• Prologue

    -Beep-

    Hey. Testing, testing, one two three. This thing working? Well, anyways, I hope this voice recorder I’m talking to right now is working, otherwise, everything I say to this piece of junk would have been for nothing .Listen. If you’re holding this right now don’t put it down, please. It’s my only chance... At least hear me out, okay? I’m Hayden. Hayden Octrife. I live in British Colombia, Canada. I don’t know where you live, but please ,I need help. You will not believe the things that are happening right now. Tomorrow, April 16th 2011 ,the sky will turn orange. I know this sounds crazy, but please, just wait for a little bit more for me to explain. The sky will turn orange and the clouds will turn black. This means only one thing: the world’s going to end. Don’t put the voice recorder down, please! It’s true! After you hear this you only have to do one thing. I need you to-


    Chapter One
    April 16th. Head resting on the heel of my palm, I look out the window. A gray blanket of clouds, covering the sun. Well, that’s what you get for living in Vancouver. Rainy days all the time. Hope the sun comes up soon. I look at the classroom clock. Twenty minutes ‘till class ends. And there’s Ms. Scarlette, walking down the aisle of desks towards me. I straighten my back and assume a sitting position that suggests I’m participating in class. The teacher walks right by me. We were supposed to be talking to our partners and finishing a worksheet about the Middle East, but I guess my partner’s conversationally challenged, as he hasn’t spoken a word to me yet. I look at my worksheet again, when I hear a collective gasp, hands raised with their pointing finger out targeting the classroom windows. The sky was turning an unnatural orange and the clouds were a darker gray than ever. I, for one, have never seen in my entire life a sky that was completely orange, so you couldn’t blame me as I gawked at the sight of such a colour. I just stared. I was frozen by the shock of such an unaccustomed colour of the sky until something even more shocking happened. The ground began to shake. Just a little bit, so that the debris lying on the classroom floor began to jump, just a little. And as you have guessed, the tremors grew more and more violent, until it was safe to say an earthquake was taking place.
    “Holy crap!” someone said.
    “Earthquake! Get under the-“ a classmate says, but her voice turns into a scream as the classroom lights fall, glass flying everywhere as it hits a few desks and finally landing on the floor with crash. My reaction kicks in and I dive under my desk. My worksheet partner looks around, dumbfounded, so I pull him down too.
    “Get under the desks!” I growl to him. I was right under the windows, and you could hear them cracking after every tremor, until after a while they finally splinter into millions of tiny shards of glass, spraying the floor with razor sharp chips. I wince at the sound of breaking glass. I was so scared my stomach felt like a shaky mixture of jell-o and fat, making me feel very vulnerable. That’s when one wall of the classroom breaks down completely, burying a few students nearby in rubble. Screams pierce the air. My mind went into overdrive, and call it instinct or intuition, I knew the classroom was going to collapse any second. I made a bolt for the classroom door, and a few students follow me. My shoes brush aside the broken glass on the ground, and adrenaline shoots through me. I had to get out of the building, now. I didn’t do anything heroic like go back into the classroom to save the others, or, run around pulling kids out of rubble, I just ran. And don’t judge me, I’m sure most of you would have done the same thing. A cacophony of screams, shouts and falling rubble echo throughout the hallway I was running down. I was on the second floor, so I had to run down to the first floor to get out of the school. Students were streaming out of classrooms, panicked and disorganized. Without teachers telling us what to do we were as lost as sheep without their shepherd.
    “What do we do?!”
    “We have to get out, now!”
    “How ‘bout the others?”
    I block out everyone’s questions and run down the flight of stairs connecting the second and first floors, running so fast I was literally dropping down three steps at a time. I could hear kids from the upper floors running down too. I didn’t have much friends in highschool, so I didn’t bother looking for my buddies. I just focused, making choices based on instinct. Breath ragged, I reach the front door and burst out, and see a bunch of other students on the school grounds, looking hopelessly confused. But most however, were looking towards the city. Vancouver was ruined. Roads were forked up six meters into the air, buildings reduced to piles of rubble, fires breaking out in random areas. Cars were lining up to get out of the city, and traffic was a horror. Scared people ran out onto the streets, some in hysteria, others breaking down in sobs, some calm ones assessing the situation, and a bunch of others doing what they could to cope with the shocking disaster. I couldn’t believe it. Before my eyes was a reality that’s chances of happening were slim to none. But here it was, laid out in front of my eyes, my city, ruined.