There's no Utopia

Derek was an hopeless optimist and this was a nature he had come to embrace despite all the hard things of life that stuffed his throat and pills too bitter to swallow that surrounded his cup.

Being brilliant was a way to compensate for the slowly-turning sour things in his life and he didn't take this lightly.

You know how we all have our favourite person or wish that we did have one? For Derek, his favourite person, his mum, had her days numbered and every passing hour was not promised to remain. Does anyone ever have tomorrow, really?

Derek rushed into his neighbour's house from where he heard the wailing scream and as he stepped in with both feet following themselves almost immediately, he saw nothing. He saw blackness. The blackout was making more sense to the weak Derek whose thinking was falling apart.

"Is anyone in here? Are you okay?" Derek had uttered these words before realising how foolish the words really were.

The scream that had stopped earlier continued and became louder as it lingered.

Derek was scared but he wasn't shocked. He slowly and blindly found his way towards the voice that sounded like it gushed from a stream of tears.

"Is that you, Derek? What's happening?" This teenage girl said as she cried in the darkness that couldn't make space for her shadow.

"Yeah, Hailey, it's me. I'm sorry..I don't know what's happened, but I'm sorry" Derek muttered in a tone of grief.

"What are you sorry for? It wasn't your fault… she was here, they were all here and before I could blink my eyes, they just…" Hailey broke into tears halfway through her words.

"Vanished? Yeah." Derek said as he placed his right hand warmly on whatever part of her body that his hand could find within the darkness.

"Your mum, did she…?" Hailey asked as snot covered most of her face and tears kept running steaks of races down her cheeks.

Before Derek could process a response, they heard a loud sound. It was an explosion and a heavy one that caused the house to tremble.

Derek hyperventilated in the midst of that shocking sound while Hailey closed her eyes tightly as she used her fingers to scratch the hand of Derek that was on her.

Derek got up towards the light that appeared to be shining largely from a distance. His breath was slowly stabilising and he could see slight shadows of objects that surrounded him in her house.

He looked towards Hailey who buried her eyes tightly in their sockets and had her head in between her legs with her hands right above it. He could see her silhouette against the wall and glimpses of her red hair as he tapped her by the shoulder.

While she fidgeted, she raised up her head and opened her eyes to the light that was far off but visible from the room where they were.

They exchanged glances of grief and sought clarity and without any words being said, they walked over to the entrance of the house, headed out, and walked towards the light that was ascending with smoke into the blind sky.

Hailey hadn't seen this dead and empty sky and she looked up with open lips and Insane awe.

What could this be? They both thought to themselves as they kept walking towards the forest before them.

They were the only ones walking, and this was not much of a surprise because they were the only teenagers on this street.

As they continued advancing towards what was clearly fire from a huge explosion, the light it produced became brighter and the cold within the forests significantly increased.

It was a photon-energy aircraft and neither of them had seen this in real life given its scarcity on the planet. There were only three of it in the world and this one couldn't have been Europe's or Asia's.

Derek walked carefully around the burning bushes that kept catching fire as the wind blew the flames across from trees to tree. He was freezing and sweating profusely from his face at the same time.

The left wing had come off and was a fair distance away from the rest of the aircraft's body. The wing had the Stars and Stripes boldly imprinted on it. This was the Presidential Aircraft, and it has crashed.

The aircraft was renowned for its Artificial intelligence modifications and one of them was its self-flying and stealth mode.

"Was anyone inside? Could anyone have survived?" These questions throbbed Derek's heart as he stood few feet from the blazing flames.

"gggaaq, ggggaaqqq!" A survivor coughed hardly, not too far away from the burning ruins of the aircraft.

Derek heard this sound and looked behind himself for a moment. All along, Hailey had stood far behind him as she watched it all in utter shock.

Derek advanced towards the unusual cough sounds that he heard irregularly. He saw someone who rested his back on a tree's root. This tree was on fire from the top but not the foot where this person stayed.

Derek looked at this person who was barely moving and cautiously he found his way to his side.

This was Philip, the President's son. He had ashes all over his face and blackness over all his blood that covered the most parts of his body.

Derek didn't say anything, and dragged Philip two trees away from the tree's foot where he was.

Philip's eyes twitched and he was barely staying conscious as shock and the pains in his body kept escalating.

Derek stared at Philip with concern and worry about his survival and a branch from the tree's foot where Philip formerly was fell to the ground as it caught fire and spread it fastly while hitting the ground.

Derek kept dragging Philip through the forest on the floor to get them to safety.

Philip's body kept dangling to Derek's tune and turn and soon, Derek was at the back of the forest with his body right beside where Hailey stood with a dozen feelings that he couldn't express in words.

Hailey paid little or no attention to Derek's heroism or presence as she looked towards the flames that zealously kept blazing.

Derek raised up his head, hoping to catch Hailey's gaze and he looked towards where her eyes were fixed towards, he saw shadows and also faces of teenagers like them on the other end of the forest not too far from the fire.

"ggggaaqqq, ggggaaqqq!!" Philip coughed harshly from a repository of pain.