Chapter 1: The first shock

Seth slouched in his seat, doodling, as the teacher droned on. The classroom seemed to get more and more dull everyday. He pressed his pencil to the white notebook paper and smiled with satisfaction as he finished the last character in his super hero comic. If only life could be like that. He sighed.
“Seth.” The teacher, Mr. Benson, called on him.
He darted his head up, and there was a long silence.
“Do you know what question we’re on, Seth?” Mr. Benson sighed, looking down at his desk.
“Uh…” He frantically looked under his notebook and pile of papers for his math book. “Oh, um…number 8?”
Mr. Benson nodded. “The square root of 9.”
“3.” Seth looked up expectantly.
“That’s correct. Now students, please flip to page 97 as we discuss the-“
All of a sudden, an earsplitting boom shook the building, and screams could be heard from the second floor. The windows rattled in their frames, and some pictures and cabinets fell off of the walls. Everyone screamed and frantically ran as the horrible rumbles constantly shook the building.
Mr. Benson just looked around in shock as everything fell off of the walls and ceiling.
Seth crouched under a table in the corner, with his curly chocolate brown hair, looked up to see his friend Jacob.
“Jake, over here!” Seth yelled as Jacob rushed over to take a crouching position beside Seth.
“What do you think it is?” Jacob looked right into Seth’s eyes.
“I don’t know.” Seth turned away and looked at all of the students either running and screaming or cowering. “Do you think it’s an earthquake?”
“We don’t get earthquakes here.” Jacob protested.
All of a sudden, a giant piece of the ceiling caved in and broke the table in half. More parts of the ceiling had started to cave in too, and were cracking.
Seth sprang up and sprinted out the door.
“Come on, run!” he yelled to Jacob
He ran through hallways where the rumbling continued, taking down pieces of the ceiling as it went. He rounded various corners, until he realized that Jacob wasn’t following. He frantically looked back and forth, then shoved open the exit doors. For once, he was glad they had emergency exits. He always thought they were just another excuse for rules. “Don’t touch this! Bad things will happen! Only use this in an emergency!” Blah, blah, blah. All Seth knew was that adults could lecture all day.
The light of day made him squint as he saw planes rushing by, and buildings exploding in the distance. He felt ready to crumble as he saw kids his age and even older crying and giving up. All of a sudden, a force of air and burning fire swept him off of his feet. He flew through the air and the hard concrete cut into his skin as he skidded on his shoulder and hit his back on the hard, brick building that was his school. Just then, he saw a man. He was on a vehicle that had no top and looked fast and destructive. He was yelling out words in a language that Seth did not understand. He had black hair, and he was shooting a machine gun at everyone he saw. Seth watched in shock as someone fell to their knees after being shot.
One of the people he saw was Seth. He looked straight into his eyes, and Seth felt frozen, like he couldn’t move. He lifted his gun and…
Darkness.

Chapter 2: The safehouse

Seth opened his eyes to a brightly lit wall. He was in a small bed with colorful sheets.
“Is this…heaven?” He groaned as he turned over.
He screamed, as someone was staring right into his face. It was a girl, a bit younger than him. She was smiling, cross-legged, and she was also in a bed.
“You’re up! Great! I was waiting for you.”
“Where am I?” He mumbled, rubbing his eyes. The room was small, but colorful. It was obviously stocked with different kinds of food, and what looked like different games. There were two hospital-looking beds in the room, one he was in and one that she was in.
“Oh, that. Sorry, I get a little carried away.” She smiled as she sipped some orange juice. “It’s a safehouse.”
“It’s a pretty fancy safehouse.” Seth looked around.
“The nurse brought us here. We’re the only ones that know about it. Cool, right?”
Seth just looked around.
The girl continued “You know those bombs? Some terrorist group. There’s this leader guy named Yusuf. He’s apparently going around just killing people.”
“The guy I saw outside…” Seth trailed off.
“Oh, you saw him? Yeah, he’s just hunting people down, trying to terminate the country. And get this, he’s got supporters everywhere. They’ve been planning this for years. I like to call it: Operation, Destroy USA.” The girl looked excited and she explained to him what was going on.
“That sounds…unpleasant.” Seth slid out of bed and realized he was only in shorts, and that there was a big bandage on his left shoulder that was leaking blood.
“Whoa…did I get shot?” Seth grinned for a second.
“Oh no. That’s just where you scraped your shoulder.”
Seth frowned. “Then why did I just black out and end up here?”
“That was the trauma. You fainted from the shock of everything!” She laughed
“Aw, man!” Seth pouted. He thought he might actually have something to brag about when this was over.
If it would ever be over.
“How long do we have to stay here?”
“as long as we can before they find us.” The girl got up and set her glass on the counter.
“Wait.” Seth stopped. “Them, find us? And kill us?”
“uh huh.” The girl nodded her head. “Oh, and by the way, my name’s Sarah.” She stuck out her hand to Seth.
“What? So they might come in here any second and murder us?” Seth ignored her hand.
“Chill out, man. You never know what will happen!” Sarah put up her hands defensively.
Seth paced around the room for the rest of the day while the girl entertained herself with various things. He just couldn’t see how she could stay so calm. She seemed so…excited. Happy, even.
But she was right about one thing:
You never know what will happen.

Chapter 3: the plan 1 month later

Sarah and Seth were both laying on their stomachs in the middle of the safehouse, drawing on a big piece of paper. They had run out of food supplies already, and they needed a way to strategically get out of the safehouse to get more food. Every day they had lived in fear that someone would walk through that door and fire shots, but the day had not come, at least not yet.
“I say we cut through Baker St. and find the grocery store.” Seth suggested, penciling out the route.
“No, don’t you remember? Baker St. is right next to Main Street, and that’s probably a popular roadway. They might still be here, you never know.” Despite Sarah’s unusual optimism, she sure was smart. He sometimes spotted her up late at night with a reading light writing or doing math problems. Sometimes he was curious to what she was actually doing, but didn’t let it bother him too much.
“You’re right.” He sighed. “Well, we need a plan. We have to be able to prepare ourselves for any situation. But what?”
“Well, the nurse is the only one that knows about us,” Sarah noted “So if everything has already gone back to normal, no one would be able to find us and tell us. The nurse might be gone too, you never know. That’s one possibility.” She looked puzzled as she subconsciously tapped the pencil on her lips. “Or there could just be no one. It could be a desert land for all we know. Let’s just assume that everything’s normal out there for right now.”
They discussed the plan for hours, and they both started to get hungry. They knew they needed food right away, before they starved to death.
The day of the plan, they got all of the stuff that they needed. Looking around, they knew that they were probably never coming back.
Sarah sighed as she unlatched the three locks on the steel door that would lead them out to the unknown world.
“You ready?”

Chapter 4: The end of the world

Wood. Dirt. Debris. That’s what the world was like, as Sarah and Seth stepped out of the safehouse. The steel doors of the safehouse stuck out like an elephant among ants, and they were surprised that no one had come in or found them yet.
“…wow.” That was all Seth could say after they had stepped out into the world.
“This is amazing!” Sarah raved “It’s exactly like it says, exactly! I knew it, I just knew it!” She walked in circles smiling.
Seth looked at her in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? Everything here has been destroyed! For all we know, this could be the end of the world!”
“I know! That’s exactly what I mean!” She grinned and sat down on a concrete block, examining all the debris surrounding her.
“Okay, you’re going to need to bring me up to speed on this or something. What are you talking about?”
“The Bible, Seth. It’s the Bible. The Bible talks about this very thing!” She threw her hands up in the air.
“What? The Bible? Sarah, I don’t understand.” Seth put his face in his hands, frustrated.
“Are you familiar with the Bible at all? Ever went to church?”
“No, what does this have to do with anything?”
“Just listen! The Bible talks about End Times. The end of the world. The rapture. It’s where God takes all his believers up to heaven and the devil rules the earth, but no one knew when it would happen, or in what order! This is it!”
“Okay, so let me summarize this.” Seth looked down at Sarah “So you’re telling me that Satan is ruling the world right now, and that God is going to magically appear in all of this and take all of the good people to his perfect kingdom?”
“No, it’s more…complicated and…different than that.” Sarah tried to explain.


Sarah and Seth ventured out to another location and found a food market that was still standing. They then they found a vacant house and started to farm the land. Soon they could almost live as normal. Sarah taught Seth about the Bible and what this all meant.
“So does that mean that there is a God?”
“Yes, Seth. It does.” Sarah smiled her beautiful smile.

That would be the last time Seth would ever see Sarah