Blurb: A wildfire covers the entire world. Many families try to get on one of two ships that will take everyone to a safe island not affected by the fire. The question being, is the island even real?
“Where’s mother?” screams Edam concerningly.
“I don’t know, I don’t think she made it out of the fire,” Jaedon yells hastily.
Edam and Jaedon have always been quiet people. However, their father and mother have always been social, and positive.
Edam, his father, and twin brother Jaedon, ran from their house that was engulfed in flames. Unfortunately their mother was stuck in the house, unable to outrun the fire. She was four months pregnant and nobody could do anything about it, the house went up in flames so quickly there was no time to react. It’s almost gone. The brothers entire world was engulfed in the largest wildfire in history. Many died and others scrambling to survive. Edam, his father and brother stick together like a pack of wolves as they make there way to the pier. They have very little belongings, everything they owned fit in each of their backpacks and a small carry-on suitcase.
I can smell the salty ocean before I can see it. Edam thought.
“Did you hear that?” Jaedon questioned.
“No, what?” Edam replies, “Not everyone has a good hearing as you do.” Edam says trying to get on Jaedons nerves.
“I can hear the roaring ships against the crashing waves of the ocean.” Jaedon states.
“The only thing I hear right now is mother crying for help in my head as she got trapped in the fire,” Edam says sadly.
“Don’t you guys feel the warm, gentle, breeze?” Their father asks trying to change the subject.
In a few minutes everyone could see the pier and the colossal sized ships docked at them.
From the looks of it, just about everyone that lived in New York must have been attempting to dock one of these two large ships. Probably the two largest ships to ever sail. Edam and his family realized how slim their chances were of boarding a ship considering their family consisted of two sixteen year old twins and their father, there were many families that are just mothers with young children.
“Take a look around Edam, maybe you can make a friend for once in your life,” Jaedon snarks.
“Frick off!” Edam responds as he punches Jaedon in the shoulder.
“CHILL out!” their father says calmly.
As the reduced family of three walks closer to the ship they can hear the panic of all the other families dealing with children and trying not to lose what little belongings they have left. Everybody is crowding the ramps leading to the entrances of the ships, trying to get on board.
“Where do we go now?” Jaedon asks.
“Um, try to board the boat, I guess,” Father says.
“What if we get lost Dad?” Edam explains hypothetically.
“Call me,” Father responds.
The family walks to one of the giant boarding ramps that leads to the ship. The father pushes through the crowd to see what’s happening. There is a man sitting at a table that looks like a police officer arguing with a young women.
A lady taps Edam on the shoulder “Do you happened to know where we get on the ship?”
“No, sorry,” Edam says in his quiet and shy voice.
“We only have room for 200 more, we cannot accept a family of twelve people that’s just too much- ma’am,” a man explains in the distant.
Father asks many people in the crowd what they’re waiting for, apparently they all have families too large to board and the officer is waiting to see if there are any smaller families so he walks up to the man standing at the table.
“How do we get on the ship?” Father asks the man.
“How many people, how old, and the name of everyone in your family sir,” The man replies.
“My two 16 year old twins, Edam and Jaedon, and my name is Victor and I’m 45.”
“Okay, you three will be room 150 on deck ten,” he said as he hands Victor a ticket.
“Oh, thank you.”
All the sudden Edam and Jaedon come running out of the crowd and everybody starts to panic, something crazy just happened.
“What’s happening?” Father asks.
“The Freedom Tower just collapsed on itself, The fire is taking the city to ashes,” Eden panics!
Immediately after The Freedom Tower, The Empire State Building joined on the ground, Everyone in the crowd is going ballistic. The fire is reaching closer to the dock. Many people are jumping into the water, others running, many got crushed by the building. It is too hard to look at everything that is happening. Many people are covering their mouths with their shirts from the rubble and smoke.
As the full cruise ship's engine makes a loud roar it pulls away from the dock, the officer at the table yells, “Everyone who got a ticket on, we got to go now.”
“Lets go!” yelled the father, “If we don’t get on now, we never will.”
The two twins follow. After boarding, many of the people without tickets pushed the guards out of the way and rushed the ship.
The boat is pulling away from the dock.
The last cruise ship pulls away from the dock, and the boarding ramps fall down into the water below along with hundreds of people trying to run across to get on the ship. About 300 feet away everyone on the boat is near the rails looking back at all the people that going to die.
“I guess we made it on just in time” Jaedon realized.
The intercom made a short buzzing noise followed by, “Could every please make it to there assigned rooms, if you were not assigned a room please come to the center meeting area on the second deck.”
“Okay boys…” Father was interrupted by the sticky intercom again, “If you need any help or assistance just make your way up to the bridge and don’t be afraid to ask questions, we don’t know how long till we find the designated island, it could be a while.”
A loud uproar was let out by the crowd as many people were not happy by the information they just heard. First, all their belongings had been taken by the fire that has destroyed nearly everything, but now the captain doesn’t know how long it is till’ the island. People are now starting to wonder if the island even exist.
The other ship left a while earlier than theirs, but it’s just barely visible off in the distance.
“Let’s make our way down to our room, sounds like we could be here for a while.” Father suggests.
Edam, Jaedon and Father make their way down to their room. Many other unhappy civilians are still out on the deck arguing with crew on the ship.
“I can’t believe people were let on the ship for free, they are save. I can’t believe they’re still complaining,” Jaedon says.
“Ya, and they probably don’t even have tickets.” Edam agrees.
Everyone wakes up quite late the next morning. The whole family is starting to feel the impacts on their lives without their mother. Everyone goes to gets some breakfast. Father comes across a quite familiar lady. It was the one arguing with the officer the previous day about getting her whole family on board. Edam, feeling selfish and greedy stockpiles a huge pile of eggs into his plate. The morning breakfast smell wafted up to his nose. He hasn’t had a breakfast this good in a long time.
The lady approaches Edam.
“You take that many eggs for just yourself when we’re struggling for food?!” The lady yells, “Jeez kid.”
Edam gives the lady a quick look flips her off and proceeds to take other food.
“Um! excuse me,” the lady says.
“Please stop yelling at my son,” Father says, “If I remember right, you don’t even have the right to be on this boat right now ma’am!”
A crew member comes over and takes the lady away.
“Holy cow!” Jaedon mumbles.
“I know,” Edam says, “tensions are growing on this ship quite rapidly, I guess we’ll just avoid everyone from now on.”
The next morning:
“Edam… Edam…” Jaedon taps Edam on the shoulder, “It’s two o’clock, you overslept a little.”
Yesterday it was sunny and nice out but today it was just rainy and gray outside.
Edam leaves his room to eat breakfast, or lunch in this case. Edam grabs some food but is cautious about not taking too much because it seems that everyday, people get more and more pissed off. At this point people are selfish and just trying to save their own lives.
On day five everyone wakes up to the crackling buzz of the intercom, “We have an announcement to maake, we have information that the island is pretty close, we will keep everyone updated on any further information.”
“Finally, we might have a chance to a better life,” Jaedon says.
On the eighth day the island is finally in sight. Everyone is arguing about who or what is on the island. Everyone knows there's not enough room for everyone but what they don't know is where the other cruise ship went.
Finally everyone has a great view of the island, it looks like there is a family waving at the ship. A mammoth log cabin stands behind. The smell of the ocean air is salty but the is a slight smell of the wood cabin too.
As they get closer to the island a little boat with some crew members goes to the island first and has a long talk with the family.
“What will we do first?” Edam asks.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Father replies.
Suddenly there is a faint noise of screaming.
“Oh no, it’s that psycho lady again,” Jaedon says.
She walks over and starts talking, arguing with a man about how she should get first dibs to get on the island. Everyone on the boat is opposed to this idea based on the crowd yelling “boo” and a few following it up some other explicit language. Apparently Edam isn’t the only person to have problems with this lady. Moments later the tiny boat comes back. The captain steps off says, they took many people from the other ship, there's no more room..