Part 5

Yael makes two friends. A dog and a boomstick.

I lost track of time, but to be honest I just stopped caring. For what seemed like years, and most likely was, I lived like a rat. I ate whatever I thought wouldn’t kill me, but I had a few moments when I hoped the opposite would come true. I tried to use the things my dad taught me to survive. There were supposed to be plants that you could eat growing everywhere. Either I didn’t pay enough attention, or they were nowhere to be found.

I decided one day to head for the mountains in the distance. I followed some of the old roads trying to get there. Not long after I got over them I came across a rotted out town. I was looking for guns in the town’s police station when I heard a loud roaring. Suddenly the air was filled with dust that threatened to choke the life out of me. I held my breath and hoped it would be over soon.

I crawled out of the police station gasping for air. The storm had left the town covered in a foot of sand and dirt. I heard a dog whining in a different section of the half collapsed station and followed the sound. I climbed over a fallen brick wall and saw a man’s body with the dog laying down beside it. It looked like the man had died there a few days before. I tried getting closer to the dog and she started growling at me, ready to defend the man’s body.

When she realized I wasn’t a threat she let me get close to her. She was wearing a collar with a tag that read ‘Molly.’ I looked at the man and saw he had nothing with him but Molly, a leash, and a canteen full of dust. It took a while, but I got Molly to trust me. After looking around the police station for a while I found a half rusted shotgun with a handful of shells. I decided there was nothing left there worth taking, and with that Molly and I were left the buried town.

There we were, Yael and Molly, a girl and her dog. We followed what bit of road we could see and eventually saw a sign that read ‘Carson City 5 miles.’ When we got to the top of the next hill, the sun was setting and I could see lights in the city. Apparently there were people who had been able to hold on to life in Carson City.

Author's Note

It's supposed to be a first person narrative. I want to flesh it out as much as it needs. Let me know what you think needs changed, dropped, or expanded on. Be critical.

Note from Part 1: Yael's age at this point is somewhere around late teens to early twenties(17-20) and over the course of the next few parts, not much time passes to the events of Dust. I think at that point she's 23-ish but there's no set age so if that age conflicts with something in the story I apologize.

Reviews

[EileenM]

A suggestion: to let the reader know how old Yael is, how about mentioning or alluding to the amount of time that's passed?
"It's been 5 years since I saw my mom, and I barely remember what she looked like." kind of thing. It gives the reader a frame of reference, or sometimes a better one, for how long Yael and her dad are staying in some places.

Just a suggestion; it's your story.

[Jordan]

Doing that in the revision. Just have to find a good way to make the birthday scenes seem natural. I've done one that's good, but the next one seems forced. Part 3 is just awkward all around which is why I haven't put it up yet.