EdsonK1213

__There Are Others__

It had been a long and tiresome day in the fields. Quinn walked slowly down the dirt street, clutching the small red and brown purse that contained her day’s earnings. Her face was slightly smudged with dirt and her wavy brown hair was messily shoved into a cloth. Quinn relished the tranquility that seemed to radiate from the quiet buildings that framed the street. Five o’clock was the only time when things were quiet in Smokefall. Only a few people were on the road today.

Smokefall only had one road. Quinn noted that familiar landmarks: the general store, the apartments, the houses, the school, the doctors’ office. At the end of the street stood the barn, an enormous brown structure that housed all the horses in the village.

There were only 300 people in the village. They were the only 300 people left- not since the militaristic disasters that had swept the Earth hundreds of years ago had there been another sole on the planet. Quinn had a trunk of books passed down from her ancestors- books about Paris and the ocean and America and telephones and cars. Everything in the past seemed like a myth- now the world was a vast expanse with only 300 people, the Smokefall citizens.

Everyone in Smokefall went to school until the age of 15. At age 16, people got jobs, either working at one of the few stores or working in the fields. Every morning everyone who didn't work in town, which was most people, walked to the fields and worked all day. The food from the fields was taken to the shops, where people purchased it, or to the storehouses were it was stored for the winter, or to the bakery or restaurant where it was made into delicacies Quinn could rarely afford. Most girls lived with their parents until they married, but not Quinn. Quinn, age 16 and an orphan, lived with her five younger siblings and elderly great-aunt, and was the sole supporter of her family. Jobs in town didn’t pay enough, so she worked in the fields all day long, the youngest woman in Smokefall to do so.

Quinn’s live was too repetitive for her. Wake up. Make breakfast for everyone; see everyone off to school at 6:30. Tidy up around the house. Leave for work at seven o’clock. Go to work. Walk home for a lunch break at 1 o’clock, walk the kids home from school and make them lunch. Walk back to the fields. Work. Walk home at five o'clock. Put a quarter of the day’s earnings in the box under the bed. If it was a Friday, go to town and pick up the groceries and the cloth. Eat dinner. Read and talk to the kids. Continue sewing everyone’s winter coats to be finished in time for the cold weather. Wash up. Bed.

But what was beyond that life, anything? No. Only the sunny grasslands that seemed to stretch on forever, and the small wood that bordered the fields of crops could be seen from Smokefall. No other humans were anywhere, a thought that sometimes made Quinn shiver with fear. The Earth beyond Smokefall was supposedly an atomic wasteland that could not sufficiently support life.

"Good afternoon, Quinn!" A lanky and black-haired fellow, Eric from down the street approached Quinn and handed her a glass bottle of milk. Eric was the town's milkman. All day long he cared and tended for the cows, made sure the milk was fresh and clean, and loaded the bottles into the wagon, making his rounds in the evening when most people were getting supper on the table. Quinn felt ashamed of her ragged work clothes and humbly accepted the bottle with her head ducked.

"Thanks, Eric." She turned to go. The kids would be wondering where she was. They always did when she walked home slowly, as if they were worried she would never come back to them and poor Great Aunt Nell.

Eric, however, wasn't finished. "Did you hear?"

"Hear what?" Quinn was growing impatient. Lunch had been hours ago, and had been nothing but a pathetic bit of bread and cheese. The milk bottle was frosty and her palms were getting cold.

"Last night." He cleared his throat and straightened up, looking important. "In the sky."

"Yes, I saw the full moon. It was beautiful," Quinn replied, relieved that he wasn't bringing up a more complicated subject.

"No," Eric whispered. "There were big, glowing streaks in the sky. I overheard the mayors speaking about it earlier and they said it looked like ancient airplanes."

Ancient Methods of Transportation...that had been the title of Quinn's third grade project. Cars, buses, boats, planes. She strained to remember what a plane was. "They were surely mistaken, right?" she asked, frustrated with the slow chatter.

"I don't know." Eric frowned, as though he sensed Quinn's agitation. "I'll see you later."

"Thanks again."

Later that evening, Quinn was sitting outside on the porch, paging through a worn paper-back book by an ancient author named Judy Blume. The street was busy; people made last minute shopping trips or stopped by their neighbors houses, many of the women clutching cups of herbal tea while the children ran around and played.

And all of the sudden there was a hum.

It started out softly- like the buzz of the bee or the long, sweet chirp of a bird. Then it grew, and as the sound crescendoed the air began to vibrate and the hum sounded electric and unfamiliar and like the hissing of wire.

The sound became so loud that Quinn couldn't hear the frantic, panicky voices of anyone around her. Screaming and darting through the street, people began to rush from house to house, finding their family members, clutching their friends, covering their ears, and hitting the ground as they crouched over.

"Elle!! Matthias!" Quinn grabbed her siblings and looped her arms over their small shoulders. "Great-aunt Nell!"

She hustled her family members to the middle of the road. Even though it was crowded and full of traffic, she wanted to be with the other people. The air was humming violently and she felt her skin begin to sting with small, sharp electric zaps. Her youngest sister, Elle, was bawling. Quinn hosted her into her arms and sank to the earth, rocking back and forth in her own panic.

And as if it had never started, the buzzing stopped abruptly.

The noise almost instantaneously died down; people strained the hear to last few notes of the hum before it cut off altogether. Quinn looked up and all around her in confusion, wiping tears from Elle's cheeks as the last sob squeaked out.

Suddenly, a silver airplane swept across the sky.

It thundered and roared as it came closer to the ground. Everyone started running in the opposite direction, screaming and shrieking. Quinn tried to help all of her siblings but Matthias slipped and she fell behind as she reached for him. The crowd dashed around them and someone stepped on Quinn's ear. She felt the ground spinning underneath her and heard Matthias' frantic screech as he grabbed her hand. Quinn opened her eyes but then the world went black.

_

"Quinn! Quinn!"

She opened her eyes. She was in a bright, clean room with flourescent lights and a marble floor. Huge windows bordered the length of the room. Velvety chairs were arranged in circles and all of the Smokefall residents were wandering to and from, clutching cups of water or sandwiches. The lights looked only like pictures she'd seen in books. What was happening...?

"Quinn." It was Eric. He stood next to the her, and only then did she realize that she was lying on a high table. "You're going to be fine."

"What the heck happened to me? Where are we?" Quinn's eyes darted back and forth. She noticed a number of unfamiliar men and women clad in navy blazers in the room, talking to people, answering questions, providing food or pillows.

"Quinn..." Eric frowned slightly and tried to think of a way to begin. "I don't know how to say this...but we're in New York City. There are others."

Quinn sat up too fast and her head hurt so badly she gasped, sinking back to the table.

"New York was destroyed, Eric!" She didn't feel like thinking right now. "Back in 2040... along with everything else."

"No, it wasn't." A crisp, feminine voice from behind... Quinn struggled to turn her head but gave up. Suddenly a tall blonde women in a navy blazer joined them.

"New York wasn't destroyed. We were just //well hidden// during the disasters. After all the other civilizations and cities of the world stopped and died out, we kept thriving. With difficulty, yes, but we were able to survive. New York City isn't like it used to be. But when our surveillance cameras found Smokefall, we decided to rescue you." The women stopped sharply to see if Quinn was following.

"Rescue us?" Quinn was offended. "We didn't need rescuing! We're fine the way we are."

"Really?" scoffed the woman. "Were you at all aware of the nuclear fumes that were going to consume Smokefall at any moment? They already consumed most of the world. In New York we have a unique and advanced electrical system that keeps out the fumes now. That's what we had to do to Smokefall when we invaded, set up a temporary electrical system."

It was too much to take in. Quinn tried not to think about it to hard. But if f the New York people had not rescued them within hours...they would've been killed...

"Is my family okay?" she whispered.

"Yes, they're fine," said the blonde woman.

"Can I see them? What happens now?" asked Quinn.

"We wait, and figure out what to do with you, and everyone else. But first, we need to make sure that you're going to be alright."

"Alright? I'm fine!" Quinn wanted to believe it, but she could barely move without feeling a stab of pain in her neck and head. All because someone had stepped on her?

"We're going to have to put you under for a short surgery," the woman said. Suddenly she was joined by two doctors in blue lab coats toting a cart full of equipment.

"What do you mean?" The doctors were adjusting the height of Quinn's table and removing instruments from their cart.

"Just relax." The woman walked away. Quinn felt panicky and scared. What if she died during the surgery, what if the shot was lethal? What if these people were really enemies in disguise?

She started to scream but couldn't. The doctor bent toward her...

Then Quinn felt the needle stab her arm and everything went black.