Teresa balanced the rusty old coin on her thumb, putting all her concentration into the small circle of dusty metal that she had found on the war-beaten ground during the Lightening this morning as the sun had shone it's ferocious beams towards them for the first time since the Darkening the day before. She flicked her finger up and the coin spun while sailing through the air.

Heads for we'll-survive-through-the-day, and tails for we won't, Teresa remembered, hoping for them to preferably not die today.
The coin landed on the pre-World War III table with a light bump. Tails. She cursed.

"Better luck next time, ya old dung pile," Her best buddy, Alex, clapped her on the back. Hard. Teresa jerked forward and let out a cough. "Weak bean, are ya?" Alex teased, leaning against the hard rock wall of the cave where their S-Group was sheltering. The S stood for small, survival, and shelter. Probably because the S-groups were always small, focusing on surviving and finding shelter.

"Not really," Teresa muttered. "You have a hard hit." She flexed her fingers and looked again at the unlucky tails staring at her from the table. Carefully, deliberately, she gripped the small piece in her fingers and turned it over. "Lucky!" she called out, giving Alex a playful nudge. Alex crossed her arms but then whipped one over the table and came up with the rusted cent from before the apocalypse.

"Not for long ya won't be, ya genie," she muttered, then stomped to the cave entrance. Teresa sighed. Their relationship could get so awkward at times, but she had no idea what to do in these moments. She just couldn't figure her best friend out. She leaned her back against the rough wooden chair and that had been hastily sculpted by their A-Bots, who had no sense of neatness about them. They had been the first models, a prototype of a smart-bot without artificial intelligence that wouldn't cause another World War V. Then the disease had struck, taking out nearly 9/10's of humanity and leaving only about a thousand sane people left in the world, all avoiding the diseased, dropping off the project and Teresa's group had taken the prototypes. Split into two parts, the Reformers, and the government. Also a few smaller groups that focused solely on surviving, like the S-Group Teresa was in. She pushed back her chair, stood up, and pressed her black boots into the trodden earth as she crept up to her friend. She glanced up to see it was the middle of sun-up and the Darkening wouldn't happen for a while. Then she sat beside Alex uncomfortably and gazed at the disease-ridden world. The poisoned trees drooped and clouds scuttled across the grey, polluted sky. None of the clouds looked swollen with rain yet so no acidic rain that would harm their skin would fall for a while. The world was in as much peace as it could handle while slowly dying. Unless it was already dead. Which was a sad possibility.

Teresa didn't remember much about when the apocalypse had happened. She had been young and her parents had fled with her to a remote location to wait out what was just called an "epidemic" at that early stage. And they had waited for years until the disease turned enough people insane that once careful adults were now using whatever dangerous weapons they could get their hands on to bomb others, sometimes with nuclear bombs, sometimes with expando-grenades that could kill over a hundred with one wide sweep, all for no reason. All because the disease had made them go insane. Mutated people's life spans lessened considerably but they caused much more destruction in that short time than they would if they hadn't been mutated by the virus. Chaos had reigned in the world until the bombs and grenade overuse had polluted the world to near death, until they ran out of firearms. Teresa and her mother and father had retreated, further, until her parent's died suddenly one day. Then she found this group.

"Hey," Alex had got over her sudden anger. "Hey, ya beanie. Ya okay, lost in thought like a moony?" They had sat there for over an hour and the giant gassy ball in the sky was starting to descend, so it was almost the Darkening. They needed to set up the defenses. The Mutated attacked in the dark, their over sized arms and cracked, bloody skin giving them the surprise they needed. Alex got to her feet and pulled Teresa up with her.

"Hey," Teresa protested. Alex grinned and trotted inside, Teresa following behind more slowly, her eyes adjusting to the bleakness and grayness, even with a few fires shooting painful sparks in the air. A shadowy silhouette spun past her and Teresa jumped until she realized it was Tobias.

"Scared you, did he scaredy-cat?" Alex teased her again and her eyes glimmered painfully.

"Teresa, you need to get a hold of your senses," Tobias muttered with a grave shake of his head. "Your life may depend on it someday." He brushed her hair behind her ear as he passed and Teresa shook off the feeling his touch gave her. It was unnerving.

"Like the fleabag said," Alex added, then darted around to face Teresa. "I don't want no friend of mine to die. So, hear out the old fleabag."

Tobias paused a short way ahead and swiveled around, eyes glittering in the firelight. "Who are you calling old?" He asked her friend. "I'm the same age as you!"
Alex just snorted and was at once by his side, pulling down a chain on the wall that released the mechanisms of defense for the night with the help of Tobias.

Teresa looked up as the bars dropped over the entrance to the cave and a protective metal cover that was impenetrable slid over the sides of the huge cave. Immediately, carved out panels slid open and beds unfolded from the walls, the robots hurrying over and dusting off the mattresses and putting on the sheets and blankets and the lot.

The first moan sounded in the distance. A loud bang made everyone jump as an electro-bolt hit the cave, the first part of the storm. The electro-bolts kept on raining down from the sky all around the cave, visible from the barred entrance. Teresa prayed the Mutated wouldn't come banging on the walls and grinding their bodies against the bars again. That night had been almost as traumatizing as when her parents had read on their News-Flats that the epidemic was taking over the world and causing what looked like a senseless world war. But she felt relatively safe with the hard ceiling over her head, the sloping walls. As she climbed into her warm bed, she gazed at the other figures lit by the steady firelight contrasting the flashes of bolts just visible at the dim entryway a couple hundred feet away. Alex murmured in the bunk behind hers and Teresa fell into a comforting sleep.

She wasn't sure what woke her. But in the middle of the night, she bolted up, her heart suddenly pounding. There was a heartbeat of silence, then more electro-bolts started raining down from the clouds outside and she shuddered, hearing their booms and crackles and thunderclaps.
Then she heard them. It sounded like an uneasy shake in the earth at first, then there was a thin line on the horizon. Teresa swung out of her bed, her bare feet crunching in the dirt, as she padded up to the entrance way where the bolts were way to close for comfort. Then, there they were. Teresa pulled her leather jacket over the T-shirt and sweat pants she had worn to sleep and slipped on her sneakers.

"Guys," she called softly. "They've found us." The Mutated were marching in their direction, not stopping as their friends fell from the bolts, their skin cracked and wet from the rain, some's clothes flaming from the bolts but not stopping. Trouble was marching their way. Right towards their cave. No entrance could keep out such disease. The Virus was coming.

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