Aaron burst out of the door and saw his sister struggling to get his Mom into the car. “Vanessa toss me the keys,” Aaron said to his sister. He caught the keys and opened the car door. As he was starting the car, two students crashed into each other in their haste to drive away. The front of their cars were completely deformed, the metal twisted in unnatural ways. Aaron watched in horror as their bodies jerked and smashed into the airbags. They definitely wouldn't be getting up.

The broken car's horn droned on and on, refusing to be silent. The parking lot looked like a bomb had gone off, the asphalt was cracked and multiple cars were on fire. Once again the ground started shaking, even though it was not as intense as the first time, it was all the motivation he needed to get the hell out of there.

Aaron put his sweaty hands on the steering wheel and peeled out of the parking lot as the light posts collapsed behind him. Aaron glanced in his rearview mirror and took one last look at his high school. One of the outer walls of the school crumbled under the growing intensity of the fire.

This wasn’t how he had imagined his graduation ceremony going. He wasn’t complaining, he heard that they were notoriously long and boring. The only thing he regretted was not getting the chance to ask out Ashley. “See ya later Northridge High, you weren’t the best school, but you didn’t deserve to go out like this,” Aaron waved goodbye to the burning remains of his school.

Aaron slapped himself in the face, now wasn’t the time to be distracted. Just as suddenly as it started, the earthquake stopped. It seemed like random earthquakes would be a common occurrence for the next few days. He sped along the main road, swerving in between cars, attempting to get home as fast as possible, until he saw a familiar minivan crashed into a wall. He slowed down to get a better look at the wreck.

The front windshield was smashed with a twisted body laying on it. Aaron recognized the body, it was his classmate. In fact, he had seen her alive and well not even ten minutes ago. She had looked so full of life when she had run out of the building screaming about monsters.

Not wanting to be faced with a similar fate Aaron put on his seatbelt and vowed to drive at a safer speed. He then urged his family to put on theirs.

“Fine,” Vanessa huffed.

Aaron drove in silence for some time, taking in the destruction around him. Everywhere he went, he was surrounded by the broken heaps of reckless drivers' cars. The number of car crashes caused by the panic was honestly uncountable. The panic wasn’t only causing people to crash their cars, it was also making people act on edge. The slightest inconvenience would set them off. Aaron had even seen two men get in a fistfight because they did not move out of each other's way fast enough. At this point, humanity had probably done more damage to themselves than any monster had done.

Aaron slowed down as he passed a grocery store near his house. “Do we need anything?”

“Hold on, I have my grocery list in my purse,” Aaron’s mom said, as she blindly dug through her purse. Her face flushed with pride when she plucked a piece of paper out of her purse. She squinted at the piece of paper and brought it real close to her face. “I think this is it, I can’t really see at the moment.”

Aaron pulled into the rundown grocery store parking lot then looked over the long list. “Okay, I don’t think I can get everything, but I should be able to get the essentials.” Aaron leaned back in his car and hugged his mom and sister. “I’ll be fast, scream if you need me.”

Just as Aaron was opening the car door, a hummer skidded to a stop in the grocery store parking lot. The back doors popped open and two men with guns jumped out. They both had long beards and looked like they hadn’t had a haircut in a year. In addition, they wore American flag t-shirts that were somehow in neon colors and aviator sunglasses that went out of style 30 years ago.

“Fuck this, I’m not getting shot by some rednecks” Aaron mumbled. It’s been less than an hour and people are already robbing stores, unbelievable!

“Watch your language young man,” Aaron’s mom howled at him, slapping the air vaguely in his direction.

He scanned the parking lots for possible escape routes. Two directions were blocked off by a chain-link fence, one by the store itself, and the actual entrance to the parking lot was blocked by the hummer. The armed men brazenly walked into the store leaving two of their comrades waiting in the car. The only way out was by driving off the curb by the entrance. Aaron squinted trying to gauge how far of a drop it would be.

The drop looked to be a foot and a half, definitely more than the city regulation standard. A part of Aaron’s mind urged him to go into the store and make sure the cashier was alright. Aaron knew better than anyone else that minimum wage cashiers had suffered enough, they didn’t need some jackasses trying to rob them. But deep down, he knew he wasn’t a superhero, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. All going in there would do is piss off the people robbing the place. With how people were acting lately, he couldn’t rule out the possibility of getting shot. “Hold on, things are about to get bumpy.”

Aaron slammed the accelerator to the floor. The car lurched and suddenly they were moving 30 miles per hour off a ledge. Aaron felt weightless for a moment, butterflies dancing in his stomach. Eventually, gravity took over and the car crashed into the ground.

“Aaron, what just happened? I swear you’re a terrible driver,” Aarons mom said as she desperately hung onto the car's roof handle for dear life.

“Ah, don’t worry about it, I just had to pass a slow driver. Besides, I learned from the best,” Aaron said, glancing over at his mom.

Aaron’s mom ground her teeth in anger. “When we get home you’re grounded.”

Vanessa laughed

The rest of the trip home was a blur, the vast amounts of adrenaline in his system making him tunnel vision on the road

Aaron slowly pulled into his driveway, his heart still beating a million times per second. He opened the car door and collapsed to the ground, happy to have made it home alive. He laid on his back watching clouds drift about. Aaron tried to relax as he stared at the puffy white clouds. He had never noticed how beautiful they were before.

A warm blob snuggled into Aaron's side. He looked over and saw his little sister, Vanessa laying on the ground next to him. "I don't think you're a bad driver," she pointed to a random grouping of clouds. "That one looks like you."

Aaron chuckled. "Thanks." Aaron stayed on the ground, staring at the clouds, freely letting his mind make pictures out of them, till a face that wasn't made out of clouds appeared hovering over him.

“You don’t look so good,” John said, a mix of smug and concerned.

“I’m fine," Aaron said as he picked himself up off the ground. "Did you know there were literal flaming mice at the school?”

“No, I must have missed them. I wish I saw them, they sound pretty cool,” John quickly brushed off that information as unimportant. “Anyways, you won’t believe what I found out, think the word Status really hard.”

Bewildered Aaron followed John’s odd instructions. Aaron let out a scream of shock when a blue screen appeared in front of him.