Free Mass Extinction Event (Book 2): Days 9-16 by Amy Cross Page A

maybe he doesn't know. "There's been some kind of emergency," I tell him. "All the power's down. Planes crashing, phones not working, it's like the whole world has just gone insane. No-one knows what's happening, but there's this virus or illness or something that makes people sick."
    "There is, huh?" he replies.
    "You have to believe me," I continue. "I've seen it. It makes people get really ill and then they die, except some of them turn some other way and they start walking again. They become, like, these creatures that talk in this weird way, and some of them seem to not really have minds of their own, and some of them are people you might even know!"
    "Dead people walking?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.
    "I've seen it," I say. "With my own eyes. We were in Scottsville, in Oklahoma, and there were all these things. I don't know how many there are, but they were everywhere, and they were talking. My brother got hurt, but we managed to escape, and then we just drove and drove but we didn't see anyone and finally we got to this place, so we took a look around and..." I pause, realizing that I'm not ready to tell the next part. "Please," I continue, "you've got to understand. It's like the whole world's just gone wrong."
    "Like an apocalypse?" he asks. "Like the Lord has finally seen fit to wash the sin and horror from the surface of this miserable world?"
    "I don't know," I reply. "Like... I saw this woman explode. She got all sick and festering, and then her body burst. And my own mother, and my father too. And then my brother got crushed by a truck, and he was in agony, and..." My voice trails off as I realize how insane the past week has been. "This is day ten," I say eventually. "I think, anyway. I've been counting. It started ten days ago. Maybe it hasn't reached you out here yet, but I swear to God, it's happening."
    He stares at me, as if he can't quite believe what I'm saying.
    "It's true," I tell him.
    "Maybe," he replies, frowning, "and maybe not. It's certainly an eye-opener, boy, but I really don't know if I can trust you. You wouldn't come up here and try to trick an old man, would you? I've never done anything to you, so I hope to God that you wouldn't think I'm an idiot. If you're lying to me, I'll see through it. I'll get to understanding what you're doing and I'll punish you, don't think I won't."
    "It's all true," I insist. "Why else do you think my brother and I ended up out here?"
    He pauses. "Few days ago," he says eventually, "I noticed something weird. I used to see jets going through the sky, over to the north. Then they stopped, maybe about a week ago."
    "That's because of everything that's happened," I tell him. "I saw a whole jet just come crashing down last week. I bet they all just fell out of the sky when the power stopped working and people got sick."
    He smiles. "I guess I'm lucky none of them landed on my head, huh?"
    "It's not a joke," I say firmly. "People are dying."
    "Sinners," he mutters.
    "Everyone," I reply. "Not just bad people. Good people too. My parents died."
    "Then they must've been sinners too."
    I stare at him. The old guy seems so resolutely stuck in his ways, it's hard to see how I can ever convince him to see the world any other way.
    "I've been expecting something like this," he continues. "Some kind of change. I never thought I'd live to see the day, but it seems I've finally been shown that I was right. God does listen, and he does punish those who've lived unholy lives."
    "God isn't like this," I reply. "This isn't God's doing. God helps people. God's going to put all of this right. He didn't start it."
    "That's the modern world for you," he continues, with a hint of a smile still on his lips. "Everyone pretends that God is some great big teddy bear who's going to make everything fair and just. Sometimes I wonder if anyone's ever really read the Bible at all. Doesn't matter much to me, though I've gotta say, I saw it coming. I actually read the text, you see, and I