Before the dust had arrived, life had been normal. That dust which eats up everything in it's path, destroying it's victims. Some say it was created by humans, the government, a terrorist group, etc. Others say that mother nature had a way of fighting back. Whatever the case was, it was a devastating catastrophe. Some people had predicted this, however. Weeks before the arrival of the blue tinted dust, the ones who had been dubbed 'crazy' and 'insane' had been shouting of a mysterious dust that would end the world. Of course, as usual, no one believed them.

 

Alice had been the B+ student with long, wavy brown hair, who had woken up to find a sapphire colored cloud racing towards her house, her bedroom window showing the dust to be eating her town. She had never been a strong girl, and she never was, after the incident. This would later cause a downfall in her attempt at survival.

 

"It's like Battle Royale… or The Hunger Games. It's now a survival of the fittest… I believe that I do not fall into that category of fit."

 

"No, don't say that." Eli had comforted, patting her back. "We can survive… somebody will come to help us." They never found out if some one did.

 

Eli was the boy who avidly played soccer, and after returning from a bathroom break, he found his whole team sprinting away from a blue fog that he later learned had killed the other team. Years of the sport had almost trained him for this new, apocalyptic world, and he would later thank his father for pushing him into the activity. However, this new silence in the world would cause his mental health to stagger.

 

"My dad… h-he said that I would become a star soccer player! Did I believe him? No! Did I value him? No!"

 

"Eli, it's no use yelling." Nicole snapped, throwing a pebble at his arm.

 

Nicole once had been the school tomboy with short spiky hair, who'd been shoved into a car by a nervous neighbor as she watched her parents be consumed by the sky colored wind from the car window. That neighbor would later perish as she attempted to get into the driver's seat; The car protected Nicole from the dust, and after she had finished sobbing, in a fit of terror she had leapt from the car, forgetting of the dust as she sped out of town. Alice and Eli had questioned how she managed to live. She didn't know.

 

"Maybe there's a cure."

 

"A cure to what? What even is this?" 

 

"I wonder if we're the last ones alive." The whispering to herself frightened Alice.

 

The multiple escape buses had crashed long ago, and three young teenagers had somehow found solitude in each other, the only living beings in a close by distance. Alice and Eli had been school mates, he being the eighth grader to her seventh grader, while Nicole was the girl from an out of town school building, now giving their trio two seventh graders. Their clothes, now long torn and tattered, the food scarce. Life was hard now, but with the palm sized radio they had found in a run down toyota, they used it for signals and warnings of the dust's migration pattern, or where it would strike next. This made their journey of simple escape slightly easier. Only slightly.

 

"Is the food still decent?" Alice mumbled, nudging the satchel of gathered nutrition.

 

"Maybe. Who knows." Eli had desolately said, throwing another stick into their campfire.

 

"I believe it's alright…" Nicole tried to say, inner doubt making her hesitate.

 

Alice nodded, but only stretched out her arm, as her eyes dragged themselves to the large, crimson dust cloud headed their way. This was new. The blue dust had caused it's victims to disappear into it's thick color, leaving no trace or evidence. So truth be told, the survivors of this actually had no knowledge if it was deadly. This new, red mist was different though. A smell of rot came to their noses, a few grumbles and moans of pain that sounded of a monster floated to them, and something seemed to spell out that this was indeed a killer.

 

"Guys… you guys!"

 

So they began running. Eli was the fastest, picking up speed quite quickly, bits of brown dirt flinging from the bottoms of his worn out sneakers. Nicole was next, and her speed increased once she abandoned the heavy black trench coat that hung on her shoulders. Alice was last, her loud and torrid screams like a soundtrack to this horror. Her voice was the first to go. Nicole's yelp and cry for help was next. Eli kept running. Faster and faster he went, he could feel the new and unknown dust touching the backs of his legs. Then a hand grabbed his shoulder, and pulled him backwards.

 

"Where did they go? Did they die? Who knows! Find out next week on, 'The Dust'!"

 

"Should you really be watching this darn television show? It can't be good for you." Niel's mother scoffed, glaring at the television.

 

"It's just a zombie show, mom. I'm a grade away from high school, and I like horror anyway. Don't worry. Besides, it's just a story, it won't ever happen." Niel reasoned, trotting to the kitchen to get himself an apple.

 

"Hey mom," Amy, Niel's sister, called out from her place by the window. "What's with that blue dust cloud out there?"