Artificial Intelligence (actual copy)

chapter 2

Chapter 2
After a while, I realized that the explosion noises had stopped and the ground wasn't shaking. As soon as I was sure the bombing was over, I got up and peeked outside. The entire city was in ruins. There were little fires everywhere. I stepped outside and realized that the smoke was very thick. I pulled my t-shirt over my nose and sprinted to the nearest standing building, which happened to be Walmart.

Once I was inside, I listened for a long time from behind a rack of maxi dresses to make sure that I couldn’t hear any buzzing or speaking or anything that could signal that a robot of some sort was inside the store.

When I was about pretty sure nothing was inside, I wandered around to see what I could find to help me survive. Most of the canned goods were gone because of looting, but there were a lot of cans of spaghetti-o’s so I grabbed a handful of them and headed to the back where the bags were. I looked through all of them and eventually chose a pretty big camouflage backpack.

Looking at the camo backpack reminded me of my friend Colton who had one. All of my other friends and I always asked him where his backpack was. We never even called him Colton we called him Cam. He never lived that stupid backpack down. It made me feel homesick just thinking about him and my other friends. Homesick. It’s such a strange word.

I wandered around for a while, picking up things I might need here and there: Neosporin, water bottles, better shoes, food, a gun I found, you know, the works. The whole time I was wandering I was thinking. I thought about trying to figure out a way to defeat the bots even though I’m probably one of the last people left on Earth. I thought about figuring out a way to leave Earth and be reunited with my family. But every thought just ended with How? You’re not a genius. You’re a regular fourteen-year-old girl. I sighed.

“Guess I’ll just die here in a freakin’ Walmart. God, what a crappy way to die.” I said aloud. My own voice startled me. I hadn’t heard it in a while. I was all crackly and hoarse. Like your voice sounds when you wake up with a cold.

I spent a week in Walmart all alone. The power had been out since the attack, so I couldn’t watch TV or listen to music. I mostly read. At first, I read books and about three days in to my stay at Walmart, I finished every book that looked necessary for my survival. I mostly read survival books about people who had lived in extreme temperatures, or camped in the woods for a year.
By the sixth day, I knew I was going crazy. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think of anything, really. Except death. Four sentences repeated in my head over and over: I’m gonna die here. Yes sir, this is how it all ends. All alone. Nobody’s coming for me. I’m gonna die here. Yes sir-


Lydia Rose