• What had once been a colorful suburban neighborhood, complete with an array of minivans and manicured lawns was now a jumble of dark debris. Glass, damaged furniture, the skeletons of cars, and various objects that not only a week ago had decorated the insides of attractive homes were now strewn about in the dirt and on broken slabs of asphalt that had once been a road. As if sensing the gloom that had taken over the place, the sun was refusing to shine and the light blue sky was replaced with ugly and possessive masses of grey clouds that cast shadows on anything they possibly could. There was something else strange about the place; something different. Could it be the lack of noise? No sounds could be heard coming from Chester Drive whether made by humans or animals, and the silence seemed deafening to Amelia.

    On the ground and leaning against the remains of a wall, was a shivering young lady of sixteen years. The girl’s name was Amelia Lee Drentts, although the idea of needing a last name was ridiculous to her, as she doubted that there were enough people left alive to even have to worry about last names. Her pale skin was covered with smudges of ash and her long black hair was in a heap of messy tangles. Accompanying her filthy state of being like accessories were cuts and dark bruises in hues of blue, black and yellow covering every spot of her body that the dirt hadn’t. Amelia’s overall look, combined with her worn and ripped clothing, would be fit for some type of designer collection named Vagabond de la Grunge.

    Amelia’s face held no emotions and her eyes were blank and dry from the hours she had spent crying. This was something that Amelia did not do often, crying. She would slam a door on her fingers and only let a few profanities slip from her pink lips before moving on, or stub her toe and hop around on one leg for a few seconds before continuing to walk in the direction she’d been going before. Amelia wasn’t a total robot though, she might cry once or twice on a blue moon if she saw some super-depressing movie. But she didn’t have to worry about sad movies now; she doubted that there would be any more made.

    ‘What happened?’ is what you may be wondering, but Amelia didn’t know the answer herself. Could it have been global warming? Pollution? The product of some nuclear war? It didn’t really matter what caused all of this though, what was going to happen now was what concerned Amelia the most. The man on the news had said a hurricane was going to hit, and that hadn’t been all that strange, seeing as hurricanes had become much more common as the years went by. In fact, lots of things that had once not been had become more common. Earthquakes, tsunamis, varying climates, and extinction had all made themselves more comfortable since 2087, the year in which global warming had reached it peak. The strange thing was that it stopped. Global warming, that is. The hole in the atmosphere that had caused so much worry started to close itself and caused many scientists and astronomers alike to spend hours of puzzlement looking over their graphs and charts. End of the problem right? Not exactly. The strange weather persisted and gradually became worse. It became dangerous to go outside at times and many businesses and public places slowly began to close down or just collapse from the wear and tear. And that was when the Storm hit.

    It was different from any other hurricane or weather phenomena that had occurred before. Huddled in the hallway that there was now no trace of with her mother, father, and brother, she had heard the windows being attacked by a persistent hail. Before then, her family had gathered from the news that tornados were rampaging across the country and that there had possibly been a colossal earthquake somewhere in California but that they couldn’t verify it because their correspondents in Cali weren’t responding. And soon after that the electricity went off. That was when it got really bad, forcing the family into the narrow hallway that had no windows or skylights. Lightning and thunder had shaken their home and the sound of sirens in the distance was all that she remembered clearly. After that she vaguely recalled someone screaming-perhaps herself judging from the way her throat felt-and her little brother’s crying. Then everything went black. When she had woken up she was lying beneath a pile of heavy debris and had kept herself awake long enough to crawl up to the top before sleeping again. The second time she had woken, she realized something was missing: her family. With the little amount of energy she had, she had clawed through the pile in a hysterical manner and the only thing she found was her brother’s small stuffed animal, Puff, who her brother never went anywhere without. She had picked up the small blue bear and stared at it a long time, and all the while tears had made their way down her face.

    Now the bear was held tightly to her chest by her two bruised arms. For a long time she had been sitting where she was, her eyes looking straight out in front of her with a lifeless glint to them. Now they looked down at Puff who stared back at her with eyes that told her that she was being selfish by not looking for her brother who would obviously be needing his little bear buddy. Taking a shaky breath, Amelia began to lift herself off the ground…only to sit back down and groan at the pain she felt all over her body. Some of the cuts on legs opened up again from when she had stretched the skin on them to stand and for the first time since she realized how painful her left ankle felt when she moved it. Not to mention the aching that had started in her head when she moved her neck. But she had spent too much time, not that she really knew how much time she had actually spent there, sitting on the ground doing nothing and trying to avoid the thoughts of what had happened to her family. To her neighbors and the human race in general. Judging from the mess her surroundings were in, there had to be a lot of injuries. Amelia wasn’t even going to think about the death toll. Not when her family could be part of it. So she would look for them because that would give her a goal, despite that little pessimistic voice in the back of her mind was telling her that it was useless.

    Clenching her teeth, she pushed herself off the ground a second time and succeeded in staying up. Favoring her right leg because of the pain that surged through her left when she put weight on it, she began to limp across the mess that was once a street with Puff in hand.

    Her eyes, although now with a certain glimmer of determination to them, couldn’t help but hold a hint of hysteria as she continued in the direction she guessed was north. ‘Over there…isn’t that Miss Martin’s rocking chair? And what about that piece of cloth? It looks a lot like the material on Cary’s couch.’
    With each item she thought she recognized, Amelia became less hopeful of finding her family. If they were here, wouldn’t they be looking for her too? The other possibility that had been persistently ringing through her head since she had pulled herself from the pile of debris made her feel as though she’d been punched in the stomach, so she refused to think about it too much. Her family couldn’t be dead. Could they?