Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
"Oscar," Selene hissed, shoving him awake. "Will you please stop it?"
Oscar jolted out of his sleep. He'd been distant from his sister all day, ever since they'd left the airport together. And obviously no matter what he did he wouldn't leave Selene satisfied on the journey. On the airport she'd scolded him for being rude to the service staff and for drinking (even though he was of age in his home country, the UK). For the first five hours of the flight he'd apparently been disrespectful to the flight staff, and he couldn't even sleep without doing something wrong.
"Approaching New York State," the voice at the intercom announced. Oscar couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something unsettling about the surrounding passengers.
"What now?" He grumbled as alertness came back to his system. He turned to his sister.
"You were kicking," Selene said, investigating her face in the mirror. Selene had always been obsessively tidy. She was the textbook definition of a perfectionist. Make-up done perfectly, hair done perfectly and even though she hadn't graduated from college she liked to give herself a professional façade by wearing fresh suits. She adjusted her hair and straightened her skirt for the umpteenth time before she finally turned to Oscar. "We're descending soon."
Oscar turned towards the window sulkily.
"Yay," he said sarcastically, not expecting his sister to catch on. She did.
Her voice turned gentle for once, instead of adopting the sternness he was so used to hearing in his mother's voice. "Look, Oscar, is everything okay? I know I haven't been the best sister lately, being in another country and being so busy with college, but I'm here to talk," he didn't reply. "Mum's been telling dad and I about you. She found pot in your room; your teachers have been saying that you're a disruption in class. You weren't always like this."
Oscar saw his grey eyes roll in the reflection of the window, almost camouflaged by the surrounding blue sky.
"What does it matter?" He turned to her. "I doubt mum cares very much anyway."
"You know she does," Selene's well-manicured hand rested on Oscar's shoulder, her pink lips pulling themselves into a smile. "It's not been easy for any of us."
"The divorce was a decade ago," Oscar said emptily. He couldn't pretend it didn't still affect him.
"I don't mean that, that's in the past," Selene leant back, ignoring the intercom's announcement of the plane's descent. Oscar was wide-awake now and he understood why he found that there was something up with the plane. The air hosts and hostesses were bustling around, giving each other sharp whispers and looking kind of anxious. Oscar hoped it wasn't anything too bad, though he couldn't be quite sure himself. Selene was a high achiever, and was much smarter than Oscar could hope to be, but after being pampered in the comfy lifestyle of any Ivy League attendee she didn't know real life – not like Oscar did. He knew that there was something up, something being kept from the passengers.
It was probably nothing. Maybe one of the meals was gone, or maybe they'll be delayed. If there were going to be some fatal crash or something Oscar would expect them to be much more panicked.
"You're distant again," Selene chided. Oscar glanced at her dark eyes and raven black hair.
"Sorry," Oscar mumbled.
"Just with dad finally getting married and having children of his own, moving to the U.S.A, me moving there to for college, it must be pretty lonely when you're alone with mum in Exeter," Selene was obviously trying to get him to dish out his feelings. Oscar only shrugged, failing to be responsive. "You haven't met Lily, have you?" Selene opened her phone and showed Oscar a picture of a chubby, brown haired beauty that was riding some kind of kid's bike. "She's four now, and Kristy is expecting a new kid!"
"Go them," Oscar frowned. "I'm not part of their family."
Selene winced when the feeling of the descent finally hit her ears; another announcement was made from the pilot over the intercom. The air hosts and hostesses seemed a little calmer.
"Of course you're part of the family," she said, sticking her finger in her ears and leaning back. "Don't say I didn't try, Oscar. I don't know why you even agreed to come visit dad, you refused to talk to him for what, five years? If you're still mad at him maybe you should have stayed away."
As the plane got closer to the ground Oscar could see fields, roads and buildings beneath the plane. Most of the people on the plane would be happy to land: they'd go on a holiday, or would see family members they'd missed. Oscar could only feel a bad gut feeling, like a doom and gloom gut feeling.
"You didn't try," Oscar turned to his sister, saying how he felt for the first time in years. She looked at him neutrally. "You just moved on, and when you were old enough you ran away just like dad. Maybe you can play happy families, but I can't."
Selene paused, lost for words as Oscar turned to look out of the window again. He thought he saw her about to speak from his peripheral vision, but the bump of the plane landing silenced her. The intercom was surprisingly silent, considering they'd just landed, and Oscar and Selene were both confused as passengers were prevented from standing by air stewards. There was something definitely up.
Oscar glanced out of the window to try and get a glimpse of Buffalo-Niagra international airport. He could see the modern, glass building in the distance, but it was surprisingly empty. There were no planes on runways or near the surrounding skies, though there were a lot of planes that were resting. He tried to find a glimpse of people – of anyone – close by.
What had happened in a matter of eight hours? When he left Exeter England wasn't so bad. There'd be rioting in London and in other big cities, but that was usually expected, right? It was like people had vanished.
Maybe something had happened in America. He turned to Selene who looked equally panicked. Had she looked out of the window? All passengers on board were extremely restless.
"What's up?" He asked, feeling weird for being the one asking that question for once.
"My phone… There's no signal," Selene explained, desperately trying to text. She stood up slightly, trying to observe all the other passengers before a camp air steward walked over to her and politely demanded she sit down.
"We're just facing some problems currently, Ma'am," he told her.
"What problems?" Oscar asked, glancing out of the window again. He thought he could see a highway, but that was eerily empty. Maybe he was just overanalysing things.
When he turned to the air steward, he looked kind of uncomfortable, like he was going to admit an inconvenient truth.
"For the past five or so hours we've failed to initiate contact with anybody," he admitted, clearing his throat. "We've arrived and there's still no-one to contact. We tried to contact so many government officials but many weren't contactable, and those who we did contact were incredibly vague and told us to get to our destination and radio them there." Selene suddenly went pale. "But there's nobody here."
I guess this is the introduction.
For all SYOC newbies who are in TWD fandom but not THG fandom, this is an SYOC. I have a form on my profile, which you fill in and send me. Basically, you'll be sending your characters into this storyline to interact with my OC's. Does that kind of make sense?
Submission deadlines will be… the 12th of July! Not because of America, because it isn't America day.
I have a fair few characters now and hopefully this will shape up to be a great story. It will be gory, sweary, adulty and kind of sexy too, as a warning. Also: updates will probably be every two weeks. This story will be between 30-40 chapters, maybe a little bit less, but no more :)
P.S - What does everyone think about a forum for this story? I'm usually tentative to follow the SYOC popular trends, but a forum is a bandwagon I'm interested on jumping on.
P.P.S - The story is named after the Tennyson poem 'In Memoriam', a favourite of mine. Each chapter will have a single stanza from the veryyyy long poem that will coincide with the storyline :)
