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Cale walked home from work like any other day, following the same broken cement path he did every time after work; the more time away from home the better. Cale stayed in his steady pace, making sure to watch the traffic that was not kind enough to do the same for pedestrians such as him. The time spent making his way home was often used to ponder life, love, and now, the city to which he belonged.
As Cale made his way past yet another harsh crossing of roads, his mind wondered into thoughts about the small portion of the world he was born into; each individual, hurrying to some destination, only important to the individuals themselves. Would they understand what real emotion was, or had they completely forgotten such things by now? Would he too become as jaded as they were? Cale could only shake his head in detest at the thought.
As most of the things Cale found to be tolerable, his walk home was too short. He arrived to his apartment complex, only to find his father already in his solemn sleep, which he never deterred from.
“Asleep again, I believe that is a good thing. I suppose I’ll do the same.”
Cale went to wash his face in his horribly compact bathroom. His eyes were leaking a pale blue liquid. The dripping that fell slowly out of his eyes was not enough to be noticeable unless he had given time to let it build, as he had done just now. They seemed to be tears from some sort of sorrowful being that had never lived. It seemed odd then, to Cale, that he would have such a thing to appear in himself. Cale peered into the mirror, taking careful notice of his features.
His skin was pale, and flawed; concave holes and malformations always present that seemed to reflect who he was. While having thought of this, he looked further into the mirror. His eyes, they were a dark blue, another oddity. Before his eyes had been hazel, and subject to change, but never as blue as they had become in the last few days.
“What could trigger such change? Is this normal I wonder…” Cale whispered, running his hands past his face and through his thick, brown hair. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
Cale looked at himself harder in the mirror. He had been told by a few people that he wasn’t as horrible as he had figured himself to be, in fact, once or twice he’d even been known to make a few people look his way. However, peering into the mirror now, where he stood, he was certain that there was no truth in the words of his friends. How could anyone say such things?
“Ugh, so tired.” Cale breathed aloud crawling into bed. The sheets were comforting, and amazingly soft, softer then usual. “Weird.”
Sleep was strangely hard to find. As good as he felt in bed, he should have fallen into his dreams as soon as he had lain his head along his pillow. His mind could do nothing but wander into thoughts about tomorrow, and how it would be the same uninteresting tasks as ever. Cale simple cleared his mind and forced himself to fall into a deep sleep.

The knob easily twisted open, and Cale slowly pushed the door open with a slight creaking sound. “Hello, Nurse Nancy?” There was no reply. Cale silently peeked his head inside. The infirmary was full, wall to wall, with the girls who attended Cale’s school. Each of them had blue eyes. While he had expected to find blue eyes, he found also that each of their eyes contained looks of annoyance and confusion at being forced out of their classes to humor whatever group was calling them, for whichever crazy reason.
Cale worked his way through the mob of school girls that were presently in his way, he happened to know one girl in particular with blue eyes, that he had hoped not to cross. While approaching the end of the mass of girls, he saw that they were being lead to a room in the back of the infirmary. Cale knew he had to find out was going on sooner than the rest of the people, it was possible he was the one they were looking for. He opened the back room’s door, and barged in.
Cale looked around the room, at first searching for people in the room, and looking to see who he should ask information from. First he saw a girl sitting in a chair. The look in her eyes showed her to be in an extremely frightened state of mind. In front of her was a man sitting behind a desk. The man’s face stayed fixated on the distressed girl in front of him. It seemed to Cale as if he were in a still black and white picture from an old mystery movie.
Cale looked at the desk the man was behind; on it was a piece of white tissue paper, with some kind of red paste smudging spread across it. Suddenly the man noticed him, and looked infuriated, but when he spoke it was in a calm voice. “Get out of this office.”
Cale was not about to be left out in the dark without any kind of information of use. “I was told to go to the infirmary, but there isn’t anyone out there explaining anything to me.”
“Boys are to go to the gym, not the infirmary, go now.” The air of authority coming from this man made Cale almost respectful, but still he wanted information, and would not waste any time in finding it.
“I want answers now.” Cale said. It was strange; normally Cale hadn’t had the nerve, or the desire, to speak so directly to people. The notion of fear and not knowing what was going on must have been driving him to drop his façade of submissiveness, and be direct.
The man sitting before him stood and moved directly into his face. He whispered lowly into Cale’s ear, so that the girl could not hear him. “Leave now, or I will kill you.”
Cale’s eyes widened in fear. He knew there was no confusing what was going on now. His eyes slowly returned to their normal fixed position. This was not intended to help him at all. Whatever was wrong with him, he would have to keep a secret.
Cale turned around and left the room silently. A great look of hopelessness was evident in his face from that moment on. Walking across the infirmary to leave, he stopped dead in his tracks. It was Lily, she had been dragged into the infirmary as well, her blue eyes were beautiful, but now they were a source of trouble.
Cale watched her face, it seemed to show the same fear he felt. Did she know what was going on? She was shaking; her fingers tracing her lips sporadically. He wanted to stop and ask her what was wrong, but as Cale looked back he saw the man peering at him from behind the office window blinds. This man behind the blinds, he was a monstrous beast, if he could spare Lily from meeting him he would have, unfortunately speaking to her now might endanger her. If Cale was right in his assumptions, whatever they wanted had something to do with him.

In the back of the ambulance Cale found five other boys who were waiting. Most sat with furrowed eyebrows, or wide eyes that stared at Cale being thrown inside the ambulance. Obviously these boys had as little clue of what was going on as Cale. Still, it did not stop Cale from asking the same question he was sure that these boys had asked each other when they had arrived one by one, just like him. Cale sat down awkwardly. “What’s happening?”
“We don’t know.” The answer came from a blonde boy sitting straight across from Cale. Upon further inspection Cale realized that this boy was Sahdy, from his fourth period history class.
“Ack, this sucks. What the Hell is going on, damn these bastards. They can’t do this!” Cale yelled trying to be heard outside the car. “We have rights damn it! Habeas Corpus you sons of bitches.” Cale had no clue what was happening to him or why he was so angry, but he did calm down after a few seconds, and suddenly felt very embarrassed by his emotional outburst. What could he do though; there was no way to change his past actions.
The guards standing outside swung the doors shut leaving the ring of the large iron doors clamor in the air. “Sahdy,” Cale said shyly, “we can’t let them keep us, we have to get out of here man, there’s no telling what they are planning to do, and I am not appreciating the lack of answers to the questions we have given.”
Cale knew Sahdy as a class clown of some sort, so he was not sure how Sahdy would react to his decisive words, but under the situation Cale beleived there was no time to waste being fearful.
“Yeah, I know.” Sahdy said solemnly. Cale could see that the severity of the circumstances was not lost on his classmate. “But they’ve locked us in, we have no way out.”
The ambulance was moving, devoid of the normal alarm which bellowed out a sound of urgency that an ambulance should have. Time went by, hours it seemed, it was unbearable to withstand the silence. Sahdy initiated conversation to pass the time. He already knew Cale, so it would have been pointless to question him about who he was, however there were four other boys that he must have either never seen, or at least did not remember seeing them before since he had chosen to question them. He started with the boy closest to Cale on the left.
Cale looked towards the boy. He had brown hair and wore a denim jacket over a green turtleneck sweater. His pants were dark blue genes hanging over white Nike shoes. While his fashion sense was a little odd, he was still a distraction from the presumably long hours ahead.
“My names Nathan.” The boy began rather timidly. “Uh, I’m four-teen.” Sahdy’s inquires into who Nathan was started the other three to boys open up as well.
Cale found that in the car with him, beside Sahdy and himself, there was Nathan, Brandon, Craig, and Micheal.
Micheal was fifteen and played football as a defensive linemen. As Micheal continued to open up more and more information came out of his mouth. He had originally lived in Austin, but moved to his current city three years prior to meeting the five other boys in the ambulance. His mother and father were bakers, they ran the local bread store and made a considerable amount of money doing so. Micheal announced that he had been the earliest one in the school to get in line because his athletic period was first thing in the morning, and he was already in the gym with the rest of the players. He then went on to say that the two boys who had not spoken yet were already in the car before he arrived.
The conversation quickly moved to the two boys named Brandon and Craig. The two boys claimed that they were fraternal twins, and they were both eight-teen years old. The reason they had been in the ambulance before Micheal, as well as why Cale had never seen them before was that the two were from an entirely different school further north towards Amarillo.
Sahdy’s face became serious, and he rested his elbows on his knees holding his hands together, and leaning forward as if he had something important to say.
He closed his eyes taking a deep breathe and said, “Does anyone have any clue why we are here?” The air was silent aside from the whirring of the wheels outside the car. “No? Well it doesn’t really matter; can we all agree this is no good?” Each of the other boys including Cale nodded solemnly in reply to this question that in very direct wording summed up what they were all thinking. “Are you all willing to---“
Sahdy was cut short as something smashed into the side of the ambulance causing it to flip multiple times and land on its side finally by the side of a grocery store causing the on looking pedestrians to peer over the car questioningly. The boys tumbled all over each other as the car flipped, Cale and Micheal landed freely. However, Brandon, Nathan, and Sahdy had been tangled on top of each other by the collision. Craig was no where to be found.
Sahdy cried out, “Ouch that hurt--- and Nathan! His head’s bleeding!”
It was true, Cale glared over the blood that was flowing down from the boy, Nathan was unconscious and did not look like he was in very good condition. As Sahdy and Brandon untangled themselves, suddenly Cale saw it, the door to the ambulance had been blown open when it crashed. Craig must have flung out because, as Cale noted, Craig’s body was laying on the side of the concrete pavement looking in just as bad a state as Nathan’s.
Sahdy looked at the Brandon, Micheal, and Cale. “We have a chance to leave lets go!”
Cale looked at Sahdy questioningly, “what about Craig and Nathan?”
Sahdy inspected Nathan for a short moment, “What can we do? It has already happened.” Sahdy looked back and forth between the boys, his voice cracking, ‘This could be our only chance.” With that Sahdy jumped out of the tipped ambulance running at full speed, as far as he could go.
Cale turned his head to Craig. Brandon was kneeling over his brother feeling for a pulse along Craig’s neck. Cale was feeling very insecure at the moment. Nothing was going right, there wasn’t any reason for this. Cale’s world was flipped upside down. He scurried quickly to the side of Nathan, pushing Micheal out of the way. Brandon had given him the idea that it would probably be wise to check Nathan’s pulse, but he didn’t get a chance to. Brandon was getting into a brawl with the one of the men who the Doctor had called Zealots many hours earlier.
As the Zealot who stood behind Brandon raised the back of a long rifle to ram the back end against his head, Cale jumped out and kicked him in the back of his legs, forcing the zealot to drop to the ground, “We gotta run Brandon.” Cale said despairingly. “I don’t know if we have time to take Craig or Nathan with us.” Cale wondered where the other Zealot was, did he chase after Sahdy?
“I’m not leaving without my brother.” Brandon said defiantly.
So many events had happened since the crash, but it all happened too fast, in reality only two minutes had passed since the impact, and Cale had yet to see the car that hit them. Looking to see who hit them, he did not notice a single car on the street, yet alone any demolished remnants of the vehicle which had hit them. All he saw was a black spot on the side of the tipped ambulance.
“Then you wont be leaving.” Cale replied with such an unconcerned air of coldness that Craig had all his right to be outraged at him for it. It wasn’t Cale’s intent to anger Brandon, but at the present time there was no time to waste worrying over the things that could not be changed. Craig and Nathan were baggage at the moment, and they still had the zealot on the ground to worry about.
Seemingly from no where, two men dressed in very weathered looking army gear ran out from behind an alley a few feet from where they stood. Cale would not have noticed if it were not for Micheal who had only just now climbed his way out of the ambulance pointing out the oncoming men.
Now a new problem was arising, who were these men? There wasn’t much time to make decisions, and Cale had no clue where to start. He didn’t even know what the options were. This had to be some elaborate dream. There was no way this could be happening. Cale closed his eyes and hoped that when he opened them he would be in his bed at home waiting for the alarm to go off so he could get ready for school. Slowly he opened his eyes, no such luck.
The one Zealot was on his feet again looking very angry. He glared at Cale like he was disgusted by him, like he wanted to kill him. Cale turned in an attempt to run away from all of the arising conflict but turning around he found that the second Zealot stood in front of him and rammed the butt of his rifle into Cales face, knocking him out cold instantly.