Extinct (xonlymydreamsx short story)

[xonlymydreamsx]

It was the one thing that no one wanted to happen… The one thing that everyone suspected…But it was the one thing that did happen, the one thing that did end and destroy us… Destroy life. Power… That was all humanity seemed to strive for, seemed to live for. Electronics and entertainment being consoled by petty objects that would barely last for more than a month on the new time records sky rocketing in the middle of the winter season. And who’s right was it to take so much away? To take so much of “humanity” and “living” out of life, out of perspective with a simple switch… A simple button bringing the end to all that we cherished most, our technology, our world.
December 1st, 2250 AD it’s the one day that no one wants to remember but the one day that they can’t forget… The one day that brought our lives into complete and total peril… Into complete and total decimation. We lasted far more than the good ol’ bible had predicted, over one hundred years worth of time that we had managed to last on and keep going for another hundred, only to add a some odd forty afterward. Yes, we beat the book, we beat “destiny” only to have it come back up and bite us where it hurt most… The morning was just beginning, dawn just breaking the dusk and the starry moon light, the last moonlight. I was just waking for the school day to begin, just as any other, retro jeans with converse that managed to last over many decades in fashion with my normal black button down, the collar down and flat against my collar bone. Most futurities would say hover crafts and over technological use was to be the future for all living specimens. They were wrong, given that more had been created though; it wasn’t as if everything was gone in humanities human qualities. My brunette hair was down in loose waves, just as any other days while bright, wide green eyes were hazed in a tired coat, wanting sleep again. Little had I known I wouldn’t be sleeping much more after that day. Freckles were scattered across my nose as the light shone onto my face, the door having been tugged open to our fair little house… I kept in my back pocket the old version of the “I phone”… The 230 generation version. It was out of date, but Gerard had kept it up enough for it to work with out all of the new giznads and gadgets. Dear old Gerard. I strode down the street, watching as the bus zoomed by me on the Continental Bus Way, large rods keeping it a flight on railroads that were build in the sky. I scrunched my nose at the smell of burning food oils keeping the contraption running, and “saving” the environment at the same time.
“Gerard!” I called out, my arm reaching up in a wave, my grin wide as I saw my best friend, my oldest friend.
“Quinny!” He called in response before running with long steps. How could they not have been long with him standing at the 6’4” height that he was so proud of… Broad shoulders moved clumsily with his long arms, black hair swaying in his olive skinned face, deep, dark brown eyes shining at the sight of his cherished friend.
“We match!” Laughing I hugged him, feeling the cotton cloth of his own black button up, my face resting against his chest in the quick embrace.
“C’mon, Mr. Feltson will have our head if we’re late again” Rolling his eyes he grinned down at me again, making me sigh… Making me smile.
Thankfully, the school hadn’t been too far from my house back then… Within five minutes we were striding into the building, automatic doors opening in a soft hum while they closed behind us, round floating tables hovering just above the sleek metal floors of Jamersons Laken house of Laker High school. People were hurrying down the bustling hallways trying to get to the class on time… As if they couldn’t afford to be late for one day.
“Okay settle in students…” A husky, rasped voice called out to the physics class filled with seniors of the year 2250… Just as class began a bell began to go off… A siren, sending chills down the many students backs, just as it was designed to do. His eyes grew wide while his mixture of 17-19 year olds looked around in confusion.
“What’s going on?” Was the main question as the male teacher began to rush around the room, locking in the walls with the metal shafts that kept each door closed, each window covered.
“Gerard!” I called out, grabbing onto him before the noise of a thousand trains crashing came rolling closer… Louder. He hugged me tight into his chest, my arms clutched around the male’s waist. We knew… The teacher knew, but no one else seemed to be aware of the situation. And then the light came… A ringing was in my ears when I found myself pushed under the desk, Gerard on me, shielding the debris of scrap metal, paper, dust, and insulation. I clutched onto him while the ringing continued in my ears… The war, the one war that we had been hearing about for years and years was finally hitting home. So close to home. I felt cuts burning along my arms, my legs and heard my best friend groaning softly as if he was feeling the same as I.
“Gerard…” I managed, probably sounding much louder than I intended, the smell of death and destruction starting to hit my nose, starting to burn my nose. I shifted beneath him, and he moved with me, crouching out before he tugged me out afterward.
“Are you ok? Are you alive? Quinny! Open your eyes” He was gently shaking me at my shoulders, my vision blurring in and out of blackness, kerosene filling the room as well.
“G-er…Ger-ard” I pushed at his hands sluggishly, reaching up to rub my eyes clean of the haze now filling the rest of the room.
“I-I’m ok… I’m alive, stop it..” Batting at him again, I felt his hands release me, only to feel his arms engulf me, hugging me against his chest.
“What about you? A-are you ok?” Finally being able to see as clear as I could, I looked at him, a single scratch running down his cheek with crimson fluid streaking the skin. I could see a small welt growing on his neck, probably from being hit by debris. Much more than I, there had to be more marks beneath clothing that I couldn’t see just yet.
“Me? I’m fine… Tough as… As nails” He coughed a bit while I looked around. I couldn’t help it, tears instantly welding up in my eyes at the sight before me…
The back wall was gone, once bodies filled with life and joy now empty pale faces blood a common factor.. Some looked peaceful, limp as if they were sleeping, others faces being permanently contorted in terror at the bomb self-destructing not too far from the school, causing destruction to the whole north wing… And much, much more. We were only on the first floor, and so far… All I saw was desolated areas, the dead corpses having clothes burned off from the instant incineration affect. Mr.Feltson was just crawling out from under his own desk, glasses broken, shirt torn in different spots from the impact. What would have normally been snow in the beginning of winter was now falling ashes… Burning ashes that now coated the ground, grey, a morbid snow as the reminder of December 1st 2250.
“Quinn… Don’t look, please just don’t look…” He spoke, hiding my face again while my tears burned against my cheeks.
“G-g-gerard… They’re all dead… They’re all dead…”…

That was all I could remember saying after such an event… It wasn’t much after that we had found out, there were many more isolated bombs stationed through out the city of Manhattan, as well as many others, bringing more than half of our nation to an end. A nuclear Holocaust many would have said, me and the few that we found alive would have called it hell…
And now, now a year later, nuclear destruction was still all around us, lurking just behind the station meant strictly for the “survivors”, or as we liked to call it, the ones who knew. The ones who were aware of the situation outside of technology advances, aware of all of the nuclear threats and that were taught what to do whenever the attack was to be made.
As if some sort of cage, walls had been set up around the city, glass, large, indestructible walls were made to protect the lot of the survivors from another attack, another brutal, bombing attack that wiped out the majority of the United States. We were “safe…” Right, safe, the word meaning secure, and protected, we felt anything but. It was the first of December once more, just as the year past, everyone on edge while the gathering formed on the bridge of the “protective” walls. It happened often, all of us staring out into the world that we once lived in and loved. One world that we all took for granted. It was so much better, so much more alive with life, and breathing beings that grinned happily in the winter wind. That had all ended, leaving us with a broken society in desperate need for a leader, for a home. That was when the boarding headquarters had been created and our leader stepped up. There weren’t many people left alive, and those that had some how managed to find us were put through brutal searches, cleaning, and disinfecting from the nuclear outside.
I stared out into the bland, dirt flatland that now had no hopes of going back to normal. Technology was no more and we were all forced back to our roots. The “old days” as some of the scattered journals that we found had said. Of course, there were small traces of light bulbs and other electronics but other than that… There was nothing. Nothing but the dull light and fire keeping our lives running, it was such a drastic change.
“Quinn…” A familiar voice was behind me while his hand came to rest on my shoulder, gently, very gently tugging on me to turn me around. “Quinny… Everyone is leaving, I think it’s best that we do too…”
“Gerard…” I sighed, shaking my head in the faint need to disobey the law.
“You know the rules… We can’t be here after dark, it’s not right…” He spoke again… Only now, now he didn’t smile, not like he used to. I’d missed his warm eye crinkling grin that made me smile, no matter what mood I was in, he always made me smile.. Now, these days it was as if I never smiled anymore, no one really smiled anymore.
“Gerard… Tonight… Can’t we just not go by these stupid rules… I mean, doesn’t it make you wonder?”
“Does what make me wonder?” His brow quirked while wide brown eyes studied my face.
“All of the rules… I mean, we can’t be out after dark, which some times is at five or seven in the afternoon, and… And the fact that we can’t be here, at the edge of this wall for longer than ten minutes at a time, or the one about only having two to a room… I swear, there’s something going on. You can’t tell me that the council isn’t the least bit suspicious?”
“Quinn… Sweetie, you have to stop… you can’t keep thinking this way, you know what will happen. They’ll throw you out if they hear you talking this way, just like they did to Aaron last month…” He came closer to me, having turned me around to hush the words passing from my lips… But no, I knew it… I knew the secret.
He kissed me for a moment before I pulled back enough to scowl.
“You know that’s not fair… Besides… Why do you think they threw him out? Something isn’t right… And they know that we’re picking up on it… That I’m picking up on it..” My eyes fell to the floor while he just stared.
“You think I’m crazy don’t you?”
“No… No that’s not it… It’s just… I don’t want you being thrown out there like the others have been…” He sighed, flashing a small smile.
“I care about you too much to be tossed out like that…”
“And I care about making everyone happy again… One of the girls at the shop said that they saw light in the head master Lakens headquarters, and not candle light… Gerard… Something… Something is going o-“ I cringed being interrupted by the broadcasting system.
“All residents please return to your dormitories, the over lights will be shut down in fifteen minutes, have a good night.”
“C’mon… Quinny, lets go to bed… We can talk in the morning.”
“We can talk tonight… It’s not like we have separate rooms… Beside, we’re all each other have…” Sighing to myself, I leaned up to kiss his cheek before being dragged off into our quarters. Yes, it was safe to say that all of my family had died being in the pathway of most destruction, same with Gerard’s… Truly we were the last of one another’s lives, our old lives.


-c-

[xonlymydreamsx]

The night was just beginning, my eyes closed while I continued thinking on the few words that had been said to me earlier.
“Melly said she saw a light, one that looked to be from a tv, given how the tones were changing and everything..”
Yes, something was definitely going on… And I could feel it. Just as my mind began to drift there was a scream… Lights all down the hall flicked on while heads poked out, searching, looking through the narrow hallways to find something laying just in front of the doorway out. There were gasps while many rushed forward to find what lay engraved on the ground beside the body.
“I double dare you…” Encrypted with some sort of knife, it was odd, how could no one have noticed it? How could no one have heard it before now, obviously someone must have been doing something, or someone must have known something.
“Get back Quinn…” Gerard hissed, pushing me back into the room while my eyes stayed fixated upon the lifeless body down the hall. Just as I was forced back into the stone walls, an announcer came on the speakers.
“Everyone, return to your dormitories immediately…” It was repeated… Once, twice, three times in hopes to control the situation. There was another scream, the crowd jumping again as more lights flickered on in the next hall way down. The message was repeated again. I couldn’t just sit there anymore, adrenalin pulsing through my head by this point, my nerves on fire while I pushed through the condensed people. I heard Gerard calling me a few people back before he grew closer… He was following me… Crap. In the third hallway, my fingertips searched the wall for some sort of switch, it was found. My nimble fingers working trying to find the right way to turn it on before his arms were around me, tugging me back. It was a silent struggle, only to be lost once I had my way… The light flipped on in the hallway and a black figure lunged down to the next hall, two more following after it… My heart seemed to stop seeing the crumbled person on the floor in the third hallway. They were still alive.
“They’re still alive! We can’t just go!” I urged to Gerard while he tugged me back toward the second door. “No! We have to get them… We have to help them!” Struggling now, I knew I’d won when his arms slowly started to loosen around my waist… Still, I grabbed his hand and tugged him close behind me to the figure quivering on the floor.
I could feel the warmth emitting from the skin as if the life was being sucked from him. His skin was tight against the bones, eyes sunken in with an obvious sight of terror. My eyes widened, gasping as wrinkles continued to grow defined on the dry pale skin.
“Quinn! Get back!” Gerard tugged me back into him before taking a few steps away… Again, the figure cried out in what seemed like sheer pain before collapsing. His ragged clothes were obviously worn to their very last seam, my own frame shaking with fear. What the hell… I felt the rush of thoughts come in, clouding my true processing abilities, I felt so hazed… So drugged, so tired. My eyes began closing before I forced them open, Gerard continuing to try and pull me back.
“We can’t help him now… Quinn… We can’t help him…” He seemed to repeat in my ear over and over while my heart continued to pace faster than it should. I felt sweat beading along my forehead, the lights starting to flicker.
“Gerard! What’s going on? God what’s happening? Gerard… Gerard…” I couldn’t help it, panicking, all of this time, I knew I was right… Something was going on, and now… now it was showing its true colors to the pale faces, bringing back the terror that so many had possessed after the events of last year. After 365 days, I’d never felt so much strain in my sanity, what had I just witnessed? A soul being devoured, a life being taken? God so many possibilities and yet, I found no answers. None to the three murders that had taken place in less than five minutes under a blanket of the velvet night… And they said the night was supposed to be peaceful, what no one was noticing was that the night was slowly but surely becoming the darkness. The darkness that no one wanted, not even I. The darkness that would soon be blanketing our minds, or converting us into some sort of battery to tend to the leisure’s of our “protectors”. So what were we now? Where were we now…?
It wasn’t until months later until I learned what I had to do… Through nights of sneaking out, I’d lurk for some sort of information, some small key, and there really wasn’t much. I’d stumbled upon an old library with different files and factors to the entire bombing incident… Sure, it happened years ago, but with more murders happening, I knew it couldn’t last much more.
After another series of murders the previous night, I knew something had to be done… Something had to be stopped. The message, by the first body still made me shake but I knew it was a challenge. “I double dare you…” Then there was the second message “Catch me if you can…” And beside the third body, there was a last message. “You will never win” I sighed, damning the process of having a photographic memory, remembering how the words were so coldly carved into different things, sometimes in the actual body itself… That night I wasn’t able to sleep, no matter how many times Gerard tried to console me… I couldn’t bare it, I couldn’t bare the thought that there was something going on behind “safe” walls, and we were the guinea pigs. Everyone was a guinea pig in some way or another. The next night, I watched while Gerard fell asleep, staying beside him so not to alert the sleeping bear. He was so cute when he slept… I’d missed him so much, being so at ease, so peaceful, and what was worse, was that I knew he wouldn’t be so ‘peaceful’ whenever he woke up to find me gone… Oh well, it was a risk I had to take.
Nothing ever seemed too hard to do, even with as simple as the action was, I couldn’t help but feel the nerves trembling on my toes. Slowly, very slowly did I shift, moving the covers off of me to where I could move, setting my feet on the ground. As I pushed my weight more, there was a soft creak, making me stop, my eyes shut while the breathing in my chest managed to pause in suspense, hoping I hadn’t woken him… One eye opened, my head turning just enough to see him rolled over, sleeping just as he was seconds before. Again, my body shifted to where I was standing. Sure my clothes weren’t “public” suited, but I didn’t care, everyone should have been asleep anyways.
My black pajama pants were adorned with a matching hoodie , the hood being pulled up and over my head once I slipped into a pair of socks. It was so much easier to move quietly in socks as opposed to my bare tired feet. My movements were quick once I grabbed the flash light from a dresser near the door, now all that was left was the lock… I reached over and pulled on the latch, listening while it slid effortlessly out of place… Yes… This is it… thinking to myself, I opened the door just enough to slip through and run… I was quick, quicker than most of the people that had survived, my flash light slowly flickering on while I felt along the walls. And then there was light, a very small amount, but there was some none the less. I saw the round yellow beam come from the plastic lens while I moved down and through the hallways. My breath was fast, panting almost now with how far away I was from my dorm, reading signs as fast as I could to find the room of the head master… Laken. I took in a sharp breath.. My lungs had never felt so cold before, whether it was from the fear trembling through out my frame or the fact that it was colder than ice near his door, I had no idea… but at this point, I really didn’t care. I leaned in, flinching faintly once the ice cold metal frame hit my cheek, my ear hoping to hear something… Anything.
“How dare you!” Laken growled.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry Lak-“ There was a noise… -thud-…
I closed my eyes in terror… It sounded like a bone cracking.
“Insolent fool! Do you have any idea what your tracker just almost cost me?! I could have been exposed, you could have been killed.. And they could have figured it out! They could have figured everything out!” His hissing continued to someone else who must have been in the room.
“Master… With all do respect you were the one who set the bombs in place… You were the one who ordered us to collect them like cattle. You were the one who urged me to find a tracker worthy of finding the best souls for energy! So don’t you dare...”
It was as if I could see the figures in the room, dark black eyes glaring at the man who had set things up to begin with.
There was another pause, and my blood ran cold.
“What was that?”
“What?” Laken spoke, almost as if he were ready to leap from his safety tower.
“I’d advise you to keep your security up…” The speaker from before hissed. I couldn’t move… My heart began to stop in the realization that this thing… That man on the other side of the door could hear me.
“We have a visitor…” He sneered before I heard footsteps.
Again, the trembling began, and it took all that I had in me to throw myself away from the door in a head on sprint. The flash light was dropped, I being desperate to make my load lighter, to make it easier for me to out run whatever it was that opened the door. So many thoughts… so many thoughts were in my head!
Had he seen my face? Did he know who I was? Was he chasing me?!
I couldn’t stop… Not yet at least, I had to keep running until I found the right hallway, but soon… That wouldn’t happen. Cold… Something was ice cold against my palms, and this wasn’t another door.. Now, it was… It was moving! I screamed before it felt as if my throat had closed upon its own self. No, this couldn’t be happening I thought, squirming roughly at the hands that I wasn’t familiar with.
“I-c-c’ant b-bre-athe” Was all I was able to manage before my consciousness cut out… I was gone. I never thought death was so peaceful, my body fading into the blackness that I was never used to before… yes, it was peaceful, I couldn’t hear anything, only… Only my heart. My heart?
There was another cold touch, one that sent my eyes flying open, something similar to liquid fire aching in my muscles, everything was but a blur, just an open mouth staring down at me with what looked like things fast forwarding… It was my life. My life was ending and I could do nothing… Absolutely nothing in the fact that I was strapped down, my hands restrained, my neck being the same as my arms and legs. I couldn’t move… I was trapped in a bright lit room, fluorescent lights heating my tightening skin. This was what had happened to the three victims before, my body was trembling as much as it could while my heart began to slow. It was as if every pore in my being was closing up and I was suffocating… Dying at the hands of some fiend just to harvest my soul for more electricity, for more technology, slowly the pain began to subside.
Devious, the smirk was followed by a sinister chuckle once the black hood was pulled back from the demons head, with deathly grey skin, his eyes were burning red iris’ with black around everything else, fine pointed teeth, the mans sickly thin fingers reached out to me, brushing down the length of my cheek,
“Aah Ms.Quinn… You really should learn to behave better, because now…” He paused, shrugging some what. “Now, I’m going to have to kill you… You see, I’m aware that you heard the majority of me and myself’s conversation… A double mind you see, Laken on one hand and me on the other” He held his hand out as in some gesture, flipping it from palm to the backside, watching it with mild amusement. “And unfortunately, now I have to share with you the rest of it so you can… Well, serve my purposes. I am one of the last ones of my kind left, for you see… We were all wiped out in the early 2000’s, you can call me what you’d like but I’d prefer to be known as Extinct…” he came to stop his words, grinning again in the same devious smile as before.
“What I do is, I leach… I take lives in order to support my own, I feed off of souls if you would be so kind as to humor me in the word. That was the whole reason for why I started all of this you know. Though I’m sure with your nights of research that you were coming close to such a conclusion, one that shouldn’t have been to hard to decode in the first case, but I chose my scene well. A catastrophic bombing leaving the lucky survivors in need of hope, in need of a leader, and what better person was there aside from the one providing all of the towns education! Oh it was beautiful. The rules were set in place to keep anyone from figuring such things out, but you… You were one of the few rambunctious ones that I felt I could challenge, just for a little fun, you know? Well… Now, it seems you got too far into it, and now I can’t just let you get away with all that you’ve learned these past few months.” He shook his head as if it was to be an actual loss.
“It’s sad, really… I’m pretty sure little Gerard was about to ask you to take his name… Well, I guess now we know what happens when people do stupid things and take on more than they can handle…” Again, the fiend shook his finger at me with a following noise, he was enjoying this wasn’t he?
“Well… Never the matter, it’s time for you to die…” His voice changed into something much more sinister, much more dangerous. The male’s mouth opened again and I closed my eyes for the worst… I still couldn’t talk, and yet the pain never came. All I heard was a series of struggles before my eyes opened again, there was so much blurry movement… And I was tired, I was so… So tired.
“Quinn? Quinny… God, Quinny it’s ok, I’m here now…” That was a voice that I had wanted to hear, that I needed to hear for my sanity sake. “I’ve got you…” Gerard’s voice was warm against my cheek while the restraints were taken off, relieving the pressure of cold iron from my frame. I was hardly conscious of my movements but I was aware of my arms wrapping around him in hopes to be held close and to never be let go.
“You silly… Silly girl… You’re lucky I followed you…” He sighed. There wasn’t much left that I could do aside from listen as another noise was made, it was almost as if a bone had cracked and suddenly… The life was starting to return to me. I watched as a white fog emitted from the black robed figure lying on the floor, and there were many more. It was almost as if liquid ice ran through my skin, my body lifting faintly against his hands as my vision began to come back, my life began to come back. Unfortunately, the rest of whom Laken had consumed were truly dead, aside from myself they could not have their lives back… But they could go some where they were happy… Some where they were truly safe.
Less than a year later the walls were torn down and it was growing apparent that life was going to have to restart. We were going to have to make the changes, the changes to keep us alive… The changes to keep us from becoming… The “Extinct”. -d-

[xonlymydreamsx]

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