The Saviors

Chapter 2(Part 2 - The US, 2080)

I'm back, back in my old home. I look around me to take in all the familiar items. The picture frames with pictures of me and my sister, our trips to the beach in the summer, and our family reunions. These pictures come from past times when life was worth living. I look past the images on the mantle and take in the old, yellowing couch that I used to make fun of for being so dirty. I see the fireplace with a missing brick that I hid in the backyard years ago.

I walk upstairs to my sisters room, and I look at her medals that she won from competing in all her dance competitions. I notice her dresser full of all her beautiful clothes. I see her pictures of her and all her friends. She is sleeping, and I quietly sneak over and give her a hug. Then, I walk to my parents bedroom where they are busy getting ready for bed. My mom looks up and catches my eye. I run to her and hug her and tell her how much I love her. I look behind my mom and see my dad, and I give him a huge hug and tell him how much I've missed him.

Before they can say anything, the scene changes, and I am lying in the street clutching my sister's lifeless body. Blood is everywhere. It is in the street, it is on my hands. It is flowing through the road caught in the flood of water. I stare at my sister, taking in her beautiful face always so full of joy. Now there is no emotion on her face, she is gone. I go to move her hair away from her face, but something grabs my hand stopping me from touching her hair.

"It's your fault!" My sister screams suddenly, opening her eyes. "It's your fault!"

"No, it's not. I couldn't have done anything. Please." I beg. "I love you. I wouldn't ever want anything to happen to you."

"Lies! You were always jealous of me! You could have stopped them, but you wanted me dead!"

"No!" I scream. "No! I loved you so much! I still love you, everyday!" It seems as if she doesn't hear me, and she continues to blame me. She keeps yelling. The yelling is so loud, it won't stop. I don't think I can take it any longer. Just when I start to give up my sister disappears and the screaming stops.

I'm now in a hospital. I look up to see windows overlooking a dark nothingness well all around me are beds. I spot my parents lying on two beds, and I run over to make sure that they are okay. When I reach them, I realize that they are anything but okay. My parents stare at me with cold, lifeless eyes as if they don't see me. My sister is nowhere to be seen. My mom looks so pale if I didn't see the slight movement of her chest, I would think she was dead. My dad lying next to her is breathing very slowly. I go to hug my mom, but she reaches out to me and starts choking me.

"It's your fault!" She screams spitting flying all over my face.

"No, please. It's not my fault. There's nothing I could have done." I croak back. "Please, mom. I can't breathe. Dad, help."

My dad looks up from all the commotion as if he is seeing me for the first time. He pulls himself up and stands almost falling from the sudden movement. He starts walking over to me, and I think that he is coming to help me, but instead of removing my moms arms he grabs my face and reaches for my eyes. He starts jamming his thumbs into my eyes, and I begin to lose my vision. I scream out to them, begging them to stop hurting me, telling them I didn't do anything wrong. I yell that they are my parents, they should be protecting me not hurting me. I scream and scream. I shout for a nurse to help me, but no one comes.

My mom stares me in the eyes, and all of a sudden something wet is sliding down my facing. I am jolted from my sleep to find a dog licking me. I sit up and slowly push the dog away making sure that it doesn't attack me. Most of the dogs in the city are strays covered in lice and carrying all sorts of dangerous diseases. It is nearly impossible to avoid the dogs when walking through the back alleys, so I am used to them by now. As soon as the dog leaves, I lay back down thinking of the terrible dreams bringing back awful memories from my past. I have had so many nightmares since all the chaos started that I am finally getting used to them. They come most nights, shoving themselves into my brain and engraving my mind with these terrible fears. It is nearly impossible for me to sleep without the dreams of my past coming to my mind. I reach into my bag and grab my memory chip inserting it into my wrist band. The band displays the homescreen for me, and I click to choose the pictures. I scroll through looking at all the happy memories of my family before everything changed before the whole world turned upside down. I sit there in a dirty alley looking at all the amazing luxuries of my old life. I see pictures of my family at the amusement park, me and my sister shopping at the fancy stores. As I look at these pictures, I can barely remember when these were taken. I can barely remember the times when I was happy with my family, and I didn't have to worry about finding shelter or where I was going to get my next meal.

Ding! Ding! The city bell rings signaling the end of curfew and the start of working hours. The government says that the curfew is in place to limit the violence in the city and to try and lower the carbon dioxide emissions, but I think they have an ulterior motive for instituting the curfew. I think that the government created the curfew to be allowed to legally pick up the homeless people off the streets and get rid of them. Anyone caught out after curfew is sent away to an unknown location, and they are never heard from again. Curfew doesn't affect the rich people, but the homeless people like me have nowhere to go and are constantly being picked up off the streets. Over the years, I have found many good places to hide during the night to avoid the cops, and I have been lucky so far. Sometimes I will be hiding in an alley, and I will watch as the cops chase down groups of people and capture them. I have learned that the best way to survive in this world is by travelling alone and staying hidden. The best thing to do is to just blend in.

A few minutes after the bells ring, I put my memory chip back in my bag and head onto the streets. I put my hood up and join the crowd walking toward the outskirts of the city. As I get farther away from the center of the city, the groups of the homeless increase. More and more homeless people are camped out in the abandoned buildings. When the world started changing many people lost their jobs and homes. The government knew that the world was going to change long before we started noticing the effects. Even when we started to notice the erratic weather like the hurricanes, the droughts, the floods, the government still continued to deny the fact that the world was changing for the worse. The government refused to do anything about the climate. Even when the riots of 2050 happened, the government managed to distract everyone and about a year later, all the problems were forgotten. Eventually, the scientists started to warn everyone about what was going to happen but people refused to do anything. Then, disease hit. A horrible illness started spreading around the world, and the government still refused to do anything. Many people died, and the illness led to many changes in the economy. Inflation became a major problem and many people started losing their jobs, their life savings, and their homes. Crime increased as people started freaking out. I lost my sister to muggers who robbed and killed her on the streets. Later, I lost my parents to the terrible illness, and all I was left with was their savings. I eventually lost that as well due to the inflation. I was forced to live on the streets and just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, the erratic weather started to become even more dangerous. We lost major cities to the rise in sea level, and people started blaming the government and rioting. The government started killing the prominent scientists who were trying to save the climate, and they killed the people who were trying to lead riots. Eventually, most of the people who were leading riots were the homeless people who had lost their jobs because of the ignorance of the government. When the riots got out of control, the government created the curfew so that they would be able to get rid of the homeless.

The time when I lost my parents was the hardest because I was stuck in the middle of the riots while I was trying to find food and shelter. My life was awful, and I could barely find a reason to keep living. The one thing that helped keep me going was the memory bar. About a year before my sister died, the government released memory cards in an attempt to distract the public from all the problems in the world. For my sister and I's birthday, we got memory cards and we uploaded all of our pictures and files onto the cards. We then got wristbands that we could insert the cards into and view all the pictures in a more in depth fashion then just looking at pictures on a screen. The memory cards distracted the public for a little while, but eventually more and more people kept dying, so the government created something else to distract the public again. The government created some memory bars in the various major cities. One memory bar was created in my city a few feet from my home. Originally, I didn't care for them much, but when my parents died, all I wanted to do was see them again. I went to the memory bar, and I got to relive my best memories of times spent with my family. Eventually, I became addicted to the memory bars, and I spent the rest of my money going there. The same thing happened to other people who had lost their entire families. The memory bars ended up adding to the problems by increasing the amount of homeless people. When I lost my home due to the memory bar, I decided I had to stop my daily visits. Now I only go to the memory bar once a month.

Living in this world full of poverty, dangerous people, and dangerous weather is very difficult, but I have learned to make due with what I have. I spend most of my days scouring the city for food while trying to avoid the cops and other people. My goal is to just survive, I don't want to bother anyone, and I don't want to join any of the revolutions. I just want to try and get enough money to get as far from the city as I can.