[Broken Glass] Chapter 1: Old Tricks, New Dogs

[Silv3r Energy]

[October 12, 2025]

[4:23p.m.]

 

Dear Diary. Dad's been out on a hunting trip for the third day in a row, but now I think I'm worried about him. He's stopped answering his calls and doesn't respond to my texts or voicemails! I just want to talk to him. The last thing he sent me was a jumble of letters in a text, but they don't make any sense so I stopped trying to figure it out. If anybody's reading this, bring my dad back. Please.

 

~Amelia

 

 

 

After finishing the entry, Amelia closed her diary, taking a short glance at its bedazzled cover before adjusting her view out the window. Snow was falling early this year, and Amelia always liked to watch it as it fell. Her friends told her she was too old for such simple things, but her justification was that "Seventeen isn't too old for anything." 

 

Abruptly, Amelia's mother rapped thrice on the door, shaking the metal knob. "Amy, wanna do me a favor?"

 

She pretended she didn't hear her mom, and continued looking out the window. Louder this time, knocks rung throughout the room.

 

"Amelia Orr, answer me please!"

 

She sighed, her breath temporarily accumulating on the window pane. "What's up?"

 

Her mother opened the door, peeking her head in. "Could you shovel the walkway for your father? He should be back tonight."

 

"Does this mean we can have macaroni and cheese tonight?"

 

"That's not what I said."

 

"Sorry, but that snow is going to stay exactly where it is until there is macaroni involved." Amelia folded her arms and made a faux-pouty face.

 

Her mother sighed. "You're cooking then."

 

Amelia jumped out of her chair and bolted to the front door, eager to finish the shoveling job as soon as possible, and happy to hear that her father would return soon. The shoveling itself would take until well after sundown, and she estimated that it would be perfect timing to see her father when she finished.

 

After a few hours, she scooped up the final lumps of snow, and threw them into the snowbank. Sometimes, she cursed her longer-than-most driveway, but decided it was worth the wait and effort. She ran back inside, and began boiling a large pot of water over the stove. Her mother was, unsurprisingly, asleep in her living room chair, her favorite program playing on the TV. Prior to sitting down on the couch with a small bowl of macaroni, Amelia tucked her mother in with the blanket from her bed. She slipped away into a soft slumber, making sure to leave the porch light on.

 

-          -          -

 

Screams. Glass breaking. High-pitched whistling. The smell of lit torches. Amelia woke up in a cold sweat, looking to the window to see where the horrid sounds were coming from. On the street, she saw crowds amass on the pavement, all looking towards the sky. She approached the window, inching closer until she could see what they were all looking at. They were looking at what first appeared to be the moon, but soon, three cylindrical objects came shooting out of the bright sphere. Amelia could soon see that they were, in fact, rockets, and she knew about them from her American History class at school, on the topic of a German research group called Group 935. The rockets were identical to the diagrams they saw in class.

 

Time seemed to move very slowly. She thought about school. Her friends. Her relatives. She was snapped out of her daze when her mother grabbed her by the shoulder, and began an instruction.

 

"Go to the bunker. Everything you need is there."

 

Amelia could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. "You aren't coming with?"

 

"I have to look for your father."

 

Understanding, she ran through the house and out the back door, almost tripping on the cement stair. A bunker was standard for every house, especially during the war. The one she had was nothing to gawk at, but it was a bunker nonetheless.

 

Amelia looked nervously at the paint on the door, eyeing the words "Fallout Shelter" over and over. She finally gripped the thick steel door and pulled it open. She narrowly slipped in, and the door swung shut behind her with an echoing boom.

[anonymous]

Nice! I like the alternate future setting. Like Group 935 is well known in history classes, and fallout shelters are everywhere