise he was used to hearing, but it was a noise none the less. Catherine didn’t believe him. She knew that Greg plays with her head, and she doesn’t like it.
She looked at him. He returned the look and could see her face change from confusion to realization. Realization that she could now hear the noise.
“What is it?” she said
“Shhhh” Greg said with impatience and raised a hand
“I want to hear” he whispered
The sound gradually lowered in pitch and then faded to nothing. They both looked at each other once again. He raised his head quickly as if to point at where it was coming from. She shallow nodded back in agreement.
They moved through the brush in the direction of the sound, slowly clambering up a small hill towards a tree. Greg signed to Catherine to wait at the tree, as he moved slowly over the hill on his stomach. As he crawled over the hill he could hear the sound again on a very low pitch now, but staying stable. He could see what looked like a shimmering haze. A heat wave he thought. He could tell as he could see objects being shimmered behind it. He though maybe it was a geyser or a natural gas spring of some sort, but he had a much darker foreboding in the back of his mind which told him it was none of these. Besides it had too much of a symmetrical shape, like a kind of American football. He stared at this, thing, as you do when you try to work out what something is. Catherine tapped him on his leg. He turned to look around at her, wondering what could be so important for him to stop looking at this amazement. She signalled to Greg to come with her to leave this anomaly. He shrugged her off and turned back to find the object gone and the sound quickly fade away, into nothingness.
Greg found this puzzling but decided to explain it away with his previous explanations, and try to forget about it.
He got back to his feet and turned to see Catherine still hiding behind the tree. He held out his hand to help.
“So, Mr , What was it?” said Catherine
“It was a gas exhaust or a natural geyser of some sort” he said, not wanting to seem uncertain to her.
Her face returned to confusion.
“But were in the middle of a city park! Don’t they normally check this kind of thing before building a park?” Catherine said
“normally” said Greg and looked away, as if to survey the horizon for anything suspicious.
They both walked back down the hill, away from the so-called natural geyser. They both had a look on their face that could only be attributed to food. They were both desperately hungry.
After the time of mistrust and confusion, food had become a commodity far greater than any other. Greater than gold, greater than fuel for motor vehicles, but it was in close succession to water. At least, something that passes as drinking water anyway.
They found a small building, pretty rough. It had broken windows and a broken front door. This was the norm; rarely did you find a non broken window. Catherine tried to walk inside but Greg stopped her. They didn’t know what was in there, but at least he thought he had a fighting chance if anything went wrong. He searched around for a cudgel shaped object of sorts to protect himself. He reached down and picked up a small bent pipe, it seemed to fit quite nicely into the palm of his hand and with this decided to walk into the building.
Chapter 2
Greg gave the building a passing glance as he stepped inside. As he passed through the doorway he noticed a room to his right with the door hanging of its top hinge. It looked like it had been broken off with some force. This didn’t worry him as this building was black and hollow, gutted. There was no life left here. There seemed to be a lot of stuff around, scattered on the floor and tables and boxes and papers left on the stairs which he could see in the back of the buildings hallway.
He turned around to usher Cat in with him. She was already following him moving in with Greg, occasionally popping out from behind him to take a brief look at what lay inside. Greg held out his palm, she grabbed it with anxious assertion and went forward. They walked together into the first room they came across. It was the room at the front of the building with what seemed like wooden floor boards. It had a large window, broken of course. A large tree root like crack through the centre split the word SHOP into two.
They scanned the room meticulously for food, there beedy eyes squinted in the near darkness for any shape they could make out which had even the remotest possibility of food. Both of their attentions settled on a row of tin cans sitting on a shelf on the back wall facing the broken window.
“Look” said Greg
“I know” said Cat
“Are you looking at, what I think your looking at?” enquired Greg
“The cans?” said Cat
“Yep” said Greg
“Yep” agreed Cat
There was silence. The silence seemed like it went on for days, months, years. But it never. They both turned to look at each other.
It was like slow motion, they both darted for the far wall of the room where the shelf and cans were. All the debris that was sitting and gathering dust for years was now back in upheaval again. A dust bowl was created in seconds as they both scrambled and fell over objects to get to the cans on the shelf. Greg got there first, grabbing the first can he could lay his hands on. He quickly studied it and decided to try to prise the lid off with his fingers. This came as a bit of a surprise to Greg as this old can sitting on a shelf for years, possibly containing food was now ready to bear its fruit and open easily for him. It wasn’t.
Greg threw the can to the floor and grabbed another newer looking can and found it more pliable to his finger work. As the lid opened his nose twitched with the smell of peaches, he had found possibly the last peach can in existence, with peaches still in it! A large beaming smile appeared slowly over his grubby face. He quickly wiped his hands on his dirty trousers thinking this would clean them up enough to enable him to eat the peaches without eating dirt, this was unlikely. He tried to pick up a peach from the can. He found it slippery and decided to try to drink the peaches from the can instead.
Meanwhile Cat had found a can with custard inside, this came as a bit of a surprise for her as she had never seen or eaten custard before. She tilted her head back and let the yellow viscous liquid pour out of the can and down her throat. It was sweet and creamy, she decided she liked it and took another swig. In between the peaches Greg looked over at Cat. She had a yellow moustache from the custard. Greg smiled and she did too, he had forgotten how beautiful her smile was even if it was covered in custard. They both stood still, looking at each other. Greg realised he could hear that sound again. This time it became much louder, quicker. He dropped the can put his hands over his ears. Cat took a queue from this and did the same. They stood still looking around and finally looked through the window at the front of the shop. Even though it was dirty they could still see light and shapes through it. The sound slowly faded away again and as it did they heard foot steps on concrete, running. As they stood where they were, they watched a figure run with heavy footsteps past the window of the shop. Their eyes were wide with amazement, as they thought they were the only ones. The running faded away to the right of them, only to make way for small pitter patter footsteps, but only walking at a quickened pace. The figure that passed the window was a small silhouette of a child, by the sounds of it no wearing any shoes or socks. Holding what could only be described as a rifle of some kind.
But it was dark thought Greg. It could have been anything. It was probably a trick of the light he said to himself. But one thing was for sure, now they knew they were no longer alone.
Chapter 3
Ford was running. Running from this thing which wanted him. He didn’t really know what it was, but he didn’t want to find out. Ford was quite a nimble character he had found a pair of fairly comfortable shoes which were miraculously his size. Ford ran and jumped over rocks and broken bench’s, trying to get away from this something. As he turned a corner he turned to look at what it was, he couldn’t immediately see anything. As he turned back to face the way he was running, he ran straight into a pillar and fell onto the floor in a heap and nearly knocked him out. He put his hand to his face and as he lay on the floor looking up into the sky, he could hear the footsteps slowly getting louder.
He could only see a faint blur thanks to this accident and the sun streaming through his fingers blinding him, he squinted. He pulled himself up and turned around to see a bright white yellow light in front of his eyes. Ford immediately thought it was because he nearly killed himself running into this damn pillar. But he felt a sharp pain emerging in his chest; he fell to his knees and held his chest. It went dark.
Greg turned to look at Catherine, she stared back at him.
“What was that?” enquired Cat
“I’m not sure, but from that gunshot noise it didn’t sound good” said Greg, trailing the volume of his voice to make sure no one else heard him.
“We should find that man” Said Cat
“That man who was running away from that child” finished Cat not believing what she actually said.
“Well” Said Greg, thinking to himself as he spoke.
“I suppose we should” agreed Greg
Greg frowned
“How did you know it was a man?” Said Greg
“Well, the footsteps were heavy and far apart” Said Cat with an air of smugness in face.
They walked towards the front of the shop, and peered around the door frame until they could see the street. They looked towards where the man had run and saw the child looking person, coming around the corner. Greg grabbed Catherine by the waist and dragged her back into the room, trying to be quiet. The passing child did not see them and continued walking past the broken window and away from the shop, as if it wasn’t interested in them. Greg peered back out onto the street and watched the child walk down the street and away from him. He slowly put his foot out onto the street and followed. The child turned another corner and Greg quickened his pace to minimise the distance between them, he turned the same corner. Only to find the child gone and a faint noise, which Greg decided was reminiscence of the previous encounter with the haze.
Catherine was behind him. She put her hand on his shoulder trying to pull him away from the corner.
“It’s too open here, lets go” said Catherine with a degree of urgency in her voice
Greg turned back to face Catherine.
“ok, your right” said Greg
“Lets get out of here” Greg said with a stumble in his voice
They both returned back too the shop and gathered up what they could into and bag they found under the counter and returned to the street.
At this point Greg was getting more and more nervous about the whole situation. Things had been happening around him all day and he didn’t know, or understand what was going on but he was going to find out.
With their bag of supplies and a bent pipe for protection they started to walk in the direction the man ran. It was a bright day, with small white clouds in the sky travelling in an easterly direction. Greg didn’t really know what direction the clouds were travelling but he like to think he did. Small things like this enabled him to keep a grip on the world, especially the things that were happening today.
Greg turned a corner in the street closely followed by Catherine and he immediately stopped walking. Catherine must have been occupied because she bumped quite heavily into Greg. He shuffled forward and tried to stop himself walking any further. He swivelled around on the balls of his feet and held Catherine by her shoulders with both hands and looked straight into her eyes.
“I don’t want you to go any further” Said Greg with a nervous angst in his voice
“Why? Why?” Snapped Catherine
She tried to peak her head around Greg’s, but he matched hers with a greater precision. She caught a glimpse of a body on the floor, flumped on its back. She pushed Greg aside with all of her might. Greg had never felt such strength from the girl. He decided she needed to see this so he helped by moving to one side.
She moved towards it. She saw the broken, burnt, charred chest of the man. It was like something had burnt or melted a hole into it. Her eyes welled up with tears. She brought her hands up to her face and turned towards Greg. She started to cry. Greg held her and let her shy away from the world. She found what sanctuary she could in Greg.
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