What Do We Do Now?

Prologue

10:54.

A young German Shephard looked at the clock on the car's infotainment screen. He squinted at it to make sure he wasn't mistaking it for something else, but it was clear as day; it was 10:54. He couldn't believe it. His eyes moved towards the gauge cluster, mostly blocked by his owner and the steering wheel. It was illuminated brightly and littered with several icons, one of which being two semi-circles faced opposed each other with three lines emanating from them. He looked out the window to his right to see a rear light glowing brightly red, yet he couldn't see past the car itself. It was dark outside. It was dark at 10:54.

AM.

"You holdin' up back there, Chase?" the German Shephard's owner, Adam, asked. The man was in his late twenties and adopted Chase when he was but a puppy. Adam was tall and burly, a long beard adorning his chin down to his lower chest. He was bald and loved Chase very much, adopting him after Adam's parents passed away. The relationship was returned to him by Chase, and now the two are inseparable.

"I'm scared, Adam," Chase replied shakily. A burst and sprawl of blue, orange, green, and red lighting crawled across the clouds, forcing Chase's ears down. "I wanna go home."

The car trekked slowly forward and past a red electronic sign with "EVACUATION" at the top, showing various routes and roads to take to get out of the city. Another sign further down the freeway was a billboard lit up by floodlights reading

We Advise You To Leave The City.

Los Angeles Hopes To Welcome You Back When Things Are Sorted Out.

"Why are we leaving? W-W-Where are we going?" Chase demanded weakly. Adam's eyebrows furrowed and he gripped the steering wheel harder.

"We're going up to Bakersfield to my sister until we can come back," Adam groaned, his mood angering.

"But.... why?" Chase asked, his voice weakening more. His fear and anxiety were trying to run away and he could barely keep a hold of them.

Adam stayed silent. Chase was too scared to say anything else and crawled into the footwell between the rear and front passenger seat. He did this on road trips when Adam would drive through storms or other places that unsettled him. He shut his eyes to keep him from shedding tears of fear, but his attempts to dam them up were failing, and the tears demanded a way out.

"Chase," Adam spoke softly. Chase sat up a little and saw Adam's eyes connecting to his through the rearview mirror, purposely aimed towards the dog. He stood up fully and rested his head on the center console, looking at the infotainment screen again.

"Oh, get up here, boy," Adam smiled. Chase smiled weakly and climbed over the console and into Adam's lap. Chase was four years old, 30 inches tall, and over a hundred pounds, yet Adam was still (somehow) fine with his big puppy laying in his lap.

"If I'm being honest, I don't fully know why we have to leave. But I know that we'll be okay, alright?"

Chase saw through the sweet nothing, but in this time where everything was uncertain, he took a false hope and kept it in place for something real when it came. His smile lifted a little and he curled up in Adam's lap, staring into the footwell as the car crawled further ahead.

"-the hell...?" Adam whispered a few minutes later. He fiddled with a lever jutting off the steering wheel, forcing two wiper blades to make several attempts to wipe off some sort of black liquid from the windshield, but to no avail. They only smeared the substance across the glass, drawing stringy lines to further inhibit his vision.

Chase watched as the car in front of him hid behind the foreign liquid and the brightly lit-up supercluster of skyscrapers next to them flicker. His ears only lowered more in fear as his anxiety boiled and Adam's confusion became closer akin to worry. The two shared concerned glances at both each other and their surroundings as they became darker and darker, only briefly and brightly illuminated by variously colored lighting strikes. Even the car's electronics started to fail and it started rev at strange intervals.