|| First Draft ||
Upon a college campus just outside Washington DC lies home to the people of tomorrow, who all live relatively everyday lives.
This narrative accompanies Poppy, Sawyer, Abigail, Jared, and Nadine as they go about their lives after...
indicating the absence of any or all units under consideration
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How was it possible for a head to be on the ground? How? How could she be looking at a dead Harrison - his expression frozen for the rest of time? Poppy and Sawyer didn't think something like that could happen, let alone see it on the ground. Sawyer swore under his breath - Poppy reacted much the way I would if I saw a dead head in front of me; she screamed.
The thing about this quad is that at night, many edges were blocked by random objects such as tables and chairs, which were generally used as a part of the on-campus college coffee shop, and tonight was one of those nights; this made it difficult to exit the quad. This information also made Sawyer react rather quickly while Poppy panicked. Sawyer ran into the yard, his eyes scanning the area looking to see any shapes or movement - it was dark and not particularly lit up that well, but he could see a body on the ground. He rushed over to it and saw the decapitated body of Harrison; Sawyer's stomach jerked. He was doing his best not to freak out, but what could he do? He pulled out his phone - his hands fumbling as he attempted to get it out of his pocket.
"Drop it," he heard a familiar voice and a click of what sounded to be a gun. Sawyer initially dropped the phone. He wasn't prepared to ignore the words of someone who currently had a gun pointed at him. He was worried for his safety, but precisely his eyes were scanning the quad - hoping, just praying that Poppy hadn't entered the courtyard. He hoped she had run away attempting to get help - she had called the police, but she had been the one to scream; you would have to be deaf not to have heard it. He felt that whoever was pointing this gun at him knew he wasn't alone. "You scream like a girl." The same voice said, and maybe that should not have made him feel as if a weight had been lifted, but he, this person, believed that he had screamed he wasn't going to denier; he was going to do his best to protect Poppy.
"And you sound like a guy." He knew he shouldn't have said anything, but a part of him was more frustrated, and he hoped this would cause the guard to go down a bit, and it did, sort of. He did enough so that Sawyer could get his leg around, causing this girl he knew oh-so-well to fall to her feet, causing the gun to travel across the floor. He used his foot to pin her arm down while her body wriggled beneath it. She tried to hit him, grab him and pull him down with the other arm. Still, unlike her other victims, he was prepared for the attack and held his ground - the issue was his phone was on the floor, and he didn't know if he could grab it without her getting out and running over to that gun.
"Abi, how could you?" A voice from the darkness said; Saywer flipped his head around to see Poppy standing there like a ghost. Abi, however, took Saywer's distraction to roll out from under him and did her best to scurry across the floor to try and retrieve the gun - it was cleaner using a weapon; she didn't know why she had chosen to use a machete with Harrison when the gun was more straightforward, maybe because it was a little more fun. Still, Sawyer noticed and ran and jumped, falling on top of her and stopping her in her tracks. Poppy moved towards where the gun was, and with her foot, she kicked it further away, standing between it at the two people she would have said at the start of the day she cared about more than anyone else. "How could you?" Poppy said her voice was dripping with the pain she looked just seconds away from crying and breaking and falling to her knees.
