The young boy was woken by the sound of smoldering fire and the stench of smoke. Donte slowly opened his eyes and took a whiff of the black fog that had formed around him in the closet. He let out a series of deep coughs. The smoke made his eyes water.
The young boy looked around him. He saw a thin strip of light shining through into the closet. Donte looked around to try to find the source of the light, but the fog blocked his view of sight. He got up on his feet and banged at the door with his hands. Nothing. So he kicked it several times and the door broke off its hinges.
What he saw haunted him for many nights. The charred bodies of his teacher and classmates were scattered all over the floor. There was a fire in the corner of the room. There were blaster marks all over the walls, signifying a fight broke out. There was a blaster next to what was left of Mrs. Lapham. The nozzle of the weapon had been blown off, making it unserviceable. There had been rumors she was a part of the resistance fighters, and this was surefire proof of it, but he wasn't thinking about that.
Then Donte thought of a horrible possibility. If they came here to take out Mrs. Lapham, They might also look for his dad! He picked up the blaster, burst down through the door of his classroom, or at least what was left of it, and discovered that the entire school had been hit.
He walked down the destroyed hallway of his school. Parts of it had no roof. Looking in through the doors of the other classrooms, he saw the same story every time. He approached the main doors when he heard the sounds of footsteps. They where in perfect rhythm, all at once, making it impossible to tell whether their was five or fifty.
It was like the soldiers footsteps he remembered when he went with his dad to the makeshift barracks. Only much more organized. He ducked and waited for the footsteps to pass.
After they did he ran through the doors and into the street. The streets were clear, for the most part, just some rubble hear and there. A few more buildings had been destroyed in any direction, but the rest of Theed seemed untouched. His school was on the very edge of Theed, where as some say, cobblestone meets grass.
As he ran toward his house, he saw in a nearby canal, what seemed to be a sub of some sort. He paid it little attention; all he wanted to do was to get home, and to find the militia drinking his moms ice cold lemonade.
"But that young boy would never experience that." Oba said, cutting in.
"No." Donte replied in a sullen voice. "And then," Oba continued, "What happened next."
Donte ran past the city limits and passed into the grasslands. Don't stop running. Don't stop. He repeated this over and over through his head, so much that his brain was out of breath.
"Almost… there." Donte muttered under his breath.
But he wasn't close, not yet. There were still miles left to his house. "Gotta rest…" Donte breathed out. He stopped to rest on a rock covered with moss.
The young, innocent boy looked up at the city of Theed. The palace rose above the other buildings of Theed. He could see smoke rising still from the area around his school. Then he heard it, a low hum. Donte looked around and saw something moving over a hill near him.
He ducked behind the rock. It just barely hid him from sight. He looked up to see a tan colored tank moving past him toward Theed. It was hovering several feet off the ground. He waited and waited, and even though it was long gone, Donte didn't move, he just sat there, as if he was waiting for something.
Donte came out of the trance when he heard blaster shots going of within the city.
"I have to keep moving." He whispered aloud.
It was night by the time he finally reached his house in the plains. There was one problem, it wasn't there anymore. What was there one wouldn't even consider ruins of a house. He dropped to his knees.
Donte needed to get off the planet, but to do that, he would have to go back to Theed…