Unplugged • a short story

After WWIII, the United States suffered a depression greater than the great. We killed our power, the last of our gas resources, our medicine, and food. It all went to the war effort; a war to end all wars, and it brought total destruction upon the country that basically asked for it. The soil was depleted from the chemicals of nuclear bombs; you could still smell them in the air even months after the last was dropped. Nothing was able to  grow, so there was no way for civilization to sustain itself . For the most part. Although the people in the settlements believed we were the only ones left on earth, we realized the possibility of mass extinction was slight; we hadn't even been overseas. But nevertheless, the world wasn't the same.
We lived in groups, sort of like back in the old days. Except it wasn't kin-like. These people were complete strangers to me. We all had our demons, and few really spoke to each other. I was just glad for the compassion of our group leader for not kicking me out.
My scrawny, starving body didn't do much help to them, and I was sure they were sick of seeing the same head of matted, blonde hair crying in the corner, mourning the loss of her life before the war. My brother and dad had been drafted; my mom went crazy after that. But, I still missed them like hell. My friends, too. I was only 17, not even out of high school and already I had to fend completely for myself; it was something I could've never prepared myself for.
One night, a guy in my group who I remembered to be named Martin walked towards me. No one did that. He came bearing food, sat down next to me, and attempted a conversation; it'd been weeks since my last substantial meal, so there wasn't much room for rejection on my part. 
"You looked pretty hungry," He said, handing me a roll. I stayed silent.
"Look, Christina and Cameron over there told me you don't talk and I still came over to try. I heard you're 17, right?" I looked at him. His expression was soft and trustworthy,  so I gave him a nod.
"We're all around that age, too. I don't know if that means much, but I'm just saying we might be able to relate to some of the stuff you're dealing with.." He trailed off, looking at me.
Christina and Cameron I knew; but this boy, I'd never really looked at him before. His smile sort of drew you in. That must have been why I began to speak. He grabbed my hand and sat me down in a smaller circle off to the side with only the three of them, and over the next few weeks, we all grew closer. The more I looked at Martin's smile, the happier I felt. The more laughter I spouted when I was with our little band, the less pain weighed on my chest. Life post-destruction wasn't too bad after all.
Until one day, when we got word from another group that a mental hospital nearby had been locked up since the bombs, but the patients had escaped. However,  it wasn't any regular mental hospital; it treated patients who were addicted to technology, people whose eyes could not be dragged away from the ubiquitous screens on earth.
"Just be careful, " our group leader warned. "They're mental, they don't understand that the world is different and that we don't have much technology anymore."
That night, long after everyone else had gone to sleep, I was laying down on my back, looking at the stars next to the dying fire when someone approached me. I shot up, unprepared to defend myself against a mental patient, but just my luck,  it was Martin.
"You shouldn't be out here all alone, not with them coming," he said, laying down next to me. The silence between us as we layed in the grass, hands intertwined, did not break for several minutes.
"Do you think we're gonna be okay?" I asked him.
"I won't let anything happen to you," he said, moving to plant a kiss on my lips. The first, and the last.
The next morning we woke to panic. Everyone was hiding the few computers we had that we used as an attempt to connect to a signal. We needed them to figure out how many people were left. The thumping of footsteps could be heard in the distance, and Martin ushered us inside one of the houses in the neighborhood we were camped out in.
We watched from the windows as everything went down.
The patients were in a large group, all wearing hospital gowns. They looked like they hadn't showered in weeks, which was probably accurate. The leaders seemed to talk amongst themselves for several minutes before their group's began to freak out. They riled up their crowd, and all we could see were the guns they pulled from their gowns.
"Kill them all," I heard one of them yell. Our group ran sporadically away from the site, but it was no use. I stayed put and tried to hide with Martin and a few others.
"Where the hell did they get those?!" Martin yelled at one of the other members.
Their guns shot fast, and almost everyone on the street had been killed within minutes. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the window until one of them looked up, right at me, and began to walk towards us, his eyes never leaving mine.
"We gotta go, Taylor," Martin said.
We ran with the man right on our heels; I could barely keep up with Martin and twisted my ankle trying to. Martin looked back at me and up ahead again. The only way out was up a fence, and I'd messed it all up.
The look on his face as he watched the man draw closer, knowing I would be unable to get myself over the fence was full of terror and heartbreak.
"Step onto my hand," he said quickly. I obliged, and in the process of jumping from one side to the other, I was pretty sure I'd twisted both ankles.
Martin scaled the fence fast, and as he reached the top,  I thanked the universe that the patients had ran out of ammo. It was at that second that a gun fired, sending a bullet right through his leg and sending him toppling down my side of the fence.
We crawled to a spot behind the trees far enough that we could rest, and slept till the remainder of our group found and woke us. From there, we were on the search for a new place to settle, far away from that city. But little did we know, the world was much more broken than believed.

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If y'all want a follow up story for this one let me know in the comments :))