The sky was burning, the cold orangey-red glow that had taken over the horizon attributed to a half-dozen or so structure fires that dotted the city. Despite the fact that the government had outlawed guns years ago, shots rang out through the semi-darkness at regular intervals. Babies were screaming inside their homes, being the only ones young and innocent enough to be frightened by the mayhem. Most others were complacently desensitized, driving home from work in their SUVs and not noticing when someone was taken down on the streets by police in riot gear.

The world wasn't in a post-apocalyptic state as one might assume given this description. To be post-apocalyptic, there would have had to have been an apocalypse to speak of. Here it had just been a steady decline, the government tightening their "security measures" until everyone in the country came to live in a constant state of paranoia. It didn't matter whether they had done anything wrong or not; if they hadn't broken any laws there were sure to be new laws passed that pegged them as criminals. It was hard for many to put a finger on when exactly this downfall had started, but most were too numb to care.

One figure dotted an otherwise empty sidewalk, keeping his deadened blue eyes on his scuffed boots and his tattooed hands deep inside the pockets of his nondescript black pants. As this figure passed into an alleyway, a device on the wall installed for "protection of the citizens" - called a Threat Monitor - blurted out a reading in a mechanical voice.

"Tim Armstrong, age twenty-seven, caucasian male, threat mild," the device blared to the empty sidewalk.

"Yeh, thanks for the reminder," Tim replied gruffly to the machine, wishing that he had a baseball bat with him that he could take to it's electronic face. 'Threat mild' that, asshole. He sighed inwardly, knowing he probably wouldn't do it even if had a bat. The times were rough, and anyone caught destroying government property was rarely seen or heard from again. That did little to stop the constant rioting, however. Very few people, it seemed, felt there was anything worth living for.

Tim felt differently. He could remember, despite the men in power's constant attempts to force out things like memory, a time when things were different. Granted, he had been younger and more naive then, but the world hadn't always been such a horrible place. He knew that, and he figured that if he held on long enough it might get back to something better. It may have been blind hope, but it was all he had, and there were others who were of the same opinion.

At the end of the alley, Tim crawled through a hole in the rotted-out wooden panelling where a door probably once stood. Candlelight and warmth greeted him, not the sort of warmth that came from heating as they had no electricity here, but the kind of warmth that came from too many bodies packed into a small space for too long. He ventured further into the delapidated confines of the building and voices joined the warmth. Laughter, something he heard rarely. Tim smiled.

He found various familiar figures sprawled around the main room, candlelight highlighting their features. In one corner, Pete Koller was finding some sort of peace, slumped against a wall and napping. More in the center of the room, Tim's close friend Lars Frederiksen was sitting in a sort of half circle otherwise made up by Stax, a wiry man with a shaved head, Dana Destruxion, a quiet, knowledgable girl with ceaseless energy, and Rachel Riott, a girl who's rare smiles did more to light the room than any of the candles melting. Also, off to the back of the room, a lanky dark-haired boy known only as Hollywood was smoking a cigarette and watching their conversation.

The four looked up from whatever joke they were sharing as Tim walked in. They greeted him with mixed grins and a few "Hey"s. He knew that secretly they were all glad he was back; too often it seems one of their number would disappear and not return. Tim was the only one who often went out just to walk, besides Hollywood - but no one knew what that creep was really up to.

Taking a seat with the others, Tim pulled his legs underneath them. He halfway listened to their conversation, but mostly was staring vacantly at the wall behind Hollywood's head as he thought. A moment later, Rachel smacked his leg lightly and drew him out of his thoughts.

"What's on your mind, dude?," she asked, arching an eyebrow inquisitively.

Tim shook his head. "We've got to get the fuck out of here," he muttered.

"Ah, here ya go again," Pete, who had just woken up and joined them, said sardonically. "Where exactly do you suggest we go, Mister Escape Plan? The rest of the world's just as fucked up as here."

Recently, America had seized control of most of Europe - the only area of the world, until then, that they hadn't controlled. Pete wasn't far off - the rest of the world was just as fucked up as the west coast of America, gripped tight inside the fist of power. But Tim reasoned that the men in power had gone too far, they had bitten off more than they could chew. The riots that ran across this part of the country were proof of that, if only on a small scale. No matter how many cops they pumped into any part of the country, there were always others willing and ready to take the place of the people they took down.

"I...don't know," Tim admitted hesitantly. "There has to be somewhere..." He pulled his beanie off of his head, revealing his faded blue mohawk, and ran his hand through the messy hair with a sigh of frustration.

Lars smiled at his friend's endearing sense of hope and urgency, shaking his spike-laden head morosely. He didn't say anything, but even if he had, it would have been the same things he'd said hundreds of times before. 'There's good things in the world, Tim. They're just slowly being suffocated by all the bad things, and soon they'll cease to breathe. The best you can do is stay here, and provide mouth-to-mouth for the good things while they still have a chance. Running away isn't going to help.'

The seven of them worked on and ran an underground information center from the building they were in. It was, in some past life, the publishing office for a newspaper. It had been by chance that they stumbled upon the place, and by sheer luck that the printing presses still ran. They were wary, of course, about who they distributed their leaflets of information to. If the things they wrote fell into the wrong hands, it would mean nothing less than imprisonment for all of them, and more likely death - despite the fact that Dana wasn't even of age to be tried as an adult.

Hollywood moved out of his corner, crawling forward to the rest across the ground slowly, snakelike. Most of the information they gathered was found by Hollywood, on his nightly prowls, and no one ever really asked where he got it - though they did sometimes question it's validity. He reached them and sat behind Stax, encircling the other man's waist with his arms and resting his chin on his shoulder.

"I heard," Hollywood began, in his strangely raspy, low voice. "About this group of rebels that operate out of the woods, across from the bay. Like, guerillas, or a militia or something...they can take out ten cops, in full riot gear, even if there's only three of 'em fighting. And they have sniper rifles that can kill a cop from over three hundred yards away."

He raised his eyebrows to accentuate his point, and Lars snorted derisively.

"I bet," Lars muttered disbelievingly. "And you're suggesting that we go join them, or what?"

Hollywood narrowed his dark eyes at Lars. It wasn't a hidden fact that the two never got along, and probably only by Stax staying on good terms with Lars that one hadn't killed the other yet. "No," he growled. "I was only suggesting, that if Tim was so intent on leaving, he could go there."

Hollywood then tilted his head, burying his face against Stax's neck and nipping at it with his teeth, signifying that he was done talking. Tim leaned back, propping himself up with his arms and stretching his legs in front of him.

"I don't really want to kill anyone," he protested. "Even if it is a cop. They're only cops because they think it's better to be on that side."

"Safer, anyway," Dana conceded, nodding.

"And we're all so very concerned with safety," Pete said with a smirk.

"That reminds me, I saw a group of pigs about three blocks up when I was out. We're gunna have to vacate for a couple days tomorrow," Tim told them.

Rachel groaned loudly at the information. "Not again..."

"Fucking hell, maybe we should just go live in the forest," Stax added, his head tilted back onto Hollywood's shoulder.

"Fuck that, man, I'm allergic to pollen," Pete interjected, earning a small forced laugh from the rest of the group.

The sun, or what could been seen of it through the thick smoke from the riots, sank lower towards the rolling hills crossing the horizon as the group lapsed into comfortable silence, Rachel and Pete working on a few columns for their project, Dana cutting up old magazines to make a collaged flier proclaiming "Fascism Is Not Patriotism". Stax and Hollywood had disappeared, which no one questioned; and Tim sat playing a lazy game of cards with Lars.

"It's not so bad, Tim. I mean, it could be worse, we could be part of the army of zombies that goes to work in an office building everyday," Lars was telling Tim, having another conversation about the bleak state of the world.

Tim shrugged. "It could be a lot better, too," he countered.

"I know," Lars sighed. He could see that there was no clearing Tim's dark mood, for now anyway. He could remember a time when Tim was nothing but unending energy, smiling and talking of revolution like it was just around the corner. It seemed like his oldest friend was finally cracking and losing hope, and it hurt Lars to see it.

Tim tossed down his hand and stood up. "I'm going for a walk," he told Lars, pulling his beanie back over his hair.

"Now?," Lars asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's almost midnight."

"Good, most people are asleep then. No one will bug me."

"The cops are awake," Lars pointed out forebodingly. Tim just nodded before heading out of the room. Rachel looked up and told him to be careful.

"Not enough caution exists for someone to safely face this world," he told Rachel darkly, before ducking through the door.

Clunk. Fsssssssh...

The can of tear gas hit the ground and broke open, an acrid smelling cloud of smoke rising from it. The first person to awake was Lars, who had fallen asleep ten feet from the door awaiting Tim's return.

"Federal Police," a muffled voice announced, as heavy footfalls entered the room. A bright light cut through the smoke and nearly blinded Lars. "Stay where you are. If you move, we will shoot you."

Lars' eyes widened in realization, and he heard movement behind him.

"What the fuh-," Rachel's voice was cut off as a shot rang through the air. Something fell a few feet behind him, and Lars felt sick as a warm, thick liquid reached his hand. Raising his hand to his face and trying not to breathe any more than necessary, his worst fears were confirmed as he saw the substance on his hand. Blood.

The cops had busied themselves with spreading out across the room. Through the smoke, Lars could barely make out one of the gasmasked forms picking up an unfinished copy of their latest zine and glancing at it breifly before tossing it to another. The first spoke.

"You're all under arrest for distribution of anti-governmental propaganda. If you speak, you will be shot. Stand and form a line," the figure said in an authoritative voice. The smoke was so thick by that time that Lars could no longer hold back the coughing fit, his skin feeling as if it were on fire. All at once, everything seemed to speed up.

He heard movement and a uniformed officer dropped nearby, a sharpened peice of rusted iron sticking through his chest armor and blood leaking from the holes in his gas mask. Shots rang out, the sounds of more bodies falling. There was an unmistakably Hollywood warcry and the sound of a cop yelling indecipherable words.

Choking on his own breath, Lars did the only thing he could think of and lay close to the floor, starting to crawl towards the door. His forearm hit the thresh hold before everything went black.

"Tim Armstrong, age twenty-seven, caucasian male, threat mild."

Tim's boots crunched on the pavement in the early morning light, wads of trash finding their way underneath them. He watched with interest as a rat scurried across the dirty ground, keeping his head down as he tended to do these days. The sound of sirens broke out somewhere nearby, but he payed it no mind as he reached the entrance to the compound.

Someone's hand was flung out from the door. Tim froze. Not just someone's hand, Lars' hand. The tattoo on the back of it was unmistakable, Tim had seen the nautical star a million times before. Urging his feet to move, he took a few tenative steps towards the door, noting the faded smell of tear gas.

He peeked through the door hesitantly, and could only stare for a few moments. Once the initial shock wore off, he stumbled backwards as if he was drunk until he hit the wall of the opposite building. Dropping to his knees, Tim vomitted onto the pavement, retching violently far after his stomach was empty and nothing but bile came up, tears running freely down his face.

Despite the overwhelming desire to stay on the ground there forever, pools of vomit creeping ever closer to his black bondage pants and the corpse of his best friend staring wide-eyed at him from across the alley, Tim shakily pulled himself to his feet. He tore his eyes away from Lars' body and looked into the darkness that used to be his home. For a second he thought about going in, but the voice in his head told him nothing living would be found there. He stood as if frozen for a moment.

"What the fuck do I do now?," his own voice sounded odd to him, weak and strained. The voice inside his head gave him the answer he was looking for.

'Run.'

And he did.