The Survivors

Chapter 3

Narrator's pov:

"Can we go back now?", Sam asks.

"Why? We haven't seen anything that interesting yet!", O answers pouting.

It was probably the middle of the afternoon and they had been lurking around for more than 7 hours, or it seemed to be more than 7 hours. They had already eaten the protein bars they took with them and they were starting to get low on water.

"Exactly! We haven't found anything interesting, we're nearly out of water and in a few hours it'll be dark. We'll come back tomorrow and the days after, it's not as if we haven't got any time!"

"But-"

"No! No buts! If we don't go back now, we will have to find shelter in town because I'm not walking on the road when it's dark!", he says starting to get angry.

"You're no fun... But you're right. I'm not that keen either to walk in the dark.", she says with a defeated voice.

"Maybe I'm no fun but I'm reasonable."

"Whatever..."

So, they went back to the bunker using the same road they took to go in the city but walked a little faster. On their way back they passed in front of the exact same patch of grass from the beginning, a little greener then when they first saw it. Or was it just an illusion?

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A few days had gone by and they hadn't found anything else after the green-yellow grass. No insects nor tiny creatures in sight. Not even flies or the most common animals or insects such as birds or mosquitoes.

They had lost hope again...

But Olivia thought about something: the only place where they had been looking was their neighbourhood and town. What if they had to go outside of the city to be able to find something or someone? She shared her thoughts with her brother and he wasn't very convinced about there being anything else left but agreed with the necessity of having to look somewhere else.

And that's what they did the next day. Instead of going inside their town they went the other way into the woods that surrounded the road going out of town. As they didn't know what they could encounter, they took more provisions than the last few days when they only went in town.

You never know what could happen...

They had never walked outside their town alone before. The wind was brushing through the skeleton like bushes and trees. The forest that was once enormous, very dense, and vibrant green was no longer but a graveyard for trees. It was a very sad sight. You could see miles ahead with nothing in the way as there was no vegetation to block the view.

They walked for hours without finding anything. They were thinking about going back to their bunker when suddenly it started raining. It was such a surprise that the twins didn't have the reflex to cover the parts of their body that weren't protected by their clothes in case it had radiation particles. The rain was cold and burning at the same time. Very different from the rain they were used to. It turned out that as the radiation in the air had left the atmosphere, the burning didn't come from that, it was the feeling of the very cold temperature of the rain touching their skin very quickly. The forest around them didn't offer any cover so there was nowhere to go.

They were stuck in the middle of nowhere starting to get soaked with no shelter in sight. Starting to shiver O was the first to react after the small shock caused by the sudden appearance of the rain:

"Come on Sam, we have to go or we'll catch a cold and won't be able to come out for a few days!"

"You're right, let's go.", her brother says coming back to his senses.

They turned around and started walking back to their bunker trying to find the path they took to end up where they were. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of going round in circles, the twins concluded that they were lost.

As they were trying to figure out a way to go back to their home, they heard noises above their heads. At first, they couldn't see anything because of the tree branches that were in the way, but after taking a better look a bird appeared. It was a robin. These birds are supposed to be a sign of hope when you're going through a tough period.

But something seemed off...

It was acting strangely. Its head was twitching and its eyes were red-ish. Then it flew away acting as if it hadn't just run into two humans in the middle of nowhere after there being no human beings alive and walking out in the wild for years. Not even a little bit afraid. As if everything it just saw was totally normal.

"Well, that was weirdly interesting...", O said with hope and confusion painted on her face.

"Wait, so we saw the same thing, right?", her brother asked even more confused than her.

"Yeah, a robin...", she says not seeing what the problem was.

"With strange red eyes and clearly not reacting how a bird should normally react after seeing people when it's been such a long time since anybody was out on the surface.", he explains looking around them to see if there were any other strange birds.

But there weren't.

There was nothing in sight, as it was supposed to be since the first time they checked there wasn't anything. It seemed that the bird had just appeared out of nowhere.

"What do you mean by not reacting how a bird should normally react?", O says completely lost.

"Didn't you see? It was completely calm and wasn't a tiny bit scared!", he says starting to get a little bit scared, thinking that if the robin wasn't scared after seeing two humans after such a long time, maybe it actually hadn't been that long and there were other humans outside...

"I still don't-", she says before interrupting herself and looking right behind her brother with terror spreading all over her face.

"What's wrong?", Sam asks before turning around to see what had caused his sister to freeze the way she did.

As he turned around, the thing that made O stop ran away and disappeared into thin air. Unfortunately, the young boy didn't get to see what it was.

"Wh-what was that?", the sister asks, still in shock.

"I... I have no idea...", her brother says, "I didn't get to see what it looked like.", he tells her, not sure what to think about what had just happened.

Suddenly, they heard some noise coming from the bushes behind them, where they had just seen the thing. The twins looked at each other straight into their eyes not wanting to see what it was. They were both as terrified as if their life was in danger. Devoting himself, Sam turned around, carefully this time, in case the thing was going to run away again.

When he finally turned around completely, what was before them wasn't at all the same thing that they saw before...

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Hello, no comment, goodbye <3

PS: I hope you won't hate me to much with what happens next...

PPS: oh and sorry for the cliff-hanger (well not really) (but I love you)...