Okay, so here is part 1 of chapter 1 of my young-adult novel, Blackout Forever. I know I need to work on some grammar and stuff, but feel free to comment and review on it telling me what I need to fix. All reviews are welcome!
CHAPTER 1: New World and a New Way of life
It was day 364 of the New World. That’s what everyone called it. Everyone that had survived. The death count was by the hour. For the first few months of the New World, everyone was kind of okay, we still had had essential needs like gas and food, before it spoiled, but as time went by, we have run out of those things. The New World was declared official when scientists all over the world couldn’t come up with any ideas on how to turn the power back on. On March 21, 2012 the world lost its electricity.
Crouching behind an abandoned building, I peered around the side of broken brick. With my gun loaded in hand, I waved the others over to follow, who were standing around the corner behind me. We were out hunting today. It was hunting season in the city. Ever since the New World began, people came in flocks to the cities all over the world. You couldn’t survive in the country or anywhere else these days. You had to be with a group of people or Others would attack you and eventually you would end up dead.
We called them Clans. Every single person was part of a Clan, an organized group of people that they could trust and were willing to work with. Clan’s could be small, from 2 to 10 people, or very large, from 11 to 30 or more. The greater the Clan was, the harder it was to get enough food for everyone, but the safer you were when it came to raids. People were frantic, and would do anything for food these days. I’ve heard stories that you couldn’t imagine. Things that would make your flesh crawl. People were desperate. Times were so hard; I didn’t know if the human race would survive. But just like everyone else, I was only worrying about one certain thing. My Clan.
We had 13 people, including my older brother, Jesse, my younger brother, Kyle, and 10 other people that were our friends and now family. If you weren’t close to your Clan, you wouldn’t have such a good chance surviving. If you Clan were mad or upset with you, they could easily betray you to the Others. The Others were what we, and by we I mean everyone all over the world, called our enemy’s. It was you and your Clan and nobody else mattered.
Now, we were waist high in tall dry grass, sprouted from the hard solid cement around the vacant buildings of the abandoned city and we were tracking a small herd of roe deer. Hunts were when you skimmed the city for wild roaming herds of animals or any people who were weak or betrayed by their Clan, who you could take hostage and either added to your Clan, which was rare, or trade them for other supplies. Each Clan had different rules for hunts.
If the group was smaller, then normally everyone would go on hunts, which could be dangerous for little kids, who you couldn’t risk to lose. Or, with a Clan like our size, which was a normal number, only certain aged people could go, for younger ones were to valuable and needed. In our Clan, you had to be at least 14 and know how to use a gun. That was me and Jesse, and the other 6.
“Shhh,” I warned, putting my finger up to my mouth and pointing around the building to the deer.
Jesse peaked around and smiled at me. I was our Clan’s best tracker. Maybe I didn’t have the best aim, which sometimes lost us our dinner, but I could track deer like no one else. Clan’s normally started when a family or group of friends came together, and how ever many people it started out with, was how many it stayed with. If the group had taken in a Stray, a person that had been betrayed, it would only be because they had recently lost one of their members and needed an addition, or that that specific person had a good talent that his original group was too stupid to notice. I just came with Jesse and Kyle and 5 other friends of his, who brought 5 of their friends for our total of 13 members.
We hadn’t taken anyone in yet, and I didn’t mind that. I was the only girl in the entire group, and got the most attention from the guys, which was totally fine with me, but not so much with Jesse. He was really protective over me and Kyle because he “couldn’t stand to lose us”. I was pretty confident that nothing would happen, but I was also glad that Jesse was protecting me. He really cared, unlike our dead parents.
Well my dad used to care, until his new wife, Stephanie, overpowered him. Our dead step-mom died when she became terribly sick with the Flu, which wasn’t a problem with me, and later my father went with her by the same sickness, which made me really mad. If she hadn’t had been there, he would have still been alive. But that Witch had to come along just to kill them both. Jesse was more than a son to our dad, they were like brothers, close friends, and when he died, Jesse made a promise to him that he would keep us safe, and dad was still holding it to him.
Our mom had cared a whole lot, though she didn’t have very many things to worry about in the Old World. She had died a couple of years before the ‘world ended’, by getting hit by an eighteen-wheeler truck. We had been able to say goodbye in the hospital, but we weren’t there when she died. I was sure that Jesse would do anything in his power to keep Kyle and me safe and well, even if it meant his life being in jeopardy, which I totally wasn’t about to let him do. So along with keeping my Clan feed and alive, I had to keep myself healthy and living.
“So are we going to shoot some deer or what?” One of the guys behind me said.
I swung my head around and scowled at the face I matched with the voice. I saw Sean, one of the friends Jesse had often had over to the house when the Old World was in play. Sean was always joking around and it had gotten him slugged in the face once or twice when he had said the wrong thing around me or Kyle by Jesse himself, who wouldn’t normally swat a fly (unless that fly was a 6-pointer buck). See, I told you he cared.
“Yeah,” I replied turning my head away from that wildly grinning face.
“Lets do this,” Jesse said, holding his gun up to his chest, barrel pointed skyward and slowly walked across the street.
Just like all the other Clan’s one of the biggest “duh, it common sense,” things is that you need is a plan. Without a plan in the New World was like traveling under the ocean without an oxygen tank. Dumb, dumb, dumb. There were many techniques in hunting wild animals in the middle of a city, which wasn’t natural, so obviously it was more difficult to capture the prey, which had more hiding places then in their natural habitat. Our plan was that we would surround the herd, spread out so that we created a large circle and then each take a turn at firing our firearm at the herd, trying to take down anyone we could.
When it came to hunting, the rules to the Old World didn’t apply. There was not one season that you were allowed to hunt and not one type of animal you could take down, like only bucks and not doe’s with fawns. Even if we had big rules like that, how would we get the news around? With the world’s power and electricity stole away from it, we were like cave men again, but crueler and with weapons. There wasn’t a messenger person you could send around with news about new laws and regulations, and if there was, they would be considered Strays and that meant you were up for grabs to be taken in and traded to the Stores.
Stores were gathered people who had the last of the supplies, and I don’t know what would happen to you next. If you were seen alone, unarmed without any type of companion, no matter who you were, you were a Stray. One of the only rules that was known everywhere, and don’t ask me how it got everywhere; I guess it was, again, common sense, that if you were alone, you were anyone’s game. That’s why Clan’s had to stick together and not be seen alone.
The Stores were a very large, about 50 or so, gathered group of people who were merchants and traders. They had the very last, even though it was still a some-what large amount, of supplies that the rest of us needed, like clear water, some fresh meat, rice, corn, green beans and other vegetables. They also had other things besides food, like candles and matches, clothes, furniture, books, wood, gas for fires, bullets, knifes and other weapons, kitchen essentials and gobs of extra supplies of things that could help you live in the New World and survive.
To be continued...
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