Day X

Circle Industries made bold statement, about a year ago. This statement was that they planned on single-handedly creating energy, using physics and certain elements and a machine they called Hersta X. No one questioned beyond the first few days, everyone applauded and cheered. If they knew what was going to happen, if they knew right then what would happen one year, three months, and one day after Circle Industries made the statement, they would have screamed in horror and urged the government to do something about it. As it were, they didn't know what was going to happen. They saw what Circle Industries was presenting us, a way to have unlimited energy, as a Godsend. Instead of God, it sent us the end.

The day it happened, was just as normal as any day I suppose. Waking up was a little difficult because I'd been up all night with Evan fighting again. Thinking back on it now, I can't even remember what the fight was about. I remember him telling me that he wanted to take a break, because we couldn't handle living together now and he wanted to get married one day, so he had to know I was the right one for him. That was a fight we had had plenty of times, with me asking him if he thought that any relationship was rainbows and roses. I remember slamming the door of my parents' house a little harder than I needed to when he dropped me off but to be honest, I'm not even sure he heard it. Mom and dad did though, and after chiding me lightly, they asked what was wrong.

The next morning I woke up at seven AM like always when I had to be at work at nine. It took me a little longer than usual to get ready that day and although I knew that being late would be the least of my problems, I still rushed a little more than I should have. I kissed the cheeks of each parent, grabbed a bagel and rushed out of the house to run to the bus stop. If I knew what the significance of the day, if I would have even read a few of the headlines on the newspaper that morning, maybe I would have known and spent a little more time at the house, or even taken the day off. Or begged them to come to the shop for a few hours. Life was always a series of shoulda-coulda-wouldas, with hindsight being twenty-twenty. I should have done a million things first, I could have done something more, I would have done it differently if I knew. But myself, like millions of other people, did not know what was going to happen at 12:37 PM that day.

Every day, I took my break at 12:00 and go back to work at 12:45. Working at the little grocery store wasn't my dream job, but it paid my few bills and it kept me busy. Diana, one of my co-workers that lived in the same complex as Evan and I had been for a while, noticed that I got off the bus instead of him dropping me off. Her face showed sympathy every time she looked at me.

By 12:01, I was sitting in the basement of the store with all of the odds and ends that we never used. After doing my few laps around the floor and then started to get bored. Usually I would have stayed down there until 12:40 when I would make my way back upstairs but I went upstairs at 12:20 that day. My boss was about to yell at me for not taking my break when I told her I was going to do my shopping during my break time. I'd done it a few times before, so she just nodded and told me to take my time. I suppose Diana told everyone about me not coming in with Evan today.

I grabbed a box of cereal off of the shelf a while later as I was gathering my items to purchase and cursed when the box beside it fell down. I wonder if it made any difference, that I reached down to pick it up at the exact moment the shockwave hit our store. I wonder if I would have shared the fate of the other customers who were standing around, or of Diana who was sitting at the cash register as always, or even my boss who was in her back office chain smoking the cigarettes we always smelled on her but pretended not to. Wondering the what if's didn't matter because I was bent down, crouched to put my items on the floor to grab the fallen box of cereal, when everything seemed too quiet and then too loud at the same time; when everything seemed too hot and then too cold at the same time; when the entire store seemed to just collapse on itself.

When the rescue squads, dispatched from who-knows-where and who-knows-how-long-ago came to the shop, they almost decided not to bother. Who could have survived an entire store collapsing on them? But it was their duty to find survivors and even if no one survived, maybe they could save some of the food that wasn't damaged or obliterated beyond recognition. When they lifted up the shelves of aisle 6, they found a bloody body surrounded by cereal boxes and other items. They went to pull the body out of the rubble, when the should-have-been-dead body started to cough. I remember them asking me a thousand questions, if I remembered anything about the explosion, if there could have been other survivors, how I survived. The only answer I could give them was that I didn't know.

I was airlifted to a hospital on the west coast. The entire east coast, I was told, and most of the middle of the country, where I was, had been leveled. The idea didn't register until later, when they started flying over the areas, filming it for the news. Until then, I was the biggest news. I was the girl that lived through the explosion, I was the only survivor they had found that had been above ground at the time. People with conspiracy theories had holed themselves up in bombshelters the day that Circle Industries switched on the Hersta X, believing that it would do exactly what it did, sending out a shockwave of energy that destroyed everything and anything it came into contact with.

For some reason it didn't hit me that everyone I knew, everyone I had ever known since I never left my little town, was now dead. That thought didn't seem to ever come to the surface; maybe I just held it back. However during a press conference, with me answering the same dull questions that I always answered, a man stood up to ask his question.

"How are you coping with the loss of all you knew, and all of your loved ones?" Watching the interview later, I apparently opened my mouth to answer and then just stopped. Stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped thinking. I stopped. And then it came in a flood and there were flashes and people yelling more questions as I sank to the floor out of my chair, screaming and pulling at my hair.

Day X, as it had been named, was the end of everything that everyone knew. The world was different. Our president had been playing a game of cards with his son when the explosion happened. The vice-president, however, had been in England at the time and therefore he was promoted.

Day X plus five, the day that I had my breakdown on international television, was also the day that they started showing images and videos on the news of the disaster. I was forgotten soon after, but that was okay with me. As I packed a bag with the items that I had been given, clothes and necessities and for some reason money, I made my way out of the hospital without anyone even noticing. I didn't know where I was headed, I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know anything the moment my tennis shoes hit the pavement of the highway.

All I knew was that I was alone now and I had to do something other than be asked questions that I didn't know the answers to.

My name is Charlotte Peyton, and this is my story of survivng after Day X.

A/N: I'm baaaack! I'm sorry for the super long hiatus (seriously, what has it been, a year or so?)! Thank you to the people who have continued to read or review my stories, or favorite or alert. This is a little different than my other stories. As always, there will be a romantic interest in the story later but right now, it's just what it is.
This idea came to me in a dream and I've been molding it for a while now, trying to make it something I could manipulate into more than just a one-shot and I finally was able to get the proper inspiration by having a "follow-up dream" or something.
As always, please let me know what you think. I know right now there might be some questions, but understand this is just the prologue and I will answer them all in time. If I don't answer your question by the end of Chapter Two (part three in the drop down list), please ask me and I will either answer in an Author's Note or direct you to when/where I will be answering.

THANK YOU FOR READING! And if you review, I promise to get back to you in some way or form as soon as possible! :]