In The Air Tonight

Outside the shelter, the wind is blowing and the clouds are black. The rain is falling, and it is so cold that the raindrops feel like steel nails hitting your skin.

This is why you are in the shelter, under cover.

There are rumbles of thunder, but as yet there has been no lightning but you know it will come, but hopefully, it will not strike near here.

The shelter is basic and the rainwater is coming in through the entrance, and the floor is soaking, luckily there are wide seat cum beds in the walls, so sleep is possible if you can shut out the noise of the weather.

You can't go out because of the rain, the cold, and the things that are in the air that will find you and hook onto you to suck your blood and replace it with their acid. No one knows what they are, some say they are mutant fire ants, but the certainty is that they must be avoided.

There is food and water in the shelter but how long that will last no one knows. There are new people coming in, some go out to forage but none ever come back, whether they find somewhere better or the things in the air get them we don't know.

This has been your life for what seems like forever. You cannot remember what life was like before this happened, and now it is just a case of trying to stay alive.

Something happened, and now it was like the Stone Age, shelters were derelict warehouses and caves, and there were permanent storms and the air was filled with vicious death.

Had a button been pressed?

Had there been some terrible accident?

At least we could breathe, and there was water to drink, but that was it in this world of night, twilight, storms and flying death.

One day you will have to leave the shelter, but you will need to avoid those night creatures. You may find salvation or you may meet your final demise, but every day you are being pulled to go out in the storm...

Who knows what you will find...

... or what will find you.