Radioactive

This is a novel that I am currently writing. I will hopefully finish it and when I do that, I'm going to send it to a publishing company to hopefully publish! This is only a preview, as I will only be posting the Prologue and first five chapters. The prologue is my short story Thunder, so if you read that and don't want to read it again, just keep in mind that instead of it being in first person, it is in third and the main character is a girl with no name. She is just addressed as "she." Hope you enjoy and tell me what you think about it!

Prologue
It was almost as if it were night outside. But it wasn't. Dark rainclouds shrouded all of Manhattan and people everywhere were rushing to get home before the onslaught of rain. Pigeons and sparrows were flying across the sky, looking for a secure tree or safe alleyway to hide out in until the storm was over. The already congested city streets were even more crowded with taxis filled with workers that normally walk home. She walks away from her window over to her couch to enjoy whatever television she has until the storm knocks out all of the power. The first boom of thunder shakes her apartment.

After about ten minutes of channel surfing, all she finds is the news. But because she only has a short amount of time of power left and would like to enjoy it with reality shows, she turns the television off. She gets off of her couch and walks into the kitchen to get the candles she had bought earlier today. As she is wrestling with the five candles that are currently in her hands and arms, she hears another roar of thunder, feels the shockwave of it in her apartment, and, even though it is merely lightning, there is screaming outside.

She places the candles on her coffee table and walks over to the window to peer down onto the city streets. It is total bedlam. Cars are completely stopped and people are rushing out of them, running as if there lives depended on it. Others on the sidewalk had their cell phones pointed at the sky, taking videos and pictures. Another boom shakes the world around her. More screams of terror. She rushes back to her television and somehow puts the news on as she fumbles with the remote.

“…currently attacking Manhattan and on their way to Washington D.C., China and allies Russia and North Korea are brutally attacking every major U.S. city on their way to our capital.” Before she hears anymore, she turns the television off. Another boom travels throughout the city. Only this time, an intense ringing envelopes her ears and everything goes dark.

Chapter One
"Daddy, no!" A bang echoes throughout the world around us. My eyes start stinging from the oncoming tears. My father just died a valiant death. North Korea had captured my family because he apparently had a vast knowledge of the U.S. government's deepest secrets about military base locations, sites that we keep our weapons of mass destruction, and just about anything else that pertains to the military you could think of. He refused to talk, so when one of the soldiers pointed a gun at my sixteen year old sister Avery, he dove in front of the bullet. Tori, my thirteen year old sister, was the one that called out his name. I am currently holding her in my arms, preventing her from running at the soldiers, which would only end with a bullet in her head.

The soldiers' general comes into the room we are all in and they start talking to each other in their native tongue. I can feel Tori relax as if she had given up on trying to run at the soldiers, so I loosen my grip. She stands in front of me for a couple of seconds and then bolts away, going straight for Avery. I see the anger in her movements and I charge after her, not knowing what she is about to do.

Tori stops next to Avery and starts hitting and punching her arm. Then she starts screaming, "You could've saved him!" Tori just keeps yelling and shouting this while Avery just stares at our father crying and shaking. I grab Tori so that she will leave Avery alone and when I do, she breaks down, turns around, and starts crying into my chest.

Avery turns to look at me and I say, "It wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could do."

She rubs her tear filled eyes and looks back down at our dead father. "Yes, there was." There was a long and silent pause. Avery turns to look at me again and says, "Pearce, you have to promise me that you won't leave me and Tori. Not like this."

Before I even have the time to reply, the general comes walking over to me. When he is standing in front of me, I realize that I have at least a foot on him. Despite his height, though, he has such an air of authority that intimidates me. He reminds me of Napoleon. I push Tori behind me so that it makes it a little more challenging for him to grab her. Avery stands right next to me, blocking Tori off even more.

"You seem like a strong young man," he says to me. "How old are you?"

"I turned eighteen two months ago."

He nods to himself and starts looking at me up and down. Probably looking for any noticeable strengths and weaknesses. "Are you planning on joining the military?"

"Do I really have much choice?"

He starts laughing. Did I say something funny? When he stops, he says, "I like your wit." I guess I did. "But whether or not it is mandatory that you join is up to China. I guess you'll have to wait and see."

The general's gaze falls on my father. "It's a pity we couldn't get any answers out of him." I feel Avery stiffen beside me and I hear her let out a growl. It didn't sound remotely like her, though. It sounded more like a bear or lion ticked off by the fact that something else is trespassing on its territory. Behind us, Tori says nervously, "Avery..."

She suddenly stops and glances over to me nervously. When the general looks up from our father and back to us, Avery's gaze snaps back to him. Behind us, Tori shuffles uncomforably. Noticing the sudden movement, the general looks between me and Avery. When he realizes that we are hiding her, a wide and malicious grin spreads across his face. He walks over to us and stops about a foot away from us. He looks at Avery and says, "And what might your name be?"

"Avery."

"May I talk to the girl that is hiding behind you, Avery?"

She doesn't answer him. Instead, she is just standing next to me with her arms slightly outstretched to protect Tori a little more. The general starts putting his foot out, getting ready to take a step closer to Tori. Beside me, I feel Avery tense and in a voice that sounds a lot like the growl she let out earlier, she says, "Not another step closer."

He smiles. He knows that he struck a nerve. He places his foot down. Tori gulps nervously. And for some odd reason, my heart drops to my stomach. When Avery reaches her arm back, I know why. I don't even get the time to stop her. Within the next second, a painful smacking noise echoes throughout the room and the general ends up ten feet to our left. He is laying on the ground and a large red hand imprint is already on his cheek, not even five seconds after he was hit.

The three soldiers in front of us immediately aim their assault rifles at us-- well, more Avery than anyone-- and are ready to start shooting at the order. The general slowly gets up, holding his face and groaning in pain. When he is up, it is obvious that he is dazed. His knees are slightly bent and his eyes are closed tightly. I glance over at Avery and she is trying to hide a smile of pride. How could she be smiling at a time like this? Within the next few seconds, she could be shot to death, meaning that our father died in vain! I get weak knees at the though of losing her just because she had lost her temper.

The soldiers are still aiming their guns at her. I feel anger starting to build up inside of me. I need to contain it, though. It cannot be released in an irrational way like Avery's was. My gaze fall back onto the general and he is waving at his soldiers in a way that is telling them to put their weapons down. He then starts tottering over to us like a drunk. He makes sure to put a few feet between himself and Avery before he starts talking.

"I am only letting you go for one reason." The eye that is on the side that was hit is closed. Avery did a good job. "I want you three to be witnesses. I want you to witness your country fall and crumble." Then, without saying another word, the general walks out the door. The soldiers take us, walk us through a maze of hallways, shove us into a white van, and put black hoods over our heads, preventing us from seeing absolutely anything.

Chapter Two
I am completely numb. My body, my mind, everything. The soldiers roughly ripping me out of the van and them tearing the hood off of my face? I don't feel any of it. Pearce yelling at me because I lost my temper? I don't feel any anger at his lack of understanding. I barely even hear it. His shouts sound distant and almost unreal. I look at Tori and by the way her face looks, I can tell she is feeling the same thing I am experiencing. I should be feeling sorrow and grief that Dad is gone forever, yet I can't because for some odd reason, there is a part of me that thinks he is still coming back.

Pearce grabs me by the wrist and drags me towards the steps that lead us up to the front door to our house. Tori is slowly following us. Pearce is surprised to see that our door is back on hinges and not on the ground from when the soldiers kicked it in. He opens the door and shoves me inside. Then he grabs Tori and does the same to her. Pearce then slams the door and closes the curtains at the window. Walking inside of my empty house, that part of me that thought my father was coming back died. He was never coming back and there was nothing I could do about it now, even though I could have when they first invaded our house. Before I know it, tears start streaming down my face.

Pearce looks at me and hugs me. "It's going to be okay. We're home now and we can try to make our lives as normal as possible."

I just keep crying and through the sobs, I am able to say, "I could've stopped them. I could've stopped them from taking us and killing him." As I am saying this, I hear Tori walk out of the room and go upstairs to her bedroom.

Pearce grabs my shoulders and pushes me away just enough so he could see my face. "You need to stop blaming what happened on yourself. What Tori was yelling at you was just her way of releasing her anger. There was nothing you could have possibly done."

''You don't know what I'm capable of doing, Pearce. Tori was right when she said that I could've saved him.''

~   ~   ~

Avery wipes the tears out of her eyes with the heels of her hands. I let go of her shoulders and she walks upstairs to her bedroom. Down the halway, I hear noises in my parents' room. I get butterflies in my stomach as  Istart walking down the hall. I open the door, hoping to see my missing mother in there, but all I see is an open window with the curtains blowing in the wind. I let out a shaky breath of disappointment. When China, North Korea, and Russia first attacked, my mother was on a business trip in New York City. Instead of sleeping in a hotel, her friend let her stay in her apartment. Although the chances of surviving those bombs are extremely slim, she hasn't been reported dead yet. All we can do is hope she survived and is on her way back to Pennsylvania now.

I sigh and close the door. The realization that I very well may be an orphan makes me sick. I walk back into the living room and slightly open the curtain just enough so I can see out of it. The van and North Korean soldiers are gone, but replacing them is a small group of armed Russian soldiers marching down the street. Normally, my street is covered with little children playing games like hide-and-seek and tag. Now, it's completely empty. I don't know if it's because they are all dead or because they are all cooped up inside, but the street has no life to it except for the soldiers. Is this really what life is going to be like now? Living under the rule of China and its lap pets?

A loud knock at the door makes me jump. I close the curtain and I walk to the door. My hand is on the doorknob and I hesitate. I lean my ear against the door and I faintly hear people talking outside. Is that a Russian accent I'm picking up? I open the door and three of the soldiers that were marching are standing on my front porch.

I open the screen door and say nervously, " Can I help you?"

"Is this the Coleman residence?" one of them asks in a very thick accent. I nod and hear two pairs of footsteps come downstairs. "General Teilel of North Korea has informed us of your father's death. Is your mothre home?"

"She was on a business trip in Manhattan when you first attacked. She hasn't been reported dead yet."

"You have one month for her to come back to you. If she fails to do so, your sisters will be put into foster homes."

I become dizzy. "B-But I'm eighteen. Aren't I old enough to take care of them?"

"You need to be part of the foster care system, which can take months to join," one of them replies coldly. "And even if you were to join, you need to be twenty-one. And you cannot adopt your siblings."

Avery walks up to the door and looks at the soldiers. "Will the two of us be separated?"

"There is a strong possibility of that happening." I hear Avery swallow hard and she nods. Just one month, I think. "Enjoy the rest of your day." The soldiers then walk back onto the street and continue marching.

Avery then walks past me and goes outside. "What are you doing?" I ask.

Without turning around to look at me, she responds," I'm going for a walk in the woods behind the elementary school."

"Then I'm going with you."

When I take my first step towards her, Tori grabs my arm. "Pearce, let her do this. Avery can handle herself." I turn my head to look at her. Tori has a pleading look in her eyes.

I sigh in annoyance. "Fine." By the time I look back to where Avery was standing, she is gone and already half way down the street. "So you were just going to go anyway?" I shout.

"Yeah, pretty much!" she retorts back.

Chapter Three
It is four in the afternoon. Avery left two and a half hours ago. I knew I shouldn't have let her go alone! I start pacing back and forth in the living room, waiting for her to come back. Tori is sitting on the couch reading a book, trying to distract her mind from the fact that Avery isn't back yet. Or at least, I think that's why she's reading. I shake my head at both mine and Avery's ignorance. I look at my watch. Fifteen minutes. If she is not back in fifteen minutes, I'm going out there to look for her.

I suddenly feel all of the anger from the past few hours bottled up inside of me. It is making my hands shake and my face hot and sweaty. When it feels like I'll die if I don't release just a small amount of it, I turn and punch a gaping hole into the wall next to me. I think I may have gotten my way through to the next room over.

Tori looks up from her book and gapes at me. "Since when were you so strong?"

I merely shrug. "It was probably just an adrenaline rush." Tori makes a noise that sounds like she doesn't believe me and gets off the couch to examine the hole I made in the wall. Her eyes widen in surprise and she runs upstairs and I hear her slam her bedroom door shut. I follow her upstairs, but when I try to open the door, it is locked.

I press my ear against the door and hear Tori whispering to herself, "Both of the holes go straight through the wall. The cracks running up from the hole are the same, so both punches had the same amount of force behind them. But Pearce couldn't be-" She stops when she hears the floor creak underneath me. I wince. I couldn't be what? She opens the door and she stands in the entrance of her room. "What is it, Pearce?"

"I was just wondering what you were doing," I reply. I peer int oher room and a large hole in the wall is badly concealed by a drawer. It looks as if it was just put there now and that she hoped it was good enough for me not to see. "Why is there a hole in the wall over there?"

She lets me in and we sit on her bed. "When North Korea took us last night, Avery was resisting capture. She tried landing a punch on one of them and he got out of the way so that all she hit was the wall."

"But your rooms are a good thirty feet apart," I interrupt.

"That's because the doors are on complete opposite sides of each of our rooms. My door is on the left side and her's is on the right. In all reality, there's only a foot of wall separating our rooms."

I look at the hole. It's a clean hit all the way through and I can clearly see the foot of Avery's bed on the other side of her room. "She's a lot stronger than she looks." Avery is kind of tall and lanky. Her appearance doesn't give her the look that she could even put a dent in a wall, let alone a hole that reaches over to the room next to it.

Tori laughs uncomfortably and replies, "You have no idea." The two of us get up and move the drawer back to where it was before Tori moved it. As I pass the furniture to exit the room, a picture catches my eye. I stop and turn to see a picture of my dad holding Tori-- a baby then-- with me and Avery at both of his legs. The picture brings tears to my eyes. "That's my favorite picture of him," I hear Tori say behind me. Her voice sounds like she is about to cry.

I pick up the picture and examine it more closely. I vaguely remember the day it was taken. I think I was almost six and Avery had just turned four. We had gone on a day trip to do some sight seeing over in Pittsburgh. I remember liking the Duquesne Incline a lot. It was something like a train that, depending on what part of the mountain you were on, would bring you up and down the side of a mountain. I also remember Avery giving a small fit about bringing Tori when we left. Avery still wasn't too keen on the fact that Mom and Dad had Tori and she didn't want them to bring her along. And, now that the two are so close, the memory manages to get a chuckle out of me.

Tori walks up next to me to look at the picture. Her cheeks are wet from the tears that just rolled down her face. And, for the first time ever, I notice how much she looks like Dad. She has the same straight, light brown hair, the same emerald green eyes, and just about all of the facial features. She couldn't look more like him if she tried. "You look so much like him," I say.

As she is staring at the picture of Dad's big, happy smile as she is being held up above his head and of me and Avery holding his legs and sitting on his feet, she responds, "Sometimes, if I were to look at you from the corner of my eye, I think you are him." Uncomfortable, I look I at my watch. It's a quarter after four. I hand Tori the picture and she continues staring at it. "Avery looks a lot like Mom." Tori was right. Avery is basically a mirrored image of her. The two had-- have-- the same bright blonde hair, the same dark blue eyes, and the same athletic build, yet tall and lanky at the same time.

I start walking out of the room and Tori stops me by questioning, "Where are you going?"

"I need to make sure Avery is safe. She's been gone for too long."

"Pearce, I told you that she would be okay." Her voice was hard and sounded angry. "Avery can take care of herself," she tells me as she glances at the hole in the wall.

"How do you know?" I shout. I don't want to yell at her, but it all just comes out. "That soldier earlier today had the audacity to point a gun at her and shoot it. So what would keep the others from doing the same?" Without waiting for a response, I walk out of her room and go out the door downstairs.

When I get onto the street, I pull my iPhone out of my pocket and text Avery, "where r u," but as soon as I press "SEND," the message comes back to me and says that it can't be sent. I sigh in exasperation. The Chinese must've done something to the cell phone towers so people can't communicate.

Panic starts to rise from my stomach to my head and it makes me dizzy. What if sh'es been trying to contact me all this time, trying to tell me that she was in trouble? I take a deep breath to try and calm myselft down. Okay, I think. I can get to her in time. The elementary school that she went to is about five minutes away if I walk. But if I run, I can get there in about two. As I start running, the cool September air helps calm me down.