Sci Fi Story Beginning-- Lindsay

                                            

                         "There's no chance."

                         "No chance of what?"

                         "Leaving." I spit out the word with grim disgust, as if it tastes sour on my tongue. Cal, my co-worker and fellow survivor, lets out a cough and he falls to his knees, and I kneel beside him while patting him on the back. As the dust and debris settled in Cal's lungs, it made his breathing shallow, his coughs sharp rasps. Helping him up, I lead him to a mound of rubble and sit him down, leaning against piled up planks of wood that come from one of the many buildings that crumbled from the nuclear explosion. Ever since the bombs went off, his eyes seem to be glazed over by dust. Everything is dust. Dust floating in the air. Dust covering our clothes. Dust blanketing our hearts.

                         Five years or so, the world was devastated by an unknown number of nuclear bombs that bombarded the planet from space. No one knows who fired the earth. Heck, there isn't even anyone left to confide in. The sun, a non-existent light source is blocked by clouds of floating grey particles while a layer of debris covers what used to be rolling fields of green and forest floors.              

                         Sometimes, on the difficult nights when reality stares back at me with its blank eyes, sheets of white with no color, I toss and turn in my agonizing sleep, my dreams just continuous reruns of the explosions, the people, and the emptyness. It isn't the explosion that sparks my insecurity, it's the painstaking emptiness that is all I see.