The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,5

to the floor. Tears stung Landon’s eyes as his body reacted to a painful truth his mind was unwilling to accept. Unable to stop himself, Landon continued to scream at her and shake her, expecting his mother to wake up at any moment.

Suddenly, the loud creak of someone in the hall caught Landon’s attention. As their feet pressed into the old floorboards of the building, the sounds of their footsteps became louder and louder as they moved closer to his apartment door.

Landon bolted upright and dragged his fingers through his hair. What would happen if someone came through that door? What would they think when they found him standing over his mother with her blood all over his hands? His family lay lifelessly amidst mountains of debris, casualties of an unknown apocalypse, with Landon as the only survivor. They’d think I did it, he realized, as there was no way for him to explain what happened. He couldn’t remember anything after he opened his bedroom door. I’ll be made out as one of those lunatic kids who go crazy and brutally murder their entire family. I’ll be all over the news!

Panicking, he plowed through the debris, pushing his way into his room. Once inside, he slammed the door shut and leaned against it. He started to lose his breath and his heart pounded within his chest. Apart from the broken door and a bit of dust, his room looked the same as he left it. The copy of David Copperfield still lay on his disheveled bed and his reading lamp illuminated the room. He walked over and collapsed beside the bed, pressing his head into his hands. What have I done? He didn’t know why, but he knew he was responsible. What do I do now?

He could think of only one option. He ran through his room as sweat soaked his clothes and dripped from his face. He shoved a pair of dirty jeans and a few t-shirts into a duffle bag then jumped over the corner of the bed to his nightstand and pulled out his special copy of Treasure Island from a small drawer and placed it on the bed. He opened it and pulled a stack of cash from its hollowed-out pages and shoved the money into his pocket.

He then grabbed a pen and a composition notebook off a stack of textbooks on the floor and rushed to his desk. As he sat there, he took a long breath and looked around his room. Pictures from his vacations with his mother and posters of his favorite rock bands lined the walls. Books and knickknacks covered his shelves. He was his mother’s son. Homework from his previous year at school and dirty clothes littered the floor, and in a corner he saw a bin with a small plastic sword sticking out of it, a pirate’s bandana dangling from its hilt. He turned back to the desk and opened up the notebook to a random page. In small letters across a line toward the top he wrote, “I’m sorry,” before tearing the page out of the notebook, folding it once down the middle, and setting it on his desk. He secured it with a third place trophy he won for the one-hundred-meter backstroke when he was eleven.

The sound of someone knocking on the apartment door startled him. He’d lingered too long. Panicked, he grabbed his cell phone off his desk, sped to the other side of his room, and opened the window. With one foot on the fire escape, he turned around and looked at his bedroom once more. Something told him this could be the last time he would ever see it. A moment later he climbed down the metal ladder into the alley.

CHAPTER TWO

RUN AWAY

Landon stopped running when he reached the park. It was only a mile or two from the apartment, but he knew that it was large and dark and that there would be plenty of places to hide for the night. Thinking of the one place he knew best, he went straight for the lake. His mother brought him there so many times as a kid that he felt he could name every tree and animal in a fifty foot radius.

Choosing a weeping willow with a large patch of grass at its base, Landon curled up, trying to sleep. It seemed impossible at first. The adrenaline wearing off in his system made his body twitch all over, and his mind was still spinning from