Neighborhood Apocalypse Prevention

Welcome to the  Neighborhood Apocalypse Prevention Squad!

If you're reading this, then congratulations! Your town and/or planet is under attack from one of the following:

**Aliens**

**Robots**

**Zombies**

**Ghosts**

**Demons**

**Garden Gnomes**

**And much, much more!**

Here at the Neighborhood Apocalypse Prevention Squad, or N.A.P.S., our goal is to protect our homes from being run over by unnatural or unearthly beings. How do we do this? It's simple, friend! We recruit young people into our order, finding that they tend to be most creative and resourceful when it comes to problem solving. YOU, friend are one of the lucky few who have been deemed worthy of affiliation with our noble cause.

Please enjoy this motivational essay, written by one of out top agents.

Chap. 1

Okay, first thing's first: This is NOT a motivational essay. It's an honest story about my involvement with N.A.P.S..

My name is Gage Redwolf. Over all, my
life is pretty well put together- at least it will be for the next couple
chapters. After that… well, let’s just say that things get a bit rickety. I’m a
junior in Greendey high school, and unlike most of these kinds of stories, no. I’m
not the nerd or weird kid in school. People don’t pick on me, I don’t live in
half of a run-down apartment room, and I have both of my parents. So as you can
see, there is no reason for me to be dragged into this. None. At all. I have ZERO
baseline for a hero.

I am a straight A student, not too
bad looking, and pretty popular around here. Life was nice. Until they showed
up. *Him* in particular. Ugh. *Him*.

Okay. Let’s rewind a bit. It started
after the end of year party, on the last possible day of school. I was feeling
pretty good, especially since I had triumphed over the stress of exam week and
scraped by with an A in everything. *Whew*.  I was heading to the library to meet up with
friends. Oh yeah. I had *plenty* of
those at the moment.

Right now, I was going to see the
ones that basically lived at the library. I pushed open the doors and felt a
rush of cold air in my face, along with the scent of paper. This library in
particular had low shelves, so that you could see the people on the other side
of the isle. In the far corner sat a girl about my age with ratty black hair
that was bunched in a messy bun and pinned with nothing but crossing pencils.

This is Dell. To call her a bookworm would be the biggest
understatement of all time. For one thing, she doesn’t have the personality of
your average bookworm. She’s sarcastic. She’s mischievous. And at times she can
be downright mean. But also, because she is way out of the bookworm league.
Whenever she reads a series, she has to have the other books right next to her
so that when she finishes with one, she can just put it down and open the next
one without skipping a beat. The *Harry Potter*
series took her a week- and that was because she had to wait three days for the
last one to arrive.

Now, the problem with Dell is that
she will only read fiction. Sci-fi. Fantasy. Mystery novels if she’s feeling
mellow.  But you hand her a book on world
war one, and she’ll read it alright, but she will be grumpy for the next week
or so. Anything that isn’t out of this world impossible is boring. Therefore,
life is boring. So there you go. That’s why Dell reads… all the time.  She is the most intimidating nerd you’ll ever
meet.

She looked up at me, and I could tell
she was lost in thought. She does this thing where she stares into space and
furrows her eyebrows like she was mad. It means she’s thinking. When I say
thinking, I don’t mean philosophical reasoning. No, it’s more like: *I wonder what that dude in the business suit*
would do if I throw a brick at him. Let’s find out*.*

She had violence problems. She
nodded, acknowledging that I was there. I maneuvered through the shelving,
which for some reason was made like a maze, with dead ends and misleading
paths. I’d seen Dell navigate the thing easily, without even looking. Yup. She
was reading at the time. Which just goes to show how often she came here.

You know how your mom says that it is
impossible to read too much? I found out that my mom was wrong when I met
Dell.  Whenever she isn’t in school,
(actually, she reads in the hallways) or sleeping, (I’m pretty sure that she
goes to bed with a book in her arms) or facing a life or death situation,
(Which never happened until *they*
arrived) she is reading.  I wander what
she’ll do when the world runs out of books. Never mind. Too scary to
imagine.

I made it out of the maze and moved
to sit down in the chair next to her. “Hey.” I said.

She nodded and continued reading,
while simultaneously moving to a chair away from me. She needs her space while
she reads. Otherwise… ouch. I noticed that she was also in the middle of
writing an essay. I didn’t question her. I knew all too well that she could
multi-task as easily as chewing gum and walking at the same time.

“How was book club?” I asked.

She didn’t look up as she replied, “A
complete waste of time.”

“Not surprised. Did you read through
it again?”

“Nope.”  She looked up into the distance again,
squinting.

“What are you-‘’ She cut me off by
putting a hand in my face.

“Could you shut up for a second,
please? Your annoying voice is interfering with my ability to mentally transport
into the fictional realm of this book.”

I rolled my eyes, and shut my trap.
Dell got up and took three large steps across the room, still holding the book
and stopping about two yards away. I noticed that she was wearing her cargo
pants. They were baggy and beige with pockets big enough to hold… you guessed
it. Books. She looked up and frowned.

“This book has faulty information.”
She announced, coming back to sit at the table. “Three large steps taken across
a room by a ten year old is not a yard and a half. Here it says that ‘*Michal took three steps large enough to make*
him split and ended up about a yard and a half away from the group’*. That*
is incorrect.”

“How do you know?” I challenged.

She looked at me like I was a bad
grade on a test sheet. “Because I measured that space earlier, and a yard and a
half only took two steps.”

“But you’re not a ten year old.” I
pointed out.

Her scowl deepened. “I tested my
theory on that kid over there.” She flicked her head toward the opposite side
of the room, where a younger kid was eying her wearily.

“Dell, seriously, you need to stop
using small children as test subjects. It’s creepy.”

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyways.
That book isn’t worth reading if it contains faulty info.” She tossed the book
aside. I unzipped my backpack.

“I’ve already read it anyways.” Dell
continued. I didn’t bother to counter her.

“But you read books about the dead
coming back to life. How is that not faulty info?”

“Because that’s different.”

“Hi, guys.” Said somebody. I looked
to the side and realized that Shawn had arrived. Let me introduce you. When you
first look at Shawn your immediate reaction is: NERD SIGHTED.

I’ve known him since kindergarten,
and even then, he was a geek. The green hair didn’t happen until he was nine,
when he was experimenting with the stuff that makes glow-sticks glow, and some
mercury that he ‘found’ in the lab. Ever since, he’s had this spiky green hair
that by his own definition is ‘*permanent*’
permanent. His eyebrows and even the peach fuzz on his arms is neon green as
well. He’s about six feet tall and painfully skinny, and to further illustrate
my point of his geekiness, he was wearing neon blue glasses.

“Hey Shawn.”  I greeted him. I scooted my seat a little
closer and patted the chair next to me. Shawn sat down, heaving his *Star Wars* backpack over his shoulder and
onto the table. Dell looked up and nodded briefly. Then she went back to
reading.

Shawn had the other side of the *nerd*. Dell had the reads- too- much
side, and Shawn had… well, pretty much everything else. Dell doesn’t like the
‘boring’ books, and Shawn doesn’t know the definition of ‘boring’.  He would love the world war one book. Shawn
doesn’t care much about fiction, and I can’t even compare his reading rate to
Dell’s, but he does read more than me (which is a low bar). Anyway, he liked
science, and he had a lab in his room. Are you surprised? Didn’t think so. That’s
how the hair incident happened.

“How was physics club?”  I asked.

“It was amazing. Not even one
explosion.” I raised my eyebrows. That was a first.

“Shouldn’t you be mad about that?”
Dell snapped. She was writing the essay as well as steadily reading to the
bottom of another page. I didn’t even realize that she had picked up another
book. Dell is like that. You blink and all the sudden she’s siphoned another
book out of nowhere.

Shawn smiled
sarcastically. “Hello, sunshine. How was school?”

Dell ground
her teeth. “I got in trouble for chucking a textbook at Mark Dingle. It was his
fault in the first place for provoking me.
He called me…” she glanced around and then bent in to whisper, “*You know what*.”

“Hey, who
says words can’t be weapons?”  I added. I
didn’t like Mark Dingle. I’m a pretty popular guy, but that doesn’t mean that I
can’t not like bullies. Oh, yeah. ‘You know what’ is the code word for Bell.
You know. The Disney version of beauty in the beast. He started calling Dell that
on her first day, after hey saw her walking and reading at the same time.
(Also, her name is just the slightest bit similar to Bell. Dell.)

Shawn tugged
on his hair, looking exasperated. “Why did you have to *throw* something at the most feared kid in the school? He’s on the
top of the food chain, and he get to *pick*
his prey, so guess who’ll be jammed into their locker tomorrow?”  He signed his name using sign language. (I
can’t even read ASL, I just know because he was mouthing the word as well) “I
DON’T WANT TO BE LOCKER LUNCH!”  He
finished.  Leave it to Shawn to use an
animal kingdom reference and ASL in the same sentence.

Dell reached
over and punched him in the gut. “Shut up, will you? We’re in a library.”  She looked over her shoulder at the lady
behind the front desk, who was eyeing our group savagely.

Shawn took
some breaths to calm down.  “Just don’t
do it again…”  I figured that Shawn had
probably had enough for now. Whenever he gets annoyed, he dares Dell to do something
difficult (stupid) and that never ends well.
Last time he dared her to read *War*
and Peace *in fourth grade. She finished it in a day, but wouldn’t talk to*
us for a month.

My phone
started to ring (nothing fancy, just your average apocalypse invasion sound
track).  “Be back in a seck.”  I informed them.

When I left, dell was
turning another page and Shawn was momentarily chewing on his backpack. He does
that when he gets anxiety (which is a lot). Friendly tip: if you ever have to
pick up Shawn’s backpack, keep your hands well away from the front pocket.

I flipped open the phone and pressed
the receiving button.

“Hey
mom.”  My voice echoed a bit.

“Hi,
sweetie. I just wanted to let you know that I might be a bit late for the
library. I feel bad about letting you walk home, so if I’m not able to make it,
Mr. Hernandez is going to bring you home. You okay with that?”  Her voice transmitted scratchy and disconnected.

“It’s only
two miles, mom.”

She’d
already hung up. I sighed, and shoved he phone in my back pocket.

Okay.
Maybe not EVERYTHING was perfect. My dad worked far from home, and my mom was
really busy. Sometimes I felt like they didn’t have enough time for me.

But back to the story.