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Okay, I hope you enjoy my little story. This first chapter is short, but I have more coming very soon.
The "Danger" Apocalypse: Chapter 1
Ansly Danger tried to remember how she’d gotten here, to this shack on the outskirts of the outskirts of Strangetown. She couldn’t, and she thought that might have something to do with the goose egg forming on her forehead, her dirty clothes, and her missing luggage.
Okay. What was the last thing she could recall?
The orphanage. Yes. She had gone there, to see if anyone remained, or if any of her old friends had come back, but there was no one. What did she remember before that? Why was she even back in her hometown at all? The empty airport—no, not empty; looted. The plane. The Pualos Islands.
“Ansly, you’ve been with the volunteer program for eight weeks,” the project director said, leaning forward over his industrial metal desk. A large fan swung its face lazily around to her, dispelling little of the room’s cloying heat.
“Yes? I’m here on the twelve-week stay,” she answered. The Pualos Islands were a difficult place to call home, what with the lack of basic amenities, sweltering tropical heat, and unusual food. But, fresh out of college, she loved feeling like she was making a difference. “Is there a problem with my papers, sir, my passport…?”
“No, nothing like that. But you’ve heard about the disaster in Strangetown, haven’t you?”
“Disaster?” She smiled nervously. “I’d heard there was an accident, but you know—news travels slow.”
“Yes. It does.” He looked uncomfortable. “Ansly, I want to apologize that we didn’t realize the urgency sooner. And But now, we really—we really think you will want to go back. Not to Strangetown, of course, but to the states—“
“Sir, what happened?”
A nuclear disaster had happened. And she’d insisted on returning to her hometown, to find her loved ones—no family, of course, but the friends she’d grown up with at the orphanage, as well as the woman who’d lived in this shack, Jane. Jane had been the closest she had come to family outside the Home, a “Zen wannabe” with a sense of humor, a huge heart, and a sparse (really, impoverished) but lovingly kept home. Ansly had found no one at the orphanage, so here she was—able to remember only scattered images since she’d arrived at the airport, and unsure of how long it had taken to get here. She suspected it was days, and was suddenly grateful for her amnesia.
“Jane?” She knocked lightly, and the door swung open. A chill clenched around her heart. “Jane?”
Jane’s lovely things, simple though they were, had been stolen in the weeks since her death. Still, there was a bed, a sink, a toilet, a near-empty fridge; not much more or less than Ansly had had on the Pualos, in other words. Ansly had nowhere else to go, and was afraid to venture far from the house, so for now it looked like she was home.
Jane had kept a journal before her death. She wrote of the confusion after the accident, the terror in the streets, the fleeing survivors... Ansly’s heart went out to her, to all of them.
The last two entries were her goodbyes to the people she’d loved. Jane had always had a weak heart, and perhaps she’d known there was little more she could take. Ansly read them over with a sadness and deep reluctance, never more so than when she got to the end:
“Ansly: I’m so proud of you and grateful that you are at that college and far away from all of this. I know the world has a great need of you and wonderful things in store for you. You were a blessing in my life.
I’m not afraid of what will happen to me now. Life has to end because end is natural, and life is natural. And deep down I know that my soul will find Howard’s. That will be a relief.”
