Chapter II

All hell breaks loose

   II
      
       "Kid... hey kid! Wake up! Are you even alive?"
       I groan as I return to consciousness. Where am I? What am I doing on the ground? I crack open my eyes, but the sunlight is so bright it fries them like eggs in a skillet, and I am immediately forced to shut them. I try lifting my head. Bad idea. Upon movement, searing pain shoots down my spine and causes me to gasp.
       "Ohhh..." I groan. "What happened?"
       A man walks up to me. His body blocks some of the sunlight, so I manage to squint up at him. He's standing over me with an expression of shock over his face. He's an older man, about fifty, with long graying hair and a scraggly beard, dark, tan skin and blue eyes. He's dressed pretty rough, like he's homeless.
       "Whatchoo doin' on the ground at a time like this?" he asks.
       "You know. Just hanging around," I reply sarcastically. I look around. People are running everywhere, filling the streets and sidewalks, screaming, shouting, pushing... complete anarchy. This is more hectic than rush hour on Time's Square. "What's happened?"
       The man extends a hand and pulls me up. Pain shoots up my spine like wildfire, but I manage to stand upright. I stretch forward and crick! all down my back. I felt much better after that.
       The man is looking at me, dumbstruck. "Don't you know?" he asks with an expression of peer puzzlement on his face, unable to get his mind around my lack of knowledge.
       "Know what?" I ask, waving my hands. I look up at the sky. "What time is it?"
       The man shakes his head. "Where the hell have you been boy?" he asks incredulously. "You live under a rock or somethin'?"
       "I don't know anything! I've been unconscious since dawn..." That's when I remembered. I spin around quickly. There was the orphanage, void of life. "Oh my God," I mutter.
       "Hey kid, your back's bleedin'," the man points out. "What happened to you?"
       I spin around again and face the man. "The Snatchers were here," I gasp. "They took my brother!"
       "They took damn near everybody under the age of eighteen," the man replies. "They struck all over the country, kidnapping people everywhere all at the same time! Don't you know?"
       "NO!" I shout. "I don't know! They shot me with a tazer and pushed me out of a window! I've been unconscious! What the hell happened?!" 
       "Holy s**t, you don't know, do you?" he realizes. "We've been couped! The damn Koreans couped us!" 
       "... What?" I ask, unable to say anything else.
       "It's a coup de etat! The Koreans have overthrown our government. They've set off missiles and are preparing to nuke America all the way to hell!"
       "A... a coup de etat?" I ask, thunderstruck. "How?"
       "Korean spies infiltrated our government and tore it apart from the inside out. All of the major leaders including the president have been assassinated. They've taken over our nuclear warhead facilities and are preparing to nuke us with our own goddamn weapons! At six o' clock tonight the missiles will go off and all will be gone..."
       "What are all of these people doing then?" I ask. "Shouldn't they be finding their way to the bomb shelters?"
       "... That, I'm afraid, is impossible. The Koreans have occupied all of the bomb shelters and are gunning down anybody who comes near in cold blood. It's a massacre. I saw it, waves of innocent people, men, women, children, only wanting a chance at salvation... shot down by the thousands, blood running in the streets like a scarlet river. We have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. We're all doomed... wait, what am I doing?" he asks suddenly. "I can't waste my time explaining this to you! Sorry, you're on your own, kid!"
       "Wait!" I shout as he turns and runs away. "What am I supposed to do?!" The man ignores me and continues away. "Damn," I mutter. What am I supposed to do? What the heck is going on? Attacked by Chinese terrorists and couped by Korean spies all in the same day? All while I was unconscious?!
       Anarchy unfolds before my very eyes. I see people running frantically in all directions, no order whatsoever, complete, utter chaos. Where am I supposed to go? Had judgement day actually come?
       "Listen to me, all ye sinners and non-believers!" I hear a shout from behind. I turn around to see some lunatic standing on top of a van holding a sign that reads, 'JUDGEMENT DAY IS UPON US! CRY UNTO GOD FOR HIS MERCY!' "The Day of The Damned is upon us!" he continues, waving the sign frantically. "All ye sinners and non-believers shall be punished! Only those faithful to the word of God will be spared! The rest shall be damned! The Day of the Damned is upon us!"
       "Shut up, you crazy old fool!" another man shouts, waving his fist violently at the sign guy.
       "You too shall be judged," the man continues. "All of you fornicators and adulators, w***e-mongers and thieves, coveters and non-believers! You shall all meet your demise! The Day of the Damned is upon us!"
       "I said, SHUT THE HELL UP!" the other man shouts, jumping on to the van. He pulls out a switch blade and reams it into the man's neck. He struggles wildly in a colorful splash of bright crimsonn and falls off of the van, crumpling to the ground in a lifeless heap. "Where's your God now?!"
       Violence outbreaks everywhere. Fights break out, some with fists and others with baseball bats and golf clubs, some even with knives.
       I look towards the road. Further down a man with red hair, who was speeding extremely fast, lost control of his vehicle.
       "S**t!" he cried as he started veering left and right as he attempted to regain control of his car. Suddenly it flipped onto its side and was crashed into by another car with a deafening collision.The collision knocked the car right-side up, completely totaling it however. The man with red hair banged his head on the steering wheel. He was banged up with one HELL of a headache, but otherwise OK.
       "You okay?" he asks the man who crashed into his car.
       "You son of a b***h!" the other man roars as he pries open his door and very shakily walks out. He has a large gash on his head that is bleeding profusely.  "Where'd you get your goddamn license, a cerial box?"
       "I'm terribly sorry," the man with red hair apologizes as he is yanked out of his vehicle and thrown onto the ground. He cries out in pain and stares desperately into the other man's eyes. "I didn't mean to--"
       His words were cut off rather rudely as the other man jumped on top of him and proceeded to beat his face down repeatedly with his fist. Soon it was painted red.
       "That's my baby!" a woman cries as a large black man sprints past her, snatching her infant. The man laughs cruelly as the woman drops to her knees, sobbing. 
       "Somebody stop him!" she cries. Nobody even looks at her. She pans around in desperation. "Please! Somebody! Anybody! Help, he took my baby!"
       "That's my bike, you dingbat!" cries a young man as he his kncoked off of his motorcycle and has it stolen right in front of him by some large-built man.
       "You wrecked my car, you sorry wretch!" the man was shouting as he continued to beat the red-head down.
       "Please," he gurgles. "You.. you'll kill... me..."
       Shouting and fighting all around me. I couldn't turn my head without seeing red. "I need to get out of here," I whisper.
      ____________________________________________________
      
       I don't know how I managed to cross the street without getting trampled to death. The crowd is exceedingly rowdy at the moment. I got whacked a few times by unwary citizens (some seemed very aware of what they were doing) and as a result, I'm even more banged up than I was before. Regardless, I'm alive... but is that a good thing? Is there even a point in living? Everyone I love is dead, Jack is kidnapped, I'm all alone... I suppose none of it matters. In a few hours, everything will be gone. I remembered a nursery rhyme my mother used to sing to me. "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down..." I whisper. "Mama... is this really the way it all ends?"
       I have no idea where to go. According to the one man, all the shelters are being puppy-dog guarded by the Koreans, so obviously there's no salvation there. There really isn't anywhere for me to go at all. Home? Ha. I don't have a home... I did. But... but what? I haven't been there since my mother died, I thought. Do I even have the courage to go back? I thought about it. Where else could I go? I'm all alone... I guess it would be fitting to spend my final moments in the place I used to call home. "Better than dying on the street like a dog," I mutter as I start to make my way towards my home.
       I do my best to block out everything that is happening around me and start a fast paced jog. I do my best to doge around people in my way, but that's about as easy as getting Frogger across the street without getting hit. At one point I actually trip and fall on top of another boy.
       "Hey, get off me!" he groans.
       "Oh, I'm sorry... Slick? Is that you?"
       I help him back up to his feet. "Allen? Is that you?"
       Slick used to go to school with me back before my parents died. He wasn't exactly a friend, but it was somebody I knew. Just being around him made some of the loneliness disappear. 
       "I haven't seen you in ages, man!" he laughs as we move off to the side.
       "Times have been rough," I reply. Gunshots fired off a few blocks away.
       "You can say that again," he mutters, wincing. "What the hell is going on? I heard it's a coup?"
       "Yeah. I don't really understand how, but... it happened."
       "But why? The war with Korea ended months ago, they signed a treaty and everything!"
       "They signed a goddamn piece of paper," I spat. "That doesn't mean anything. As to why... I don't have a clue. All I know is that at six tonight the missiles will launch and we will all die."
       Slick looked at the ground. "I always thought it would end different, man. Like a global epidemic or something. I didn't think that everything would be turned to dust overnight."
       "Yeah... I always thought that there would be a chance of salvation, but this... not only have they made our graves but they've pissed all over them as well. The b******s..."
       "Where you heading, anyways?" 
       "My old home," I reply. "I want to see it one more time before..." I break off.
       "I hear you. I'm heading to my house as well. See if my Mom is still there. We had a fight last time we talked. I want to rectify it."
       "I hope you do, brother. Don't die with regrets like that, okay? You go make it right."
       "I will." He clapped me a high five and brought it in for a short hug. "Good luck. Who knows, maybe the bombs will be stopped?"
       "Maybe," I shrug. "God speed." 
       We parted and went our separate ways. I feel a little stronger, having seen an old face. Carrying that strength, I continue forward.
      ____________________________________________________
       
       As a little child, The War of the Worlds had always been one of my favorite stories. I never cared much for the movie, I found it too frightening at the time, but while most kids were being read Aurthur the Anteater or Dr. Seuss, I was demanding my father to read me stories of suspense and despair. I loved to put myself into the role of the honerable hero. Who wouldn't want to be the hero of the story? Strong, adamant, brave, resilient, most of the time handsome. I loved The War of the Worlds because I liked the idea of the human race being attacked by gigantic aliens with no conceivable hope of salvation. My mother always thought I was morbid, but most six year olds were.
       "Do you think the world will end like that, Daddy?" I asked when he had finished reading it to me one night.
       "End like what, son?" he asked. "The good guys won in the end. Peace was restored to the world."
       "Yeah, but what about in real life? Would we still win?"
       "Why do you ask?"
       "I just think that the world is destined to end someday. Don't you?"
       "Possibly. All things must come to an end eventually, I believe. But I don't think it would be brought upon by something like an alien civilization."
       "How, then? A disease like the Black Death? A zombie outbreak?"
       "No... I think the end will be brought by our own hands."
       I looked at him quizzically. "What do you mean? You think we will destroy the world?"
       "The sad truth is, my son, our species is a violent one. Filled with teeming hate for one another. We are driven by impulse, driven by hate, willing to kill for the smallest reason. We are all the same, therefore we should all be working together. But instead, we are segregated by race, segregated by religion, segregated by nationality..."
       "And you think that in the end all the hate will boil over and we will destroy ourselves?"
       "Yeah. Something like that."
       I snorted. "Right. I'm betting on a zombie apocalypse. It makes a lot more sense." 
       "Maybe. Who knows? Perhaps the world won't end after all and and will exist for all eternity."
       I didn't quite understand at the time, but as I continue to experience the sinister events of this hate-filled day, I realize that my father's prediction was a lot more accurate than even he would like to admit. The world would not meet it's end as flying saucers descended from the sky, creating walls of fire with their high tech lasers, or as a rising army of flesh-eating, re-animated corpses dug their way up from their graves to feast on human flesh. It was all as my father said... "the end will be brought by our own hands..."