I woke up early the morning of September 23rd, 2145. I remember that day very vividly. Birds chirping and dogs barking as everyone takes their morning routine upon themselves. I stagger out of my room to the bathroom door where I wait for my sister to finish brushing her hair so I can take my morning shower. She finally exits the bathroom exchanging crude words as we pass each other. I enter the bathroom and grab a towel and set it on the counter next to the shower, I turn the knob three quarters of the way between hot and cold and feel with my hand to tell when the water is warm enough. I enter the shower and begin my shower routine, shampoo rinse, shampoo rinse, soap rinse, soap rinse, turn off the shower, and step out. Grab my towel and dry myself.
After I got myself dressed I head downstairs to eat my breakfast. A bowl of oatmeal with diced up bananas in the mix and a small amount of cinnamon. I eat it in a fairly fast fashion because I’m always in a crunch for time. I run back upstairs and brush my teeth before rushing out the door and get in the car and drive off to school.
I drive to school getting stuck in the everyday morning traffic. School Buses stopping at every other intersection to pick up kids. Crazy parents trying to rush their kids off to school so they can get along with their day. It’s sort of hectic but it’s my kind of hectic. I live for the moments that my heart runs fast. The sort of rush I get having to slam on the breaks cause that crazy woman from 31 Main Street has to get out of her driveway as she rips in front of me and I exchange a few hand gestures with her as she decides to ride her breaks the entire way to the elementary school where we part ways.
I normally arrive at school at 7:30 just enough time for me to sit around and do nothing while I wait to hear the warning bell and rush into the school. I walk into the school and everyone is frantic, mainly the freshmen though. The freshmen had all come from small schools full of local people where everybody knew everybody. Now they came to a High School with nearly three-thousand people. Which, for me was a hard change coming from a school with just under three-hundred.
My usual routine was to head to the corridor in the middle most part of the High School and plan out my day. Choosing which classes I planned on skipping and which ones I planned on attending. Stats attend, English skip, Gym attend, Honors Physics attend, Art skip, Drama skip, Dismissal definitely attend. Where my High School is so large it’s almost impossible for the teachers to even notice that a student was missing from any of the classes.
It may sound like I don’t really care about school but I do just, being a senior this year having all my credits and just taking filler classes has left me with little motivation to do anything besides the most needed classes. Like those I need for my Engineering major. Classes here at Foggy Mountain High are really easy, especially those artsy classes, I’ve shown up to those once this year and am currently passing with a 93. Pretty good I think. 
The day went on Stats done, English skipped, Gym done, Honors Physics done now only two more periods in the day time for me to go home. As I was making my way out of the school I heard a large crash followed by screaming and the fire alarm going off and the sprinklers engaging. I heard them shout over the intercom to find the nearest classroom and lockdown. Me being the kind of person I was sprinted to my sister’s class, Biology I believe. I ran through the west wing and went to turn to the south wing and saw what made the giant crash. I look down the hall to see a giant pile of rubble with fire coming from it. With these creatures climbing out of it. I looked up and the ceiling had not been damaged, this meant they must have come from below.
Knowing this school as well as I did left me to my “Anti-teacher” zones. The parts of the school I knew how to access but the teachers never went, like the attic. I rushed to the nearest janitor’s closet and mover the large cabinet that they blocked the entrance with. I know that there is an exit to the attic on the opposite side of the south wing that I need to get too. I quickly ran through the menagerie of what seemed to be a myriad of spider webs to the opposite end of the attic and busted through the door on this end. I open the door to hear more screaming so I grabbed the gardening sickle that was hidden behind all of the janitor’s overalls, and headed out the door.
  These creatures seemed to stand roughly 8 feet tall and had quite a muscular looking build. Their skin was dark and oily looking from what I could tell. They spoke in a dialect that I had never heard before, not able to be associated to any of those I have heard of. I headed to my sisters classroom where one of them was trying to get in. I quickly put the sharp part of the sickle through the back of the creature’s neck, it was weird because it thought that would surely kill it but it seemed to enrage the creature. I ripped the sickle down through the creatures back and regained my composure. It turned around and look at me with a sort or pain and anger in its eyes. But I was not to be fooled by such a thing. Its face looked to be almost human but with a sort of decayed stature.
It let out a screech and ran towards me I kicked it in the abdominal area and swung the sickle through the top of its skull laying it to the ground, and I heard it mutter something in Latin “Nos sumus Derelicta” which if I could remember correctly means “We are the Forsaken” what could this mean? The creature then died in front of me, but when it died it changed. The dark oily composure turned to a softer more human like one, with skin being almost like mine. As if it had been absolved of some sort of curse it had been bearing.
Could the forsaken mean they are the damned? Could this mean all those who had died and committed atrocities are coming to the surface to wreak havoc among the living? No time for finding answers yet, I need to find my sister. I quickly ran to the door and knocked and asked to be let in, the teacher hesitantly opened the door as I rushed through, slamming the door behind me.
I look around the room and see no sign of my sister. I ask the teacher, “Where is my sister?” The teacher says, “She went to the bathroom.” Just my luck on the opposite end of the hall from where I was. I dashed out of the classroom and back into the attic to the other side of the hall into the janitor’s closet. I exit the closet to hear screaming coming from the girls bathroom. I rush through the door to see one of those creatures outside the stall doors trying to get in. I swing the sickle through the top of the creatures head, killing it instantly. I pulled the sickle from its head and said, “Sis is that you?” She responded, “Yes it’s me.” “Follow close behind me,” I said to her.
We exit the bathroom to sounds of screams all around. I look down the hall and see more of these creatures climbing out of the hole. We ran to the janitor’s closet where I found a flare gun, axe, shovel, hammers, metal broom handle, and surprisingly a pick axe. I hand her the sickle where it is lighter and use the janitor’s cart to wheel everything else around. We head up the north wing of the school because that’s where the exit to the parking lot is, and hear gunshots from up the hallway. It must be the security guard. We head closer to the noise to see the security guard lying against the wall with his chest cavity sort of ripped open, and his head bashed in with the gun on the ground beside him. I grab the pick axe and slowly approach his body I hear a noise next to me and go to swing but hear “Wait! Wait! Wait!” I look to see my friend John.
I hand him the axe and tell him to follow us we’re getting out of here. He says he needs to find his girlfriend before he leaves. I ask where she is. He says she’s down the west wing. I came from there it seems to be okay so we head that way. When we come around the corner one of the creatures runs at John, before I could react he swings the axe into the skull of the creature stopping it in its tracks. He yells, “Nobody messes with J-Rock!” and we continue heading up the hall. John runs to the Home Ec. Room. He knocks on the door and yells, “LET ME IN!” The teacher responds, “No, we’re in a lockdown.” John becomes infuriated and takes the axe to the door and breaks it down in 3 large swings. Once he gets through the door he’s met with a big hug from his girlfriend.
We decide we need to head to the office so we can tell everyone about what’s going on and that they need to get out of the school, or take up arms and fight. We run down the west wing to the center corridor and head down the east wing to the office. We knock on the door and tell them to let us in. They hesitantly open the door but once we get in we see that the principles door is shut and stuff is stacked in front of the door. “Why is there stuff in front of the door?” I ask. “Some hole opened up underneath the office and the principle fell in, nothing came out but I could hear something from down the hole,” said the secretary. I grab the intercom and say, “Everyone, the school is under attack. Not from above but from below. The best thing you can do is to find a weapon and swing for their heads. If you penetrate the brain you will kill them on the spot. Try and get out of the school.”
The secretary taps me on the shoulder and hands me a box of shells and a shotgun that had been thought of no more than a school relic. She tells me it’s not accurate but it is powerful. Just let them get close and aim high. Then she sits down in her desk and starts crying, we leave the office and enter an almost disturbing silence. As if nothing had happened in the first place. We make our way down the hallway to the center corridor again and head up the north wing, at this point we have no clue what has happened outside the school all we know is that the school isn’t safe.
  We finally approach the exit and open the doors and all we can hear is screaming and sirens. I look where my car is supposed to be and all that’s left is a large hole where more of those creatures came from. I see a roadblock set up by the police half of which is still there and the other engulfed by one of those sinkholes. People running frantically around the streets trying to find some place to call sanctuary.
We head down the stairs into the parking lot and try to find a car that’s unlocked. But we realize that with everything going on right now, laws don’t matter. We find an SUV and bust out the window. John rips the dashboard panel off and starts playing with the wires and then suddenly the SUV starts. I throw it in reverse and go speeding up the road trying to avoid all the debris, rubble, and the giant sinkholes all around us.
As we head up the road there’s screaming and running all around, sounds of gunfire in the distance and glass breaking as people raid the stores for supplies. John opens up the glove box and a .44 falls out onto the floor and a box of bullets too. This must have been one of the gang member’s cars.
We pull up to a grocery store and I put the car in park, I tell John to keep watch with the .44 and I’m going in to take the shotgun and get some food and water. I grab a grocery cart and run to the front door. The doors are locked, so I pick up the cart and throw it through the glass window and it shatters. I step through the hole I had made and head into the dark and quiet store. My shopping cart was creating a slight whistling noise where the wheels were not lubricated properly. I hear rustling on the other side of the store and quickly look for my cellphone and use the flashlight to find my way around. I begin to hear sounds of footsteps so I kneel down behind one of the clerk’s counters and see two of those creatures walk past the far end of the store heading this way. I slowly load the shotgun and c*** it. I peak over the counter again and see a third one appear from around the corner holding the body of one of the clerk’s lifeless in its hands.
I grab a candy bar and throw it far across the room to the area behind them so they turn around. I quickly run around the counters and slide in behind the counter just in front of them and throw another candy bar so they keep looking that direction. I stand up and grasp the shotgun firmly and fire at one of the creatures skulls and drop it. The others make a screaming noise and turn and run at me and try grabbing me from over the counter. I drop to the floor, c*** the shotgun, and fire again. Taking the head off of another one of the creature’s shoulders. Before I get the chance to recover the third creature climbs over the counter and goes to grab me. I close my eyes and hope for the best but then hear a gunshot fallowed by a thud. I open my eyes to see the creature down with a hole through its forehead.
I stand up and look around to see John, my sister, and John’s girlfriend standing on the opposite end of the store where the entrance is. I yell, “Thanks John!” “Come here,” he says. I run over and he tells me that one of the sinkholes opened beneath the SUV and almost to my sister and his girlfriend with it. They managed to get the bullets and shotgun shells before it fell but lost all of the janitor’s equipment. Good thing this store has a hunting and fishing section with rifles and other guns.
We head to that section but stop at the camping section first and grab flashlights and lanterns for lighting. Along with a couple hundred batteries. We get to the hunting and fishing section and bust open the glass display case and grab the AR-15 and the 30-06 and grab plenty of ammo for each. We all grab a utility belt with pistol holders and room for two extra clips. We each grab a pistol. All of us end up with a semi-automatic 9mm pistol. We put it in our holders and clip it in and head deeper into the store. I being the person I am ran over and busted out a glass case. Inside the glass case held a machete. I grab the machete and put it in our cart. We turn down and aisle and find one of the sinkholes which had happened to open up in the candle aisle making a giant glass and wax explosion all over the floor.
We skip that aisle and head down another one which led us right to the water which inconveniently had already been raided just leaving a few small bottles left. But I remember seeing a water station for employees in the manager’s office from when I had gotten an interview for a job here. So we head there and open up the backroom and find it’s stocked with 5gallon jugs of water. Which we grabbed a couple of and then shut the door and pushed things in front of it to try and keep hidden from others just in case we need more. We decide we may need some food so we head to the canned food aisle and load up with as many cans of soup, vegetables, and fruits as we could. Also making a stop at the “Fine China” and grabbing paper plates, cups, and plastic forks.
We decide it’s time to leave. So we head out the door and try to find a vehicle. The only vehicle we could find was a semi-truck parked behind the store with a trailer. John’s dad was a truck driver so he learned how to unhook a trailer so I let him get to doing that.  Before he unhooks the trailer he decides to move the truck forward and goes around to the back doors and opens them and calls me over. I run over to see the back of this trailer solid full of supplies. From reams of paper to boxes of paper towels to cases of sugar and creamer. All dry goods that could be useful in some way. We decide that the trailer would be good to have, but this would be a very obvious sign of supplies so we are going to need to put it somewhere. So john runs inside and grabs a couple of padlocks and puts them on the doors so no one can get in. He then gets back in the truck and backs the trailer up so that the backdoor is pressed almost right against the wall to prevent anyone from getting in it.
After all of this we put what supplies we have in the sleeper cab to keep them from rolling around. John unhooks the trailer and gets in the driver’s seat and we take off down the road. Luckily the trucks fuel tanks were filled when they parked it at the store. We listen to the scanner to find if there are any broadcasts showing signs of refuge. We hear one broadcast about the prison being the safes place, with 6 inch thick concrete walls and 12 inch thick floors. All of the windows are reinforced with wire and are Plexiglass. But the only problem is it’s full of criminals. From people in for to many speeding tickets to murderers, they’re all in there. So I don’t know if that would be the greatest idea for a sanctuary.
We hear another broadcast from the President himself saying, “Find your family, find a couple weapons and supplies, and find someplace safe. We’re under attack, and it’s not from those you’d think. It’s from below, nobody knows what they are or how they came to be but they’re attacking us and we need to retaliate. So if anyone thinks they can help do your part and put as many of these things down as you can. It seems that these things are much like humans. They have brains and if you can stop that brain you can stop them too. They’re strong and fast so don’t let them to close, if you can stay at long distances. I have my team of scientists studying a few that we manages to incapacitate. It seems the weakest part of their skulls is right behind where the ears would be on a human, followed by their foreheads. This is your President saying, be strong America, this is our battle.” Then it just continues to repeat.
As we head down the road we see more and more chaos. Cars and buildings burning. Corpses of creatures and humans lay scattered in the street. Crows line the top of the telephone lines sitting, waiting to feast on the dead. It’s been 5 hours since all of this happened and it seems like it’s never going to end. We are managing okay right now but sunset is in another hour and I’m afraid what might happen there. We continue down the road until we come to a police road block. They told us to stop or we would be fired upon so John did just that. He stopped the truck put it in neutral put the air brake on and shut it off. As soon as the engine stopped two of the cops ripped open John’s door then mine. They grabbed John by his leg and went to rip him out but John wasn’t going to go so easily. John kick the officer in the side of the head with his steel toe and I did the same to the other and quickly pulled our guns. The other officer in the roadblock dropped his gun and put his hands up.
We told him to move the road block so we could get through. The officer did as we told him to. We both got in the truck and set off again watching the rear view mirror just in case. The other cop attended to his fellow comrades who were on the ground unconscious. As we went on the sun got lower and lower in the sky. We came up on the town park and John stopped the truck. The entire town park was gone. Nothing left but a giant hole. On the opposite side of the hole we could see hundreds of these creatures standing. Completely still not even moving as if something had control of them. John and I got out of the truck and walked around the edge of the hole to the other side. Where the creatures stood like statues. Then we heard footsteps of some creatures. Carrying the bodies of their own dead. Setting them next to each other one by one.
John and I stood there and watched them for a little longer as they grouped what seemed to be the last of their dead, each of them went over and picked up one of their own until there were none left. I looked at my cellphone and it read 7:15 sunset was at 7:20 tonight. As I looked up from my cell phone the creatures slowly walked into the hole at a constant pace. One followed by the other. Hundreds of them in a line. I look and see that the end of the line is coming and look at my watch. 7:20 on the dot as the last of them filed into the hole.
John and I walk back to the truck slowly, pondering the Idea of why? Why did they all file down the hole? Are they going to come back? Are we safe? The string of questions just go on and on and on. We finally get back to the truck and climb in. We turn on the scanner again and hear another message from the president. “The creature’s attitudes have changed. They filed down a large sinkhole in the middle of the Reflecting Pool. Bigger than any of the others that had started anywhere else. We don’t know if they are going to come back but we recommend not leaving the place you are now. If it’s safe stay there.”
We lock the doors to the truck and get something to eat. We each grab what we wanted out of what we had. Which turned out to be a lot of canned pasta. We finish eating, john digs through the glove box and finds a box of cards, so we play a couple games of go fish. We look at the clock and it turns out to be 9:30. We decide it’s time to go to bed. We give the girls the bed and John and I sleep in the driver and passenger seat. I’m the first to wake up the next morning, it’s 8:00 on the dot and I look out the window and see nothing but the giant hole. Nothing surrounding it nothing going in or coming out of it. Just the giant hole.
I wake everyone up and we get our breakfast. More canned pasta and we all head out of the truck to take a look around. We notice others who had found refuge have come out of their hiding places. Everyone still very shaky and being very cautious. No one knowing what is going to happen or of what has happened to the creatures, where they went.  If they’re coming back or not. But from the looks of it they’re gone for good.
The day went on, nothing else happened. Everywhere we went someone was fixing something. We came across road crews trying to fix some of the holes. Others were trying to fix parts of their building that had fallen down. Everything seemed to come back together. The day went on and no sign of the creatures. I guess everyday will be a mystery.
It’s been 15 years since they came for that awful day. Nobody has seen one since then. Nobody knows what they came for or why they did it. But all I know is that it’s over and they haven’t come back yet….