Edward's POV

I sighed as we approached the remains of Forks High School. It's been over 2 years since I'd been here. It was one of the best schools I'd ever attended…for obvious reasons.
And now…its rubble.

The alien apocalypse started a year ago, and humans, as well as vampires, have been hanging onto existence by a thread. Most of us are extinct. Most of the humans as well.
But the only human I worry about is the same one I left without a thought, a decision I regret with all my dead, un-beating heart.

Bella.

I had looked for her at first. Searched the globe. But eventually even my family had to assume that she had either been taken over or died. It killed me. It still does. It always will.

Now, with all hope lost, we just wander the earth along with any other of out kind, avoiding the aliens that destroyed this planet.
I remember a time when I still had hope. Hope that we might be able to rise above the aliens. Hope that this planet will still be saved. Hope that my Bella is still out there somewhere…

I shook my head. These were the hopes I gave up on a long time ago. Hope leads to disappointment. And any more of that just might kill me.

"Edward?" I heard Alice call from behind me. I turned around. "Let's go," she said. "We need to find a place to stay for a while."

I nodded. I turned back to the ruins of what was the best school I'd ever attended and sighed. It will be a miracle if our old house was still standing. After a while everything just collapses. Everything gives in at some point.
I mean sure, they put up a fight for a while, but hope doesn't last very long anymore.
And that goes for everyone. Even us. Vampires were supposed to be the last hope for humans. After the Volturi believed that exposing what we are to humans was the last hope, humans believed that we were the ones that could bring earth back from the grave.
And we tried. We really did. But they were too strong. For us, for the army, for nuclear bombs…everything we tried failed. Giving up was the only option. At least it seemed that way.

They call themselves the Yulubra, the aliens, and they live off other species. That's how they defeated us. By taking over our bodies. First the humans, then they adapted to Vampires. The werewolves were the only race that they couldn't take over, strangely enough. But nobody knows what happened to them.
We all speculated. Some of them are a part of the Ulbra's guard. The Ulbra's the head of the aliens. The one in charge. The werewolves almost acted as guard dogs, the ones who gave in.

The others? Who knows? We speculate and make assumptions. Maybe they ran off to a part of the world nobody knows about? Maybe they were seen as a weakness and killed off using other methods? Maybe they all scattered, and died off unable to feed or breed?
Those were some of the more common assumptions.
But as I say, we can only assume.

"Edward!" Alice yelled.

I nodded and started walking back to where they were all standing waiting for me. Carlisle was the first to pick up the sadness in my eyes and it didn't take long for him to figure out where it came from.

"I wish she were here too, son," he said placing his hand on my shoulder.

I didn't respond. All I did was start running towards our old house and I heard the quick footsteps of my family not far behind me.

Bella's POV

"Did we have to come back to this broken down place?" I asked looking out at the empty street in Forks. Filled with empty houses. Empty, empty, empty.

That was how life is now.
Since the invasion, life just seems empty. The few of us left don't know how to spend it, besides planning a counter attack on the aliens.
But we haven't given up hope…Well, most of us anyway.

Hope that someday, somehow, we'll get this planet back. Hope that the few of us remaining might be strong enough…
Hope that he is still out there somewhere. Safe…

I sighed, thinking back to the times we spent together. Me and Edward. It seems like a lifetime ago, even though it's just been a couple of years. But what's happened in the past two years I wouldn't have expected in a lifetime.

It doesn't hurt to think of it anymore. I've been through and seen far too much to let that bother me. And after Charlie got taken over I had to tough up.
I sighed.
My father was a sensitive subject. I didn't even like to think about it…

"Everywhere you go is broken down these days," Angie said, jumping onto a nearby rock to examine the area.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my favorite gun. This was the only way to kill them. A bullet to the head. "Look alive people," I said. "You never know if there might be any Yuck's around."

I looked around at my team. My family.

Angie, who just turned sixteen, jumped down from the rock and reached into her back-pack for a pistol. Chris and Andrew, both about seventeen, shifted apart, giving room for space. Emma and Emily, twins and the youngest at fourteen, each pulled out a pocketknife and stood closer together. Kyle, almost twenty years old, moved closer to me.
I was now nineteen and sort of a leader to our little army. Sure, Kyle's older, but he's a little childish…in a cute way, yeah, but not when it comes to missions.
Like checking out an old town for Yuck's.

Yuck's is the name we came up with for the Yulubra. The aliens. Mainly because they're not very pleasant to look at. At all.

Not that we've seen much of them. They take over human forms. The only way to recognize them was the bright green rings inside they're eyes.

We walked slowly through the town until Angie stopped. Of all of us, she seemed to be the least reluctant to speak her mind. That could be your mightiest strength…or your greatest weakness.

"Okay," she groaned, placing her gun in her pocket. "This place is abandoned. Good a place as any to set up camp."

Everyone seemed to thaw out at that moment, as if that was the final judgment. Then they caught one look at my face and straightened up again, remembering who was in charge.
I took a deep breath and put my gun into my combat boot.

"No," I said, turning to face them. "No, I know this place not far from here," I started looking at each of them, remembering the glorious house the Cullens used to stay in. "It's secluded. Safe. Out of the town. We should stay there while we're here. It's located through the woods."

"Okay," Emma said, stepping forward.

"Wait," I snapped, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her back. "Not now. The sun is about to set and I don't think it would be the best idea for us to be strolling through the forest at night. For obvious reasons."

She nodded along with the rest of them and stepped back into the crowd. I took a tired breath.

"Let's stay out in the open for tonight. No setting up tents. That way if there's an emergency we can pack up and leave quickly, without any hassle." I looked around at them and waited for one of them to argue my logic. No-one did.

I nodded and dropped my sachel. I sighed and watched the others make plans.

"Isabel," Emma said, walking up to me. That's what I told them to call me. I had to mature, and so did my name. "We're running low on food sources. We have enough for tonight, but tomorrow we'll have to go hunting and scavenging for more."

I nodded and sat down a nearby rock. "Get a fire going," I said. "Time to rest and regain some strength. God knows we'll need it for when we take down the Yulubra."

She nodded and ran away. I shook my head, watching my team get on with business. We'd all been through too much. Emma and Emily especially. It hurt me to know that they were so young. The things they have seen…things we'd all seen…I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I thought about the twins. They were only twelve when the invasion started. They grew up in an orphanage. They had to watch all their friends get taken over while they hid in as closet. That's where Angie found them a day later while she was looking for food.

Angie was fourteen and had to watch her two siblings get infected. She watched her mother shoot her brother in the head, before her sister bit her. It's like a disease. Once bitten by one of them, you become infected. Like a zombie. Your body becomes an empty vessel until another one of them comes around to take over what's left of you.

There are some who are out there that have been infected but not yet taken over. They move in packs, feeding off the souls of others, spreading the disease. But eventually even they get taken over. It's a sad never-ending cycle. They wont stop until everyone is taken over.
Legend has it that there is a cure. A way to reverse what has happened. To remove the aliens from humans and other creatures and bring them back to life.
That's what my team is for. We're one of the few teams out there who want to help the earth. The fight to freedom.

I looked at Chris and Andrew. They were best friends and neighbors. When war broke out they ran away together. Hid away until they were found by Kyle.

Kyle, who, as a teenager, ran away from home. I feel bad for him. He never even got a chance to see his parents one last time. He doesn't even know where they are now.

With me it's a different story. At least I know my parents are dead. Emma and Emily never knew theirs. Angie shot her mother in the head, therefore she knows she's dead.
We all have closure.

But Kyle? He has nothing. Just hope.

I mean, that's what we all have left. The only thing we have left. Hope. Hope for the future. We wouldn't be doing all this if we didn't have hope.

I sighed and watched as the sun sunk into the horizon. A few years ago, sunset would bring sadness. The end of another day, one less day of life. With each day you grow older, closer to death. Closer to the end.
But we're already at the end.
Now sunset means joy. It brings hope. Hope for a new day, a brighter one tomorrow. Hope for the future. It also brings satisfaction. Relief. We'd lived through another day. With any luck, we'll live to see the next one.
All we can do is sit back and hope for the best.

There I go again with this hope. What is hope? You can't see it, touch it, hear it, smell it, or even taste it. There is no certain way to know whether it even exists. For all we know, it could be something people made up to give them reason to be. A reason to live.
What if it doesn't exist? What if all we're doing is a lost cause? What if we're wasting our time?

After all, all my life I'd hoped for good things…hoped for the best.
All that got me were divorced parents, falling in love with a vampire then having him leave you, an alien apocalypse…
It got me nowhere and all it brought was sadness.

I looked at my team, who were getting comfortable on the ground around a campfire.
They had hope. That meant that they are probably going to be disappointed, somehow, someway.

I shook my head. That was hope was, wasn't it?
Putting your heart and mind into an expectation that might never be. You have to be prepared for disappointment. Many people aren't.
I shook my head.
Hope leads to disappointment.
Hope is like an expectation where you aren't prepared for the worst.

I never expect anything. Because disappointment from expectations is worse than hope. Or so you would think.
Expectations are straight-forward. There is no confusion. Anyone who expects something that doesn't happen is prepared for the disappointment.
Hope is worse. Much worse. It builds you up and gives you the impression that things will be alright. It builds you up just to break you down. That's the sad part.

I sighed and jumped off the rock, walking towards the fire to warm up with my family. I looked at each of their faces. They were joking around and smiling.
I didn't mind them having a laugh once in a while. There was hardly any cause to be happy nowadays, so whenever the chance arose I reveled in the sensation of smiling.
You had to laugh about these things.
The only other option was to cry about it. And I don't think any of us were prepared to face reality yet.

Denial was what saved many of us. Deny, deny, deny. As long as you keep denying everything, life seems okay. Because once you accept the truth, there's no going back.

I watched as they laughed. I loved our little campfire moment. It's as if for those few moments, there is nothing to worry about. Not a care in the world. It was like an escape.

What are trying to escape from though?
Life?
The truth?
Reality?

No, those are the things you run from. Running and escaping are two entirely different concepts.
You could run from these things all your life.
But you can never escape them.
When you run, they follow you.
But each time you try to escape, it really hits you harder when you give in.

And, believe me, you always give in.
Always. There's no negotiation.
The only debatable concept is how long you wait before you do.

Like us. Our hope won't last forever. It can't.
But we haven't given up yet. And we don't plan to any time soon.

I scanned around the small circle I had now joined. They all seemed so happy. It was nice. This was nice. We had to live every moment as it comes. It's the only way to really live.
It's one thing to be alive but another to live.
I mean, yeah, we had to plan ahead and strategize. We won't get anywhere fast if we don't.

But this campfire, this is what life's about.

Getting through the bad moment whenever they might come.
And enjoying the good moments for as long as they are here.

And to have hope that there will be more good than bad.

Yes, hope may not last forever. But it's gotten us this far.

We have to live in the present.

And what tomorrow will bring…only time will tell.