Neighborhood Apocalypse Prevention

Introduction
Welcome to the Neighborhood Apocalypse Prevention Squad! If you're reading this: Congratulations! Your town in under attack from one of the below: Aliens Robots Zombies Ghosts Demons And much, much more! We here at the Neighborhood Apocalypse Prevention Squad, or N.A.P.S., wish you the best in your endevor to save the world! You will be drafted into your specialized devision shortly, and given tools, weapons and instruction to continue with your mission. Our goal is to draft young people into a battalion of elite fighters, spies and problem solvers to help save the world! The rules: Never tell an adult about your involvement with N.A.P.S. Always wear your contact/safety flare emmiting wach, cuortesy of N.A.P.S. technitions. And always remember: You are here to save us. Now please enjoy a breif introduction and motivational essay by one of our top agents, and orange heart award winner, Gage Redwolf.

Chapter 1
My name is Gage Redwolf. Over all, my life is pretty well put together- at least it will be for the next two chapters. After that… well, let’s just say that things get a bit rickety. I’m a junior in Greendey high school, and unlike most of these kinds of stories, no. I’m not the nerd or weird kid in school. People don’t pick on me, I don’t live in half of a run-down apartment room, and I have both of my parents. So as you can see, there is no reason for me to be dragged into this. None. At all. I have ZERO baseline for a hero.

I am a straight A student, not too bad looking, and pretty popular around here. Life was nice. Until they showed up. Him in particular. Ugh. Him.

Okay. Let’s rewind a bit. It started after the end of year party, on the last possible day of school. I was feeling pretty good, especially since I had triumphed over the stress of exam week and scraped by with an A in everything. Whew. I was heading to the library to meet up with friends. Oh yeah. I had plenty of those at the moment.

Right now, I was going to see the ones that basically lived at the library. I pushed open the doors and felt a rush of cold air in my face, along with the scent of paper. This library in particular had low shelves, so that you could see the people on the other side of the isle. In the far corner sat a girl about my age with ratty black hair that was bunched in a messy bun and pinned with nothing but crossing pencils.

This is Dell. To call her a bookworm would be the biggest understatement of all time. For one thing, she doesn’t have the personality of your average bookworm. She’s sarcastic. She’s mischievous. And at times she can be downright mean. But also, because she is way out of the bookworm league. Whenever she reads a series, she has to have the other books right next to her so that when she finishes with one, she can just put it down and open the next one without skipping a beat. The Harry Potter series took her a week- and that was because she had to wait three days for the last one to arrive.

Now, the problem with Dell is that she will only read fiction. Sci-fi. Fantasy. Mystery novels if she’s feeling mellow. But you hand her a book on world war one, and she’ll read it alright, but she will be grumpy for the next week or so. Anything that isn’t out of this world impossible is boring. Therefore, life is boring. So there you go. That’s why Dell reads… all the time. She is the most intimidating nerd you’ll ever meet.

She looked up at me, and I could tell she was lost in thought. She does this thing where she stares into space and furrows her eyebrows like she was mad. It means she’s thinking. When I say thinking, I don’t mean philosophical reasoning. No, it’s more like: ''I wonder what that dude in the business suit would do if I throw a brick at him. Let’s find out''.

She had violence problems. She nodded, acknowledging that I was there. I maneuvered through the shelving, which for some reason was made like a maze, with dead ends and misleading paths. I’d seen Dell navigate the thing easily, without even looking. Yup. She was reading at the time. Which just goes to show how often she came here.

You know how your mom says that it is impossible to read too much? I found out that my mom was wrong when I met Dell. Whenever she isn’t in school, (actually, she reads in the hallways) or sleeping, (I’m pretty sure that she goes to bed with a book in her arms) or facing a life or death situation, (Which never happened until they arrived) she is reading. I wander what she’ll do when the world runs out of books. Never mind. Too scary to imagine.

I made it out of the maze and moved to sit down in the chair next to her. “Hey.” I said.

She nodded and continued reading, while simultaneously moving to a chair away from me. She needs her space while she reads. Otherwise… ouch. I noticed that she was also in the middle of writing an essay. I didn’t question her. I knew all too well that she could multi-task as easily as chewing gum and walking at the same time.

“How was book club?” I asked.

She didn’t look up as she replied, “A complete waste of time.”

“Not surprised. Did you read through it again?”

“Nope.”  She looked up into the distance again, squinting.

“What are you-‘’ She cut me off by putting a hand in my face.

“Could you shut up for a second, please? Your annoying voice is interfering with my ability to mentally transport into the fictional realm of this book.”

I rolled my eyes, and shut my trap. Dell got up and took three large steps across the room, still holding the book and stopping about two yards away. I noticed that she was wearing her cargo pants. They were baggy and beige with pockets big enough to hold… you guessed it. Books. She looked up and frowned.

“This book has faulty information.” She announced, coming back to sit at the table. “Three large steps taken across a room by a ten year old is not a yard and a half. Here it says that ‘Michal took three steps large enough to make him split and ended up about a yard and a half away from the group’. That is incorrect.”

“How do you know?” I challenged.

She looked at me like I was a bad grade on a test sheet. “Because I measured that space earlier, and a yard and a half only took two steps.”

“But you’re not a ten year old.” I pointed out.

Her scowl deepened. “I tested my theory on that kid over there.” She flicked her head toward the opposite side of the room, where a younger kid was eying her wearily.

“Dell, seriously, you need to stop using small children as test subjects. It’s creepy.”

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyways. That book isn’t worth reading if it contains faulty info.” She tossed the book aside. I unzipped my backpack.

“I’ve already read it anyways.” Dell continued. I didn’t bother to counter her.

“But you read books about the dead coming back to life. How is that not faulty info?”

“Because that’s different.”

“Hi, guys.” Said somebody. I looked to the side and realized that Shawn had arrived. Let me introduce you. When you first look at Shawn your immediate reaction is: NERD SIGHTED.

I’ve known him since kindergarten, and even then, he was a geek. The green hair didn’t happen until he was nine, when he was experimenting with the stuff that makes glow-sticks glow, and some mercury that he ‘found’ in the lab. Ever since, he’s had this spiky green hair that by his own definition is ‘permanent’ permanent. His eyebrows and even the peach fuzz on his arms is neon green as well. He’s about six feet tall and painfully skinny, and to further illustrate my point of his geekiness, he was wearing neon blue glasses.

“Hey Shawn.”  I greeted him. I scooted my seat a little closer and patted the chair next to me. Shawn sat down, heaving his Star Wars backpack over his shoulder and onto the table. Dell looked up and nodded briefly. Then she went back to reading.

Shawn had the other side of the nerd. Dell had the reads- too- much side, and Shawn had… well, pretty much everything else. Dell doesn’t like the ‘boring’ books, and Shawn doesn’t know the definition of ‘boring’. He would love the world war one book. Shawn doesn’t care much about fiction, and I can’t even compare his reading rate to Dell’s, but he does read more than me (which is a low bar). Anyway, he liked science, and he had a lab in his room. Are you surprised? Didn’t think so. That’s how the hair incident happened.

“How was physics club?”  I asked.

“It was amazing. Not even one explosion.” I raised my eyebrows. That was a first.

“Shouldn’t you be mad about that?” Dell snapped. She was writing the essay as well as steadily reading to the bottom of another page. I didn’t even realize that she had picked up another book. Dell is like that. You blink and all the sudden she’s siphoned another book out of nowhere.

Shawn smiled sarcastically. “Hello, sunshine. How was school?”

Dell ground her teeth. “I got in trouble for chucking a textbook at Mark Dingle. It was his fault in the first place for provoking me. He called me…” she glanced around and then bent in to whisper, “You know what.”

“Hey, who says words can’t be weapons?”  I added. I didn’t like Mark Dingle. I’m a pretty popular guy, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t not like bullies. Oh, yeah. ‘You know what’ is the code word for Bell. You know. The Disney version of beauty in the beast. He started calling Dell that on her first day, after hey saw her walking and reading at the same time. (Also, her name is just the slightest bit similar to Bell. Dell.)

Shawn tugged on his hair, looking exasperated. “Why did you have to throw something at the most feared kid in the school? He’s on the top of the food chain, and he get to pick his prey, so guess who’ll be jammed into their locker tomorrow?”  He signed his name using sign language. (I can’t even read ASL, I just know because he was mouthing the word as well) “I DON’T WANT TO BE LOCKER LUNCH!”  He finished. Leave it to Shawn to use an animal kingdom reference and ASL in the same sentence.

Dell reached over and punched him in the gut. “Shut up, will you? We’re in a library.”  She looked over her shoulder at the lady behind the front desk, who was eying our group savagely.

Shawn took some breaths to calm down. “Just don’t do it again…”  I figured that Shawn had probably had enough for now. Whenever he gets annoyed, he dares Dell to do something difficult (stupid) and that never ends well. Last time he dared her to read War and Peace in fourth grade. She finished it in a day, but wouldn’t talk to us for a month.

My phone started to ring (nothing fancy, just your average apocalypse invasion sound track). “Be back in a seck.”  I informed them.

When I left, dell was turning another page and Shawn was momentarily chewing on his backpack. He does that when he gets anxiety (which is a lot). Friendly tip: if you ever have to pick up Shawn’s backpack, keep your hands well away from the front pocket.

I flipped open the phone and pressed the receiving button.

“Hey mom.”  My voice echoed a bit.

“Hi, sweetie. I just wanted to let you know that I might be a bit late for the library. I feel bad about letting you walk home, so if I’m not able to make it, Mr. Hernandez is going to bring you home. You okay with that?”  Her voice transmitted scratchy and disconnected.

“It’s only two miles, mom.”

She’d already hung up. I sighed, and shoved he phone in my back pocket.

Okay. Maybe not EVERYTHING was perfect. My dad worked far from home, and my mom was really busy. Sometimes I felt like they didn’t have enough time for me.

(i will finish later)