The end of the world began with sirens. Blaring and whirring louder than Theo could comprehend.

The second thing that happened was a bang, far more concussive than the sirens, and it knocked her out of her bed along with all the soft stuffed animals she piled around herself before sleep.

The girl struggled to her feet, entirely caught off guard and off balance by the shaking of the building. The only thing that pulled her from her sleepy daze was her bedroom door.

"Grab your brother! Where's Micha?!" Her mother shouted, yanking Theo by the arm out of her room just before the wall caved in with the weight of the upper apartments.

She couldn't really think, or focus on any single thing at once. All she knew was that her mother was dragging her down the stairwell faster and faster to outrun the collapsing building. And her father was following behind, carrying her screaming five year old brother in his arms.

"What's going on?" Theo asked, still stupefied by how much the world rushed around her.

"Into the car! Get in!" Her mother shoved her forward, slamming the door shut as she ran around to the passenger side to try and buckle her son into his car seat.
Another bang, followed by a terrible bright light, like lightning that scattered across the sky, bathing them in a ghostly hue. All four of them flinched, but Theo was the first to twist around in her seat.

AKAN lab was on fire, but it wasn't the normal type of fire that you see. It was bright green, the smoke of it billowing up into the sky, concealing something far larger that lurched across the mountains.

Theo squinted, trying to make out the enormous thing. It moved like an animal, lumbering across the slopes, crushing trees and houses, tangling itself in the gondola wires as it erupted with a horrendous shriek.

"Mom...there's something on the mountain." Her voice was inordinately calm, and she barely even vocalized the words.

"Take Ferris drive! We can cut through the traffic and get to the rally point faster!"

Rally point?

Theo couldn't make herself face her parents. Her eyes remained locked on the thing in the smoke.

The apartment building adjacent to hers crumbled and slid out over its foundation, bowing and bending until the cement pillars that held it up shattered under its weight and the lights in the building flickered off, leaving only the awful sound of people screaming before they too turned silent.

"...mom," Theo murmured, briefly flickering her gaze away from the chaos behind her. Her eyes rested on her younger brother, screaming bloody murder in his car seat, before she forced herself to look at her parents in the rear view mirror.

None of them expected the old truck to ram into them, careening their vehicle to the left and sending it spinning out on the road. All the girl's muscles tightened, and she braced herself for impact as she watched the starry sky turn into the ground. Their minivan hurtled over a guardrail into a pile of other cars that had, at some point, stacked themselves in rows over the bridge.

The other car was far worse off. It had flipped and rolled several times over until it landed upside down, until it was hit by another car and sent careening down the steep ditch that led straight to the lake below.

No one even stopped to help whoever was inside. They all simply swerved around them, or slammed to a shrieking halt and jumped out of their cars to sprint to the highway bridge.

"Come on, Theo, get up, we have to go, are you hurt?" Her father's voice buzzed around in her head, among her disjointed and concussed thoughts. She felt him around her waist, prying loose the seat belt that kept her hanging upside down in the car.

"N-no?" Yes. All of her hurt. And she could taste iron in her mouth. It sputtered out of her lips when she answered.

Theo's father wrapped his arms under her shoulders, dragging the nearly incompacitated girl out of the broken car. Her eyes drifted, struggling to focus amongst the screaming and yelling and crying.

"Where's my baby?! Where's my Cassidy?!! Cheri, MON CHERI, OU ET TOI?!" a woman with a thick, foreign accent and no hair shrieked, dropping down on her knees as she begged and cried and fought against her wife. Theo recognized her, very briefly, as one of her classmate's parents.

"Where's mom?" She mumbled, struggling back to her feet as her father handed her Micah and pulled her forward into the mess of crowded people, desperate to escape whatever awful thing was happening.

"She got out before me. I lost her, STAY CLOSE!" Her father yanked her forward, disallowing any attempt Theo made to look back at their car. If she had, she would have seen her mother hanging there, limp.

"Where are we going?" All her questions sounded so stupid, partly because she already knew the answer, but also because her head throbbed so much that she couldn't properly articulate what it was she wanted to ask.

"Gimme your brother," her father commanded, crawling over the hoods of two cars that had rammed into each other, sending their drivers into each other's windshields.
She had never seen so much death before. So much panic and destruction.

"YOUR BROTHER!!" her dad's voice broke through the static dissaray of other noises, prompting Theo to lift her sibling up and over the cars.

"Sissy, don't let go, don't let go of me! I don't wanna go!" Micah bawled, clinging to her nightshirt as his father grabbed his waist and tugged him away.

"I'm coming too, I won't-" Theo's head smacked against the hood of the car, knocking any sense out of her as another person scrambled over her, shoving her down under the mass of hands and feet clawing to get above her.

She let out an awful howl, attempting to crawl her way back to the top, to her brother, her father.

"THEO!! THEOPHANIA!!" Micah's gutteral wail pierced through the scattered voices, and Theo broke through the crowd in attempt to reach him. But he was gone, lost among the silhouettes of thousands of other human bodies as they congregated, flooding over the cars and onto the bridge.

"MICAH?!" Theo screeched, only for a hand to wrap around her long hair and yank her backward onto the asphalt. She scrambled in attempt to move out of the way, but grown adults and children alike trampled over her, forcing out the air in her lungs and crushing her bones. Where did they go? I need to find them, I need to get out. Micha needs me He needs his big sister!

Theo's skull cracked against the asphalt, loosing the thoughts from her head and causing a jolt of adrenaline to rush through her. I need to get away from here.

In a split second decision, before her head was completely crushed by the frantic rampage of the mob, Theo rolled under the car in front of her.
It was safe, the safest she had been in the seemingly few seconds that the world was ending in.

The car titled and croaked, squeaking with every bystander that leapt from it to the next in effort to get away from the awful shrieking.

Theo's head tilted up, over to the only thing she could see through the moving feet around her. The damm.
She could see it through the spaces between the rails on the bridge, and watched as it cracked, sending a deep grumble over the water as something far too heavy to bear its weight crawled across it.

Theo stared at the crack, her eyes gaining focus as it grew and she realized that everyone on the bridge were too busy fleeing to notice it.

The first thing that came to her mind was finding a way to secure herself. She knew she couldn't outrun the water, but the lake was low this spring and the likelihood that the river water would remain above the bridge after it burst was slim.

She searched under the car, for something, anything that she could use to tie herself to it, or to the ground. The only thing she could find, after prying off the electrical component cover was a few wires.
That will work.

Theo wrapped the wires around her fingers, twisting and jerking, even biting until she managed to cut through the longest one. She tied it around her wrist in an ugly loop. One that only needed to be strong enough for the initial impact, she thought.

Micah made it out. He and Dad met up with Mom. They aren't on the bridge. They won't drown.

She convinced herself of it as best she could, praying that they had made it out, that they were away from the end of the world.

The damm made another rumble, followed by the high pitched creak of cement and metal bending and cracking under pressure. She could hear the silence that followed, hushing the crowd of people above her for only a couple of seconds before their screams grew louder than ever.

It was surreal. Watching the feet around her all move one direction only to stop in brief silence and run the opposite way. Like a silly game of tag. Except everyone knew if they lost, they would die.

Theo rolled over on her belly, crawling to the only place no feet existed.
The car she was under was turned horizontal to the road, and the back of it had slammed into the guardrail. She figured it was the only thing that could potentially withstand the wave.

The girl reached out, wrapping her wire around the metal rail and looping the other end over her wrist.

For a moment or two, she looked out, over the water to the damn at the other end of the lake, and watched as it finally gave way and whatever caused it to break removed its claws from the concrete barrier.

Then she closed her eyes, tightening her grip and forcing herself to relax every muscle she possibly could. It was going to hurt. A lot. But she couldn't open her mouth to gasp when it hit, she couldn't let herself die just yet.

They made it out. They made it to safety. Mom and Dad and Micah are all on a bus, or on a train, far far away from here. They are safe. Stay alive so you can see them. And tell them how awesome you are for beating the end of the world.

Theo sucked in a deep breath as she heard the rush of water. She clenched her eyes tight and dug the wires into her wrist. The spray hit first. Soft. Deceptive.

Then, like a thousand ice cold knives burying into her skin, the water enveloped her. It lifted her up, floating against the current and removing the precious cover she had over her.

Briefly, she opened her eyes, the murk and muck of the river stung them, but in the midst of bubbles and frantic splashing, she saw the people around her be swept away, over the bridge and a hundred feet down into the water below.

The water muffled noise, car horns honked, gurgling and broken up amongst the sound of the sirens and the thing that shrieked and caused all this destruction.

And then Theo flopped on the ground and drew in an ugly gasp as the last efforts of the wave subsided. Water rippled on the surface of the road, running down the sides into the drains. She winced, and unhooked herself from the guardrail.

Theo rubbed her wrists, keeping a tight grip on her joints where the wires cut into her skin and made blood mix with the water that now soaked her.

She shuddered and shivered, drawing in a cold breath and exhaling, leaving a puff of condensation in the air as she stood up.

The car that was, at one point, on top of her now teetered on the other side of the bridge, hanging over it until gravity eventually overcame it and sent it toppling into the lake below.

There was still screaming, still crying. Still people running around, begging for their loved ones to appear from thin air. Or sobbing over the ones they found unmoving.

But Theo's only thought was to find her way home. They would come back for me. Mom, Dad...they will come back for me.

They have to come back for me.