Third world.
Pt 1 Sickness
“This time, we give it everything,” Mina said clutching her pendant and watching the black clouds approach. “The ways this simp finds us is above me,” I curse crushing my hand into the concrete floor, and my left wall falls into the next room. We hid on floor 10 of this barely stable building for the last 12 days, and I felt in my soul Mina was close to going half on a love nest…. but now, just another what if. Maybe the building was a bustling office before the First Wave, but I saw it as a cozy tiny home, minus the sandstorms smashing stone, now and then. There weren’t many places left with buildings as tall. About 6yrs ago, the Sun pointed a solar-super storm in Earth’s direction, tearing a Moon sized hole in the atmosphere above the Pacific. Half of humanity was wiped out at the First; so many fell unconscious as oxygen dropped then fires, tsunamis, and storms destroyed a lot of our structures while preventing rebuilding. Watered areas would become deserts and deserts became wetlands. Within weeks our maps changed. I shake the screams out my head and try to focus on the clouds. Mina continues to speak, “No more running Daunte, we win, or we lose.” While she said this, I heard her open the heart-shaped locket and knew her mind was about to drift away. It was hard to tell if she was crying or sweating these days. We were always in grime from head to toe, but her locket was the one thing Mina would clean consistently. It held a picture of her brother Gregory who died at the Second Wave. 5 years after the First, with remnant populations scattered, a Second smaller storm hit. I’m guessing another half didn’t make it or only a 3rd lived through it, hard to tell. I think I was probably 20 during that time. The Second was weird, aurora lights filled every sky for days, and large numbers of people and animals showed strange symptoms. Some grew extra limbs that didn’t work, and masses lost their lives to stage 4 cancers, like Gregory. Those days were sad, but the Third Wave brought real fear- 400 days after the Second, the night sky lit up a brilliant red orange, like Earth had been dropped into a fire. At the time, I was moving with a survival camp through a dead forest. The few people in the camp started crying, collecting belongings, or were fixated at the blazing sky like myself. The last thing I recall about that night was sitting against a tree, struggling to hold onto consciousness, my eyes attempted to focus through a haze of dust and debris, lifting my head I heard hysterical laughter and saw Eric: he was 18, had been travelling with the camp for a couple days. He stood in the middle of what looked like the epicenter of an explosion. I blacked out after that and when I came to, the camp was decimated, and Eric gone. Gathering myself, I left to search for him, Eric was an elitist because he had no ailments, but it didn’t make sense how we survived that type of blast. After travelling for a day, I felt tremors in one direction and followed. When I arrived at the source, I saw Eric locked in struggle with a slightly larger man towards the center of a field of pits. Each was trying to overpower the other, both were on their feet, sleeves and pants torn pass the elbows and knees, with black veins tracing underneath their skin. Every time the pair moved, they fired into the air, and then broke sound to land creating new depressions. My gut twisted with fear, it wasn’t safe, not anywhere with no one. The Third changed people. Black veins drew through our skin forming unique patterns. Our bodies became tougher, and it varied for each person. At my best, I could crumble bricks like loafs of bread, outrun rushing water, and go weeks without nutrients remaining stronger than 10 men. However, I soon found that with new bodies, some could do devastating things like igniting mini hydrogen explosions, just by flicking the wrist. There were those who could absorb a targets heat, pulling it from every cell or materialize an entire flood the size of a mountain and drop it 50 kilometers in the air. What’s worst, as our abilities grew, we became emotionless and insane. It is a sickness, and the black veins spread like ink. This world has become a battlefield of monsters. I drifted for 200 days after getting away from Eric’s scene avoiding fights, spectated a few, tricked others. I learned everything I could. It was during that time that I found Mina running down a dry strip of land that connected 2 peninsulas. Behind her was an enormous black cloud the size of a small island, lightning arced inside, and some flashes were bright enough to show a human silhouette floating in the middle. Every few meters, Mina would spin to perform a double underhanded pitch towards the sky. Then, like cannon fire, two bus sized boulders blasted out the waters on either side of the strip rocketing into the storm. She moved like a professional dancer, with long dark loose curls that fanned out with each graceful step. She was wearing a torn shirt over black overalls, they lifted when she twisted to reveal a burgundy one piece. Her overalls, worn midway up the thighs, exposed two large patterns of veins that swirled like thorns down her caramel legs. Mina’s boulders were blocked with earthshattering bolts. Faster than my reaction time, a counter bolt the size of a house struck out at Mina’s position. Earth and water erupted, sending bullets of rock in every direction. I flew 3 kilometers backwards holding something soft. After sliding for some time, I focused into a gorgeous woman with slighted eyes, curled in the fetal position laying on my chest. Literally breathe taking. I knew the moment was true divine intervention, and the start of our island paradise for two, till hands squeezing my head crushed out my dream as Mina demanded, “Help me or we die!” The next second almost passed as hairs on my body began to stand. Without thinking, I closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around Mina… and we moved. When I looked, we were atop the ice in the middle of a frozen lake that swarmed with twin-head viper piranha. I can pull apart living matter, and reform it at a new point. “Whoa.”
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