Chapter 1

A mild tremor woke Bella from her nap. She struggled to open her eyelids and wipe away the sleep stuck to her eyelashes to look around her room to find the source. She mumbled incoherently and made to fall back asleep when a few minutes later, the phone downstairs began to ring shrilly.

She smacked her dry lips and grumbled unhappily. An earthquake? After the bizarre day she had, it would be the least surprising thing to happen. Not only did she have two bloodthirsty vampires out to kill her, the earth wanted to swallow her up whole too.

The phone stopped ringing by the time she reached downstairs but without hesitation began to ring again.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she groaned to no one. Picking up the phone with one hand, she leaned against the kitchen wall and kept her eyes closed. She couldn't remember when she had been this exhausted.

"I need you to pack your things, grab as many cans from the basement as you can, and head to La Push." Charlie's voice faded in and out, statics flickering between every other word. "Bella, can you hear me? I'll be home in an hour; I can pick up whatever is left.

Bella yawned loudly into the phone before answering, "What? Why?" She stretched to the tips of her toes. The joints in her ankles clicked in response.

"They just detonated a bomb in Seattle."

She stood there silently for a minute in confusion. The words just did not settle into her mind. But she was very awake now. "What?" she repeated.

"Bella, there isn't time, please, get your things together, grab some canned food from the basement and head to La Push. I'll call Harry and let him know you're on the way."

"Dad, what are you talking about?" she breathed into the phone. Bomb? "Who detonated a bomb? What is going on?" She gripped the phone painfully tight in fear that it would slip out of her hands along with her balance.

"There isn't time for questions right now, Isabella! Get ready now!"

Her knees shook at her father's booming voice and she stood with tight lips until she realized he was waiting for a response from her. "Okay," she squeaked. "I'll see you at Billy's."

Click.

Bella hurried to the living room, tripping over the change in flooring from wood to carpet and clicked on Charlie's pride-and-joy flat screen to the local news channel.

Static.

She flipped through the channels until she reached one of a national news organization and saw a frantic blonde zipping through rehearsed lines with bold white banners underneath her image. NUCLEAR ATTACK ON SEATTLE – HAVE THE TERRORISTS RETURNED?

Her knees gave out and she sunk into the earthy green couch. The network kept showing shaky footage of red mushroom cloud with cloudy rings around the neck and screams of people trying to run the opposite direction.

"The closest footage we have been able to get is from about hundred and twenty miles out from people who say they are already suffering from second degree burns. Roads to Seattle are currently –"

Bella shuddered in horror and she quickly went into action trying to follow Charlie's orders. She grabbed the suitcase she came to Forks with from underneath her bed and began to fill it with as much underwear, bras, and socks she could find in her closet. She tried using the rest of the space for jeans, sweaters, and her large winter coat. In her school backpack, she stuffed in toiletries and more underwear.

The basement was cold and unwelcoming when she stepped down the creaking stairs. The last time she had been down here was almost ten summers ago when she insisted looking through all of Charlie's childhood things and discovered a dusty guitar with a single out-of-tune string. The basement had been just as stark as it was now, but there had been sunshine in that memory. Now, it was darkness and emptiness.

Bella shook off the uneasy feeling and used the large white laundry basket and began to sweep the shelves of canned food into the basket. She couldn't imagine how long Charlie had stored them down here and she figured Charlie never even imagined having to use these at all. She thought wryly about how frantic Renee had been five years ago about Y2K and spent a month researching bunkers and even set aside money to build one in Grandma Marie's backyard until Bella's grandmother had to talk her daughter out of the ridiculous investment.

There were still two more shelves to clear out but the basket was already too heavy for her to carry. She dragged it up one step at a time, stopping in the middle to catch her breath before the anxiety coiled in her chest and she struggled to drag it the rest of the way up.

When she loaded the basket and her suitcase into the bed of the truck, she saw Mrs. Liddey with her salt-and-pepper streaked hair two houses down, standing outside wringing her hands together. The older woman turned her head to look at Bella and they locked eyes in mutual fear before Bella slammed the bed close and ran back into the house to grab more cans.

After the second load of cans, she stopped to glance at the television again as a group of men talked over one another loudly about where the bomb came from and what it meant. Their voices were mindless chatter in her ears -it didn't make sense to her.

"You can say 'it's the terrorists' all you want but I have definitive proof that the U.S. government is behind this! I have a source in the US Air Force that claim that they have planning this for over a month!" The man's hair was disheveled and his face redder than a tomato. It was clear that the anchors were dismissing what he said.

She felt selfish for thinking it as she reversed out of her driveway. How could this day have gone so horribly wrong? Her rendezvous to the meadow had ended in a disaster with meeting Laurent and running from a pack of enormous wolves and now Seattle had been wiped off the United States map, possibly by her own government. The Cullens were the least of her worries.

It should have been the last thing on her mind, but her thoughts immediately went to her fight with Jacob before this all happened. After all, the shock hadn't settled just yet. It didn't seem real.

And vampires were oh so normal, weren't they? Bella thought, wryly.

Did he know she was coming? Did he know what was going on? Considering everything going on, the fight, the Uley gang, whatever was happening between them should be swept underneath a heavy rug. But it bothered her deeply that Charlie had told her to go to Harry's house instead of Billy. An overwhelming sense of guilt filled her chest. She was the reason two lifelong friends were at odds with one another.

The road was eerily empty as she passed the large tan sign that read "The Quileute Tribe Welcomes You to La Push." Bella gulped loudly. This is normal. It wasn't like La Push was a heavily trafficked region. And when she did visit Jacob regularly, it was like the encountered many vehicles on the road with her. But knowing what she knew, the emptiness scared her. She pressed down on the accelerator a little harder, hoping the ancient vehicle would get her to the Clearwater house a little faster.