Navaphodo Incident, Ch 1

         "Jack, c'mon, we need to go, before they return!"
         "Shhh!  Keep your voice down Laura; we don't know if they're still out there!"  Said Jack, in a hushed voice.  He motioned with his hands to follow, and left the destroyed room that they had rented not even a few months earlier.  Now it was in ruins, and it happened so fast.
         "I'm coming," Laura said quietly, "but where will we head?"
         "I don't know, but let's get supplies first."  His voiced trailed up the stairs.  Laura looked around the room one last time, grabbing a backpack and leaving the room. She snuck down the stairs to catch up to the wolf, who was in a crouching position against the wall leading to the doorway.
         "Ready?  And what's with the backpack?"  He was eyeing the sack suspiciously.
         "It's if we find anything good that we'd need to keep.  So where we heading first?"  Her feline pupils were halfway open in the evening, and quite a bit of inquisitiveness in them.
         "I know of a couple places we should hit up, the first is a grocery store on Fifteenth Street."  His head poked around the corner to the outside of their apartment complex, surveying the scene outside.  Outside was a different scene than what they experienced inside.  They were shielded by a multitude of apartments from the blast.  The people outside didn't have that luxury.  Strewn across the road were charred bodies and wrecks of cars, some still smoldering. 
         "It smells horrible from here."  Laura's nose crinkled, trying to retreat from the terrible stench of burning flesh and rubber.
         "I know, just try to push past it, and hurry, we have a few blocks to travel."  Another quick survey of the surroundings was all Jack needed.  He rounded out onto the street.  His movement stopped at the corner, and the feline followed up not to far behind. 
         "This is very sad, all those people."
         "I know Laura, but we need to keep going.  The bodies will eventually thin out, and the stench will fade too..."  The car across the street exploded in a fiery storm of sparks, making Laura clutch onto Jack.
         "Hey, it's okay, it's not them.  Let's go."  She let go, regaining her thoughts, and the duo head out.  All around them, bits of buildings crumbled off, the rebar reinforcements all melted away, leaving the cement and rock fades to fall off as they passed underneath.  After a few blocks of trekking, the charred bodies gave way to dead bodies, and the stench of burning flesh faded away.
         "See, the smell did disappear, like I said.  Now Fifteenth is coming up soon, we'll need to turn right, and go a few blocks.  Okay?"
         "Yeah, but you have to admit, it was a very disturbing to see all those dead corpses burnt to a crisp.  I mean, if I had just touched them, they'd fall apart into ash piles.  What could be so wicked as to do that to our city?  A neighboring state?"
         "Laura, we had peaceful relations with all of the states on this planet.  I doubt it was any of them.  Besides, if anything, it might be the humans, in retaliation for breaking of from them.  They were particularly not happy about that, remember?"
         Every kid was instructed on the Navophodian Revolution.  When the planet was first founded, most of the inhabitants that came were the genetic experiments that lead to furries.  Since Earth was not much of a welcoming society, they were the first to hitch a ride to the new planet.  As time progressed, some humans began to venture out as well.  The landing sites grew to towns, and eventually cities; and mighty states arose.  But the peace between states was short lived, as the resource demand from their founding countries back on Earth grew, wars started.  The death tolls rose just as fast as the demands from Earth did.  Amongst the turmoil, the inhabitants realized that if they removed the cause of their turmoil, the senseless wars over the resources would come to a halt.  Under private meetings, the leaders of the colonies devised a plan to lash out at Earth, to show their independence.  On the last shipment of resources to Earth, instead of the normal resources, they sent explosives, enough to take out the space yards.  Each state had held their breaths as videos of the violent attacks came to the media's attention.  And each state had known that these acts of violence would attribute to a full flung war with their founding planet: Earth.
         Earth sent the ultimatum to the planet.  Each of the states' leaders got it, and openly refused.  The reaction to their denials wasn't pretty, all but a few states escaped unscathed.  But the Earthlings were repelled, and Navophodo won its independence.  Even though it had a bad reputation with Earth, trade began once again, and a healthy relationship started.  But this last event took the cities' inhabitants by surprise.
         "What'd you suppose did it Jack?"
         "I don't know; that blast was very interesting though.  If it was a nuke, we'd be sick with radiation poisoning by now, if we survived that initial blast.  No, this seemed like a different kind of bomb.  It created an incendiary blast radius; and it looks like outside of that was a concussion blast wave, killing many by falling or flying debris.  As in the case around here."
         The pair rounded the corner of Century and Fifteenth.  On the corner, they saw some movement.  Both immediately ducked behind a wrecked car.  A moan came from the moving figure.  Jack decided to go and get a closer look, much to the protest of Laura.
         "Jack!  You don't know what that is!  You'll get hurt or something, please, lets go!"  Despite her protests, Jack continued.  The figure gave another moan, as Jack ducked behind a piece of the fallen building.  Peaking over the fallen fade piece, he began to notice some familiar features.  The figure was, was actually a human!  A young one at that, maybe sixteen or seventeen.  His light green shirt was in shreds.  At least his pants had stayed pretty much intact.  Seeing no danger, Jack strode over to the human male, confident that he wouldn't fight back.
         "Laura, it's alright, it's a human, he can' hurt you.  C'mon."  She came rushing over to Jack.  As they neared him, they began to notice injuries, mainly on the head, such as an open wound on the right forehead, and some blood upon his lips, his breathing was steady though so none of his important internal organs were damaged.
         "He looks pretty banged up, what do you think happened?"  Laura's voice kind of cracked.
         "Well, judging by the spurt of blood on the wall right there, my guess is that he hit his head quite hard against the wall, and, just guessing here, broke a few ribs on the window sill jutting out here."  The human moved slightly, trying to pull himself out of the debris on top of him.  His lungs let out a cough, and a bit of blood riding on the dying force of the gust of air. He looked up, barely opened his eyes, revealing green eyes.  They gave a look of help before he collapsed back on the ground.
         "Are we going to help him Jack?"  She could barely stand to see the human struggling.
         "I guess, but it doesn't look like he'll be able to walk without help, so could you help me clear some of the debris around him away?"  Laura nodded, picking a few pieces of wood off of the human's body, while Jack removed a chunk of concrete.  After the debris was cleared, Jack and Laura each took and arm, and hoisted the unconscious human onto their shoulders.
         "Now what?"  Laura looked at Jack, expecting an answer.
         "I don't know, but I know we have to find somewhere to crash for the night."

~ End Chapter 1 ~