Chapter 44: Persephone Azar

Chapter 44: Chapter 44: Persephone Azar

PERSEPHONE’SPOV

Ding-dong Ding-dong

The door apartment door creaked slightly open, a beautiful silver hair girl with blue eyes was standing there. She looked exhausted. "Can I help you?" She responded.

"Miss, I’m not sure if you remember, but I’m your neighbor Harold. My sister asked me to relay a message to you." He said.

"hmm?" Persephone responded in a lazy tone. You could tell she was still drowsy from sleep.

"She said to stay away from daylight today. There seems to be a solar phenomenon going on and no one knows how the sun rays will affect others." He said. Thinking she wouldn’t believe him.

"sun rays? okay. stay away. go it" She responded groggily. "Is that all?" She asked.

"umm, yes. Remember, don’t have any direct contact with sunlight today." He said hurriedly as he walked away.

"okay" Persephone responded and waved goodbye. She closed her door and slowly slid down to the ground. She had fallen asleep on her couch last night and was awoken by the urgent knocking. She was basically bathing in today’s red sunlight when woken.

She was starting to feel feverish and started crawling towards her medicine counter. It took everything in her to give herself some energy just to stand. She took some fever reducing medication and gulped it down with room temperature water.

"Sunlight" She murmured. "Close the curtains" she kept murmuring as she made her way towards the curtains. Making sure to stay away from the sun.

Once she got close enough to the windows she noticed something was off. The sky was completely red. The sun looked fiercely red as well. She saw people screaming, as if they were in pain.

She hurriedly closed her curtains and rushed to find her phone. She needed to call her big sister and father. She had to make sure they were okay.

She wondered how her cousin was faring. She tried to reach out to them but noticed the call was not connecting. It kept saying ’no signal’. That wasn’t right. She needed something that could connect to them.

That’s when she remembered the satellite phone. She went to her bedroom and opened the drawer next to her bed. She found the black box with her family insignia on it.

She opened the box and pulled the black flip phone out. She dialed her sister’s number and it connected instantly.

"Hello?" a woman on the other line answered.

"Lia, it’s me." She said.

"Perse, how are you?" Dahlia asked urgently.

"Lia, I’m fine. Listen, close all the blinds. Do not let any sunlight in. Tell dad that I’ll head home once nighttime falls." Persephone said.

"No, don’t leave. The outside world is dangerous right now. Idk what’s happening, people just dropped dead once the sun turned red. Stay where you are. We will come find you when the time is right."

"Okay. I was informed to stay out of the sunrays by my neighbor. She said if we must go outside, to go during night time." Persephone said.

"Ok, stay safe for now." Dahlia said as she walked towards the windows. Ensuring to stay out of any sunlight.

" Is he...Is he okay?" Persephone asked.

"Don’t worry. Dad is a warrior. He’s doing perfectly fine." Dahlia said. Although she tried to sound normal, Persephone could tell something was wrong.

"What’s wrong with dad?" She asked.

Dahlia stayed quiet for a brief minute and then she chuckled lowly.

"I can’t keep anything from you, can I? He’s out cold right now. He was one of the first to be affected once the sun turned red. He currently has a fever of 104.3 Fahrenheit. I have given him fever reducing medicine but I’m also starting to feel a bit feverish. Stay still until we come find you. Something tells me this isn’t normal." Dahlia said.

"Sis...I also feel feverish." Persephone said in a terrified tone.

"’Dahlia, I’m scared." she whispered.

"Don’t be, just wait for us to come find you." She answered.

"What about her? Have you reached out to her?" Persephone asked.

"Something is wrong with the cellular towers. I have tried reaching out but the phones keep saying ’no signal’. I’ll try her on the satellite phone dad gave her. I’m sure she has it with her. Don’t worry. She will be safe, dad will be fine. We will all be fine. We will come get you once dad and I are better. Till then, stay safe." Dahlia said as she disconnected the call.

Persephone was starting to feel drowsy herself and laid on her bed. She was terrified of what was to come. She knew from Harold’s tone of voice and choice of words that this was far from any normal phenomenon.

Her mother died during labor with her little brother Sam. Both brother and mother did not make it.

All she had left in this world was her Sister Dahlia, her Father and her Cousin Penelope. She silently prayed for their safety and hoped to see them soon.

Before she could continue to worry, her whole mind blacked out and she fell into a deep sleep.

***

25th Floor.

Penelope was sitting in the living room, it what felt like complete darkness. All windows were closed, blinds shut, curtains closed.

Penelope and Kai had the lights on.

"It feels so gloomy without the curtains opened." Penelope murmured.

"Penn, the whole vibe is gloomy." Kai answered.

Both were still reeling from all the screaming they heard. People screaming for help. Cars crashing non stop. It was just a few hours since the red sun phenomenon.

Now the streets were completely silent. No one knew what was going on but it felt like the world had taken a pause.

Although the rest of the group decided to return to their homes, Kai and Erik decided to stay with Penelope and Aunt Mary. They wanted to be together during this catastrophe.

"Don’t pay attention to the outside world. We must start preparing for tonight." Erik said.

"You’re right. We need to get our defenses up. We should go and look for electric gates to install on the stairwells. The apocalypse brings out the evil in humans." Penelope whispered.

"Let’s hope we find some in the construction factory. We don’t need to worry too much for food since we raided the grocery market but we really should try to raid the mall tonight." Erik said.

"Yeah, let’s go and take all the jewelry from them. Realistically that won’t be enough though. We need to go to the jewelry district pronto." Kai said.

Penelope stayed quiet for a moment while she thought of the future.

"Dear, have you contacted your Uncle Silver?" Mary asked out of the blue.

’Silver?’ Penelope thought for a while, and then remembered about the body’s maternal uncle named Silver Azar. Her biological mother’s twin brother.

She forgot about that family. You couldn’t blame her, the book barely mentioned them.

"I seem to have forgotten." she answered guiltily.

Mary gave her a look and told her "Go, try to reach them. Your sister Perse should be in town, maybe we could go get here and bring her back with us."

"Oh great, the brat will be coming to stay with us." Kai said in an exasperated tone.

"If we can raise one brat, we can raise two." Erik said nonchalantly.

Penelope laughed just thinking about it. Persephone and Kai were like frenemies. They got along when needed but would bump heads over the little’s disagreements.

Penelope was lost in thought recalling all the information about her maternal family. Suddenly, she disappeared and entered the space. Heading towards her house where she stored a satellite phone handed to her by Uncle Silver.

When she returned to the living room in the outside world, she was holding a black flip phone and started dialing Dahlia’s contact number. No one answered.

She called Uncle Silver and again, no one answered.

By the time she reached out to Persephone she was sure no one would answer.

Sure enough, it was a busy dial tone.

"I’ll try again tonight." She said to Mary, Erik and Kai in a worried tone.