"He's gone, just like that!" Yelled Louis.
Jason sighed, preparing to deliver heavy words.
"We don't have time to mourn. Once we find the end to this we'll-."
"What do you mean, we don't have time? Was he not a person too?"
Fahad interceded, trying to settle the issue. It was not easy, having to lose someone that was supposed to be saved from this mess.
After concluding the dispute, Jason tried to change the topic. Louis was not satisfied, as the death of a survivor had been just pushed aside. He knew that they were not in the best situation and that they had barely known him, but he was just like Louis had said, a person too.
"Let's see this building," proposed Jason. "It looks practically untouched, maybe we can find alcohol to sanitise your wounds, Fahad."
"The place looks familiar, I agree with you Jay. What do you think of the idea, Hayds?"
"Jay? Hayds?" Hayden asked, with a humorous tone to his question. "Are we your little brothers now?"
They cleared the entire place, however it seems to have been looted before as they only managed to find a few nondescript trinkets and a bottle of antiseptic.
Fahad sat down next to one of the palm trees, falling on his knees in exhaustion. He pulled up his hoodie, revealing the gaping hole that made itself comfortable next to his navel. The blood had clotted, however the would lay open, vulnerable to the vicious onslaught of infection. He dipped a torn rag into the bottle of antiseptic, tracing the open door to his body with the alcohol. He winced as the strong liquid stung his wound but he knew the small pain that he had to fight was a blessing in comparison to the beast that would be unleashed should the wrong creatures make his torn stomach their home.
Hayden went to sleep on one of the couches in the entrance room of the building, after being forced awake for two consecutive days. With Fahad tending to his injuries, Jason and Louis were confronted with one another again.
"None of us wanted this to happen," Said Jason "but what else could be done?"
"Maybe respect the loss a bit more?" Louis proposed.
"I know," Jason said after a long pause. "It shouldn't have happened, but we just couldn't stop it."
"You speak like we made some mistake. Someone was literally killed, Jason."
Jason sighed. He knew how heavy the loss was, but he also knew that they could not have done anything to change the past events. He was grateful that they had been able to save Louis from falling out of the plane, but regretful that Joseph couldn't be spared his fate. Deep down, Jason didn't want any of this to happen, otherwise he'd be out on his local road demonstrating his skateboarding spectacles.
Another night fell, however this time the survivors were shrouded in near total darkness, guided only by the great arm of the galaxy in the sky, now seen by all who were left as the lights of a once bustling city had been long gone. If only the survivors could have enjoyed the beauty of the pure night sky, as when darkness falls the secretive beasts rise.
Fahad brandished a flashlight, and fired its illuminating light in front of him. The other three survivors stood behind him, as he was the sole indicator of a location they could follow.
Fahad stayed close to the gates of the building, where Hayden lay dreaming about his South American biotope, mouth brooding bettas, and his military endeavours. Fahad took it upon himself to be in charge of the night as the two other survivors found themselves giving into the exhaustion too. Resisting the desirable urge to give into his heavy eyes, he looked around the building. As his flashlight moved across the darkened facilities, the light eventually fell upon a torn newspaper. He almost missed it, just noticing it from the corners of his eyes.
He walked over to it. The deep silence of the abandoned building was obstructed with the click of his boot following each step. He squatted low, taking ahold of the newspaper. The flashlight in his left hand revealed the words to him. He read the date on the paper
January 16th, 1986.
"That was just three days ago..." he said, almost in a whisper. He squinted hard as he scanned the torn paper. His near-blind eyes struggled behind his concealing sunglasses. A particular headline had captured his attention. Fahad strained his eyes further, taking every letter into account.
The Arch has attacked
"The....Arch?" Fahad thought to himself. "What's that?"
He kept on reading, but the damage the newspaper received had obscured much of the information. He kept the newspaper alongside him, for he had something new to tell the other survivors once the night was over. He walked out of the building, looking at the parking lot. He could only imagine how much cars would have stood in each row, what kind of life would be going on in each room found in the abandoned building but he knew, this was just something of the past. For many years, he had only wanted to go back to a simpler time, but now he could only wish to go back to the years when he had hoped for such small wishes. It had finally hit him. The only way was forwards.
He crouched on the stairs that would have welcomed visitors the the building and thought about what the place would have looked like if everyone was here, how people would talk, work, visit, and enjoy life instead of having five survivors of an unknown destruction desperately clinging on following challenge after challenge. Several hours had passed, and the dark sky began to be painted by the hopeful orange of the rising sun. He sat down on a large boulder, looking out into the sky. Fahad had many questions to ask, but there was nobody who had answers. After many hardships, they finally could rest. There were no beasts that night, but that would not be a guarantee in the coming future.
Fahad reached into his backpack. Inside of it was his prized possession, battered but valuable. Barely held together was a field guide to his nation's birds that he had painstakingly sketched. Opening the damaged codex, he found himself looking at a particular bird he had sketched. It was plump, grey, and with a white underside. It had a black "mask" running across its eyes and a hooked beak.
"That's a shrike?" He heard Hayden's familiar voice behind him.
"Great grey," Fahad answered, almost instinctively. "I saw one during January of last year."
Whilst the topic of wildlife was still on the mind, Hayden shifted the focus underwater.
"Have you ever kept gouramis?" He asked
"I did in the past, dwarf gouramis. Such wondrous yet delicate creatures."
"I like Bettas in particular, a while ago I got some mouth brooders."
"Those are lovely, you don't see them all too often"
Jason's footsteps echoed through the abandoned facility, before he reach the entrance.
"Once all of this is over," Jason said "We will go to the skating park together and you will see what I am capable of"
"It's always the simple things," Fahad said. "They mean the most when they're not here anymore." Jason fumbled in his pocket, before extracting a patch embroiled with a small design. It showed three flags, from where Jason, Fahad, and Hayden had come from.
"Why the flags exactly?" Asked Fahad.
"They represent home. What we lived in, what we knew, what we took pride in. Even with their flaws, we still love them."
Hayden stepped in, with his own words to give.
"Our nations aren't there anymore, but Hayden, Fahad, and Jason still stand."
