Everyone was eerily quiet at home. My mother was holding Calix closely and conversing quietly with my father in the kitchen, her face drawn, his eyes dark. I was curled up in a tree, trying hard to focus on a book of chemistry solutions that could serve for medicinal needs. My sister was doing her hair for a date she had that night. It would seem that not even a probable-to-certain-death situation could stop her one-thought-one-action mind.
My eyes were on the book, but my mind was on the news we had just heard a few hours earlier and the direct aftermath. With the screaming surrounding me, I hadn't been able to take it. I felt the panic attack coming on from sensory overload and forced myself to focus.
Way out...
I needed a way out...
The path cleared, just slightly, but I saw it. I had turned around and ran out as fast as I could. I didn't remember when my hand had left Calix's, but it had. It was a selfish action, I knew, but I didn't care. I needed to not care. I was freely in the open, but I still felt every single one of the millions of things my senses were taking in. I turned the corner of the path, saw the house straight ahead, and launched myself into the branches of my favourite tree, climbing up to my comfortable branch.
I put my head in my hands, covering my ears, closing my eyes. The breeze swayed the branch, and I felt it on my skin. I smelled the scent it brought with it, heard the trees rustle in its grip. I wet my lips again and opened my eyes, breathing out finally. Another time it would have sent me into a panic attack, but those were other days.
My family had finally arrived home a while later. They knew I was up in the branches above their head, but did not bother to call me down. I wouldn't have come, anyway. I hated having my feet on the ground, so I swam and climbed trees every moment I could, especially in moments of being overwhelmed and the aftereffects. Calix had smiled and waved to me as my father had carried him under me, and I smiled back at him, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. The thought of my dear little brother dying killed me inside.
Even from the very moment he was born, Calix was my baby. During Mother's recovery period, when the novelty of having a baby brother had worn off from my sister, I had cared for him. Later, I fed him, rocked him to sleep, and took care of him when he was teething and my mother was too exhausted. Calix was frequently my first priority. Even more than frequently, he was almost constantly my first priority. I often thought about the fact that, if something happened or I was given the situation, I would grab my brother and leave: going far into the uncharted land that hadn't been inhabited since the explosion.
The explosion...
Decades ago, even before my parents were born, a technology producer released a new cellphone device known as the 6000XSN. Its connection range was so wide that it caused a rift in the ecosystem the minute the first one was turned on. This effect went unnoticed until the first one bought was turned on, too, and then millions all at once. The signals all collided drastically, and it caused a chain-reaction: first an earthquake, then a flood, and then a sudden change in the atmosphere causing a massive explosion that wreaked irreversible damage.
Our world could no longer handle such extreme electricity, and so all the factories and laboratories were shut down except for a few. There were seven factories in Russia that made everything we needed, two laboratories in China that did much of the research, a laboratory in Brazil that was mainly used for small projects, and a final lab in Canada that was technically still in operation but hadn't been used for nearly a decade.
Remembering the past brought a fresh wave of anger over me. Senator Josef Sly and people just like him had helped ruin the world before, and they could do it again. They had too much power, too much ambition, and there were too many of them. To put it bluntly: I didn't trust the man. Never had, and never would.
I snapped the book in my hands closed with a vengeance and leaned against the trunk of the tree, closing my eyes. I heard Melanin call a farewell to our parents as she set off to meet her date, but I didn't move. I kept my eyes closed tight, feeling the sun slowly cross the sky, focusing on different parts of my skin to cast its warm rays. At some point, my senses dulled and I drifted off to sleep, unaware that it was the last time I'd rest in a long while.
And then I realised I was waking up. It felt like no time at all had passed, but the swiftly darkening sky said otherwise. I looked around carefully, noting that I was up in the tree, still. For once, I felt completely at peace, only hearing the sound of the wind in the trees and the bird calls. It was enough to put me back to sleep, but fate had other plans.
An ear-splitting scream broke the silence into a million pieces.
I jolted in fright and fell out of the tree, travelling the fifteen feet to the ground where the impact knocked all the air out of me and left me gasping for breath, a hand clutching at my chest. Melanin ran into the yard, screaming, and collapsed very close to me. Our parents came running out, Calix behind them in the doorway.
My sister's face was covered in blisters and tears. Her expression was terrified and she was gasping for breath, completely irrational. I fired question after question at her, frantically trying to get a logical word out of her until she finally pointed towards the town and grunted the word: "Sick."
I turned sharply, looking to where her trembling finger was extended, and instantly wished I hadn't. Over the buildings, with screaming people running in all directions away from it, was a large, black, deadly cloud. It might have been an oncoming thunderstorm, but this wasn't a regular cloud. I knew unnatural when I saw it, and such knowledge caused me to draw one conclusion: carried in its murky centre was what we knew as the epidemic.