Cause for Alarm HAS BEEN UPDATED

[mors ontologica]

This does need a fair bit of re-working, but I thought that I'd do that after I got some crits. Be constructive please. ^^;

Chapter 1

That night I stood out in what I suppose you would call the back garden. It was more of a courtyard, really. When I first came to this house, I tried to grow vegetables in the muddy earth, among the weeds, so that they would not be seen and stolen by others. They were strangled by the roaming brambles and other creeping plants alike to it. After that I spent a week digging the whole place up, and we bred chickens for food. One morning I came out to feed them and they were all gone. Possibly an animal, possibly someone nearby thinking that they needed the food more than we did.
Now it’s just a barren, mini-wasteland. I come out to think, when I can, or to listen. That time I was out there to smoke. Luckily tobacco was something easy to come by these days. I don’t know if we grow it here, or if we have it imported. Both of which seem unlikely, but I have it and that’s answer enough for me. At least I can still have my vices. What I do miss is coffee and cigarettes. Coffee disappeared a few years ago. Suddenly it just wasn’t available any more. “Discontinued” someone said, when I asked. There was no point in asking why. Over time we had all grown used to not asking questions any more. This was just the kind of thing that happened on a slowly more regular basis.
We didn’t have any chairs out here. There’s no point in having things which can be easily stolen, I had come to realise. Instead I sat perched on the side of a large sink which was filled with rain water. I don’t know when or why that go there, but it served its current purpose. I took a deep drag on the cigarette, and relished the crackle of the paper as the fire crept its way slowly towards my fingers. I held the smoke in until it hurt, then exhaled a mushroom cloud, watching it drift and spiral away from me, twisting and turning like a strange, tribal dance with itself. I felt some of the tension ebb away with that dancing smoke.
As I took the last drag, I stubbed it out on the floor and flicked the end over the fence. Who was there to scold me for that anyway? I stood and stretched widely, yawning. A strange sense of uneasiness settled over me. There was an eerie silence which surely could not bode well.
I saw it in the birds first. If the birds stop singing and fly away, you try your best to follow them. As silently as possible I crept back in through the door as I heard the treads of the vehicle coming ever closer.
Quietly I raised the alarm and sad little figures came down the stairs, doe-eyed and frightened.
“Come now, just help me get the boards done. It’ll be okay.” I consoled them in hushed tones, forever doubting the promises I made to them on a daily basis. They knew the drill by now. We practised it regularly for such occasions as this. For some of them, they had been here before in this situation, and the helped the others along, but a the small few who had only ever practiced this were clearly scared, some with silent tears dripping a white stripe down their dirty faces. Sadness swelled within my chest, but I pushed it back within me, repressing it, and continued my work. They swung and locked the boards and windows inwards, then went on to help the stragglers. I went upstairs and tried to pull the curtains shut as quietly as possible. At the front of the house, where we were lucky enough to have glass, we never opened the boards. It made us too visible. I used to have all of them shut all of the time, but the house was so dark and dingy I found it was much better for morale to just set a little risk in opening the back ones.
A cold draught worked its way toward me from my room. I swore under my breath. I had left the window open. Idiot. I ducked into my sanctuary, keeping below the window, and peered up above the windowsill when I dared. The truck was slowly emptying people from its insides. They hadn’t seen me yet.
For a moment, I stood like a fox in the headlights (a phrase that has been passed down from the time before), torn between risking shutting it and being seen, or risking leaving it open, and the chances of them breaking in being greater.
When I worked up the courage, I stuck my arm haphazardly out of the window and took the hook of the board in my hand, pulling it closed slowly. My heart was in my mouth drumming a new time signature. I got the hook onto the latch, and went for the window. A sudden gust of wind howled through gaps in the boards and took the window from my hands. It slammed loudly against the frame work. My heart dropped from my mouth into my gut, and a cold sweat broke out. I saw through the gap that they had all swung round and were looking what I felt was straight at me. They clicked open the back gate, and walked into my garden.
“The kids!” I thought wildly, and turned and fled from the room. Not bothered by the sounds I was making any more, I thundered down the stairs. Some of the children were stifling sobs with grubby handkerchiefs or hands if they had nothing else. They knew things had gone wrong. I lifted up the patchy rub, and opened the trap door down into the cellar, herding them in as though they were sheep. I heard a steady thumping and splintering growing louder with each kick. They were breaking down my door.
“Quicker! Quicker!” I urged as loud as I dared. I couldn’t let the Outsiders know that I was not alone. After what felt like an eternity they were all in. I hurriedly put the door down and covered it again. I could hear them trying to kick in the back door. I tried not to be selfish and think about the expenses of having to pay for the damage, but it was difficult sometimes.
Although I knew what was coming, when the door gave in to the dark shrouded figures, it still made me jump. I stood before them, and then sprinted for the front door. I pulled it open and left it wide. There was no time to shut it. It would save it getting broken too… I hoped. I grabbed my bike from behind the bushes and jumped on.
The alarm went off, reverberating up and down the road. My head and heart pounded as I forced my legs to keep turning the pedals. The bells and the siren merged into a panicked cacophony, beginning to reach a crescendo. I couldn’t hear my pursuers anymore, but I didn’t dare stop to check. Just because I couldn’t hear them over the noise didn’t mean that they were gone. I skidded around another corner, swerving violently away from the mangled barriers on the side of the road. I had no lights on my bike, and the few street lights that still worked emitted a horrible artificial light that never seemed to do anything but create more shadows.
The shadows were where I was trying to stay currently. Becoming invisible was what I needed to do to get through this.



It kinda ubruptly ended there when I suddenly couldn't write any more. : P I'll add to this later.