Atonia-Into the Gates of Hell

 

 

Prologue

 

Amberlyn wiped her eyes as she watched the news broadcast explaining worldwide about the Eastern seaboard being wiped out by a hurricane. She looked into the eyes of her children, with new tears forming, she sighed. She was a single mommy and the two people depending on her the most stared back at her with trepidation. Her daughter was too young to understand, but her son was scared because this wasn’t the first disaster to strike the continental U.S., let alone the world. The natural disasters picked up speed over the last few weeks and Amberlyn was terrified for everyone she knew all over the world. When she lost contact with some of them, she feared for the worst. 
 

Tall, slender, and mighty; Amberlyn stood watching the TV, running her fingers through the entire two feet of her long brunette hair. She sighed as the tears kept streaming down her face. Her son looked her in the eye, not wanting to convey anything to her other than to remain calm. Where they lived nothing bad touched them yet, but they did live around the New Madrid fault line. Knowing they could go at any time, the people in the area tried to prepare as best they could on short notice. 
 

Days after Amberlyn cried about the others she knew around the world, she was fighting for life under a pile of rubble, buried alive in a house that used to be home. She tried hard to get out of her former place of residence, as she fought and skittered around, climbing through all the wood, sheet rock, and metal, sharp objects threatened her existence. As she reached the surface of what remained of her locale on Earth, she looked around to see if anyone else got out of their homes. The only voice she heard was that of her eldest child, Alex. Her daughter was nowhere to be found. There was no other sign of life in the neighborhood. The two searched for the little girl. When they found Marie, she was gone. Amberlyn screamed loudly and cried; her baby, the last child she could have was dead and there was nothing she could do but look at the tiny, torn, bloody body. Marie died reaching out a hand to someone, anyone. Her sandy hair raked off the back of her head by a part of the roof of the house. Alex jerked his mother away from his sister’s corpse whether she wanted to go or not. After he got her out of the wreckage, he threw up. He’d never seen a dead body before in his life. 

After a few cold nights spent scavenging the town looking for signs of life and ways to stay warm, it was time for them to move on. The world was changing and the two of them, once honest and hard working, had to change with it.
 
 

***

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A couple of towns over, William, known to his friends as Will, felt the vibrations from the New Madrid fault line and held onto an overhead beam of the shelter, watching the silt of old musty dirt fall while the world above him shook mercilessly.  As the world crumbled, Will prayed he and his family would make it out alive. He hadn’t been married long and his wife was terrified, sitting beside him in a corner when the beams overheard began to fall and their basement caved in around them. He tried his best to shelter her from the debris, but one of the water pipes cut through her body as she huddled on the floor. 
 

Through the dusty atmosphere, Will tried his best to keep her alive. Minutes later, she died in his arms. More debris from above him crumbled on top of him in the shelter while he hovered over his wife’s body, not sure what to do. When the shaking finally stopped, Will slowly and carefully climbed out of the hole where his house used to be and looked around at the different landscape. The once thriving rural metropolis was nothing but piles of rubble gathered at his feet as he made his way away from his new home. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t let the new sadness pour over him, he knew stopping to gather his thoughts would be dangerous so he kept going.

 
When night fell, Will had made his way far enough away from his house, he thought he might be safe from the tremors that followed the massive earthquake that sank and decimated his entire town. The reverberations were felt while Will stood still looking for a place in piles of trees, bricks, old house pieces, and metal to hide for the night. The movement beneath his feet made him find the tallest bit of structure still standing and climb it. Once he was at the top of what was left of an old building he could see a path that looked clear enough to take. When he was on the ground again, he began looking for supplies in the wreckage he passed. 

 

***

 

Monty huddled close to his small family under a mattress in the bathtub of his second story apartment. At his age, he didn’t want to admit he was terrified in front of his also young wife and their child, but he was. He’d never been in an earthquake before and it showed in his brown eyes and the sweat that matted his dark hair to his forehead. His wife held their child in her arms as he whimpered, wishing there was something his daddy could do to stop the shaking. In the apartment, pictures fell off the walls and windows broke as the building crashed down around them and tub fell into the bathroom below their little home.

Outside the cars with alarms were going off as the parking lot broke apart and began to swallow debris and metal alike. The falling buildings stopped moving and rubble surrounded the tub in the lower floor of the broken building Monty and his family formerly lived in. He used what muscle power he had to raise the mattress off of the three of them. Large concrete blocks fell off the only thing guarding them all from death. Surveying the apartment they fell into, Monty was looking for a way out. There was a window in the front and the door off to the side. The family slowly crept through the small apartment. The overhead concrete porch fell in the earthquake, blocking the door. Fear found its way back into Monty’s head as he looked out the broken window. A large tree and a power line were down nearly covering the only way out. 

As Monty was helping his wife and their child out of the small opening, he heard the crackle of a live power line. When he heard his wife screaming he scrambled to get out of the building to find her standing in what used to be the parking lot being electrocuted while holding their son. He stood his ground and listened as her screams died down and she fell to her knees then landed on her charbroiled face. Monty screamed so hard and loud he almost lost his voice. After he finished his cry of anguish, he felt the ground rumbling again. He knew he couldn’t stay rooted to the spot and had to move. Something inside him compelled him forward and he raced across what was left of the rubble filled parking lot and out of the apartment complex. When he reached the once lovely tree lined street, he looked up into the sky, angry and hate-filled. It brewed to a boiling point and he felt as if his insides were exploding. He shut his eyes tightly, his body was shaking like the ground around him. When he opened his eyes, Monty’s view of the world changed. Through cat’s eyes, he began to imagine the immediate decimation of the entire continent then the world. The feeling of rage and passionate revenge grew inside him as he walked through the debris and stood on the edge of the precipice of destruction. He knew the world was changing. He knew he was changing. He also knew he was now something far different and the madness he used to try to run from was the one thing to help him survive.

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