Endurance Read Online Free

stopped and
the silence returned.
     
    What could
have done this?
     
    Tom limped
through the streets of London. Alone.
     
    Why has this
happened? What is it, a world war? An alien invasion?
     
    Tom’s
thoughts were interrupted by screams. Standing still, he tried to
identify from which direction the screams were coming. The screams
sounded as if they were to his left, just around what used to be a
corner, where a partially constructed building was. Tom began to
jog, but slowed due to the pain in his leg.
     
    I’ve got to
ignore this pain; I’ll find somewhere to hide out to treat
it.
     
    Continuing to
jog, with a slight limp, he got closer and closer to the screams.
The screams turned from an echo to a solid sound. Soon, Tom saw the
screaming woman. She was crawling with one arm and no legs; her
face was covered in blood and looked as if it’d been scraped along
the concrete-strewn ground. Her screams rang through Tom’s ears.
The sight made him queasy. He ran toward her.
    ‘ Shit. What
happened here? Do you know anything? Did you see anything?’ Tom
sounded desperate.
    ‘ I saw
everything, please can you just…’ Her weak voice was overpowered by
Tom’s shouts.
    ‘ Tell me what
you saw.’ Tom said fearfully.
    ‘ I saw lights
in the sky…’ the woman’s voice petered in and out as she struggled
to speak, losing her breath. ‘…then something came from out of the
sky and started shooting everything and everyone… put me out of
this pain, please?’
    Tom stood and
looked down at the woman.
    ‘ What do you
mean?’
    ‘ Kill me.’
She whispered.

    She has no
chance of surviving. I don’t feel capable of killing this innocent
woman. She is in pain but how do I do it? Only thing I’ve ever
killed is an irritating fly entering my house.
     
    Tom
aggressively pulled the metal rod out his of leg, his skin and
pieces of flesh stuck to it. He held the rod above the woman’s
head. As he aimed it into the centre of her forehead, he threw it
aside forcefully.
    ‘I can’t do
it.’ Tom sobbed, ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘ No, please.
Please I’m begging you.’
    Tom stared at
her torso, arm and then her face.
     
    I feel worse
letting her suffer like this.
     
    Tom found the
rod, knelt beside her head and he stabbed her in the throat. Blood
spurted onto Tom’s face; he ignored it and continued to violently
stab the woman until there was no movement. He stared at her body
and felt ashamed to have killed this innocent person. He stood over
her, staring down at the ground around her, not daring to look into
her eyes. They were still open. He looked toward the empty skies in
disbelief.

    I’m now a
killer; I’ve probably killed a mother, a daughter and a
wife.
     
    He tried to
erase this act of senseless violence from his memory but could not.
This wasn’t the time or the situation to have good
morals.
     
    This is about
life and death now .

    This all
seems so unreal. It’s like a nightmare that you just can’t awaken
from. The way the woman was describing it made it sound like an
alien attack. It could be possible; no one has ever said aliens
don’t exist and there have been some sightings of such
things.

    Ken Williams,
Tom’s dad, never believed in aliens but he never completely
disbelieved either. ‘You can’t ever be sure of something that you
can’t prove to be unreal,’ he used to tell Tom. ‘Approach life with
an open mind,’ he also said. Today, Tom was approaching life with
an open mind; he had killed a woman, held two dead bodies, and was
considering this to be an alien attack.
     
    Tom sat down
behind a car. He took off his tie and tied it around his leg over
the wound; he pulled it tightly to stop the bleeding.
    Tom moved
away from the car to turn around and pull himself up using the side
mirror. As he stood looking over the roof of the car, a light
shined on him, immediately followed by shots that hit the car and
the tarmac behind him. Flinching away from the shots, there was an
explosion