The Storm to Come

1 :: The Beginning of Disasters

I wake up to the shrieking of the wind, and the falling nails of the rain hitting my window pain. I hear screams coming from the neighboring houses. I can't seem to understand what could be happening. We were told, we were going to have light showers, and slight rain, but what we got was nothing compared to that. I begin to hear the sirens. The loud wailing sirens, they weren't just there for show. They were there to warn us... something was coming.

I'm sitting quietly on my bed fiddling with my fingers, when my bedroom door bursts open with a crash, as my lamp falls to the ground shattering into hundreds of pieces. My first reaction is to yell at my Dad, for barging into my room, and breaking my property, but before I can manage to get a single thought out of my mind, I hear. "Anna! What on earth are you doing? Have you gone deaf?! Do you not hear the sirens?" It had slipped right past me that those sirens, the ones that for four straight years of my life, haunted my dreams, my thoughts, and my life. They were back, back to take away my happiness.

The year is 2048. I just started high school, my mom always tells me that "it's going to get better I promise." When will it? Ten years ago, when I was only four. Our world started changing, and I don't just mean the newest jet. I mean, natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc, started becoming more and more frequent. The animals started becoming sick, and inedible. So there goes our world's number one food source. I mean yeah you could eat the meat, but there would always be a one in a million chance of you not getting sick and shortly after dying.

My small little down, Naperville, Illinois. Population: 200, was right in the center of a tornado loop. If a tornado comes into the loop, it takes days up to weeks for it to die down and break. We had gone two years without a tornado hit our little town, but after two years ago. I can't help but fear. In 2046, my father moved my mom and me to Naperville. At the time of course, we didn't know that we were moving into the center of a loop. Now here 2048, and this is the world we have to get used to. School for the day had just started, when the principal went to our classroom, and told us we were going to the school cellar. He told us it was just a drill, and it would just take a few minutes. Well a few minutes turned into hours, and hours into days.

All I can really remember about being stuck in the cellar was, hearing the crashing of every brick from the walls of our school smashing against the cement layer of ground they put above the cellar for a bit more protection, but what they thought was protection, was the complete opposite. On what we believe was the second day, a piece of cement falls on my legs trapping me. We had been down in that cellar for weeks, with no food, and no water. Several days later, we hear calling for us, trying to find where we are. I try to yell for help, trying to let them know where I am. Though I try with all of my might. I am only capable of getting a faint "help".

As I begin to lose hope of every being found, I begin to hear a strange sound. It was barking. I hear men yelling "Over here, she found somebody" I then hear the rubble on top of me moving. Soon enough I am blinded by the sun. I then see a faint silhouette of a man. He reaches to me trying to get me up. I tell him I can't, I'm stuck. "She's okay, she's alive" Firemen come and bind my legs to stop the blood from flowing. Then they set me on a stretcher, and before they close the door, I call for him to stay with me. I don't know how, and I don't know how, but I did. He looks at me for a minute, then agrees to stay with me.

Mid way through the ride to the hospital, the pain begins to kick in. It starts in my legs, shooting up my back and straight into my neck. The tears start rolling down my face. I tried to hold it back, but I lost control a long time ago. The man looks at me, holding my hand trying to calm me down. I glimpse at the parametric as she is looking through vials. When she finally finds what she is looking for, she grabs a needle, and empties the bottle. She looks at me saying, "This will only hurt for a second." She slightly pinches my arm, and gives me the shot. There was a sudden pressure, but I couldn't feel the usual pain that comes with a shot. I begin to feel as though I am fading away. The last thing I saw before I fell asleep, was the man looking at me, then looking at the paramedic.

When I wake up in the hospital, I am still in the ER. I look around, and see that man talking to the doctor, he looks worried. After they had been talking for several minutes I could only understand one word "adoption", then he saw that I was awake, he looked at me and smiled. The doctor turned around, he as well looked worried. They both came to my side, look at each other, then look at me. Before they could get a single word in, I asked the first thing that came to mind. "Where are my parents?" I then see the smile that they were forcing fade away. They dodge the question by telling me the man's name, Charles. He said I could just call him Charlie. I asked again, "Where are my parents?!" They begin to have a look of despair, and they tell me something I will never forget.