Chapter 1: Country Tranquility and Turmoil

I awoke to an Incessant buzzing. “Damn it” I muttered as I slammed my fist down on the infernal contraption people have dubbed the alarm clock, shutting it up instantly. I staggered out of bed to go take a shower and get ready for a long, satisfying work day way out in the forested mountains of Northern California and South Oregon. My name is Justin; I am 23, and making a comfortable living in an isolated cottage. I live in the cottage with my friends, Gary, Dru, and Lizzy,. We live a simple life, I, making bows, crossbows, bolts and arrows to sell in the nearest city. I also assist Dru in hand forging extremely high quality blades. I am the only one in our humble home that likes to get up early to cook breakfast; today it was to be French toast and bacon. As I was preparing the breakfast, I gazed out the garden window at the craftsman style varnished wooden deck with various vines hanging down, past that the garden patch with the fruits and vegetables Lizzy and Kiki tend so affectionately. I sighed, feeling totally relaxed and in my element. The 4 of us chose to live together because, after nearly ten years of knowing each other, we just had to stick together. Lizzy and Gary just got married to each other last year, after 4 painful years going to different colleges; they finally got back together and were married. I myself went to Cal Berkeley, earning my degree in environmental sciences. Dru has been single as long as I can remember, and he was OK with it, so we were too.

Suddenly, I caught movement outside out of the corner of my eye, and in a blur of motion I had whipped a knife out of my sleeve and hurled it through the open window where the motion had occurred. The balanced throwing knife thudded into the tree outside the window with a dull thud, then I heard Dru exclaim “JESUS CHRIST!!” oh shit, I laughed, I’ll be hearing about this for weeks. Dru was shorter than Gary and I, standing at about five foot eleven, yet he had about as much upper body strength as Gary and I combined. Ever since the beginning of High school I had always carried some sort of weapon on me…. It’s just my thing. I just have been on edge lately, I don’t know why…. a tingling, some people call “soldier sense.” I had taught myself how to throw knives in high school, and had taken many knife fighting classes from my old martial arts teacher, who was also one of my closest friends. I have nearly 20 years of martial arts experience under my belt, which happens to be black with four yellow stripes on it. I rolled my eyes as Dru clomped into the kitchen, glaring at me and holding the knife. “Damn it, I swear you’re going to kill me one of these days!”

“Sorry old friend” I grumbled “I just feel like something….. is wrong….”

“huh” stated Dru, nonchalantly thrusting the knife into the bulletin board by the door. “Well, nothing can happen to us way out here”

“hmmmm” I said, continuing to chop bananas for breakfast. “What were you doing out there anyway?”

“oh, just fishing in the river.. The fish bite better in the morning when they’re hungry.”

“I see” I mumbled, continuing to chop the fruit.

I flicked our TV on, which was a small, 24 inch plasma screen, which was considered extremely obsolete by modern standards. The reporter was babbling on about some North-Korean hidden missile project, which was sending the government into a panic. Out here in our sheltered world, we don’t give a shit about the government.

Just as I finished the breakfast, Gary and Lizzy, still in their nightclothes, stumbled groggily into the room. Gary was my height, (six foot three) with gray eyes and tight brunette curls, which he affectionately referred to as his “Jew Fro”. Lizzy was about five foot eight with shoulder length, wavy light brown hair with brown eyes. She was quite attractive, which Gary and I had to continuously remind her of, even though she denied it with just as much vigor.

Just then, Lizzy’s Eyes widened, slowly extending a finger towards the television screen. I whirled around to see an overhead shot of what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse, except the roof was sliding open, and twenty-five missiles appeared, then, as if in slow motion, the missiles ignited one by one, and seared off into the sky, leaving a tainted white scar against the virgin blue sky. Completely dumbstruck by all of this, we finally regained our senses to hear the reporter screaming about a nuclear attack. Dru was the first to regain speech; “ …. I really hope those aren’t aimed at us…”

“what do you propose we do?!” demanded Gary in an urgent voice.

I spoke up first, “ We should probably just do as normal a workday as possible. We don’t even know if those missiles are aimed at us.”

The group nodded and continued to eat breakfast in silence.

As I steadily ground down the yew wood into a recurve bow in my forest grove , I wondered about the consequences of all this could be. It could mean world destruction by a World War III, It could mean nothing at all. I continued to rue these thoughts when I felt a small tremor through my feet, I heard a distant rockslide, and my rhythm of sandpaper on wood was disrupted. The back of my neck tingled, signaling something was terribly wrong, and there was an invisible menace looming. I sprinted back to the cottage to gather my friends. We needed to do something. Help, fight, hide, run, anything would be alright. When I reached the cottage, I found several shelves were felled, and there were cracked picture frames on the floor. My friends were attempting to clean up. Lizzy began to ask if I had felt the quake, but I blew past her and switched on the news.

It showed a completely devastated city, a camera shot showing utter ruin, grotesquely burned corpses in unnatural positions on the ground were scattered everywhere. The annoyingly pessimistic reporter was screaming Armageddon, world war III and the end of life as we know it, also mentioning 25 major cities around the world had been completely destroyed. A sudden twitch caught my eye on the ground behind the reporter, suddenly, one of the corpses behind the reporter vanished, unnoticed by the unsuspecting news anchor, a ominous sense of dread crept over us, all leaning towards the screen, like the climax of a horror film, except sickeningly real… These were no special effects.. a black blade slipped onto screen, glided to the reporters throat, she only had a millisecond to scream before a rose of blood blossomed on her neck. She collapsed as the picture faded into blackness.