After enjoying a meal and going for a jog in the rain, disaster strikes and the struggle for survival begins.

I was eating at a restaurant, going through the usual motions one does at such a place. I finished my meal and left, quite possibly didn’t pay for it, and walked outside. It was raining pretty hard, but I didn’t care. I started to jog in the rain and some people that were hiding under buildings and looking out of their windows were laughing at me but I still didn’t care.


To everyone’s shock and surprise, the ground started to rumble like crazy and people began to scream and panic. Buildings started to shed their outer materials as the vibrations sent large pieces of stone to the ground. I started to run, dodging the falling debris and ran up to higher ground to an area that didn’t really have any buildings around it. I ended up on a grassy hill that overlooked the roofs of a few buildings and could see buildings falling in the distance. I heard the bending and screeching of metal and turned around to see that a water tower was falling, and I was right in its drop zone. I ran and jumped onto one of the roofs that was next to the hill, and dodged the tower. It crashed on the ground and started to roll down the hill a little, and safely landed on the roof next to me.


I thought I was safe for the moment, but with little notice, half of the building I was standing on collapsed, and it happened to be the half that the tower and I was on. I grabbed on to one of the towers ladder pieces and fell to the ground. After the hard fall, the tower was on top of me, but it wasn’t crushing me as I was in a crevice made by the towers round shape. Once everything that had fallen was settled, the other half of the building began to fall right on the tower, and with each mass of the building falling on the tower, it felt like it was starting to lose its shape and was caving in under the weight of the other half of the building. Slowly, the tower was getting closer to me and more dust and debris was gathering around me. The tower wasn’t as much of a threat as the debris, because I was starting to get buried by it. With the tower pressed more on me, the building had finished falling and it was silent. The immense vibrations started to die down, and I began to try to crawl my way out.


When I finally got out, my surroundings were nothing like they were before. Only crumbled buildings and skeletons of what had been there before remained. People began to emerge, but one person caught my attention. He was covered in blood and was waving a gun around. He was yelling all kinds of random blabber and people around us just kind of stared at him in fear. He finally pointed and shot the gun. A direct hit to my leg. I went down, and he went to pull the trigger again, but he was out of ammo. He let out a crazy yell and ran away. I got up, felt the wound, and I could feel the bullet in my leg. I then used my fingers to take it out, and that was that.


The dark sky started to clear up a little bit, and at this point, thousands of people had congregated to the area I was in. There was a huge military blockade that was keeping people contained in the area, and it was pretty chaotic. A sound caught everyone’s attention, and all of the people as well as myself looked to the sky to see a large fleet of planes flying over us dropping huge supply boxes that parachuted and landed on the ground. People were running towards the boxes and ripping them open, but once again people were put in fear as some of the supply crates parachutes did not deploy, they fell to the ground hard and were crushing people. I just sat by one of the crates that had already fallen to the ground and figured that it was a safe spot to be.


After the drop was complete and everyone’s attention was on the crates, I walked over to the military blockade, and through a sheet of bulletproof glass, I told the guy behind it that I had just been shot. He saw I was the only one around and told me to quickly go into this small metal door. I ran through it and it was a war zone on the other side. There were old tanks on fire and soldiers running all over the place, which I thought was pretty odd for a disaster area. I was led through an alleyway and met up with a medical helicopter. They bandaged me up and said they would give me a lift to a safe location. I hopped on the chopper, and they took off.


This is where I saw the true amount of the damage that had been done. I could see that I was in Brooklyn, as Manhattan was visible across the river. Every bridge connecting the cities was destroyed and the water level was a lot lower than it was before. The pilot of the chopper told me that there was some kind of attack that had to do with setting up a huge detonation by the fault lines New York City was on, which in turn led to a massive shift of land causing all of the boroughs to move farther apart from each other. Beneath me, I could see small groups of military fighting some enemy force that I was not aware of.


I finally made it to the safe spot they were talking about, and it was not much different from the place I had come from. There was a very large mass of people around this one building that did not sustain any damage. Lots of people were going in, but I didn’t see anyone coming out. They walked me into the building, bypassing all of the people trying to get in, and I ended up in an office. An old man with a white robe on came into the room, and told me I was lucky to be alive even after being shot, and asked me if I wanted to take the test. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I just said yes. He gave me an envelope and told me to push the red button on the door when I was done. He left the room and I picked up the envelope. Something outside the door caught my eye. It was a line of people in white robes and white paint on their faces walking by. Once they passed, I heard screams. I walked out to the doorway and noticed no one was in the hallway. I started to walk towards where the screams were coming from, and saw a closed door with a small window on it. I peeked through the window and saw two men strapping people with black paint on their faces down to beds and injecting them with a big needle. Soon their bodies went limp and they were picked up by the men and thrown into this big furnace on the other side of the room.


I was snapped back to attention as I heard footsteps in the distance, and I started to run, trying to find the closest open door. I tried the first door, but it was locked, then I saw another door with a small window that had the lights off. I twisted the doorknob and it was unlocked. I went inside, closed the door, and then hid. I waited for the footsteps to pass, then I surveyed my surroundings. It was some kind of store room. I started looking around through drawers and cabinets, and found a white robe. I started looking through more drawers and found a jar of white paint. From what I saw, I came to the conclusion that the people who passed the test were given the white robes and the white face paint, while those who failed, got the black paint and were euthanized.


I put the paint on my face and put the robe on. I waited by the door and listened. I heard more footsteps coming. I looked down the hall and saw another group of people with white robes walking down the hall. I quietly twisted the knob and pulled the door slightly open. Right when the last person walked past the door, I opened the door and took position behind the last person and followed. They walked down spiraled stairs that led underground. I kept my head down and just followed the person in front of me. We ended up in this long underground tunnel. There was daylight at the end. We got outside and there was a small dock, with a boat waiting. We all got on the boat, and set off.


The location we arrived at was unknown to me. It was like some kind of secret utopia. It was like everyone had no idea what had just happened. Kids were running around happily in a small park and people populated the streets. We made our way into another building where we showered and were given new clothing. I walked through this maze of a building, going from small room to small room, bumping into small groups of people that were sitting around in the rooms. I made it out, and I was in a big city with blue skies. I had a key in my hand and an address on a piece of paper and that was that.