When The Sky Starts Falling

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Asinis

"When the going gets strange, the weird turn pro"
Original poster
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Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per day
  2. One post per day
  3. 1-3 posts per week
Writing Levels
  1. Adept
  2. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Female
Genres
Fantasy, SciFi, Horror, Dark Comedy.
The fortunate often fail to realise how insulated their lives are until the fun police grab them by the scruff of the neck and drag them kicking and screaming through the rusty iron gates of reality. Its a murderous shock to the system, the materialists cant handle it. To the scum-bags and gutter rats, hustlers and pimps; its just a change of scenery. When the sky starts falling and the whole world sinks into irreparable chaos; the rich will finally figure out that you cant eat money.

“Whats wrong with this mother fucker?” Frank growled at nobody in particular, maybe at the incompetent bastards that ‘fixed’ his TV ariel. The reception had been slowly guttering out all morning and became almost un-watchable as a stone-eyed news reporter flickered in and out of buzzing static. Something about meteors, or asteroids, or some shit. Frank could’t be sure, Frank didn't care. Stay inside, the world is going to end. Swine flu, bird flu, weaponized cancer, terrorism, the Mayans, the who gives a shit.

....a close pass....possible impacts....noon...” Dead, nothing, no reception at all.

Frank flicked through the other channels, same deal, every damn one. “God damn it! one hundred bucks for a fucking service? Italian goons...”

He crushed his empty beer can and grabbed the phone to express his displeasure, an angry, beer fueled rant was fermenting on his lips. No Dial tone.

“What the shit?” His brain jolted back online. Frank rushed to his apartment window, three floors up from a crowded city street, in total stand still. Every face raised to the heavens. Frank followed suit and immediately wished that he hadn't. The sky was falling.

Angry gouts of smoke littered the sky as burning rocks boiled down to earth. Frank could almost smell the frantic waves of terror as the street below became utter bedlam. Then the first impact. It was close. Frank had never heard anything like it. Concrete, brick and steel screaming apart. The blast wave shattered the windows and blew Frank clean off his feet. Time to go, no time to pull shards of glass out of your face.

The basement. Everyone else in the building had the same idea. Shouting, screaming, pushing and panic. That was Frank’s world now, and that World was disintegrating rapidly. Another impact shook the building, a woman was screaming somewhere. The basement, just another flight of stairs. Another impact, a direct hit. The walls shuddered, groaned and began to fall in on themselves. All in an instant, about twenty people were buried and the others tumbled into the basement, alive for now.



We now have an OOC thread up.
 
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Anna was sitting in her kitchen on the bottom floor of the apartment building, drinking a cup of tea while reading the paper. It seemed to be another uneventful day filled with nothing but homework. She figured that she probably should get started as soon as possible. The essay was due to that evening, and her professor failed students whom turned them in late. But there was only three pages left to write, so there was no need to rush.

A yawn escaped her lips and she put down the paper to rub some dirt out of her left eye. Once she opened her eyes again she caught a glimpse of the people outside her window. Some seemed to be looking up at something. Anna walked closer to the window, slightly curious what had taken people's attention. That's when she saw something falling down from the sky. Instinctively she dropped her body onto the floor and put her arms over her head, just a second later she heard the windows exploding.

For a few seconds she tried hard to figure out what was happening, had something crashed into the window? But nothing else than glass was scattered on the floor. "What in the world...." She whispered while looking over the floor. Before she had been able to figure everything, or anything out, Anna forced herself up on her feet and started to walked over to the door. She would have been running, but that would fast stop her if she got glass in her feet.

Carefully she walked over the glass filled floor, and once she had gotten passed it she took her shoes in the hallway and started to run. She didn't even bother to put her shoes on at the moment.

Anna was one of the first to enter the basement, and was very lucky to be unhurt. At least for the moment. Only seconds after she had entered more people came behind her, most of them in more panic than her. Anna fast slipped on her shoes and backed into a corner so to give everyone room. Everything would be fine, she thought. Once everyone had taken shelter it was just to wait out whatever was going on up there. She was still not sure what had happened though. Only that it was bad.

Then the unthinkable happened. The whole building started to shake, and for a moment Anna thought they might have gotten an earthquake on top of whatever the other thing was. But if only they had been that lucky. The building started to fall, and everyone whom didn't make it into the basement or out on the street was buried underneath it.
 
Madness, the world had been condensed into a small fragment of time. Planet earth stuffed into a basement. The atmosphere was still awash with fear, god was stamping his feet upon the ceiling, everything shook. Frank couldn't focus, it was all too real.

"Shit.....Shit!"

It wouldn't stop, people screamed, moaned, wept. It all mutated into one sound; a singular terror, a sound that could be tasted and felt. It swept the room, raising in magnitudes of intensity, until. Nothing. The silence was all encompassing, worse than the bombardment in a soupy, cloying way. Every sense was devoted to the tension and the adrenalin.

Frank noticed his hands were shaking, noticed bodies packed in and pacing. Frank noticed that he was sitting on the floor, his hands were red, red and shaking. He almost laughed, quite nearly lapsing into hysteria. No, get a grip you fucker.

“Ok, shit...” His hands were red from the blood on his face, he could feel a few jagged shards of glass lodged in there. There were more pressing matters, like this small room, trapped, all these people, no way out. Breath, chill the fuck out.

Frank managed to shuffle to the back of the room, busted up and broken.
 
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It didn't matter if it went fast or if it took an eternity for everything to quite down, Anna was too shocked to notice any of that at all either way. Everything started to sink in slowly. The apartment building had crashed down over them, and they were stuck in the basement. On top of that, there were things falling from the sky. How long would it take before it would stop? How long would it take before someone found them down there? They would be incredibly lucky if they could get out without anything being in the way for the exit.

The air... If there were no way for the air to get into the basement, then they might suffocate down there. Anna felt how she was about to hyperventilate. She had to calm herself, they might die down there if everyone started to panic again.

"This can't be happening." Her voice was shaking just like the rest of her body. Why had no warning been announced? Someone should have noticed that something were about to crash down on earth. People could have hidden in their basements before all of it started. Instead they were probably dying like flies outside.

A man shuffled to the back of the room, close to where Anna was now sitting. He had cuts everywhere, though she couldn't see what might have caused it as it was too dark. She had to calm down somehow, and while it might not be time for chitchatting, it wasn't like they had much better things to do at the moment.

"Hey... You okay?" She asked the man, it was hard to hear if she was genuinely worried for him or if she simply was scared because of their situation, though both was most likely true.
 
Frank hadn't been a people person for a good few years, he was borderline reclusive with a sour shitty attitude and had no time for all of the sour shitty people in the world. Reality though, had changed a great deal in the last five minutes

"Hey... You okay?"

Five minutes ago the answer to that question would have been 'mind your own fucking business' but Frank caught himself feeling glad for the company. He locked eyes with the girl, mind fumbling for words.

"I think I ate half the windows in my apartment, but all things considered, I guess i'm ok" His voice came out harsh, not quite an old man but pushing
forty-five.

"What about you? Did you manage to get a look at what the fuck happened?"
 
It seemed that it wasn't only her window that broke unexpectedly. She had been lucky and laid down on the floor when she thought one of those things might crash into the house, but it seemed like everyone hadn't been able to act that fast. Were those things still raining down on the people outside? How long would it take before someone could come and save them? Maybe they would have to save themselves in the end.

"Luckily I were able to duck before the window exploded, so I'm not hurt. I'm not sure what happened though... But it seemed like something fell from the sky... It might have been a... ... Meteor shower." She said, barely believing her own words. Meteors rarely survived the journey through earth's atmosphere, and even if they did they usually ended up in the ocean or somewhere inhabited. "That shouldn't be possible though. How could no one have noticed big rocks coming towards earth? We should have been warned long before this happened." She continued to share her inner conflict with the man. It didn't make sense how no one seemed to have gotten the message out.

Anna picked up her phone from her pocket and turned it on. It was a long shot, but if they could get a signal then maybe they could call for help, or at least get to know what was going on out there. She sighed after a few seconds.
"Seems like we won't know what's going on for sure before we get out of here. Basements are a phones worst enemy."
 
"Meteor shower..." Frank snorted, might have been a laugh even. He thought about the T.V, the phone.

"I was watching the news, the reception was all fucked up... said something about a close passing asteroid, or something, I don't know. My phone, that was dead too." Frank shook his head and idly plucked a small shard of glass from his eyebrow.

The atmosphere in the room was getting ugly, some people were still pacing, others sitting. No more impacts it seemed, but a new dilema had risen from the ashes, it was written upon every face that Frank could see and Frank was pretty shure it was written on his too. They were trapped under a thousand tonns of rubble, no food, no water.

"We can't stay here. Do you remember hurricane Catrina? Remember how long it took our government to help those people? We wait for 'help' we die, simple as that" Frank probably shouldn't have laid it on that heavily but he'd always viewed the truth as a valuable comodity.

"Whats your name kid? Do you smoke?" He pulled out a pack of Marlborough red, lit one for himself and offered the pack to her.
 
The temperature seemed to be rising for every passing minute. Not too surprising as there were so many people locked up in such a small space. On top of that, they had no idea for how long the air would last and they would have no food nor water before they got out of there, if no one miraculously had thought of bringing some of course. There was certainly a point in what the man was saying, they couldn't wait. It was better to try and do something and maybe die rather than not do anything and most likely die.

"I'm Anna." She answered as she put back her phone into her pocket again. "And no, I don't smoke. My dad has been treated for lung cancer since I was ten, it kind of makes smoking a turn off." The thought of her father did not help her to calm down. If he were at the hospital then maybe he could have made it down into the basement and been safe just like she was, but if he were at home then there would be no place to hide. She could just hope her parents house hadn't been destroyed by those things.

"So, what do you think we should do? Dig our way out? If it's a fire on the top, then we might end up burning ourselves alive. Though I guess suffocation and starvation aren't very nice ways to go either." Digging their way out would also create other kinds of dangers, everything might just end up crashing into the basement if they tried to loosen things. But what other choices did they have? Without a working phone, no one would even know that they were alive down there. They could only rely on themselves.
 


Frank dragged himself to standing, he was a powerful looking fellow, although he didn't quite feel that way at the moment. The anxiety in the room had quelled somewhat, small groups of people were talking, almost certainly about the same thing. How the fuck do we get out. Frank squinted at the way they'd come in. Rubble and splintered wood.

"Well, we ain't walking out the front door" Frank didn't really need to look to come to that conclusion. There were two other doors though, the basement was a little bigger than Frank first thought. He looked back down at Anna.

"I say we try some of those, its an old building, maybe a connecting tunnel to the sewerage system" He shrugged and ambled off towards the first door, cutting his way through a group of scared people, stepping over some more.

He tried the handle, open at least, just a broom closet. Turpentine, paint, brooms and mops but no way out. Frank walked over to the second door, eyes were on him now, people were getting the picture. This sucker was locked. A flimsy wooden thing, easily kicked down.

"ok..." Frank planted his foot just above the lock, as if he'd done it a hundred times before. The door shuddered, almost gave way. Every set of eyes that wasn't on him already, was now. One more boot and the door blasted open into a room about half again the size of this one, pitch black though.
"Anyone got a light?"
 
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Anna hadn't even noticed the door before as she thought there was only one entrance and exit. She had never visited the basement before, so seeing it for the first time it was easy to miss those kind of things if you weren't paying attention.

She rose shortly after him, curious about the doors. Some other people also went closer, but everyone kept their distance so that the man could kick down the second door as the first one had been a disappointment. It was even darker in the newly opened room than it was where they were trapped.

A silent murmur came from the crowd as people started to check in their pockets after something to light. Even Anna whom knew she didn't have anything like that in her pockets started to search.

"I have some matches." A boy, maybe fifteen years old said and walked forward towards the older man with someone whom probably were his older sister just behind him. A shaking hand reached out the matchbox to the man, he was clearly afraid because of the situation they were in. There were no more than eleven matches in the box, it would hardly last for long.

"You think they will be enough?" Anna asked, finally having walked closer to him and seen that there were extremely few matches in there. Though it was hard to tell just how many in the dark.
 
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"I have some matches"

Frank frowned back over his shoulder "Need something a little bigger kid, save your fire" The Boy nodded, looked a little hurt even. A woman stepped forward, a few ragged cuts carved into her cheek, another person with no time to remove glass.

"Here, use my phone... Do you think there's a way out? In there?" She tried a smile on, it didn't fit too well.

"Don't get your hopes up but old buildings like this usually connect to a drainage system, If it does then we could probably reach the street through a manhole or something"
Frank grabbed the phone.

"In the sewers you mean, in the dark..."
She looked none too happy about the prospect of wading through ankle deep streams of other peoples shit. Frank wasn't either, but it seemed like a steak dinner compared to what would happen if they were trapped here.

"Yea, and rats, and shit. To be honest though, I'd walk through almost anything to avoid starving to death in a fucking basement whilst we wait several years for our government to send help"
It came out a little harsher than Frank had intended but it was still the truth.
Frank disappeared into the gloom and had several strokes of luck in one flick of a switch, a light switch that still worked, a torch on a bench and a ladder descending into pitch blackness. He handed the phone back to its owner.
"looks like I won't be needing this"
 
Anna shuttered at the thought of going down into the sewer. While shit could be washed away once they got out and could find some clean water, or at least cleaner than sewer water, the thoughts of rats didn't sit very well with her. Who knew how many of them was down there, and more importantly, how many of them which would try to bite when humans got near. That could lead to severe sickness or infections. But it wasn't like they had much of a choice.

"The torch will only give light for the few that walks first. The people further back won't be able to see anything..." Anna pointed out. She looked back at the other people in the basement for just a moment. "We'll have to hold onto each other so no one gets lost."

"We should not go down there. It's suicide. Who knows what is down there. It could have fallen in, it might still fall in, we might as well be going into our own death." A man said, almost shouting. "We should stay here, this basement is definitely safe and someone will find us. They have probably already sent out people to help the survivors." He definitely trusted the government way too much, completely forgetting that they were only humans that also might have been trapped like them and might not be able to give orders at all at the moment.

A mumbling went through the basement, a few agreeing with the man, a few disagreeing, and a lot being confused over what was the best thing to do to survive.

"For all we know this basement might fall down on us too." Anna replied. Nothing was certain, if there came more things crashing down on them, then maybe not even the basement would hold in the long run. And that's not even mentioning the lack of air that would eventually overtake them if not starvation did.
 
Anna seemed like a pretty logical kid, fear hadn't made her stupid like about half the room. When tensions run high and fear takes over, rationality often dives head first out an open window. Everyone had a different opinion and everyone was trying their damn hardest to be heard so that their voices swelled and rose, right up until the moment Frank was done listening.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! Jesus christ, you people" Frank shook his head and spat, maybe out of disgust. "They way I see it, you have two choices; You can stay here in this basement, with no food or water and wait for a rescue that won't come, and believe me, it wont. We are trapped under an entire building, a big fucking building and we have no idea of the scale of the destruction outside. Help ain't coming. The second option is to come with me, down into a shit filled sewer and try to find a way out. So what will it be?"
 
Everyone took a step back when the man suddenly shouted above everyone's voices, even Anna. Though with a wall right behind her she didn't more than a couple of centimeters away. The room was dead silence for what felt like an eternity while people seemed to be making up their minds.

Then one after another people stepped forward, deciding that it was worth a try. But there was still some crazy fools whom thought it would be safer to stay, and those backed into the corners, looking as if they felt sorry for those whom left to their doom. The other group that decided to leave looked back with equal pitiful eyes on those whom refused to save themselves. It hurt her heart when Anna saw a father backing away with his child, while also convincing his wife it would be better to stay. Unfortunately she listened to him.

"We should hurry. There might not be much time." Anna said as she looked towards the dark hole. How much time might they need to stay down there? What might they meet? Who might they meet? "You wanna go first? Or is the dark too scary for an old man?" She then asked the man, whom was one of the few rational thinking people in their little basement hangout. Trying to make jokes while being scared almost senseless wasn't the easiest thing, and she couldn't even fool herself.
 
Through all the meshed panic and argument, Dominic felt a sudden metallic clang against his steel-toed boots. He peered down, though in this dim and bullshit basement was clearly no good for a light source. The 23 year old shifted his weight while his spindly fingers fished around for whatever he thought hit him. Dominic reached out carefully; it was cool to the touch. He pulled it closer, running his thumb along its contours as if to examine it. It was then he'd pressed some buttons and a flash of light blinded him. "Agh...!!" The college dropout jolted slightly before being cutoff by a boisterous, gruff man's voice. Listening to his speech, or "crazy-man drivel" some of the other samaritans were calling it, he was right. Who the hell would come and save them if they didn't even know where to look? And at least this man had a plan. Everyone else was just bitching about electricity and their clothes.

"Hey! Wait!" Dominic cried, weaving through a school of spooked civilians with one arm and waving the cellphone in the other. "I'm coming with you!"
 
Frank quirked an eyebrow, almost chuckled despite himself "Well kid, I could throw you down there first. Its not the dark I'm worried about, its those damn alligators people flush down the can. That gets me on edge"

He turned from Anna to peer into the gloom. That was that, point made, a clear line drawn in the sand and the only option left was to choose a side and stick with it. Frank could almost hear the cogs turning, should I stay or should I go. Staying, in Frank's opinion, was pure fucking insanity. That's fear though, you let it run wild and it'll kick your reasoning in the head until its ears bleed. Frank had seen it all too often, had suffered the consequences of poor decisions and had lived to tell the tail of a rotten life skulking in the shadows of regret.

Five, not including Frank and Anna, still had their common sense intact and ambled forwards from the larger group to join this uncertain expedition.

"Hey! Wait!"


Frank locked eyes with the stranger. Another kid, someone else with their head screwed on maybe.

"I'm coming with you!"


Six then, eight all together. Frank turned back towards the ladder, dipping into the black maw below, eager to swallow him up.

"Alright then, I'll go first, I'll wait at the bottom for everyone that plans on living. Lets get the fuck out of here"


Frank awkwardly eased himself over the ladder, torch in one hand, the other grasping the cool metal as he made the descent with grunting effort. It wasn't much further down until his feet met the concrete with a guttural echo. He swung the flashlight around to find a stereotypical underground tunnel; dark, stinking, eerie and silent. Unblocked, it went on as far as the flashlight illuminated.

"Its safe to come down, way's clear"
 
Anna rolled her eyes. Those stories of alligators in the sewers was nothing but that. Stories. Who would be so incredibly stupid to flush down animals into the toilet? Well, except for your dead goldfish maybe. The alligators probably died long before they reached the end either way, so that was definitely nothing that worried her.

"Good luck" Anna told him as the man went down. Not because she thought anything dangerous would attack them during the two first seconds of being down there, but on the odd chance that happened.

She took a look back at the people whom still refused to come with them, it wouldn't matter if she tried to convince them to come, they had already made up their minds. She climbed down after hearing the man's voice telling them it was safe and slowly the other six came after them.
"Charming place." Anna mumbled as she held her hand over her nose. It smelled so bad one could almost see the stench in the air. Or they might have if it hadn't been so dark. Some small squeaky noises could be heard, but not seen in the light of the torch.
"I guess it's just to start walking and hopefully we won't walk into a dead end." Anna was awfully happy that she wasn't holding in the torch, if she had she might just have started running in panic if she happened to catch a glimpse of a rat. At least the dark would stop her from doing something that stupid.

"By the way, you never told me your name." She then remembered to remind the man.
 
Dominic parted himself away from the rest of the unwilling, then trailed quietly behind a young woman and a more..seasoned man. Maybe her father? Dom couldn't tell. He could hear their voices, but it was all too muffled to make out a real sentence.
He quickly snapped out of his distant reverie, fighting his instinctual fears of an enclosed darkness. Darkness? "Right, the phone." Dominic breathed while he fingered around for a random button. Luckily for him the battery read 84%, and the black was snuffed out by a flourescent white-for the time being. At this point the young loner was the last at the sewers apex.
Swallowing his pride, he tossed himself into the bleak tunnel, and it swallowed him as he grasped the cold rusted bars in each hand, sliding downward into the city's dank belly.
Dom landed in a crouch, a foul liquid frayed against the bottom of his jeans and he mumbled under his breath.
 
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"Oh, yea right. My name's Franklin but just call me Frank"

Everyone was looking to him now, it'd been a while since people had counted on Frank and he had to shrug off a few icicles of nostalgia as he looked back on them. Dark memories flooded back and danced like phantoms about the corners of his mind, times of long ago, eons it seemed now. In a different life this kind of trouble was Frank's business, but that business went sour, like everything else.

"Everyone, stay behind me, stick close together, hold hands if you have to. It shouldn't be a long walk until we find a ladder to the surface"

There were no objections to that. People, in general, want someone to lead them, make decisions for them. Human nature is to follow without question, maybe out of laziness, often out of fear and always the people in power know this. The media tells you what to wear, what to eat and drink, who to hate. Humanity sells its freedom for free through its own inaction. The modern man is too obsessed with hating his neighbor to realize the enemy is right on his doorstep.

Frank turned towards the groping blackness and shone his light down the tunnel. It went on a fair way, until a bend snaked round to the left. Frank almost lost his footing a couple of times on the damp brick, cursing and grumbling as he continued awkwardly hunch-backed under the low ceiling. He shone the light back a couple of times to check that their were no stragglers.

It was another twenty minutes of stinking blackness until Frank hit the jackpot, a rusted ladder and a closed manhole cover. A grim smile crept across his face. Mixed feeling of relief and trepidation. Will it open, whats left of the world outside. A few of the crowd skipped the feelings of worry and went straight to joy and the assumption of being saved.

"Anna, hold the torch and shine it up, I'll try and get this bastard moved"
 
Anna followed Frank, just like everybody else. There wasn't much else to do than to follow the one with the best light source after all. Phone lights helped a bit, but they weren't nearly as effective as a torch. Some people had their phones up just to give them extra light, but Anna kept it turned off in her pocket so she could save the battery in case she'd need it later.

Eventually they came to a ladder which lead up to a closed manhole cover. Finally they would be able to get fresh air. Anna took the torch as instructed and lit upwards to give Frank some light. She was still afraid. Who knew what would be up there? But at the same time she was incredibly happy. They would be able to get some fresh air.

"How is it? Can you lift it off?" She asked as he started to push on it. She knew that they sometimes closed those things incredibly hard so that young people wouldn't be able to play around down there. She might just have been one of those young people some years back. Even if it stank it was still an exciting adventure. Both she and her older friends got yelled at for doing something so dangerous and they were sent home with police escort. Her mom had almost gotten a heart attack.

"I hope it's not too bad up there." She mumbled to herself. What might await them on the surface?
 
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