Silent Earth (Chapter)

Overview
Not to be confused with the collaborative fiction name, which covers all the chapters within it.

The Silent Earth chapter involves the Interstate 35 survivor group as they head from Bronzehouse to Laredo, Mexico City, and backtrack their route until they reach Bronzehouse again, and eventually, Duluth. It is currently half-way finished.

Part 1
The story starts out in Bronzehouse, Kansas at 7:10 AM. The date is August 17th, 2017. Caden Surge and a mysterious biker sit in a garage, tinkering with a motorcycle. Doctor Mike walks to work, sleep deprived. Saturne Booke chats with Caden Surge asking if he can let him work on his car later. Mike sees a homeless Heather Adams on the side of the road, and gives her a few dollars. Mike steps into the hospital and enters a janitor's closet to pick up some spilled coffee, but he falls asleep inside the closet. Gunshots ring out inside Caden's garage as the biker shoots two people who walk in for unknown reasons.

At 10:23 AM a national emergency broadcast turns on, alerting listeners in Bronzehouse of deadly insect swarms and that they need to remain indoors for the next 14 days. Initially nobody thinks anything of it, but then a massive orange cloud sweeps overhead, with spots of green, red, and yellow. Orbs descend on the town, decomposing people in the streets until they fade into nothing. Saturne Booke locks himself inside his business, Doc Mike sleeps in the closet, unknowingly safe, and Caden is locked up inside a garage with a man who shot two people.

At 10:44 PM, Doc Mike awakens, and steps into the abandoned streets. He quickly sprints to his apartment and takes his revolver before stepping back out onto the desolate, moonlit road. He rounds up Caden, the biker, Heather Adams, three children named Cody Streicher, Karl Genver, and Ren respectively; a scientist named Ed Voctim, Aaron Harrison, Nathaniel Roi, and Jessie Orlando. Ed Voctim informs the group that the orb-creatures can only be stopped with fire.

-reserved-