Sample Chapter

Author's Note: This is a hypathetical last chapter to a hypathetical novel entitled "Tag at the End of All Things." The set up is simple: The people who play tag are hiding in a bomb shelter in the basement of Buffalo Wild Wings at thirteenth and "N" streets in Lincoln. The city was marched upon by, I don't know, Chinese soldiers or something. Please suspend your disbelief, I thought this up at the Hi-Way Diner during a particularly painful shit.

The rumbling stopped two hours ago and the thirty-six people in the black tomb under buffalo wild wings were getting anxious. They were there for too long, shuffeling in cramped darkness, not knowing were anybody or anything was. The scents of three dozen people were blending into a stink unheard of before. Nobody knew exactly how long they were there, but the uncomfortable shifts and quick, "accidental" jabbings were forcing Dan to consider bashing his head into the wall until he couldn't feel. The only time keeping device, the watch around Jeff's wrist, was functionally useless in the dark. The nightlight had broken on the flight from his house to the bomb shelter.
"Well, Jeff, what do you think? Is it time?" Dan's disembodied voice echoed of the bare concrete. "We gotta get out of here," John shouted.
Jeff paused for a moment.
"Yes," he said, "by this point I don't care if I get shot."
The rusted bolt's squek was a lot quietr this time. JJ and Jeff forced their shoulders into the cast iron door and slowly pushed it open.
The fading twilight burned their eyes. What felt like years in pitch black had shrunk everyone's pupils to the size of atoms.
Eevery man and woman in the shelter climbed the steps and stretched. Grasping for a sky that was filling with stars. Maybe if they reached high enough they'd escape this wasted land.
"What time is it?" John called.
"It's nine-thirty," Jeff responded.
"Well...what do we do now?"
Looking around at the rotting flesh, crumbeling buildings and bleached bones, there was only one unspoken answer.
"Get around me in a cricle," Jeff said.
As the soiled faces and tattered clothes enclosed him, a sense of purpose came over everyone.
"Well," Dan said, "I guess we don't have to worry about hitting civillians."
And Jeff started counting...