Sound the Alarm

Class Four(?) Outbreak: June 22nd at 4:40 am

Current Location: Northlake, SC
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Something from a distance shook me awake. It sounded like a bomb going off, and my heart pounded inside my chest. I found myself still in the bed at the house I found.

Shaking off the suicide scene that returned to my head, I climbed out of the comfortable bed to investigate the sound that startled me. The window was foggy, so I wiped it with my sleeve.

"What was that...?" I mumbled to myself, squinting my eyes in an effort to see. It was too dark to see anything, but another loud boom shook the house slightly. It wasn't a gunshot; it was more like an explosion.

Suddenly, fear struck me like lightning.

Are they already bombing the cities?

Ah, I couldn't really think like that, but again, I couldn't help it. If they were already blowing up cities like Boston and New York, I at least wanted to be with my kids when fallout started.

Thinking that sent shivers down my spine, so I tried to shake it off as best as I could.

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Sleeping was useless, so I stayed up and explored the house a little more to see if I could grab anything of value. I did manage to find some extra rounds of ammo for the pistol that the man had used. I washed it so I wouldn't touch the handle for spores and yucky stuff like that.

I filled it up with ammo, and I switched the safety on and put it in my bag. I was also able to get the refrigerator to work again and managed to chill a few water bottles down, even though they'd get warm again, but it should've killed off anything that was bad in them. I made myself a few sandwiches that would last for a while and put those in my bags as well.

The door awaited me nearby, and I dreaded getting back out there.

"Come on Will, you have to go, or it'll be too late," I told myself, shaking off the fear and heading out the door.

The air had that burnt and ashy smell to it, but it was still better than the spore clouds, trust me. I looked north, then back the way I came.

I sighed heavily, and began to walk north once again.

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As the long hours passed, I arrived in the city I was sort of worried about, Greenville. I was pretty sure it was already getting dark, but it was still hard to tell, since the clouds had a strange shade of brown in them. I caught myself staring at them until a familiar groaning sound brought me back to reality.

"Oh no..." I mumbled, seeing some of Greenville's taller buildings. "I won't have enough time to go around, and I need to-"

As I was speaking to myself, a loud woosh pounded my ears, enough for me to cover them tightly with my hands. The zombies around me bowled in agony, some heads even exploding with blood and other stuff that I wanted to gag from.

It ended soon after that, and I took a minute to look at the sky. It had a path that stretched along the atmosphere that faced west.

"If that was a bomb..."

Something wasn't settling right with me, and I began to believe that fallout was closer than I thought it would be.
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Jeremy's POV
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I was walking with Braxton and Olivia to the weight room when the alarm began to shriek across the building. Navarez began to curse so loudly that I had to cover Braxton's ears.

"Nobody panic! It's probably a false alarm!"

Something told me that it wasn't, due to the loud, rocket-sounding missiles overhead.

"What should I do!?" I asked in a state of sudden panic.

"Come with me, but take the kids back into the room and lock them in there," he said, shooing me away as he began to run back to the office rooms.

"I'm sorry, but I'm literally too afraid to leave them alone. They come with me or I don't come at all," I said. Olivia looked up at me and smiled.

Navarez looked us over for what seemed like hours until he nodded. I could still tell that he was still debating it over in his head, but he had to make a decision quick, I knew. "Fine, lets go."

As we entered the room, an older man, possibly in his fifties or early sixties, met us at the door. "Navarez! They've...what are these people doing with you?" He said, motioning towards us.

"Sir, they're with me. I allowed them to stay with me, if that's okay with you," he answered back.

Braxton grabbed my hand cautiously, and the alarm finally stopped. The man, whose name tag read "Brown," looked us over, especially me, as if he was debating on sending me out to war or something. I didn't really like the way he eyed Braxton.

"Okay, but just know that if the kid starts crying, I'm kicking the three of them out," he said.

I wanted to protest to him for saying that, but I bit my tongue for Navarez's sake.

"So what was that sound, sir? It sounded like missiles or something," Navarez asked a little nervously.

Sargent, better yet Chief Master Sargent Brown by reading his insignia, folded his hands and looked at Navarez with a pained expression. "Class Four has begun, and I have a feeling that Class Five is right around the corner."

The room got cold, and I stared back at him in disbelief. Nobody said a word until Brown spoke up again to kill the silence. "Trump told me that the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota has already reported spore clouds and clickers. That's about three hundred miles from the Canadian border, maybe two seventy five. If any spore clouds come from the south into that city..." he drifted off.

"What?" I asked, my heart pounding.

"Fallout starts, or in worse terms, the end of the world."
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