A Slice of Fiction by Devin Clark

The Cave

In a town that is experiencing a terrible plague everyone is trying to evacuate the whole area. The streets are jammed packed with women, children, and men. All are in the trying to get to the street that leads out of the city. This is were the story begins.

John screamed into the crowd of villagers, “Shane, where are you and do you have Kate?”

John looked aimlessly into the crowd and suddenly a man with hunched shoulders and a doctor’s mask on walked up to him. He said with a deep voice, “Kid you have to get out of here it is not safe.” He coughed and ran into the crowd before John could retort back like his stubborn self. He still looked into the crowd waiting to see his brother and sister run out of the crowd. Finally they came through and Kate was leading Shane out of the mist holding his hand.

She giggled when she saw John. She said, “Shane is being a petrified little wimp as always.” She had a sly smirk on her face like always and she was being a wise guy and John could tell that from the moment that they emerged from the mist.

Shane suddenly changed his expression of happy to see John to a sad frown. John said “Why do you have to be such a wimp all of the time?” It was bad the way that John treated Shane, but life is tough now that the plague is gone and he needs to toughen Shane up so he is as brave as Hercules.

Shane came back at what John said angrily and said, “I am not scared I just didn’t know where you were.”

Kate could see through the obvious lie and barked back, “No, you were clinging onto me for dear life.” The battle was on they were going to argue for hours bringing up hurtful topics that might hurt them and John.

Shane quickly retorted with a childish scream, “No I didn’t, liar.”

Before another well worded comeback could be thrown by Kate, John stepped in and said angrily, “Let’s go Kate stop being smart and Shane act your age not your IQ.”

John ended up bringing them up the mountain and onto the very peak that overlooked their whole city. They looked down and saw the people of their town. They saw friends running for family and not finding anyone and no one was happy about that. When they reached the top everyone was gasping for air and John broke the silence by saying, “In we go then.”

Shane froze when he saw the cave and said, “Na, I’ll pass can we go somewhere else.”

John screamed, “We have to be safe and this is the only place.”

Shane said with a genuine sadness, “It’s too dark.”

As soon as John heard that he shoved Shane in and they vanished into the cave. They left the light and the safety of their town and went into the dark depths of the cave.