Fiction

Sorry if it's a little confusing. I copied and pasted my story from word to here and it was all messed up. I had to go through the story and add in all the paragraphs again. If it's confusing in a paragraph or two; I'm sorry.

Jojo is 16 years old and fighting to survive each day. When the war began she was 13 and lived in a small shack with her parents and her sister. One day her mom and dad didn't come back; she knew they were dead but she never knew it would happen with her being so young. She is now taking care of her 11 year old sister, 15 year old Avery and all she has is 16 year old Chase to help her survive the day. What will happen when the robots come to get the secrets she has kept for so long?

Secrets That Kill

Part 1- Present

I sit there in the corner of a charcoaled shack and stare out the window. I’m thirteen and scared for my parents who are out there fighting the robots. The robots are no bigger than the average human, and they’re dumber, much dumber. Plus they don’t die as easy, which, frankly I don’t get.

It is now dark. Everything settles down at night. My parents would be here by now and I think the worst. They are tough but the robots are tougher, and my parents know secrets that the robots want, FBI secrets, and in the wrong hands they could kill. I guess that’s why my parents told me them this morning. I wonder if they knew something was going to happen to them.

“Jojo? Where are Mommy and Daddy? I’m scared,” my eight year old sister, Micky, whispers from the corner on the opposite side of the dark room.

Before I have time to answer a robot crashes down from the ceiling. Its metal shined like glass in the moonlight.

I couldn’t fight; I’m only thirteen. I would be dead in less than a second. Instead of moving I just find myself, eyes closed, screaming. A pair of hands grasps my shoulders and shakes me. I open my eyes and stop screaming when I realize I’m staring at Chase.

“Dreams again?” he whispers, obviously used to me waking up screaming. Even though his voice seems unfazed by me screaming, his eyes seem worried.

“Yeah… dreams again.” I look around and see Micky and Avery still sleeping. “What time is it?” I ask.

He looks at his watch squinting in the darkness, “Looks like 2:07. Why?”

“I’m going out, clear my head and stuff.”

“Jojo, it was three years ago. You’re alive! Just get your sleep okay?”

“Sure I am but my parents aren’t!” I wait for him to answer but he can only stare at me through the dark. “I’ll be back by morning.” I glance over at Micky and Avery as they stir in their sleep from my yelling. “Watch them when I’m gone,” I whisper. This time I didn’t wait for an answer. I walked to the window past the sleeping bodies and yank it open. I fought back the urge to look back at Chase; I just jumped out the window instead. I hit the ground harder than I thought I would, with a hollow thunk. Once I regained balance, I run straight not even daring to look back.

* * *

I love running at night. The icy breeze always feels good hitting my face. But there is something ominous about tonight. I feel like I’m being followed, and what makes this bad is that my feelings are usually never wrong.

I whip around and scan the ground. Something black moves but I only think it’s my imagination. It’s just the shadows in the alley. No need to be such a wimp about shadows, right? I keep running as far as the edge of town and stop at the tree. I climb half way up and sit on a branch facing the way I came just in case my imagination wasn’t playing tricks on me.

I wish my parents had never told me those secrets. Then I wouldn’t have anything to hide from Micky. Yeah I told her some, but those are out in the open already, you know, not important. I mean they were, but long story short, that’s part of the reason we’re even having this stupid war. I don’t want her to get captured or anything. She’s only eleven and it’s my job to protect her from danger. The secrets I know could destroy anything the robots want if they ever got their hands on them. That’s why I can’t tell anyone. I haven’t told Chase or Avery either. Sometimes these secrets can get really hard to handle which is why I can’t tell even the most trusted people. I wish I could tell Chase though. I know it hurts him to see me run off at night, it hurts him to see me wake up screaming; I can tell by the look in his eyes. The first time he ever heard me scream like that was the night when the robot crashed through the ceiling. He came in five seconds after the robot came in. He saved our lives, but after he killed that robot he looked at me with those hurt eyes. It’s almost like my fear killed him inside.

During my daydream I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know I’m being gently shaken awake.

“Jojo?” I can only manage out a barely noticeable grunt before I am violently shaken and almost knocked out of my spot in the tree. I force my eyes open and look at Avery staring at me with a huge smile on his face. “Good morning! Have fun sleeping in a tree?”

“Go away!” I yell and close my eyes again.

“No, Jay, you have to get up. Chase picked up some sort of weird sort of frequency.”

Like I haven’t heard that a million and one times… Probably just another false alarm, or Chase’s way of getting me home faster, I think to myself, but as always, a small ding in my brain says to get up just in case. “Okay fine, I’m up.” I jump from the tree and with a sigh, walk back to the shack.

* * *

“Okay Chase… What is it now?” I asked in an angry tone.

“A large amount of metal heading this way, I don’t know what it is but I think I have a good idea,” he answers quietly. I look at him questioningly wondering if we were thinking the same thing.

      “Do you really think...?” I go to say more but I stop, letting my voice trail off. The thought of getting the same frequency three years ago when it was just my mom, my dad, Micky and me pops into my head sending a shiver down my spine. I stare at Chase wide-eyed, “How long until they get here?”

“Um… We have abo–” He’s cut off by a bang. Even after three years we all know what that means. Robots.

“Guys… We got company!” Avery yells clearly pointing out the obvious. And by the increasing number of clumsy bangs hitting the ground, we were over powered and surrounded already.

I ran to the door and stared in horror, hundreds of robots landing on the grass. We were surrounded but the good thing is we weren’t pin pointed, yet. As I said, these things are dumb!

Moving quickly, I yank Avery from the door and motion for Micky to stay calm. She still hasn’t gotten over the robot that came through the roof that night she got her first horrible glimpse of the thing that can possibly kill us if we let it.

I let Avery go and walk over to Chase briskly, who is standing at the window scanning the sky.

“No robots over here. Think we can run?” Chase reports, keeping an eye on the sky.

I look around the shack, and then scan the sky.

“Slim chance; know anyone with an underground hide out?” I ask kind of hopeful.

“Nope. At least not anyone that hasn’t been obliterated yet,” he answers sarcastically but truthfully.

“Do you have pinpoint coordinates of where they came from?” asks a small voice from the corner of the room. I turn and realize it’s Micky.

“No, but I can get them,” Chase answers unsurely.

She nods and Chase walks over to the small tracker lying on the bed and starts to type things in. Micky turns to me with fear and hopefulness mixed in her eyes.“Do you remember those people Mom and Dad worked for?” she asks me trying to sound braver then she is.

“Yeah, do you think they would help us get rid of these freaks that are after us?”

She smiles and nods as she takes her phone from her pocket and dials the number we

once so often used. I smile at her and go back to scanning the sky.

* * *

We walk into the underground room escorted by a cute guy with blue eyes. I break a small smile, happy to know I’m not the only one covered in mud, dirt, and scratches from head to toe, and I’m probably not the only one who went through hell trying to get here.

The room is cold and poorly lit, sending a shiver down my spine. When we get deeper into the room I see a table with six chairs, and a huge TV screen on the wall. The cute guy with the amazing blue eyes gestures for us to sit down. Without a word we all take our seats and so does blue eyes.

An older guy steps into the room and sits next to blue eyes directly across from me. I feel like he’s going to go all CSI on us and start playing the good cop, bad cop thing, like they did in those really old movies and shows when the human race would fight and kill each other. Now, it’s just rampaging robots chasing sixteen year old girls, which happen to know a few really dangerous secrets, she has so very carefully kept secret.

“Hello Chase, Avery, Micky and Jojo,” the man says nodding his head at each of us as he says our names. I decide not to ask how he knows our names or what his name is at least, so I just nod back.

I thought I would know him since I knew everyone my mom and dad worked for when I was little, but I don’t know him. He must have heard about us from my mom and dad right before the start of the war when Micky and I couldn’t go to work with them anymore because not even kids could be trusted.

He gives us a faint smile. “How may I be of service to you?” he asks suspiciously like we’re little kids up to no good.

“Well I want gummy bears, a hamburger, and ice cream with a Sprite on the side,” Avery blurts out sarcastically like he picked up on the same thing I did. I kicked him hard in the leg and give him a glare. “Never mind… I was being sarcastic, It was only because… Never mind, sorry,” he quickly mumbles after guessing that I would kick him again if he didn’t apologize.

I turn back to the guy sitting across from me and relax my expression. I slide the tracker– with the coordinates to the place the robots came from– across the table and smile. “All you need to do is provide an army. Then, soon enough, this war might just be over,” I report professionally.

He stares at the tracker, dumbfounded for a few endless seconds, and then slides it to the guy with the blue eyes. “Get an army ready,” he mutters without taking his eyes off me finally realizing that this is no stupid game we’re playing for fun until we get killed by the robots.

Blue eyes stares, with the same dumbfounded expression, at the tracker as he walks out of the room to get our army ready, and for the first time… I’m actually scared about this whole thing. The whole bravery thing just totally left in a big whoosh, leaving me feeling sick to my stomach.

One hour later, we are walking above ground through what looks like a black war zone. Not a bit of green is left, and the tree on the edge of town is replaced by a giant dirt hole. It’s hard to believe that a town already so destroyed can look even worse.

The robots are mostly gone by now. This small town even had an army, and those still willing to fight are joining our group of three hundred troops, mostly imported by a transporter the world outside of the FBI has never seen. We walked out of that hide-away with three hundred troops ready to fight and now nearly six hundred walk behind us. Don’t ask me how we got so many, but we have six hundred. It’s like in all the war movies you see. The general, or most important people in front and an army of troops trailing behind, approaching on the army that is usually three times the size. This army, in particular, looks like it’s coming from the Chronicles of Narnia 7, 8 and 9. As we come up on where the blinking blue dot on the tracker has lead us to, everything suddenly gets really dark. I can feel Chase tense up beside me.

I see a glint of metal in the corner of my eye. The same glass-like metal I saw three years ago when I was sitting in that shack, watching death crashing through the roof. Fighting starts all around me and the four of us get ready for the fight of our lives.

“Jojo look out!” Chase yells from beside me. Before I could say anything, or even scream, that glass-like metal hits me in the back of the head with a sickening crack. That’s the last thing I hear before I’m knocked out cold.