Rubies In The Night Sky

Prologue

Damn. It's this dream again. Well, might as well go along with it. AGAIN.

It's Liam and me hanging out by the bleachers at our old high school. It was a cold day, and we were sitting at the top of the bleachers. I was blushing, hard as hell, and Liam was awkward and quiet. We were sitting 2 inches away from each other. That was the day we got together.

"You cold?" Liam asked me. I nodded. He took off his jacket and put it around me.

"Look, Johnny and Hannah said you needed to talk to me afterschool. It's been 10 minutes of silence. What do you need to talk about?"

Liam sighed deeply and gulped, then he faced me. His coffee-bean brown eyes looked deeply into my natural born red ones.

"Will you go out with me? I know it's crazy and-"

"Yes," I smiled. Liam stopped rambling and his eyes grew wide. "Really?" Liam smiled. "Yeah," I smiled. "I actually started liking you when we were hanging out on the first day of high school. It's pretty weird."

Then the dream goes to when everything changed.

"NO! They can't be dead!" I cried as I slid my back down the wall. My best friends Johnny and Hannah tried to calm me down, but I couldn't. How could I calm down when I just found out my parents and my sister are dead?

"What's going on?" Mrs. Crest, Liam's mom, came into the living room and walked to me. Me, Johnny, and Hannah walked to Liam's house to see if Liam had magically came back. But he didn't. "What's wrong?" Mrs. Crest's sweet voice asked.

"We were just watching the news to see if anything about Liam would pop up, but instead, something about Lexi's parents and sister popped up. Mrs. Crest, her parents and her sister died in a car crash," Hannah said. I just kept crying like a stupid baby.

The dream changes to the shootings outside school. The people shooting were running around everywhere, letting their guns shoot bullets into people's bodies. I remember seeing blood everywhere. Many people were screaming bloody murder to get away, get your loved ones and run. But before I knew it, it was only me, Johnny, Hannah, and a few other kids that were able to get away.

That was when all my pure, stupid thoughts of happiness were gone. When all my times smiling and laughing were over.

"Auntie?" I heard a quiet voice next to me. I opened my eyes to see my 5 year old niece looking up at me. I looked around my room, with a few old pictures from 5 years ago.

"You awake now, Auntie?" my niece Belle asked me. "Yeah, I'm up." I was wearing my long pajama pants and I had black bandage wraps, wrapped around my breasts so I could run faster.

I looked at Belle, her eyes red like mine, her black-as-a-crow hair in a high ponytail, wearing a white crewneck and navy shorts. and her smile as wide as the Chesire Cat's. I sighed. I don't want this life for her, she's too precious for this Hell that's been brought upon us.

I got out of my bed and walked to my closet. I took out a black sports bra, my cargo jeans, and my black army boots and placed them on my bed. "Since you're already dressed up, go and find Josh and tell him to prepare the humvees. Okay?" I told Belle. "Okay. Auntie?" I turned from my bed and faced her. "Yes?"

"Will things ever get back to normal?" I looked her straight in the eyes and told her, "Yes, I don't know when, but they will." I went back to my bed and was about to dress up for today, but then Belle wanted to ask me something else. "What is it Belle?"

"Will you ever smile again, Auntie? I miss it when you smile, EVERYONE misses you smiling and laughing a lot."

I sighed deeply. "I don't know about that one."

"It's okay. I'm going to tell Josh to prepare the humveys now," Belle said. Then she walked out of the room and closed the door.

I looked at my tattoos in the mirror. I got these 3 years ago when I turned 19. I have one on my right arm. It's a tribal dragon tattoo breathing fire. It's a tribute to my dead relatives, my parents, and my sister because we were a proud family. We were strong no matter what happened.

Then the tattoo on my left arm has a white dove carrying a red rose between its beak, a tribute to my friends that have died. I chose that as a tribute to my dead friends because doves always made me happy, even when I'm not laughing or smiling. My friends always made me happy just like doves make me happy. And the red rose represents me paying my dead friends, their respects. It's basically me placing flowers on their graves.

I finished dressing up in my clothes for today and fixed my hair and pulled my hair into a high ponytail. My hair was black as night, up to the bottom of my butt. Then I fixed my Betty Page bangs, making sure there were no gaps.

I wear no makeup because every day I hunt. I don't want makeup sliding off my face, that's weird for me. I looked in the mirror, and I looked okay. I put on my finger cut gloves and walked out my room.

I got outside and saw some of my guy friends in line, facing me. "The cars are ready, the hunting rifles are loaded, and we have extra tires and an extra tank of gas in the back of each humvee," Josh told me. Josh, Danny, Phil, Jesse, and Kite were waiting for my next orders.

"Alright, start the humvees. We're going now," I ordered and the guys were in the humvees they were assigned to. I got into my humvee and started it. Carson opened the huge garage door for us and I led us out of the garage. We drove out of the utopia and into the deserted towns that always had animals for us to hunt.

What are we going to find today?