Battle for Peace: Rachel Minnie Griffin’s Epic Quest

Bennie and I had never been particularly romantic people. We met in a pub near our house when we were both sixteen and he pulled my hair and laughed at me for a week before he asked me to be his girlfriend. I didn’t really mind, though; Bennie really was the best boyfriend I could have hoped for, and he was kind, funny and very handsome. He still is, of course, but the past few days have changed him. He’s changed.

Bennie has always been a bit of a joker. He once made me eat an entire packet of licorice all in one go, saying that if I couldn’t beat them, join them. I nearly threw up all over his mother’s new carpet. I do not like licorice; it tastes nothing like liquorice to me, it just tastes disgusting. It smells disgusting too; like an old man’s breath after a hundred years of cigars and whiskey.

He always used to tease me about my phobia of sausages. The smell makes me sick because he used to put sardines in them when we lived with his mother, before we bought our house. He would tease me by pretending to eat them and make this face where his eyes bulged out like he was going to die on the spot from the horrible taste and smell alone. If I smelled sausages or even saw them I would feel sick for days afterwards; it wasn't until we moved out that I realised why that happened every time he ate them. After that happened we never ate sausages together again.

I don't think Bennie is the same person any more though; not since the day everything went wrong. That day started off normally enough: breakfast with Hudson and Jasmyn, then school drop offs, lunch with Audrina and a trip to the shops for groceries (Bennie was working late tonight so I was doing most of the shopping on my own). It's strange how something as perfect as that morning can change so quickly into something as awful as what happened last night.

I remember parking my car outside the grocery store in town and looking at my phone; only now do I realise how stupid that was of me - with hindsight you realise how many mistakes you've made while you're panicking, but at the time you don't know any better than to keep making them over and over again until you remember what's right or wrong anymore - but there wasn't any signal inside so I went outside rather than miss any messages from Bennie about changing plans for dinner or something like that.

There was a loud bang as someone hit their car door against mine as they left their car next to mine - it didn't sound too bad but I knew what things sounded like when they looked bad, so instead of waiting around to see whether there'd be a dent or not I decided to look inside first before finding somewhere else to park. Everything seemed fine though; nothing had fallen off or anything so I went back out ahead of everyone else who was walking into the store next door and tried to text Bennie again. Still no signal inside so I went outside again instead and stood right by my car door so my phone wouldn't move around too much while I waited for a reply from Bennie - still nothing though, so I tried calling him instead although with all the noise in the parking lot behind me it felt kind of pointless even though it wasn't far from ringing through...

And then everything went black after that; everything went dark and quiet all at once, which meant either someone had covered my eyes or there was something covering my ears as well - no idea how long it lasted for but when things came back into view Audrina was holding onto my arm tightly enough that her fingernails were digging into my skin (I still have those scars underneath my arms) and screaming at me to get away from her car...

She'd been in her car when it happened though - she told me later that she'd seen two men dressed all in black carrying some sort of silvery guns break through her window when they shot her tires out but she'd managed to jump out just in time somehow and run into mine before they noticed her...

God knows why they hadn't shot at us too - maybe they thought we were both dead already or maybe they thought Audrina would be easier pickings without help if she'd been caught alone...

The rest was pretty terrifying; there were more gunshots from across the road where another car had stopped moving suddenly without warning (which is why we'd crashed into each other), followed by screams from across town where everyone else must have been taken down by whatever those men were using...

That wasn't even the worst part though: after we ran into a nearby shop screaming for help as soon as we could find our way outside again without getting shot we found everyone else who'd been taken down lying facedown on the floor with metal bands wrapped around their ankles which seemed to be somehow connected to some sort of machine with lights on top which blinked brightly every few seconds while they were tied up...

We hadn't seen anything like it before except one time when we watched an episode of X Files where aliens used stuff like this to take over people's bodies while their minds were trapped somewhere else - Jasmyn used to love watching that show before she became afraid of aliens 'stealing' her body one day while she slept...

It got worse still: some man walked in through another door wearing a mask which looked almost exactly like one of those aliens on TV had while he shouted loudly at us all in a language neither Audrina nor I understood (she said she didn't know any foreign languages or anything useful like that). It scared us so much that Audrina fainted right there on the spot while Jasmyn started crying loudly somewhere behind us; Hudson kept whispering "mummy" quietly under his breath until someone finally noticed because then three more men came over and grabbed both him and Jasmyn before dragging them out through another doorway which closed automatically behind them...

I spent hours trying desperately to break free from whatever those metal bands were attached to while Audrina recovered enough strength to untie herself once they forgot about us (whoever "they" are) long enough for us both to run outside together into an abandoned street lit up by moonlight where there wasn't anyone around except empty cars whose drivers must have been taken down too...

Now here we are hiding behind a tree about twenty miles north east from where we used to live in an area entirely surrounded by trees which leave small gaps between them where monsters might hide... There are lots of other families hiding here too; some groups seem closer than others but no-one speaks or tries talking properly because everyone's too terrified by what might happen if we can be heard by whoever took everyone away yesterday...