Young Writers Society

It was the summer of 2007. Everyone was back from college and done with school. Jesse was back from Iraq and Lucy was trying to get a job as St. John’s hospital. People were looking forward to spending their summer relaxing and hanging out with friends and family.

And then we all got sick.

Only those of us who were in our teens or early twenties survived. Everyone else was dead in their houses: mothers and fathers, siblings, bosses, police, teachers, friends, relatives – all gone. America was destroyed.

There were no newscasters to report our story, no editors to print the newspaper and no president to lead us. Every station on the radio and TV had the same message: “Evacuate your area and wait for relief.”

Caleb opened the door to his parent’s house the day after they died. He was back from college where he was the goalie for the soccer team. He wasn’t sure if he would ever go back. He had called for an ambulance for his parents when he had gotten better, but no one had answered. No one could have helped him because everyone in America was dead or dying.

Caleb ran across the street to his neighbor’s house and knocked loudly on the door. No one answered. He ran to the next house but he got the same response. He ran to every house on his block, and the next. Finally, just before he was about to five up, a girl, about 15 or 16 came to the door. She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes.

“I’m Caleb,” Caleb said. “Is everyone in your house...dead?”

The girl nodded.

“Can you help me?” Caleb asked.

“As long as you help me,” the girl whispered.

“Okay, come on.”

“Wait,” the girl said and ran back inside. She came back with a backpack and a plastic bag. “Food and clothes, she explained as she shut the door to her home.

“Good thinking,” Caleb said. Caleb and the girl walked from door to door in the rest of their neighborhood, knocking on all of the doors. No one else answered.

“I’m Kate,” the girl said after a while.

Caleb and Kate had come to the main road. A light rain started falling as the two walked down the road. They saw no signs of anybody.

“How did this happen?” Kate asked. “Is everyone gone? How come we survived and no one else? What are we going to do?”

“I know just as much as you do, Kate,” Caleb said.

“Do you think we’re still contaminated and might get sick again?”

Caleb shrugged his shoulders. He sighed deeply. “Everyone is gone. I can’t believe everyone is gone.”

Caleb heard the sound of a motor in the distance and turned to see a black Mustang driving recklessly down the street towards them. The car swerved up onto the sidewalk right behind Caleb and Kate. Caleb pulled Kate out of the way just as the car rammed into a house. The wall of the house collapsed around the car and smoke rose.

“Wait there!” Caleb yelled to Kate as he ran to the car. The whole front end of the car was smashed in. A teenager, a bit younger than Caleb sat in the front. He was slumped over the steering wheel, obviously dead from the crash.

“Oh my gosh,” Kate whimpered from beside Caleb. Caleb left the car and ducked into the house. The car had landed in the living room, the couch was overturned and the ceiling fan lay on the floor. Caleb walked over to the couch. A body lay on the floor beside it, looking as if the person had merely fallen asleep. Caleb looked away and hurried back outside.

Kate was sitting in the grass a few feet away.

“Kate, we have to go find more people,” he grabbed Kate’s backpack and went to help her up.

“We all got sick on the same day,” Kate said.

“Come on, Kate,” Caleb said. Kate ignored him.

“We all joked about our bad luck. But then my brother and sister died.” Kate paused, tears rolling down her cheeks. “And then the next morning my mom and dad never woke up. I tried to call for help but - .”

“But no one answered,” Caleb finished. He sat beside Kate in the grass.

The car was still smoking in front of them.

“What are we going to do?” Kate asked.

“We need to find a place to stay. We can’t go back to our houses and be around the sickness,” Caleb said. Kate nodded. “Were do you want to go?” Caleb asked.

“My church,” Kate said. She stood up and Caleb fallowed. There was a red and rusted pick-up truck parked in the driveway behind them. Caleb knocked on the door to the house but no one answered.

“You can’t steal their truck!” Kate said as Caleb wrapped his fist in a tarp he found in the back of the truck.

“They won’t miss it,” Caleb said. His fist broke through the truck window on the second try. He opened the door and brushed away the glass.

“Come on, Kate,” he said as he got in the truck. Kate slowly walked over and climbed in the other door.

“How are you going to drive it if you have no key?” Kate asked.

Caleb ducked under the steering wheel and yanked out a few wires. When he started the engine it sputtered to life.

“How - ?” Kate started.

“Where’s your church?” Caleb interrupted.

“Uh...down the street, you can’t miss it.” When they got to the church, they entered through the back door which Kate said was always open. They went to the sanctuary and sat in the pews. A big stain glass picture of a cross leaked colored light into the room. Caleb must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, people surrounded him, all talking at once.

The first person he saw was Savanna Carico. He hadn’t seen her since junior high.

“Savanna?” Caleb asked.

“Hi Caleb,” she answered. “How did you get here?”

“There was a girl – Kate. She chose the church,” Caleb answered. He saw Kate with another girl who looked about her age.

“Her dad’s an elder here,” Savanna said,

“You know her?” Caleb asked.

“I know...most people here,” Savanna said. “The Martins: Beth, Isaac and Lucy,” she pointed to each individual as she said their names. “Levi and Hanna Cossack and Path McClouscy...”

“Our church just seemed like an obvious place to go. Besides, the back door is always unlocked,” an older girl – Lucy – said.

Just then a tall, strongly built guy walked into the sanctuary, carrying a big bag of tortilla chips.

“There wasn’t much in the kitchen – plenty of mustard but hardly anything else. I found chips, though,” the man said as he put the bag down.

“Not hungry,” a few people muttered.

“We need to figure out what to do first,” Caleb said.

The man sat down heavily and looked at everyone with dark eyes. Caleb suddenly remembered him from high school.

“It’s Jesse, right?” Caleb asked.

The man nodded. “You’re the soccer kid, the one all the girls flocked to.”

Savanna looked over at Caleb with her eyebrows raised. Caleb shrugged and shook his head.

“Shouldn’t we go see if there are more people out there?” someone asked. It was a short, well-built boy with a tattoo of a treble clef on his lower arm. Savanna had said he was Path.

“Did you all hear the message? It told us to wait for relief,” someone else – Hanna said.

“How long will we have to wait?” Kate asked.

“We live in the Midwest – it could be next year before they find us!” Savanna said.

“We’ll need food and clothes,” Lucy said. “We need to burn the clothes we’re wearing in case they’re still contaminated.”

“She’s a nurse,” Lucy’s brother, Isaac whispered.

“And she’s right,” Caleb said. “We might have to burn our houses also.”

“You don’t think we were the only town to all get sick, do you?” Beth – Lucy and Isaac’s sister asked.

“If this one disease could wipe out a whole town, it could definitely carry across all of the US,” Lucy said.

“It’s like the Black Death,” Isaac said.

Silence followed that statement.

“It seems like biological warfare,” Jesse said, breaking the silence.

“What?” Beth asked.

“Biological warfare,” Caleb said. “It’s like nuclear warfare except with a mass plague.”

“Do you think that’s what could have happened?” Savanna asked.

“It’s possible,” Jesse said.

“I don’t think anyone would want to wipe out an entire nation full of innocent people,” Caleb said.

“They didn’t,” Isaac said. “We’re still here.”

“So if they were planning on killing everyone, we ruined their plans,” Savanna said,

“Which could potentially be very bad for us,” Jesse said.

Caleb stood up. “I’m going to find pillows, blankets, lights, food, or whatever else is in this church. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

“We need to talk now,” Jesse said, also standing up.

“My parents are dead, Jesse. Everyone’s parents are dead. We’ll talk tomorrow,” Caleb said.

“If we are at war, there could very well be no tomorrow,” Jesse said. But he sat down.

“Let’s go,” Savanna said and she and Caleb walked out of the sanctuary.

The two found animal crackers in the nursery and cookies in some other classrooms. They soon had a box full of sweets but not much else.

“Maybe I should have gone to church,” Caleb said as he carried the box back to the sanctuary.

“You only get the snacks if you help with the kids,” Savanna said.

“When did you start going to church? Last time I saw you, you were cheering at the school’s football games,” Caleb said.

“I started home schooling,” Savanna said.

“Really? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, I liked it. I started going to church then and met some great people.”

“So you stopped cheering?”

“Yes, definitely. I don’t even remember why I started, probably to get your attention.” Savanna smiled briefly.

“To bad I was in the wrong sport,” Caleb said, returning her smile.

“I still got your attention,” Savanna said.

“You could say that.”

“Of course, so did ten other girls.”

Caleb looked over at Savanna. In some ways she had changed a lot since junior high, but in other ways Savanna didn’t seem to have changed at all.

“I didn’t go out with those girls, though,” Caleb said.

The two entered the sanctuary and passed out the cookies. No one said much after that. The rain pattered quietly on the rook and as the sun set, everyone lay on the pews and drifted in and out of sleep. Caleb sat up all night, wondering were they would go from there.

To be continued…

Thanks for reading!