After getting over the tremendous shock of what had just happened, Steven Johnson began to walk through the wreckage of the suburbs outside of L.A. However, instead of wreckage, this place was more of a cemetery. Everywhere you looked you would find the earthly remains of a member of this once happy community. Fortunately for Steve, he was already used to seeing these corpses so seeing all this didn’t get to him. He was, as his father proudly called him for the past 12 years of his life, “thick skinned”. This is a quality he had developed after his service in the U.S Army.

Steve walked away from the ruined city, and began a long walk down the highways that was South of the city. He walked for hours, lost in his own thoughts. He thought about Lucy, his wife, who had gone to work this morning, hours before the sirens began to wail, and these thoughts broke through his tough skin and he broke down crying. He still wondered how he had survived the shockwave, and how he wasn’t part of the barbeque that had at one point been his home. He was thankful, he guessed, that at the precise moment that all hell had broken lose, he had been in his basement trying to fix some of the plumbing.

Now, being possibly the only person alive for miles around, he began to wonder how many cities around the world had also experienced the same catastrophe. How many people around the world dead? How many injured? Where was the National Guard, and were they even alive anymore? Where were the survivors? Did they want help, or would they sink to their primitive instincts and kill to live? Steven hoped that if there were survivors that they’d still be sane. Steve did not feel alone though. He felt watched.

Before losing sight of L.A, Steven turned and decided to look back at it one more time. The view, although terrible, was beautiful as well. L.A’s skyscrapers had been knocked down, and instead of tall, smooth buildings, short and sharp stumps were all that was left. Smoke rose from within the city, blotting out the sun. The one thing that stood out the most was a gigantic red mushroom shaped cloud in the middle of the city. To Steven, the cloud looked like a giant, red piece of broccoli. His neighborhood, which had once been green with grass, was now black with burnt bodies and burnt grass.

Steven kept on walking and stopped to listen. Footsteps. They were speeding up and seemed to be getting louder. Steven turned toward the source of the noise, and was horrified to see it. The thing which followed him let out a high, blood curdling scream, as it jumped forward and bit deeply into Steven’s neck. Steve tried to scream, but could not. His vocal chords had been destroyed. The thing fell on Steven and ripped his throat. The thing then began to feed. It turned to look back at the mushroom shaped cloud, and grinned a shark-like grin. A new era had begun.