There once stood an orphanage; its exterior built in Gothic-style so that it resembled the castles where kings and queens presided over their entire domain. The orphanage, aside from its antique look, wasn’t particularly special; it housed orphans, the caretakers, and the headmaster as many orphanages do. It forever would have remained unremarkable had pure death not fallen from the heavens.
The gray snow that fell from the even grayer clouds was what made the orphanage such a special and unique place, at least to people residing in it, because, for them, it was the last civilized place on the planet, and they were the last humans to civilize it.
The snow turned everything to death and stole life from all that it touched. It did not kill its victims but robbed them of any sense of life they may have had, turning them into monsters, mutating their physiques and dashing any concept of mercy known to them.
The first generation the snow hit had it the worst, as is often the case in epidemics, almost everyone died in the first month; not of the snow, but of the things of the snow, the diseased, the retched, the cursed, the scared, all these names reflected one essence, the heartless. The infected would turn on their closest friends and family, killing them in every manner possible, and then they would simply move on, killing all life that their paths happened to cross.
Victor Mossil, a young man of twenty-seven, he was a survivor of the first Waste Fall, a member of Generation One, and one of the only people on earth who knew how to survive in the landscapes that have been named The Wastes. His hair was long and started to prematurely gray due to the stress of his life, his clothing was ragged and torn. His face bore a worn look about it, and his eyes were a tired green. He was tall, perhaps abnormally so, and he walked with a slouch. When he arrived at the orphanage, thinking it was abandoned, in search of food, he found the children and raised them; teaching them how to live with the Waste rather than against it.
As the years past and Victor Aged his mind began to suffer from the harsh realities of this new world. He suffered from mood swings, multiple personalities, fits of rage and depression and one day he vanished from the Orphanage, leaving the children behind.
“The way to keep alive out there,” he one day had said to the children, “Is to know the cycles of the death. It falls in intervals, you see, and never for longer than three hours. Then there is a dry period. That is when you travel, but you must do so carefully, for it is in the dry periods that the abandoned come out to hunt.”
The abandoned were a group of the infected that consisted of the animals that had been turned, and of the former humans that had lost their sanity and now hunted with the animals.
“You must be ready to take shelter at all times, and always keep an eye on the sky: as soon as you see the first flake fall you must find cover, else you are turned into one of them. If you do these simple things you can survive for a while at least. However…” he paused here to look at the children, trying to make eye-contact with each one; they would always turn away, his eyes were as cold as the snow he had emerged from, “Should you be fleeing from one of the infected, by they Hunters or Abandoned, and the snow falls, there is little chance you’ll live.”
He returned several years later, his physical appearance still unaffected by the evil snow that still fell periodically from the skies, but the look in his eyes told that on the inside he was just as tormented as one of the Rejected; members of the third, and final, known party of infected. The rejected were in between the Hunters and the Abandoned; not quite sane, while still retaining some of their mind.
When he arrived he said nothing to any of the children, whose ages now ranged from six to fourteen, and when they attempted to follow him Victor simply glared at them, but they all saw the same thing: a wriggling mass carried in the crook of his arm. Victor had brought something out of the waste. He disappeared into the basement for the first of what would soon be many times.
Things were never totally normal in the Orphanage after that day. The head master rarely spoke to any of the children and disappeared often into the basement; which none of the children were aloud to venture into.
Years later a girl orphan named Molly Moresque turned eighteen. Headmaster Mossil emerged from the basement and sought her out.
“You, there, girl!” he called to her.
“Uhm, yes Headmaster Mossil?” she replied
“I need you to come with me,” he began walking off, turned his head, saw that she was not following, “To the basement! Hurry now!”
Molly sat there stunned for a moment; she hadn’t even talked with the Headmaster in years. Finally she found her voice, “Yes, Headmaster.”
They both disappeared behind the door and Molly was never seen again in her place a child of what appeared to be four appeared the next morning in the male dormitory. When all the boys awoke the next morning and found him laying upon the couch the bombarded him with questions,
“You’re new, right?”
“How did you get here?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Why are you here?”
None of which he could answer aside from one.
“My name is Stephon Hingsly.”
The disappearance of eighteen year olds soon became routine, one night someone would celebrate his or her eighteenth birthday and the next morning would gone, in there place a new resident of generally opposite genders.
One morning the children were amazed to see the Headmaster walking down central corridor followed closely by two very strange looking individuals. They were bald, and wore glasses that revealed no traces of eyes. They wore strange where banana-like hats, with beads connected to ear-muffs and around their necks. Their bodies covered by flowing white robes. The children knew not whether to address them has as males or females, so they gave them the name Hib and Tiq, which they took to almost immediately. The Headmaster said nothing to the children; he simply led the duo into the main chamber and departed back down below the orphanage into the solemn prison he made for himself that should have been nothing more than a basement.
Years would pass and all of the original children would disappear, but the population count of the orphanage would never dwindle, not even by one count. It became normal that a child would ‘go away’ when he or she would turn eighteen. To the new children the concept of living to be as old as The Headmaster was beyond them.
The first new child, Stephon, who, by the younger children, was given the nickname of Sty, was essentially, bellow Hib and Tiq, the leader of the orphanage. Though, he was not the strongest by any means, that role belonged to Sty’s close friend Gerard Schovok. Gerard was three years younger than Sty but had never once lost of fight, and he had gotten into plenty.
Sty ascertained dominance over the Orphanage by his brilliance. Whenever anyone ever needed to locate him they would first check the library, where he would always have his nose buried into a book, learning all he could with the time he’d been given.
The exact opposite could be said for a young boy named Victor Ogle, whom everyone, or at least everyone who knew he existed, called Vicks.
Vicks was the type of kid whom everyone pushed around; scrawny, raggedy, and not extremely bright. Vicks was, however, the quickest, smallest, and ghostlike child anyone had ever seen. He knew every hiding place in the orphanage, and, due to his dirty appearance and odd posture, some even rumored that he had even found a way into the Waste.
One night, while moving drowsily up the staircase to the boy’s dormitory to get some sleep, Sty witnessed the death of one of the caretakers: Hib. Hib was just leaving one of the rooms that the males slept in when his foot caught on the rug and he fell down the stairs opposite of Sty. Sty could tell by the odd and unnatural angle in which Hib’s neck was currently positioned that he was dead, and this filled Sty with a unknown emotion. No one had died in the Orphanage since the Headmaster arrived according to the Orphanage records which stopped being kept up with years ago. Seeing the almost forgotten horror of death Sty ran into the female dormitory, eliciting several curses and shouts from startled and embarrassed girls, where Tiq was reading the Girl’s their night prayers.
“Hingsly?! What is the meaning of your intrusion?!” inquired a very confused and flustered Tiq.
Sty looked at the faces of Tiq and the females, and pointed outside.
Once out of the room Tiq got his answer.
“Go to bed,” Demanded Tiq. When Sty showed no intention of moving Tiq added a very stern, “Now.”

The next morning a sleepless Sty mechanically moved down into the Meal Hall where breakfast was being served. Sty sat down at a table and laid his head down. No one seemed to have noticed Hib’s absence.  He soon discovered why. The breakfast that morning was the same as always: something-that-looks-like-burnt-chocolate-and-tastes-like-dirt. It was being served by no other then Hib.
The next few days Sty occupied himself, not in the library, but at any nearby window; Staring into the Waste. One day Gerard walked by, “What are you doing, Sty?”
“Gerard, I am looking at freedom.”
“You’re looking at death if it’s anything.”
Sty looked his friend firmly in the eyes, “It’s death to be here! Take a deep breathe, it’s almost impossible! Try to find somewhere to be alone! It can’t be done!”
“Well, that’s the way it’s always been here.”
“But not out there. Out there it’s open. Out there adventure exists.”
“You really believe that. Don’t you?” inquired Gerard in an awed tone.
“You don’t?” responded Sty, his attention drawn once more to the window.
“So what are we going to do about it?”
Sty looked at Gerard and smiled, “We’re going to escape.”
“How? The windows are all barred, the door’s guarded by either Hib or Tiq at all times, there’s no way out.
“I know a way,” a voice from behind a curtain said.
“What the!” exclaimed a very surprised Gerard.
“Relax, it’s only Vicks,” Reassured Sty.
“Who?”
Vicks stepped out from behind the curtain, “There’s a vent, behind the far east corridor door, near the music hall, the one that’s always locked. I can pick it. And the vent leads out there. But you have to take me with you.”