The Beginning to White Ashes

Follow Zeke as he unintentionally uncovers the secrets of how, and why, the worlds population suddenly burst into white flames and became ash, and why he suddenly now is the last hope for the world.

I rubbed my eyes and looked to the left at my bed table, where my clock was. The time read 1:37 AM, but hadn’t it just been 10:30 a second ago? Man where did the time go. I shook my head, returning my gaze to the phone in my hands, which had just beeped again.

I had been talking to my friend, Naho, for around 4 hours now. We seem to have quite a bit in common, except for the fact she lives all the way across the world. While I live in Nova Scotia, she lives all the way in Japan, although, she was originally from the United States, or at least that’s what she had said.

We’ve been talking for about a few years now, at least once a day. We consider ourselves good friends, best friends even. I sometimes think that it’s sort of weird my best friend lives across the world, and we’ve never met in real life, but at least I know that it’s not only me, it’s the same thing with her.

I unlocked my phone, typing in my password rather quickly, reciting it in my head. 082215. Most people think it’s just a few random numbers, but it’s actually the date that her and I met, although no one knows that except myself, since they’d probably think I was really weird to make it something of the sort.

Looking at the message she had sent me, she explained how she needed to get to bed, since she had a long day ahead of her tomorrow. I typed back saying, “Yeah, that’s true, same here. Night, talk to you tomorrow!” To which she replied, “Night, Zeke.” I smiled as she used my name. She rarely does that for some reason, so when she does, it’s sort of nice.

Tomorrow was a Friday, and for my daily routine that meant that we both didn’t have anything after school. Although we talk every day, that doesn’t mean it’s for long. Both of our schedules are pretty packed with school work, and real life stuff.

Tonight happened to be an exception.

I leaned over my bed to the right, putting my phone onto my dresser, and fiddling with the charger cord, attempting to plug it in. After a quite a few failed attempts I finally felt the satisfying “click.”

I rolled over onto my stomach, getting into my usual weird position, and let my tiredness get the better of me, falling into a deep sleep.

 

 “Zeke? Zeke! Time to get up, last day of the week.”

I grumbled in response to my Mom, my body and mind telling me I needed more sleep. Even so, I slowly rose in my bed, and pulled off my sheets, the cold air hitting my body as I did so. It was still winter, although just about to be spring, and even though there is no snow on the ground, it was still somehow just as cold as a January morning, despite being March.

I rubbed my eyes, and gathered my thoughts. I had the weirdest dream through the night, I know it, although I can’t quite remember what it was. My eye brows crooked as I thought about it. I shook my head, rising to head to the washroom in my room to take a shower before school.

 

I soon fell into my normal morning routine; Taking a shower and brushing my teeth, getting dressed into my school uniform, and then heading out to school, taking along some sort of ‘breakfast’.

What I ate in the morning usually consisted of whatever my Mom decided to throw in the toaster that morning. Bread, maybe a waffle, or toaster pancake.

Before I knew it I was already at school, grabbing books for my first few classes. English, Math, Bio, Religion…

I shoved them into my backpack, and threw the backpack around my shoulder, turning to see if I could spot any of my friends. I hadn’t seen them this morning yet, which was quite weird. Usually they were always bugging me when I get to my locker, shoving each other around and such.

I shrugged, and looked at the time. I had a few minutes before class started, so I figured I’d walk around a bit.

I knew most people in my grade, so I was walked down the halls I would get the often greeting, or clap of the back or shoulder to say hello. It felt quite good. I guess you could say I was sort of popular, but not your cliché popular. I’m just, liked by most I suppose.

The first morning bell rang as I rounded a corner rather sharply, and I bumped straight into someone.

“Oh, sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I frantically apologized, before realizing it was my friend, Alex.

“Oh, Alex! Where were you this morning man?” I asked as he laughed and shoved me back playfully for bumping into him earlier.

“I overslept. My parents are gone for two weeks remember? I had no one to wake me up.” He explains, laughing.

“Oh, that’s right! Well I should be getting to class, I’ll see you in bio.” I say as I start walking off down the hall to my class. I couldn’t afford to be late again, even by a minute. My english teacher is crazy strict, so if I am late for the 3^rd time this week, I’ll definitely be getting detention, which I really would rather not have again… I shiver at the memory. Most boring 4 hours of my life…

 

I enter the classroom, and it seems just in time, Mrs. Johnson was talking about me as I entered, about to announce me late.

“Well look who decided to grace us with their presence,” She said, lowering her glasses, and staring me down as I found my seat in the left middle of the row of desks.

The girl to my left, Julie, raised her hand once Mrs. Johnson closed the door to the classroom. Before we started our work, Mrs. Johnson liked to take some time to discuss current world events. It was actually pretty cool, no other teachers did it. It was really the only good part about her though.

“Yes, Julie?” She said in her familiar raspy voice.

“Do you think we could talk about the virus scientists found a few days ago?” She asked, trying her best to be polite.

I rested my head on my arm, propped up on the desk, now intrigued. I haven’t heard anything about a new virus recently, although it’s not as if I had been looking for it either.

 

“I suppose we can take a look.” Mrs. Johnson replies, turning on the projector and pulling down the projector screen so that we can see what she is doing on her computer.

She then pulls up an article, and reads and explains it to us. The gist of it was there are random people turning into pure white ashes, beginning in the United Kingdom, and seeming to spread. The government and other organization are attempting to contain it, and that’s all they know. Although, Mrs. Johnson pulled up a few un-reliable sources stating that even the government and people who specialize in all of it are being affected as well.

Mrs. Johnson assured us that everything would be fine, but if it was spreading and it can’t currently be stopped, won’t it come here eventually? No, I’m sure they’ll deal with it way before then, I attemt to reassure myself.

 

The rest of the day goes by quite quickly, with nothing super interesting happen, other than Alex not ending up in Bio class, which was quite weird, until I find myself walking back to my locker. As I entered the hallway in which my locker resided, I stepped in something weird on the ground, some random stuff completely bright white, almost like sand. I thought nothing of it, seeing as it was outside the door to the grade 12 science lab, and continued to my locker.

 

As I shoved my books inside, and shoulder my now empty bag, I locked it up, and found myself walking towards the front of the school. Thinking back on the classes for the day, didn’t Mrs. Johnson talk about something similar to that white stuff I found in the hall? A virus…? But that was in the UK wasn’t it? It wouldn’t be here.

I scolded myself for even thinking of something so stupid, and continued out the doors of the school to the bus lane, waiting for my bus.

“Did you guys see the white sand type stuff by the English room?”

“Yeah yeah! What was that stuff? Creepy!”

I overhead a few girls’ conversation beside me. Wait a second, wasn’t the white sand stuff by the science lab? Which means there are multiple occurrences of this. It couldn’t be, could it?

I was lost inside my thoughts until I spotted my bus now approaching up the street. The traffic was quite bad by the looks of it, so there’s no surprise that it was a little late here.

The bus suddenly sped up along the street, rapidly increasing every heartbeat. What was going on? What- I couldn’t even finish my sentence before I witnessed the most weird thing ever through my entire life. The bus driver… They literally burst into white flames. Pure, white, flames.

The bus was no longer speeding up, but it was neither slowing down without it’s driver. It continued down the street, past where it was supposed to turn into the school, before hitting something hard on the ground, and the tire completely burst, causing it to topple to the left, and completely crash, toppling over, and rolling, crushing two cars in the process, and causing more cars to crash around it.

The girls beside me had the same reaction as me, completely jaw dropped. But that they hadn’t witnessed, was that driver, bursting into flames. And what made it even worse was that flames weren’t white, they were orange colored. Orange, not white. And yet, they were as white as they could possible have been.

My train of thought was interrupted, as all around me, screams and shouts started appearing, and more and more cars crashed. I whip around, looking in every direction, Person after person, people were being engulfed in bright white flames. Within seconds, there were only a few of still standing.

My face said it all. I was horrified. What the hell just happened? I just watched everyone I knew die in front of me, and fall into white ashes. My friend who I had spotted, and made eye contact with a second earlier during the commotion, just suddenly burst into flames with the rest. So why wasn’t I? Why am I the one that didn’t share the same fate? And same with the other 4 standing here? Why us?

My thoughts changed as I remembered about my family. My parents, my sisters, my brother.

Tears fell down my face, even just the thought of them turning out like this scared the living hell out of me. I broke into a sprint down the street, sobbing as I ran along the side walks, watching as the streets turned into havoc, people all around me dying in the same manor, most abandoning their cards, trying to find safety, but being burned down before they found any.

 

As I ran I felt something catch my foot as I ran, tripping over it and falling to the ground, scraping up my knees. I tried to get up, taking a quick look to the street. I regretted doing so immediately. I turned to see a car losing control, and coming straight at me. As it did my eyes locked with the driver. I gasped in my last breath of air, realizing who it was.

“Mom?” 

Author's Note

Any tips would be amazing, whether it be on grammar, dialogue, or just the way I have written everything, just anything you can think of that needs to be fixed, changed, touched up etc! Thanks for reading!!