Chapter 1: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 |

Chapter 2: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3

Athens’ head jerked sharply to the right, then to the left, trying desperately to find the voice that she had just heard whispering inside of her head.

“Wheeeeeeeeeeerrre arreeeeee youuuuu?” came the voice again, this time from a new direction.

Athens’ again looked around, and seeing no one, took off in a sprint toward the hills that were adjacent to her newly deconstructed dwelling. The loose soil gave way beneath her bare feet, but she climbed steadily and quickly until she reached the top, and could survey the landscape. She gasped as what she saw; dwellings just like hers, in the same state of destruction as hers. Everywhere she looked, nothing more than floors. Walls gone. Roofs gone. People gone.

“Wait…”, her mind started, “where are the people?”

In all of her panic about her own survival, she hadn’t even paused to consider the essential fact that not a single person had come to check on her, which is especially strange considering she lives in a neighborhood flanked by relatives. Slowly, this realization formed into a pit of darkness, which upon hardening, caused her to magnetically turn back around to where her dwelling had been, and then scan to the left and right.

That pit of darkness, quickly became despair as she turned away quickly, falling to her knees and sobbing uncontrollably. For behind Athens’ shaking shoulders, where her family should still be, were two massive holes in the ground…..