《The Fall》


 The Beginning Of the End

    I woke up to the usual sound of my alarm going off on my phone. Annoyed with the sound after a few moments, I fumble around my desk next to my bed to turn the damned thing off. After a few moments, I turn it off and glance at my phone, 7:40. Another boring Friday, 8ams are ass, and your stupid self-thought it would be a good idea to take them this semester, although being done at 11 is nice. After contemplating skipping class for the hundredth time, I hop out of bed.


    I hop out of bed and listen to the noises of my roommate''s sleep, it kinda sucks he snores, but I got pretty lucky. We have very compatible personalities, so we get along well. Well, on the positive side, I get to move out of the student dorms this summer and have my own apartment, so that will be cool. I glance out the window and see the sun starting to peek out across the horizon. This is generally my cue to get moving and get ready for class. However, this morning I took a moment to enjoy the view, living this high up certainly had its perks, I thought.


    After another few boring hours of class, I was finally free for the weekend, nothing planned but enjoying the freedom nonetheless. My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket, ''You have time to hang out and play some video games?''. Hell yeah, always time for that, it was a message from my friend, Jim. He was a part of a tight group of friends I spent most of my time goofing around and studying with. I sent him a reply ''Hell yeah, when?''. As I waited for a reply I figured I''d go grab a bite to eat, so I went to the Student Union to grab a burger.


    As I was waiting in line I saw something odd on one of the screens, ''Breaking News! Unconfirmed sources claim of unknown activity all along the coasts of Texas, California, and New York!'' Well, I live in Texas, should be interesting, most likely another oil spill or the like, I thought, disturbed. It was suddenly my turn to order so I decided to look into it later to see if it was worth reading about, could be entertaining.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Almost as soon as I finished my meal I got a reply from Jim, ''Me and some of the guys are already hanging out in your room, we haven''t really started doing anything yet though''. Huh, that''s fair, my room seemed to be the hangout room since we mostly left our door unlocked. Open secret on the floor really, it made hosting people a thousand times easier if the could enter and leave our tiny dorm as they please. I replied ''Cool, I''ll be right over''. I''m not really sure what we will play or, do really, but I''m sure whatever it is, we will have fun with it. Having a group of friends to do stuff with really made life more enjoyable.


    As I was walking back to my dorm, I got an emergency alert on my phone, I wasn''t alarmed, most of these were usually just Amber alerts for missing children. As I looked at my phone, my eyes widened in surprise ''EMERGENCY ALERT: TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY, MULTIPLE ATTACKS HAVE BEEN MADE ON MAJOR CITIES''. In the few moments it took to process this alert, the Tornado/Air raid sirens began to wail. I stood dumbfounded for a moment before jogging back to my dorm, I couldn''t really spring due to an ongoing knee injury, it wasn''t too bad as long as I didn''t put too much pressure on it, jogging and walking were fine, just needed to be careful was all. Avoiding the other panicking people was a pain, but most people showed at least a semblance of sanity and were polite enough to not shove each other around.


    However, after only about a minute after the sirens started wailing, I heard a distinct, pop. After that, all the sirens faded, including all the lights in buildings and the emergency lights that were posted around campus. Odd. I checked my phone to see if something odd had happened again, except when I tried to activate it, nothing happened. I looked around in confusion again, as did most the people who were previously panicking. We were standing there like a flock of lost sheep if I am going to be quite honest. Out of the silence, someone near me shouted in fear, "EMP!". Oh for fucks sakes.


    The Fall had begun.

 Chapter 1

    There was a moment of silence while everyone soaked that in, and suddenly, chaos everywhere. People were pushing, shoving, running, and flailing about. I was suddenly shoving to the side, hard. When I looked back to see who had done that, there were a group of cops that were shoving through the crowd of panicked people. They were ignoring everyone and looked to be heading back to the police station. Shit, things must be bad if they are ignoring everyone.


    It only took me another minute or two, but I finally got back to my dorm, someone had been clever and opened the doors manually, usually, you had to open them with a card reader for your student ID. I praised my luck as a jogged into the lobby, it was quite surprising to see a lot of people crowding around the non-responsive elevators, panicking. A few smarter ones, including myself, went for the stairs. I was remarking on how stupid people could be as I was running up the stairs, cursing myself for choosing the only dorm that had 8 floors, and of course, I was on the 8th. When I opened the door from the staircase, what shocked me the most was the silence, no one was running down the halls, no one was even here?!


    I opened my door and there was an even bigger surprise, no one was in here either! Usually, there was one or two of my friends hanging out in here at all times, not even including my roommate. Pushing those thoughts out of my mind, I dumped all the stuff in my backpack out onto the bed. I started packing emergency food and water, or at least what I had left in my fridge and on the cabinet, I hadn''t gone to the store in a while, so there wasn''t much. I grabbed a few bottled waters, the mostly full jar of peanut butter, some crackers, and poptarts in my bag. I chucked because there was an old joke with a friend of mine, he remarked if there was ever an apocalypse, there would be 3 surviving things, cockroaches, peanut butter, and poptarts. After thinking that, I winced, thinking about what often comes with an EMP, that''s not something pleasant to think about, dieing slowly to radiation. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    As I was packing everything up, I heard a rumbling sound, getting louder and louder. "What the hell is that?" I said to myself. I kept packing things, like a small notebook, a few pencils, just random things I thought would be useful If I could never come back here. As I was doing this, the rumbling continued to get louder, until finally, I decided to look out the window to see what the hell it was. I peaked out and what I saw shocked me, a line of tanks rolling down the street! There was some sort of vehicle pushing dead cars to the side of the street, and soldiers getting people to move out of the way. Damn, things must be really bad if the army was coming out of its nearby base. I wondered though, why were they coming out and not just staying in?


    As these thoughts circled around my head, my roommate came bursting into the room. "What the hell is going on man?"


    "No idea dude" I said


    "Well, what are you doing?" He said noticing me packing my backpack.


    "Well, I figured I should get a few of my things in a backpack in case we have to move and not come back, or something like that" I said, thinking of all the bad things that could happen.


    He looked at me like I was crazy. I sighed and said "You know what happened right? It was probably an EMP, no electronics are working. So where are we supposed to get food and stuff?"


    He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, suddenly looking very concerned.


    "Anyways" I said, getting up and walking towards the door "I''m going to go check out whats happening outside." I left the room and went to the staircase, still only one for two people on it, coming up or down. As I got to the lobby there was still a large crowd in front of the elevators. I sighed, shook my head and headed outside.