Ash fall
Imaginative composed by Gabrielle (Year 10)
The sun barely pierces through the thick grey smog which looms over the city, if you would even still call it one. Nothing's the same after they dropped the bombs- the government's pathetic attempt at erasing the Infected and protecting the people.
Hobo Joe claims they used it as a cover up, that the government used the bombs to destroy the evidence of “experiments” they were doing on the poor in the slums. Crazy or not, his conspiracies are about the closest thing we’re getting to entertainment out here. They also thought a twenty-foot wall around the city would fix everything, as if steel and concrete could seal away a mistake that big.
Newsflash, it didn’t.
Pretending there aren’t survivors trapped behind those walls only fuels our will to survive. If anything, their silence makes us louder.
Marcus stood atop a crumbling rooftop; his boots sank slightly into the layers of ash and dust.
Below, the streets were silent.
Too silent.
Rusted metal signs swung in the breeze, somewhere distant the groan of an Infected echoed off the concrete ruins. It had been three days since Marcus accepted a mission from the Peacekeepers, a deal he regretted more with every hour. The target was a neglected block near Sector Twelve, supposedly fit to become a safe house. Just a place for runners to crash between scavenging runs. That was the plan.
Then it happened, a break in the silence. A static crackled in Marcus’s earpiece.
Not words, but a code. It was the signal. Something was wrong. Badly wrong.
James- the head Peacekeeper and mission organiser- wouldn’t have risked a transmission unless it was urgent. He was ruthless, sure, but never careless.
Marcus crouches lower behind a rusted metal panel. His mind races and his pulse quickens. That meant either the Infected had broken through containment again or someone had let them in. He grits his teeth.
“No way it’s a breach… not this soon.” But then he heard it, not from the earpiece, but from the city itself. A metallic crash in the distance. Then silence. Then… a scream. High. Panicked. Cut short.
“Maria.. she sounded just like that before…I let her down.” Marcus whispers to nobody but himself. And just like that he is yanked backward. Back before the bombs, before the ash. Two months ago.
Maria sits on the cold ground with Marcus, heating an old can of baked beans over a makeshift fire.
“Good find with the old subway, Marky.” Maria says, hands busy with packing up her survival kit.
“I thought I told you to stop calling me that,” Marcus grumbles but it only makes Maria laugh.
“Too bad, Marky. You’re stuck with me now.” Her voice is still fresh in his memories.
He clutches the gold cross necklace in his hand so hard it leaves an imprint on his palm. As he jumps down onto the fire escape, the metal creaks below him as he cascades down onto the ground. He runs so fast he can't feel anything but his heartbeat in his ears. His boots slap across the crackled pavement while he sprints through the alleyways, dust and ash whisp behind him like a ghastly trail. Every step matches the tempo of the pounding in his chest.
He stops at a rusted van that has now sealed itself to the concrete below it and hoists himself onto its roof; the metal protests but holds his weight. From his vantage point he overlooks the streets below, eyes flickering from alleyways, shadows and ruined stores. Nothing moves, but through the harsh shadows and smog, the Peacekeeper tower emerges.
On the face of the tower, a sigil resides. Painted in thick, jagged lines of red, Marcus recognises it. The symbol of the Crimson Chain.
Not Peacekeepers and definitely not friendly.
One of the old safehouse flags, now blackened from char, barely hangs on the pole by its threads. Marcus curses under his breath; everything he’s managed to scavenge in this cruel reality.
Now gone.
