Scarlet Roses

A field of scarlet roses…

A sky turned red…

A battlefield left empty by the ravages of time…

A group tries to survive on their own…

Will they make it?

Day Twenty-Three

Date: August 13, 2016

We still wander around the battlefield. Not knowing where to go nor what to do, we have no means of communication, so we have to stay together. The only thing we really know about this place is that it is very desolate. The battlefield is a very depressing place; it's just a field of grass with many patches of either dust, or ashes. In one corner of the battlefield I found a few grave markers, they were just plain white and small, no names just dates. We haven't seen anyone since, well, in a long time. And there is a dark sky to the right of me as I write this entry. This was the one last piece of the world as we knew it before everything just, disappeared. There are only six of us here, or so we think. It's only me, Sylar, Logan, Johnny, Stephen and Ally. My name is Haley, but I haven't told anyone that yet. Who's to say that they work for the government and they're using fake names too? My alias is Katrina, and that's what the rest of them call me also.

So far Sylar, a very tall dark haired boy, is the oldest and he has tried so many times to take control of our little group of six. Stephen and I both agree that Sylar has some problems and that he should not ever be able to lead anyone. The only person out of us six that want him to lead is the only other girl beside myself, Ally. She's a tall girl, almost at Sylars' height, her hair is black and she's very bossy, just like him. They've both tried hard to gain confidence from Logan and Johnny. Maybe because they're the oldest? Maybe they try because they just like being in control? Sylar is nineteen years old and Ally is seventeen. The rest of us are younger obviously. Johnny is sixteen, Logan is thirteen and Stephen and I are both fifteen. And just for the sake of this journal I guess I should describe them, you know, if we die, maybe someone could recognize us. If there's still anyone out there. Johnny has dirty blonde hair almost hanging down into his eyes, which are deep blue. They remind me of the color of the ocean on a cloudy day. He is also sort of tall, but only a few inches taller than me, so technically that makes him average height for his age. Next would be Logan, he's the youngest being only thirteen years old. And he totally acts like it, whenever someone says something he doesn't like he gets all angry and throws a tantrum. So maybe he doesn't act like he's thirteen, he acts like he's five. I'm not trying to be rude though, I'm just stating the facts here. Okay, Logan's hair is chestnut brown and his eyes are too. I find it quite odd that someone can have the same color eyes as their hair. I know, it sounds absurd, but it's just one of those things that bug me. Another one of the boys is Stephen. He's the only guy who is my age and the only guy that I actually pay any attention to other than Johnny. Stephen has light brown hair, kind of like the sand at the beach when it gets wet after a huge rainstorm. He is also almost the same height as me, but the one thing I find odd about him are his eyes. His eyes are a metallic silvery color. I don't feel like describing Sylar or Ally right now, because I don't like them, and because I don't think that anyone would like to claim them as their children if someone did find us. I know I wouldn't be proud to have them as my children.

I don't know why I just began to write in this notebook, I've had it since the first day. That very first day all of this began. The first day was two years ago, yea; it wasn't just three weeks ago. Two years ago something just happened; I think it might've been a bomb. Maybe it was a nuclear disaster but everyone started to disappear slowly. But before that there were huge natural disasters. They were all over the news, a fire in London leaving it in ruins, a tsunami in Japan that also hit Hawaii. The coldest winter ever was recorded and the warmest summer, too. The only significant thing in America was that there was a huge outbreak of tornadoes all around the country. So basically, the world was falling apart. I felt like I was in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" and that's not a good feeling. The last thing I remember seeing on the news was that a nuclear power plant in Japan had been set off by the tsunami, it was just like after the disaster in 2011, only more followed, and it was worse. The wind was very strong that season and it carried all the radiation across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of the Americas. First my parents disappeared, then the neighbors, then the neighborhood. I stopped going to school after my parents disappeared in the first week or so. Then, when the neighbors started disappearing I packed up my stuff and just kind of wandered around. Wandering around trying to find other people, and people who were my age too. After wandering for about a year without seeing anyone I came across a very odd place in the middle of a big city, I didn't even know where I was anymore. There was a big field, a battlefield, in the middle of a city. I think anyone would have the same reaction as I did. Seeing the battlefield I stopped in my tracks, just seconds ago I was walking through what was left of a concrete forest and now a battlefield? At first I thought that I could've been in New York City, you know, with Central Park, just without all the trees. But it turns out we were somewhere a lot further away than New York City, we were in Montreal. Well that's what Stephen told me, he's the one who had been keeping a map of everything.

Anyway, today was another one of those days where Sylar tried to take over. I don't remember why this came up once again but it did, he's a persistent guy. I overheard Sylar talking to Ally when they thought that I had taken the rest of the group to explore and get more supplies for our little campground. "Ally, we should leave. The others are holding us back, they're going to start to take all the supplies for themselves and leave us to fend for ourselves," Sylar says in a low whisper.

"Are you sure? They seem nice enough, and they're younger so they wouldn't want to leave anyone out I bet," she replies in a voice barely audible over the wind whistling through the tall trees around where they stood on the edge of the battlefield. The next comment from Sylar I couldn't hear at all so I decided to leave before they caught me spying on them. I ran across the empty battlefield not quite at a sprint but close enough.

I caught up to Johnny, Logan and Stephen near the edge of the city. It still haunts me that no one is here, it was such an active place before all of this happened. Stephen told us stories about how it was before the disasters. He said the skies were always blue with little to no clouds at any given time where he visited. The most beautiful part of the city, he said, was the sunsets. While the sun set over the horizon it painted beautiful colors across the sky, pinks and oranges and brilliant shades of red. But now the sky remains a dark shade of gray most days. The skies are filled with constant cloud cover and it rains more than it should, causing the ground to stay muddy for weeks on end. And now that it's getting closer to winter we've been trying to find a good place to make shelter other than in the battlefield. Sylar had us stay in the open to make sure that, even when we were sleeping, that no planes or helicopters would fly overhead. Obviously that hasn't happened because we are all still here, and I continue to write in this journal. Maybe someday someone will find it and read about what happened after these disasters. And I still hope that when this is over, if I'm not here, that someone will recognize it's me who's writing this entry.

So after all of Stephens' descriptions of how this place was before the destruction he began talking about what was going on in the news the day he left his house. He said that a few of the nuclear power plants exploded in Japan and since the wind was blowing across the Pacific to the Americas it was possible that there could be radiation. That's what he thinks caused all of these people to disappear. But I think differently. If it was radiation poisoning we would see a whole lot more dead bodies around the streets. And to think about it, we haven't really seen any dead bodies around. Anywhere. After gathering a few supplies and more canned food for tonight I gathered the small group together and we all headed back. It was almost ten o'clock when we actually got back to camp. And guess who wasn't there. Sylar and Ally. They apparently left after they were sure I was gone. But there was no time to try to track them down tonight. Stephen was the one who finally said something. "I personally think it's better here without them."

Well, until I get more free time I won't be able to write anything more. So until then, let's hope we survive.

~Haley