Population 15

1- Cam

Okay, so here's the first chapter. The chapters are extremely short but i will try to put up a lot. They also may get longer in the future. Hope you like it (:

2020

1

Cam

            I walked down the streets of Eden, the silhouettes of burned and abandoned buildings surrounding me. I blended into the shadows that the scorching sun cast to stay hidden. The city that was once called Tucson, Arizona had been destroyed long ago; the only things that remained were me and steel skeletons-and of course, the ones that threatened my life. Plagued who had turned deadly, the sickness that ravaged their body driving them insane. My hunting boots hit the pavement silently; I was too careful for them to make any noise. Noise meant death in this city.

            I kept my hand on my knife, tucked snugly in its sheath. It was my life; if it was gone, so was I. I’d be killed in second out in the open without protection in the Quarantine.

            I am one of the Spared. I should be in the Vaults right now, eating food from the storage units they keep down there. Instead, I have to hunt for it in empty houses that line Eden’s roads.

            But it’s my own fault I’m here; I chose to stay behind. It was the only way I could save my mother, one of the Plagued. And now I don’t even have her. My only goal is to stay alive, because I’m alone in this disease ridden world.

            I slipped past a sleeping Plagued, obviously Crazed by the look of their wild appearance. They hissed in their sleep and I hurried into the building.

            The old school had been abandoned long ago. From its ceiling hung bats and in its desks slept mice. I knew every nook and cranny, every turn and every surprise. I knew what they kept in the cabinets, what was stored in the cafeteria. This knowledge came in handy when darkness fell over Eden and the only light came from an old flashlight I found in the janitors closet. I needed it to survive. The school was my haven.

            It had been ten years since the Annene Plague first began to spread. I was six years old at the time. I had no family; only my mother. We were set to enter the Vaults, the only thing left for us to do was the Annene Scan. They ran a scanner along my mother’s arms, and sent us away from safety when the scanner read positive. She tried to make me go without her, but how could I leave her? She was all I had left, and I was still just a little boy. So I stayed behind and became her nurse. I tried my hardest to keep her breathing, but the Plague won a year later and took her away from me.

            I shuddered at the memory and pushed on through the dim halls until I found the staircase. I made my way up quietly and crept past ghostly classrooms. Desks remained in neat rows. Words were written on the board from an English lesson never concluded. It was haunting to think that all these people were either dead or holed up in Vaults deep underground.

            I stopped at the teacher’s lounge, my home for the past few months. I walked into the doorway and dropped my pack at my feet as I searched my pocket for the tiny flashlight-I couldn’t see anything in here. I shined it into the room so I could get to the windows and open the blinds.

            Something was wrong. I froze before I entered the room fully and slowly scanned the flashlight across the furniture. Something moved in the corner, and panic set in. My nimble hands reached for my knife as the thing started to run at me. My light landed on its face before I dropped the flashlight. A Crazed; one of the Plagued gone insane. When you became Plagued, you either died or went insane. This one had fallen victim to the latter.

            I began to run as fast as I could as flicked my knife out of its sheath. This wasn’t supposed to happen; here I was supposed to be safe. I turned a corner and hid behind the wall, decorated with pictures of the weather that day. I peered around the wall cautiously.

            It was a woman, a glazed and hungry look in her eyes. Her hair had fallen out in patches and her clothes were ragged. I watched her with sadness and pity in my blue eyes as she searched the classroom with a feral snarl. The only way I could escape was if she stayed in that classroom.

            I stepped carefully out from behind the wall and peeked in at her. She was searching under desks. I took the opportunity to run and didn’t stop until I made it out of the school.  My heart beat fast but no footsteps followed, so I sheathed my long knife and blended into the shadows again to catch my breath.

            It was an endless battle for life, and it was just beginning.