Oblivion

Chapter 8 part 3

       We traveled through the scorching desert the whole day and we held up in an old abandoned car when night fell. By the next morning, we stood on the outskirts of Everlost; smoke was still rising from the burning embers. Allister and I stood on one of the flat-topped ridges that looked over the burnt city; a strange sad feeling gripped my heart at the blackened skeletons of the charred buildings. Allister also stood quiet and a shell-shocked at the edge of the ridge. Hot, boiling anger surged through me, I was angry that he forced me to go all the way back to Everlost just to see my hometown burnt to nothing.
I spun around on him, hands on my hips, "See I told you so! Now that you see that this trip was pointless, we can please go back to Hallowdrive so I can look for my friend?" I said, not trying to keep the irritation from my voice. At first Allister just looked at me, his eyes glazed over with sorrow and I was a little taken back by the sudden emotions I could see in his eyes.

       "I can't believe it...it was so big; how could it just burn down?" He whispered mostly to himself.

        "Did you have family here?" I asked quietly, suddenly curious about his sadness. He nearly nodded before he started to walk down the ridge towards the city.

          "Where are, you going?" I called after him, stumbling to catch up with him. I grabbed his arm and jerked him around the best I could. "What are they doing?"
He swatted my hands away, "What's it looks like, I'm going there to get a better look."

         "Why? Everyone was gone when my friend and I left!" I yelled at him, irritation flared in the pit of my stomach as I struggled to keep up from tumbling down the ridge.

        "What do you mean, everyone was gone when you left?" Allister asked, eyes narrowing with confusion.

          "Just that. Everyone disappeared, no one was there, everyone seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth and then things fell from the sky and blew the city to ash!" I explained the best I could without shuddering at the memory.

        "Things fell from the sky?" Allister asked suspiciously; taking a step closer to me. I took a step back; he was uncomfortably close to me. I puffed out my chest in an attempt to grow to his height, "That's right, I don't know what they looked like, there was too much smoke to see anything."
         He looked down on me, "Than I guess that gives us a better reason to go check out the city." He said with a sneer and he shoved passed me, continuing his journey down the ridge. I groaned and followed him down, trying not to tumble down the ridge.

         The city was now nothing but ash. It smelt like fire and warm embers crunched under our shoes. Allister was dead silent; all his attention was on his surroundings as he walked cautiously. Allister would jump occasionally whenever something would break or a noise would ring out through the air. I felt an odd sense of sadness at the bottom of my heart looking at the city where I had grown up in, I could barely recognize it. We stood in the city; Henry's store was on the right side of the street; the structure wasn't burnt all the way down, but it was blackened and gutted, leaving behind a pitiful skeleton of a building. I glanced back at Allister, who wasn't paying me any attention and was already moving ahead; seeing my chance I crept closer to Henry's before slipping inside altogether. The walls were black and chipped, some of the items on the floor were twisted and bent. Walking back farther through the store, I saw where one of those objects had hit the store, a gaping hole had replaced the other half of the building. I stepped over rubble and broken wood. The hole led to the next block over and that block was burnt and still smoking. It was eerily quiet, all I could hear was the creaking and cracking of the buildings around me, What the hell happened here? I thought, turning in a full circle, looking for any signs of life. A loud cracking noise sounded behind me; I whipped around only to see nothing, but I felt like I was being watched.