Naturally, the apocalypse started on my 16th birthday.

No one knew why it happened. I don't think anyone really stopped to think about it. It was like the system the world ran on just malfunctioned on a global scale. How a nuclear holocaust hadn't happened yet is just short of a miracle. I'm sure some now-dead hero deserves some thanks for that.

First came the storm systems. Ran all the way across the continental united states from Washington state to New York. It was like a hundred tornadoes tangled together, but somehow worse. I remember seeing something on the news about it leaving a crater almost a quarter-mile in diameter somewhere in rural Idaho, and I was not believing that news reporter who stammered something about it picking up a particularly large rock and then jettisoning it back at the ground.

When it finally got to New York, it was weird. I barely lasted more than five minutes before blowing out to sea almost too quickly for it to be real, leaving damage, broken windows, and the streets mildly flooded with sewer water. It felt like dodging a bullet, that is, if a bullet suddenly curving around you instead of continuing it's expect path fell under the broad definition of 'dodging'.

New York breathed a sigh of relief, and so did I. Looking back, I realized the only person who didn't seem relieved was, oddly, my mom, who looked, if anything, nervous. I wonder sometimes if she somehow knew.

Not three days later, the riots started.

It was weird. Sure, people were angry, there was shit in the street for god's sake, people kinda had a right to be annoyed, but things were escalating way too fast. What started as a bunch of people grumbling over coffee would quickly become a strike, which quickly became a full blown riot. Then all of the riots started joining forces, and the police were called in. The weird thing was, it wasn't even localized. News stations were reporting about riots from all over, even places where the storm system didn't wreck.

We stayed inside a lot during those early days, and I think it saved our ass. The store my mom worked at part time had been flooded by shit, and her college classes had been canceled. The high school I went to, where Paul, my stepfather, also happened to work, had taken damage in the storm, and classes were canceled until further notice. It was alright at first, but things got increasingly uneasy as time went by. It was three days before we got to see what a riot really looked like.

It was late at night, something like 10:30, when a riot passed by below our apartment, and let me tell you, it was a little terrifying looking down on that. People were starting fires and attacking each other, it didn't even really seem to matter who, though rioters and police fought the most. They didn't seem to have a message or a demand, like they were rioting just for the sake of it or something.

Watching it made me angry. I didn't really know why, but I felt like I needed to do something. It wasn't a new feeling for me, I had been ADHD all my life, but something about the energy that was boiling under my skin felt different. I distinctly remember feeling an almost overwhelming compulsion to punch Paul, which was incredibly alien to me, since Paul was the best thing to happen to my mom.

My mom was the one who figured it out. All three of us were peering out of a window when she suddenly blanched. Me and Paul shared a worried glance. She stammered out an explanation that made no sense, until eventually simply ordering us to pay close attention to a man who was approaching the crowd with disarming gestures. He fished someone out the crowd, and they spoke for a moment, others in the riots parting around them to continue moving forward, before the man suddenly stopped making disarming gestures. The person they were talking to started getting physical, and the man clocked them in the face, and the fell like a rock. The man ran up to catch up with the riot.

I remember saying 'What the fuck?', and didn't even get a peep of dissent from my mom about "language", which pretty much told me that my reaction was the only reaction.

Paul was sharp enough to point out that it looked like some police officers had started joining the riots. I said that it didn't look like just 'a few' to me.

We came to the conclusion that, whatever was going on, those riots were not normal. It was like the second you got involved in one, reason would begin to fail you or something. Stay too long, and you go insane. We didn't think we were the only ones who figured this out, since a lot of people stopped going out to see the riots. We tried to wait out the riots, hoping that this could somehow blow over and the mass hysteria could be avoided.

That plan lasted a week, and in spite of her being the one to catch the little detail that probably saved our lives back when that riot passed by, that didn't help her when everything started to really go downhill, and I found myself another one of many orphans.

Logically, I know that the reason she died was because she was trying to protect me, and Paul, in turn, was trying to protect us both, but it still confused me a little. I know it should have been me, and by all rights, I deserved it a lot more than she did. I guess my theory of the best people having the worst luck was true after all.

Since then, I think the only thing that managed to keep me going was the fact my mom chose to die for me. I really wanted to quit sometimes. The world was awful, especially with one less person like Sally Jackson in it. But my life was a gift, and I would never throw away the last gift my mom had given me. It was the most precious thing I owned, and I had backpack with a few functioning lighters in it.

I wouldn't die. Even if the whole world fell apart until I was left with nothing, I was never going to give up what second chance my mom had given to me.

It's honestly kind of funny how this all turned out in the end, because that's exactly what happened, just not in the way I would have expected.


AN: Okay, so It's a bit on the skimpy side, but I felt like if I didn't post something soon I would probably going to chicken out. This will serve as the prologue to the story, but originally, this was a little introduction that was supposed to be in chapter 1! Chapter 1 proper is already finished(and way, way longer, with dialog. The works, honestly.), but I want to give myself a bit of a buffer zone so I can update with some regularity without needing to rush anything. So I guess this is more of a... teaser? Yeah, let's go with that. It's not terribly interesting at this stage, but I am going to be diving right into Greek shenanigans, so hopefully that will entice you to stay around.

I hope you enjoyed what little I provided, and have a wonderful day!