A Foggy Beginning - R. Brownell (tools of titans ebook txt) 📗

Chapter 1
End of the World

I was five when the first dust cloud covered the entire earth; it was deadly. They think it may have come from space, or maybe it was just God telling us that it was our time to leave earth to make room for another round of species. Dinosaurs take two!

The ones who survived have called it by two names; some call it “Alien dust” while others call it “The Apocalypse”. Either way it’s some pretty serious stuff. Two weeks after the incident almost everyone on earth had become extinct. The storm reared its ugly head again in 2015; but for the past eight years it’s been eerily quiet.

I can’t remember much from that day, but the few things that I do remember are pretty hard to talk about. I lost everyone I loved and when it happened I had no idea. My father, he worked for the United States Government, some top secret crap. The week of the incident he was asked to go to Washington DC for a meeting, he took my mom with him. They dropped me off at a friend of the families in New York City; her name was Lacy she went to college with both of my parents.

I remember waking up excited to watch my morning cartoons. The sun wasn’t shining that day and everything was extremely quiet. I was staying in the city that never sleeps, it was never quiet. I was five at the time so really what did I care? All I wanted do was to eat a bowl of coco puffs and sit down in front of the TV all morning.

I sat down on the couch and flipped through the channels. Almost all of the channels were fuzzy, with the exception of a few including Disney channel which was playing re-runs of Hannah Montana. Hours had passed by before I knew it, my stomach began to growl and I started to worry about where Lacy had been. I remember shutting the TV off and checking every room calling her name. When I couldn’t find her in any of the rooms I quickly ran to the door and swung it open.

The city streets were hard to find, I could barely even see the steps in front of me. Fear and panic ran through my veins. My eyes welled up and I wanted to cry. Where had everyone gone? A few seconds later I started to see figures walking through what looked like fog at the time. As they got closer I could see flashes of light and the outline of their orange space-like suits. A few times a few rays of light would shine directly on me and then move away. As I slowly stepped forward hoping I wouldn’t fall down the stairs, the orange-suited figures came over to me.

“Where’s Lacy?” I questioned. The two of them who were standing in front of me eyed each other. I couldn’t really see their faces, at the time and I thought they were wearing fishbowls on their head, and that confused me. I think at one point I even asked them why they killed the fish to put the fish bowls on their heads… I was an odd child. They nodded to each other and then one of them reached for my hand. He was wearing black gloves. I was always told never to go with strangers, for some reason this time felt different, so I stuck my hand out and took the suited figures hand.

They led me down the deserted streets of Manhattan; cars were smashed into each other and abandoned in the middle of the road. I could see in the light from the flashlights papers flying by me. We stopped at a big white truck, the back was open and more orange-suited figures hopped out going in different directions.

One of the men handed me an oxygen mask, and the strangest thing happened to me as I put it on; it was almost as if I was seeing what had happened to the city. Slowly I could see what looked like a mixture of fog and dust coming from over the water. Slowly it creped over buildings and made its way through the city. I could see people dying and then nearly disintegrating on the streets. The last thing that I remembered was screaming and then falling into someone’s arms.

Chapter 2
Godzilla ate my Barbie

When I had woken up from what I’d hoped was a terrible nightmare, I was here… in the place I now call home. I live deep underground in a government facility for the “gifted” survivors of the May 2012 Apocalypse. There are about two-hundred known survivors. Still eight years after the second dust storm there is no answer as to how we survived. That is unless the Government is hiding something, which I wouldn’t doubt. I have asked them about my father, they claim to not know where he is, even those who had been in DC when the world came to an end, could tell me nothing.

Besides being survivors of this thing, we also came out of it with something out of the ordinary. Somehow we ended up with “super-human” powers. I say that and roll my eyes every-time, its so cliche it’s not even funny.

“Raine, you are going to be late for work again, if you are not ready in ten-seconds I am going to kick down your door and drag your butt out. Even if I have to close my eyes cuz’ your half naked, I don’t care!”

I let out a sigh, it was Cyrus.

The two of us had been good friends since the day I’d first arrived.

They had stuck us in rooms according to our ages; our room looked like a pre-school. There were toys galore. I remember I was playing with a Barbie dream-house when a young boy named Frank footers (yeah pretty bad name) stampeded over to me. Funny thing was a lot of kids started calling him Frankfurter, (like the hot dog ha ha) it still makes me giggle a bit especially after what he did to me. So anyways, I had Ken in one hand and Barbie in the other, they had just gotten married. I was about to place them in their new red convertible (a wedding present from Kens brother) when five-year old Frankfurter decides he wants to play Godzilla and step on the car with his new light up buzz-lightyear sneakers.

“Hey!” I shouted.

“Now you have to buy Barbie a new car,” I stood up and crossed my arms over my chest. Frankfurter laughed.

“Rawwr, I am Godzilla, I destroy your city … rawwwr.”

His hands were up in the air, and he was acting like a monster. Then he leaned down and picked up Barbie, looked at her, and pretended to make her talk in a girly voice, “Oh no! You can’t eat me, no, no, no.” Then he took the doll and put her head in his mouth and yanked it right off. That was it for me, I started bawling hysterically. Then that’s when Cyrus dropped in… literally. He jumped from one of the chairs and clung to the back of Frank. On his back he wore a red cape; and had white fruit-of-the-loom underwear over his dark brown hair.

“No one escapes the Cyranator,” Cyrus roared as the two of them hit the ground.

Yeah, he was pretty cheesy back then, still is as a matter of fact.

“I will rescue Barbie for you miss,” he told me, as he nearly flattened Frank.

A few minutes later one of the people watching us, stormed over to stop the chaos. She pulled Cyrus off of Frank and sat him down in the chair he jumped out of. In his hands were Barbie and her head.

“Before you punish me Ma’am,” he said politely.

“I would like to give that beautiful girl over there her Barbie back,” he said to her in a cute smart-aleck voice.

When the lady agreed he walked over to me, first he carefully re-attached Barbie’s head to her body and then held her out to me.

“Here you go miss, sorry for all the trouble,” he said politely to me.

I wiped the tears off of my face and reached for the doll. I didn’t get a chance to say thank you because the lady took him directly to a time-out chair in the corner of the room. Ever since then, Cyrus and I have been inseparable.

“8… 9… Raine, you know I am serious…,” if he was serious he would have counted to ten already.

I pulled open the door and came face to face with Cyrus. There was no red cape on his back, nor was there any underwear on his head. Although the one thing that remained the same was that smile of his he gave whenever I saw him. His lips lifted and two tiny dimples formed on both cheeks. His face wasn’t all soft anymore, he was growing up and had stubble starting to show through the baby face he once had. He stared at me with his intense green eyes.

“Are you ready or what?” he questioned tossing me my hairnet. The two of us worked in the Cafeteria, I served the food and he was one of the lucky guys who got to help cook the food.

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses,” I told him as I grabbed my bag from the hook hanging on the back of my door.

“You are so bossy sometimes,” I carried on as I shut the door behind me.

Chapter 3
About my cliché superpowers

Anyone who survived the “dust storm”, without the help of the orange suits was considered to be “special”. They rescued more and more of us as 2012 went on, but once the cold weather hit on the earths surface the numbers of survivors found were few and far between. Finally in December of 2012 they had given up. I still wonder to this day if maybe there were other facilities in other parts of the world. They call this place “The Core”, maybe like the center of the earth? Although I know we aren’t that deep in the earth’s surface.

My powers had officially been discovered a month after the incident, I remember the day all too well.

I was in the playroom when it had happened. Cyrus had become attached to my hip; he never let me be alone after the Frank incident on that first day. For a five-year old he was quite over-protective of me.

We were building a castle with building blocks, and I have to admit I really think for kids we made a pretty kick-ass castle. Cyrus was busy being obsessive over the color scheme; while I was busy deciding which Barbie would be the princess of the castle. (I did have quite and obsession with Barbie’s when I was a kid) Suddenly across the room I could hear Frankfurter causing havoc amongst another group of kids. When I looked over he was terrorizing a little girl who looked around my age. She had