The Past

"John" 

A large man in a white, lab coat began to say. John looked over to him, and saw a blank expression upon his face. John asked. 

"How do you know my name?" 

The man stood there for a moment perplexed, and just stared back with that expressionless face. His jaw dropped.  John, impatient, became irritable and angrily yelled. 

"Well. How the fuck do you know my name? I didn't stutter, I expect an answer." 

The guy looked around at all of the faces that were surrounding him; each one appeared to be on edge with the situation, and then back to John. 

"It's me, Brandon. You don't recognize me?" 

John started to look him over. The fellow who claimed his name to be "Brandon" continued. 

"You remember? We grew up together. I'm the one who introduced you to that Sam girl. I'm assuming you two are still together?" 

John stood there in thought, and then blatantly as if a light bulb was just turned on, blurted out energetically. 

"Oh yeah. Now I remember. Sorry it's been years, and yes, me and Sam are still together. So how have you been?" 

As Brandon went to answer, Sean barged in and interrupted. 

"The whole catch-up-on-everything can wait. We need to get the fuck out of here before those fucking creatures get here."

Brandon seemed to have already agreed, for he started making his way towards the cars while he uttered. 

"And they're not creatures per say, more like warriors. So which car am I getting in?" 

Sean and Greag rolled their eyes at him and grunted as they turned around and walked over to their vehicles. Sean answered his question once they arrived at their vehicle and opened the doors. 

"You can go with John." 

He then whispered something to Greag as they entered the car. 

Brandon ran over to John's car, his lab coat and belly flailed in the air, and crawled in the passenger's side next to John. John was already waiting inside his vehicle, with the engine running. The others looked over at John and mimicked his actions, turning their engines on and following behind him as he drove to the bridge. They cleared the bridge and then sped up, kicking dust up everywhere until they hit the main road.  

The sun started to set as nightfall approached. John leaned over and programmed the base coordinates into the GPS, and sat back into his seat. Brandon was holding a briefcase and occasionally he would glance over at John, for he seemed to be intrigued by him.

Half an hour went by of complete taciturnity, only the sound of the wheels tread stomping upon the road and the engines roaring, accompanied by the wisp of the wind blowing through the cracks of the windows. Brandon decided to break the silence. 

"So I see you've decided to join the military resistance." 

John looked over to him, and saw that Brandon was clearly uneasy about the situation, and nonchalantly replied back. 

"Yeah it was either that or become a worker. Naturally you know, I'm not all about the worker life, so I joined and found I had a talent for it." 

As he went to continue Brandon rudely interrupted him.

"Ah. Well, you realize that there's nothing that will change these things. They've been sent here to cleanse." 

John scowled at him in annoyance, and blurted back. 

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do. They ain't gonna cleanse or change shit." 

As John was yelling at Brandon for being an arrogant ass, the car began acting like it was going to stall out. The lights dimmed, the car sputtered, the dashboard and hologram windshield started to flash. John quickly took notice of this, and looked up at the gas gauge. He looked to see if anything was malfunctioning, and saw that all the readings appeared to be fine. Brandon sensed he was more comfortable and took a chance with a new conversation, by bringing up more of their past.

Chuckling as he spoke, Brandon asked. 

"So do you remember how we used to go to that bar on the corner, and how you tried getting that girls number?" 

John sat there clearly thinking, and seemed that he remembered, started to laugh slightly.

"Yeah I remember, you bet me 5 bucks to do it, too. It was a good time. I never did get that girl's number. Of all the girls I've hit on, she was one that wouldn't give me her number." 

Bryan started to laugh uncontrollably before he continued.

"Yeah it was so funny. She just looked at you and told you to get lost. I laughed so hard." He said

John looked at Brandon, waited for him to settle, and started talking to him again. 

"So how is it you survived and got recruited as a scientist? You have always been intelligent, but I never knew you were this kind of intelligent."

Brandon looked out of the passenger window, as if staring into nothingness and abruptly shot back. 

"Well I was there with my family. Then suddenly, I was waking up to my family gone and surrounded by several strangers on a soldier transport vehicle. Once at some military base, they began asking for people with a science type degree. So I volunteered. They gave me the job of trying to figure out their weaknesses. I ended up becoming the lead of discovering everything about them. Somehow my knowledge on ancient societies proved useful in this whole god forsaken mess." 

He looked over to John with sadness stricken in his face as he continued. 

"I found out months later that my family was killed by a Kreole. I lost my world, but somehow I survived." 

John laid his armored hand on his shoulder as he tried to comfort him. 

"I know the feeling, we've all lost so much and so many people from this whole thing. So what is a Kreole?" 

Brandon opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted when Greags voice came on the radio. 

"So hey John, command radioed saying there's a huge storm on the way, they said to hold out for the night. Apparently, another one of those bombs went off nearby us and its fallout is causing a huge storm." 

John shook his head in disappointment and sighed before he decided to respond. 

"Alright, keep your eyes open for a building to camp out at for the night." 

Shortly afterward the rain started to downpour, hard, as if someone had just turned on a water spout on full blast. The view in front of the cars grew pitch black almost instantly, and visibility dropped from being able to see for miles to less than a car's length away in the blink of an eye.