Static

INTRODUCTION AND CHAPTER ONE

When I finally did wake, it wasn't to the smell of cinnamon bread that my mom used to bake before things went all wack and they took me from her. It wasn't to the sound of my older sister Charlotte shaking my shoulder gently, softly telling me I'd be late for school if I didn't get up. And it wasn't to my dad at the other end of the hallway, humming soothing tunes as he got ready for work. It was to a harsh, blaring alarm that banged around in my ears, rattling against the edges of my skull. They say you get used to it but it's a lie. You never get used to waking up every morning to a sound that represents exactly how your feeling inside. It's a screaming sound. A sound of a hate that drills into your brain until you can't forget it. It haunts you there, begging you to pay attention to it, hurting you in places you thought you could keep safe from the monsters. Maybe I'm being a bit to metaphorical with this, maybe the others in my bunker get used to it because they don't connect the angry sound with the thoughts clouding our minds.

Strip the alarm of its metaphor cover and all you have is a wailing siren that signals to you it's time to get up. So I do, no matter how much my body protests. The other girls in my bunker are responding to the alarm much the same way that I am. Shoving their fingers in their ears, dragging their blankets off their tiny twin beds as they stand before replacing them again.

As I stretch my stif arms and legs I let my eyes wander to their equally weary faces. There are 12 girls in my bunker, all of us either 16 or 17 I'm one of the younger ones here, my 17 birthday still a good 6 months away. I don't know their names either. I mean, I know what I'm supposed to call them but I don't know their names before they came here, we are strictly prohibited from telling anyone our original ones. But I don't care. I'm not who I was 3 years ago and I don't want the other girls calling me a name that ties me down to my past and makes me think that I haven't changed at all. That I'm still Imogen Vast, the helpless dreamer, from Colby Kansas.

I only know their ages because its stitched right above their heart on every uniform along with their designated "nick-name" so to speak.

I turn back around to face my bed and kneel down to the floor. I reach under the bed where we keep our two sets of day clothes and one set of night clothes. I pull out my own uniform, a standard white long sleeve shirt and white pants made of some sort of cheep scratchy material. I change into it and ball up my one pair of night clothes in my hand.

Then I walk in the middle of the bunker, through the 12 beds that are lined up neatly on either side. At the other end of the bunker there is the one thing that is not some shade of grey. It's a door, a white one, that leads to the showers, bathrooms and laundry washing machine. I pass through the shower stalls, all two of which are empty since we aren't allowed to shower in the mornings. Then there's two toilet stalls and one sink with a sad cracked mirror mounted on the yellowing tile wall above it. At the end of that section there is one washing machine and one laundry dryer. A girl stands there, a black laundry basket full and overflowing covering her face so that I don't recognize her immediately. Then she sets the basket down with a thud and yanks open the washing machine door. I can see her face now and I know by her dull grey eyes that seemed bright at one time, and her tangled mess of black curls that sits on top of her head, that it's Ant. She's a tall girl, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. She's strong, you can just tell by looking at her, physically. I guess that's why I once admired Ant. That and the fact that she used to always walk with her head up and her back straight like she was sending a silent and subtle message that she wasn't all gone, most of her was, but not all. Now though, I can tell, there is nothing left.

"Hey, Ant." I say as I walk over to her. She turns her head in my direction but her expression doesn't change. Still blank. Always will be.
"Got room for one more?" I hold up my hand with my night clothes and she takes them from me and tosses them into the open washing machine. Then she starts tossing in the other pieces of clothing from the basket.
I watch her for a while, expecting her to say something but she doesn't. Ant used to be the most talkative one here in our bunker. But just two days ago she made the horrible mistake of talking back to one of the monitors. Not only was this totally out of line but it showed that she was not the hallow soldier that they wanted her to be. That they want all of us to be. So they took her away, only for one day but they inflicted so much torture into her that when she came back, she just wasn't the same and I never saw her eyes glow again.