3: Streets of no sympathy

The trio sat in the car wondering what was going on around them; why were people screaming? Was the crashing plane the catastrophe Samantha Sinclair warned about? Why was there so much fire is it an invasion from a foreign country? Those question swam around the heads of Salem, Skye and Alice. Remembering that Sara was still waiting for them, Salem started up the vehicle and headed north east towards the university campus where Sara studied.

As the car drove down the roads at a hurried pace, the trio noticed that the streets were oddly empty and several cars laid abandoned on the sides of the roads, with their doors open. "Where is everyone?" Skye questioned, they could hear screaming but that was still in the distance towards the Shard that was situated east of them.

The car kept going along the streets and suddenly after turning a junction, the group saw a few homeless guys chasing a pretty brunette women and presumably her little daughter. Without thinking twice Salem stopped the car and shared a quick glance with Alice before the duo jumped out of the seats of their car and ran towards the mother and daughter.

"Help us please, those people have gone crazy!" The tall women shouted whilst holding the girl in her brace. Alice rushed past the women and child and jumped high into the air, she bent her knee before letting said knee make an introduction with the face of the frontrunner hobo. Both Alice and the stocky homeless guy fell on the floor afterwards, and then Salem jumped into the fray.

Salem delivered a strong punch to the second, taller homeless guy that was about to engage Alice, stopping the hobo in his tracks. He followed up with a low kick to the man's right knee buckling him quickly.

Alice swiftly got up after taking out the first man and swiftly high kicked the chin of the final man, knocking him out cold.

Being formerly engaged to an olympian/soldier, Salem had underwent physical conditioning thanks to Alice, so he was fairly proficient in hand to hand combat and, through many painful hours at the dojo, had developed the right build to do such high intensity actions.

After the three homeless men were taken care of, Salem proceeded to call the police whilst Alice and Skye, who had come from the car at this point, questioned the assumed mother and daughter duo. "Thank you so much for saving us!" Exclaimed the 5ft8 brunette "Thank you!" cutely said the little girl in the women's embrace who also shared the same hair colour as her guardian.

"We were running away from the explosions and fire when suddenly those three men started chasing us" explained the brunette. "Don't worry your safe now" pacified Skye hugging the visibly distressed women to try and calm her down. "My phones not working, check yours" Salem said to the group as he joined them after making sure the three hobos were incapacitated

"Same" The three females said almost in unison after briefly looking at their phones and dialing 999. "They might be busy at the moment or something" suggested Alice even though she subconsciously knew that that reason was very plausible.

After a brief silence the group started sharing introductions to temporarily avoid the strange scenario they were in; as it not everyday where mass fires break out across the city, alongside a crashing planes, green rain and unresponsive emergency services.

The brunettes women's name was Claire, she was a doctor (a general practitioner) and her five year old daughters name was Amy. The duo were visiting Claire's husband grave when the events started occurring, in a panicked state Claire had grabbed Amy and was trying to run as far away as possible from a nearby building that was on fire despite the green rain when the sheet the trio.

Not wanting to waste anymore time here, Salem suggested that Claire and Amy accompany the group to his family house for now until things settle down. He had made his suggestion after learning that Claire's house was close to the Shard, a place no one should be near right now, as well as the fact that he wanted to meet up with Sara as soon as possible before heading to his family estate.

After a short interval and following the urging and assurance from Alice and Skye about the safety of the Sinclair estate, Claire and Amy joined the group and they got back into the car setting off for Sara.

The group left the three unconscious homeless guys despite the approaching fires as they did not have any sympathy for them. Besides the heat from the fires will wake those scumbags up anyway so why should they.

Alice looked at Salem from the passenger seat next to him and with hesitation asked "Salem, did you notice anything weird about those three homeless guys?" she tried her best to avoid eye contact with him.

Salem didn't really want to talk to Alice but considering the abnormal situation, he knew that he needed to temporarily forget the circumstances between them.

"Y..Yh" he awkwardly replied before continuing "Those guys seemed to have no pupils when I checked them afterwards and whilst we were fighting they made no sounds" "WTF!" Skye shouted after hearing about it. "Relax Skye they were probably on drugs or something" Alice tried to explain. "It might have been caused by this weird green rain mixing with the flames and smoke" Salem suggested.

"What do you mean?" Claire who was silently listening suddenly asked. "I tried running some tests on the green rain and although most of the test came up as unknown I noticed that one of the test indicated that the rain contained substances typically found in drugs such as L.S.D" Salem replied before continuing, " Of course that is not all that is in the rain, I have no idea what else it contains, but my guess is that the fires are evaporating some of the rain near the flames which the homeless people inhaled and are thus having some weird psychedelic episode"

"This is too extreme of a high, if you ask me" Skye joked to try and ease the tension that was prevalent in the car.

As the car kept going further towards the university campus the group noticed several more groups of men and women that had the same symptoms as the homeless guys. A few teenagers were even being chased by them and Skye and Claire wanted to help them. "Sorry we can't guys there's too many of them for Salem and I to handle" Alice sighed "Don't worry the police will handle it eventually, they will be fine" Salem said despite knowing at the back of his mind that the police would be too busy right now to do so.

Unfortunately the group could not spare their sympathy to the other people they saw along the way.