The Unknown Heroes(Manuscript)

Chapter 1

The bus slammed to a halt. I looked out the window and saw a huge wall towering over the bus. I was so dialed in on my conversation I didn't even realize that we were entering the parking lot. The Power Plant was gigantic, the cooling towers being the biggest part of the structure. Right in the middle of both the cooling towers was a circular building, I guessed that was where all the working stations were.

I heard the bus doors open. Our teacher got up and started leading my class off the bus one row at a time. I was in 9th grade and we were learning about how power plants work, even though me and most of my friends we're taught the same lessons in 7th grade. I didn't complain though because we got to go on this field trip after the school year ended, but when I thought about it, I realized how boring and stupid this trip was going to be because of all the safety standards we were going to have to follow.

When my seat was called my friend Taylor and I got up. When we exited the bus I saw a woman who I guessed was our tour guide, I was right.
"Hello everybody, my name is Samantha and I will be your tour guide today." She started, but I was already bored and began talking to Taylor.
I noticed in the corner of my eye that the other busses pull into the parking lot, my other friend Jacob was in one of them. The line started to move and we entered the building. Inside was gigantic, and it wasn't even the whole building, there were about 14 floors above us. The tour continued.

As we were reaching the 15th floor, I thought about something that scared me. There were a bunch of disasters going on lately, like terrorist attacks, but without the terrorists being seen or caught. It started off small, they just blew up random banks, and cops thought they were just bank robbers, but whoever they were, they weren't satisfied, their targets grew, they blew up concerts, apartments, even skyscrapers, and their latest target, a field of wind turbines, a place that people make energy, just like a power plant.

I brought it up to Taylor and he stopped to think, we both knew something was up, but we couldn't just up and leave, so we just shrugged it off.

"Alright, we are going to enter the viewing chamber, so we can show you what we're looking for when something goes wrong, and what is out of the ordinary." Our Tour guide said, "But I'm going to need you to put on gas masks, a hazard suit is not needed because we won't be getting direct contact with any gases that are lethal to skin contact, but there will be some fumes that you can't breathe in."
So we grabbed the gas masks one by one, and entered a metal door with a big hazardous symbol on it, just like the ones you would see in a zombie or alien movie.

As we walked in the room, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach got worse.
"That's odd," the tour guide said when we entered the room "engage protocol 2"
"What's going on?" Our teacher asked
"The heat and pipe pressure are exceeding normal levels, everything's fine, just a bit of maintenance required to make sure everything goes well"
The building shook.
I had a bad feeling in my gut something was going to happen, I was right.
"No need to worry, we will be just fine, exit the room slowly," The tour guide said, but after the door opened, a huge wall of stone came crashing down in front of it.
I looked out the door, all the floors beneath us were destroyed by the stone wall, and the room we were in was starting to collapse.

All around me were screams, I didn't know what to do. I was in a building, 15 floors up, that was collapsing to the ground. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something, there was a piece of rubble breaking through the ceiling. I jumped and got hold of a metal pole coming through the concrete. I pulled myself up and shouted to try to get the attention of my class. One of my classmates ran for the ledge, but the ground shook once again. I fell down as the ground below me collapsed, I felt the air rush by me as I fell. I felt my back burst into pain as if someone had lit it on fire, I had stopped falling. I couldn't see anything around me because the air was black with smoke. I rolled over and picked myself up. I guessed that I had landed on another piece of rubble hanging off the ground because there was no way I could have survived a 15 story drop.

I attempted to yell for help, but instead, when I opened my mouth, I realized that I couldn't breathe. I felt my tongue lodged in my throat, I felt my legs grow weak, and my vision faded darker and darker. I saw a rock on the ground next to me out of the corner of my eye, and for one last effort to survive, I picked it up, brought it to my chest. I let myself fall forward. When I hit the floor, the rock pushed into my chest and I felt pain shoot through my chest. I screamed in pain, but I could breathe again. I picked myself up while gasping for air and I began to stumble forward, hoping I would find something to help me reach the ground. I eventually ran into a wall. I put my hands on the wall and felt the warm smooth cement as I walked around feeling for something on the wall that could help. Just as I was hoping, I found a ladder. I made my way down the ladder until I hit the ground. I knew I couldn't relax though, I had already sucked a lot of toxic fumes down my air pipe, and I knew it wasn't good for my body to breathe in any more than I already had. As I was continuing forward, I saw a dark figure dragging something in the smoke. I ignored the fact that my lungs were filled with deadly material and ran at the dark figure. When I got close enough I saw that they were dragging one of my classmates and stopped in my tracks. The dark figure looked at me and did nothing, my heart froze.

The figure shot his hand out at me and I felt a rising pain in my chest. I fell to the floor, my chest was burning, and getting worse every second. I got back up and ran in the other direction. I ran and didn't stop. Once I got out of the smoke-filled area I collapsed from exhaustion. I stayed there for what felt like hours waiting to find someone to help, but nobody came, so I picked myself up and looked around.

My knees felt weak and I struggled to walk, the sun hurt my eyes after being in the smoke for so long, but I kept going. Out of nowhere, I spotted someone clearly injured, like me, and I made my way over to them and realized it was Taylor.
"Hey, you okay!?" I shouted as I grew closer to him
"Me!? Are you okay you look dead!"
"Yeah, I'm alright"
Just then I heard a loud motor like noise above our heads and looked up.
It was a helicopter. I started shouting and waving my arms like crazy trying to get their attention, and luckily we did, the helicopter landed beside us. The door opened and a bunch of people in hazmat suits came out of it. We got in the helicopter and sat down.