Part One: The New World

The faint glow of sunlight slowly started to break the darkness of Mike's cluttered bedroom, today was the day that his entire world was about to be flipped upside down. It was his last whole day of school ever. No more teachers, no more classes and now it seemed like the one thing he had spent most of his life doing were coming to a close. The few rays of light that had managed to get through the blinds of his window caused him to stir in bed, the faint red glow of his digital clock showed the time and how long he had slept in, Mike's eyes opened suddenly.

'Shit,' he swore under his breath and raced out of his room to get ready.

After a meagre breakfast and a short shower Mike set off at a run towards the school, he had ten minutes to get there. The houses and trees passed by like a slow blur as Mike ran as fast as he could manage, finally after about nine minutes he reached the school and the bell rang, with a slight groan Mike ran for rollcall.

Maths and English flew past and Mike was left with an empty feeling in his stomach as everyone was called to the assembly. A faint red glow caught his attention and he looked up into the sky and saw something peculiar, to the left of the blearing sun was a rather large crimson dot in the sky, it looked something like a star. But that can't be possible Mike thought to himself, no star would be close enough to shine through the day, apart from the sun of course.

'Hey, Lex, can you see that,' Mike pointed at the dot, to the brown haired girl that had just walked past him.

'See what?' asked Alexia, putting on her glasses to get a better view of whatever Mike was pointing at.

'See that red dot in the sky, left of the sun.'

'Oh I see it, what is it?'

'I thought you'd be able to tell me.'

Alexia smirked, she was probably the smartest person in their year, well not probably, she was the smartest person in the year and although she never was one to admit it. Her eyes moved and transfixed on Mike, but it was as if she was looking straight through him, like he wasn't even there.

'How the dickens am I meant to know?' she asked, finally looking at Mike properly, 'It's probably nothing to worry about, come on let's keep moving.'

Mike followed her towards the gymnasium, it was a large building shaped like half a cylinder with a metallic roof, a torture house during hot weather. But as they walked towards the door Mike noticed more people looking up into the sky muttering amongst each other, he looked again. It seemed to have gotten bigger.

Alexia caught him looking up at the sky again, 'come on,' she muttered rolling her eyes and pulling Mike into the gymnasium.

The heat of the gym hit Mike like a brick wall; it was a furnace inside the enormous room. Students had already started to line the seating area; many were already dripping with sweat. Mike and Alexia moved to the front row where the Year 12s had been designated to sit and sat next to their friends Nicole and Mark who seemed to currently be in the middle of a conversation.

'I swear it was getting larger. Oh, hey,' said Nicole quickly turning her attention to Mike and Alexia, 'did you guys see the "red dot?"'

'Yeah, we saw it,' muttered Alexia, 'you know it's probably nothing right?'

'Hmm I don't know Lex, as I was just saying to Mark it looked like it was getting bigger.'

Mark just rolled his eyes at Mike; it looked as if he hadn't even gotten a word in on the prior conversation. Mike gave a quick grin back, making sure not to catch either of the girls' attention.

'Oh, and how can you tell that?'

'Better eyesight I guess.'

Alexia's eyes flashed with annoyance, but before she could retaliate the remainder of the school entered the gymnasium, the sound of the talking students and the ominous presence of so many teachers forced their conversation into oblivion. The remainder of Year 12 sat around them, some people mentioning the "red dot," as it had been dubbed and others just talking about some other pointless drivel. John, another of Mike's friends sat beside him and gave him a massive grin of excitement.

'You ready?' John asked, talking about their final ever school assembly.

'Yeah,' Mike lied, hiding his feelings of anxiousness.

'I wish they'd hur-' John's next few words were cut short by a loud rumbling noise filling the gymnasium.

Screams filled the air as Year 7 students got to their feet. 'It's the red dot, it's the red dot,' cried a few of the older students over the screaming, 'it's coming for us all.'

Mike looked over at his friends, John looked as pale as a snowman and Alexia was twitching as if she had spiders crawling up and down her spine, none of them looked too good. A hand grabbed his shoulder and a soft voice whispered in his ear.

'We should probably get out of here.'

Mike turned to find a tanned girl with silver eyes looking at him, her long sandy blonde hair hanging over her face, which wore a concerned look as another younger student screamed, 'the harbingers of death are coming!'

He nodded slowly at Cass and gestured for the others to follow them. The gymnasium was in chaos, there were students on their knees crying while a religion teacher was yelling at the top of his voice 'the lord will come and save us!' Some of the older students had the same idea as Mike and his friends and were trying to get out of the madhouse.

Once the small group had reached the exit to the gym a brilliant bright blue light had swept across the sky, the sun had been blocked and only the 'red dot' could be seen in the centre of the light's source. The enormous rock was hurtling towards Earth, but it looked as though its trajectory was not towards them but to an area further north of them.

'I don't think it's going to hit us,' said Alexia behind him, confirming Mike's thoughts.

As they stared up towards their impending doom it entered the Earth's atmosphere causing the ground to shake, knocking many people over, the gymnasium made a loud rattling noise like a baby's toy and shook with great intensity. The heat from the fiery meteor was burning Mike's skin and he could see the others were sweltering in the heat of the oncoming meteor.

A deafening roar passed over them as the meteor flew over heard only a few kilometres over their heads and towards the north, and then the shaking stopped. An ear splitting thud rocketed from where the meteor had likely landed and the earth violently lurched from underneath their feet and an enormous shockwave hit Mike in the chest. Everyone around him collapsed to the ground as if some invisible force had grabbed their shoulders and pushed them downwards. A loud crunching sound came from behind Mike and the he turned to find the gymnasium collapsing in on itself, petrified screams from the inside echoed off the collapsing walls, the building had completely collapsed, and then everything went silent. Only the rumbling of other buildings falling over in the distance carried through the dry wind in the air around them.

Mike looked around to see who had managed to escape, among them; Alexia's glasses had fallen off and shattered, John's face had turned from white to green as he stared at the remains of the gymnasium, Nicole was nursing a large cut that had run the full length of her arm, with shards of glass sticking into it, Mark was just staring into the vast expanse of cloudless sky as if the answers would rain down on him, Cass's long hair was covering her face as she stared determinedly at the ground, Brett had his mouth slung open like a fish gasping in the air, Gen was mumbling something incomprehensible under her breath and Brash and Darna were both hugging their knees and rocking back and forth. Around them were littered groups of students and teachers who were trying to figure out what to do, nothing in the text books could have prepared them for this. To his left Mike saw a group of Year 10 girls staring at what must have been one of their friends crushed underneath a large pole, a small stream of blood was leaking from underneath the pole and seeping into their shoes.

'We should go,' said Cass, her voice muffled underneath her hair.

'Go?' asked John, his voice shaking.

'Yes. Go.'

'Go where? Where do you think we should go, my sister's stuck in there, we need to help them.'

'Away from here, away from this…' Cass's voice was now trembling as she looked up at John, 'I … I don't think we can help them…'

John stared at her flabbergasted, and then Mike realised something, his sister was in there too, and so was Brett's sister and Cass's brother. Most of them had someone in there they wished to save, but he knew it would be impossible to do anything; the screams had died away so quickly that it that he was almost certain none of the unlucky people inside could have survived.

'I agree,' said Alexia shaking as much as the others, pausing to think about what she was going to say, 'with Cass, there's nothing we can do really.'

John looked from Cass to Alexia not knowing of what to say next, he then stood up and looked down at them his brow furrowed in some form of silent fury, 'well, let's go then…'

Mike wearily brought himself up, and then turned to help Gen up, who was still sitting on the floor beside him, her long golden blonde hair a complete mess. Once everyone had managed to get to their feet they turned and headed towards the closest house that belonged to any of them; Mike's.

They avoided the road as they headed towards a bushy path that led to Mike's house, the road was sticky with hot tarmac and felt like a hotplate, which burned the soles of Mark's feet due to his thin shoes. They managed to reach the path without any sort of dilemmas, although a few meteorites fell from the sky and destroyed houses along their path.

They entered a wooded path that led to their destination, it was surprisingly cool as they passed under the low hanging branches of a paperbark and over the small cement bridge that spanned the tiny murky watered creek that had stopped running for some unknown reason, although Mike suspected that a meteorite may be choking up the water flow further upstream it wasn't visible due to the dense reeds that blocked their view. Large eucalypts hung over their heads, casting a deep looming shadow that covered most of the path, it was eerily silent, not even the usual bird calls could be heard among the huddled trees, a lone brush turkey ran past them in what could only be described as hysteria. Its black wings waved about in an odd manner and its knobbly legs kept tripping over themselves.

A moaning noise came from behind Mike, he turned to find Cass holding her head in pain, Mark gave a short gasp and he winced in pain. A sharp pain surged through Mike's brain, his head felt like it had been set a light, and soon he was on the ground with the others who seemed to be receiving the same torture. Stars flashed before Mike's eyes as his whole body just burned, his nerves felt distinct throughout his body as each one ached, causing immense agony throughout Mike's body.

Then everything went dark, the pain left Mike, flowing from his body like the water in a creek after a heavy downpour. The groans of pain from his friends was slowly being drowned away by the sounds of waves in the distance as Mike lay in wait for his body to awake, but it never came, all he knew was the crashing of waves and the soft shadows of his mind lapping at his consciousness as if he was lying in an ocean of darkness.