A/N - Yeah... It's categorized as Doctor Who, but doesn't actually have Doctor Who stuff in it. Not just yet. This is based off of a really freaky dream I had once, and it seemed like a kinda good idea to write it all out at the time. There are mentions of Doctor Who monsters at the moment, but more Who stuff will find its way into the story later on. n.n And it's gonna be kinda groovy when it does.

Reality Shift
Chapter 1

It was a Thursday when it happened.

Then again, Earth had a thing about it being the end of the world on Thursdays. There was a Saturday here or there, but generally, Thursday was always the day.

Unfortunately for planet Earth, this particular Thursday was no false alarm. It was not a near miss. It was, in all truth, the full scale event.

No one knew why it had happened. Actually, they had. But they could not decide who had done it. It was fairly certain that no human had done it, rather, no Earthling, had bombed the world of ape descended bipedal creatures. Oh no. The ones who had devastated the planet Earth were from the skies above, or the skies to the left and right and every possible angle that is both conceivable and non-conceivable in the universe. That is, if one were to get technical about it.

But that Thursday morning, humanity was not concerned with the how or the why or the who of it all. Oh no. They were far more concerned with simply surviving it.

There were, of course, pockets of survivors. But for every one, there were dozens more invaders of many different origins. Metal men marched the land, while extraterrestrial pepper pots soared through the skies shooting their beams of bloodless death and utter extermination.

And soldiers, short, baked potato-like killed everything in their path as they stormed the cities. Those too large and too slow to run away fell, only to rise again as a costume skin which opened with a zipper at the forehead, just barely in the hairline.

One pocket of survivors were a group of five siblings. Two brothers, and three sisters. Somehow, they had survived in a small, shabbily built room in a basement of a house that was built into the side of a hill. The first among them was the younger brother, the fourth sibling of the five.

He had run far and fast, a mesh book-bag strapped to his back which he had held onto for dear life. Notebooks and papers now rendered useless. And among them, what few treasures he possessed that he had returned to his home to reclaim in the last fleeting moments of obscurity he had managed to create.

He was the first to find the basement, and he barricaded himself inside, keeping silent. Keeping still. Hiding in the darkness in hopes that he may never be found by the horrors of what existed outside.

Then, he heard a scraping of something on the cold cement floor. He held his breath, and in the dim light that crept into the shabby room, there were two figures. A tall, lanky figure, with another shorter, equally thin form.

"Shut the door, quickly," the taller one hissed, and the one in hiding slowly let out his breath as the door was shut. His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, and he was following the vague shapes of the figures through the room.

"Where's the torch?" the taller one's companion hissed before a beam of light broke the darkness, briefly flickering before becoming a steady stream of hope.

"Shine it here."

There was a rustling, and he watched as the light was cast on the taller one's face. The younger sprang out of his hiding place, clinging to the taller man. "Jay!" he exclaimed, then clamped a hand over his mouth, looking around. He was 15, but he felt like he was a child, frightened and alone in this horrible, terrible place.

"Not so loud," hissed Jay, the taller. "How did you get here?"

"I ran."

"The whole way?"

He nodded. "The whole way. After I went back for my books."

"That was stupid. You should have come straight away. No stopping."

"Shh..." the third whispered, dousing the light and creeping towards the door. They heard muffled crying on the other side of the door. The handle jiggled, but the door didn't open.

"Please," someone on the other side. "Let us in. We know you're there."

"It's Doria," the youngest of the three snapped, feeling his way around in the dark to find the door. He pushed the other out of the way and fumbled with the lock.

The door swung open and a pair fled into the darkness quickly. The door was shut and locked back, and the beam of light was brought back up.

The smallest of the two new arrivals clung to the teenager's side, sobbing into his shirt. He wrapped an arm around her, trying to console her as he led her carefully through the now dimly lit dark to where he had hidden himself before.

The other three crowded together across the room, the tallest with his back against the cinder block wall and facing the door, keeping his big blue eyes peeled for any sign of danger.

"We thought you were dead," the oldest, Jay said.

Doria, a ginger, shook her head. "No. She got sick at school, so I went to pick her up early. We were clear across town when it happened. What about you two? Anyone else?"

The third, the blonde, shook her head. "Just us, and Kal. We were in Wal-Mart, and managed to hide out in a bathroom before making a break for it."

"If Lee hadn't managed to hot wire that BMW we never would have made it."

Doria nodded towards the chair in the corner where the younger two were cuddled up, and the little girl's sobs had stopped for the moment.

"Says he ran the whole way."

Doria's eyes widened, not that the other two could see in such feeble light anyway. "He ran? From Adairsville?"

"Didn't say from where. Just he ran," Jay said quietly.

"He's got Japanese first period. There's no way he could have made it here from there on foot. Not this fast."

They shrugged. Jay handed Lee the flashlight and went to his younger brother and youngest sister.

The five of them, a pocket, a literal handful, rode out the end of the world in the basement of their childhood home. None of them dared to think about what had happened to the house's new occupants before they had come running to the safest place they could ever remember.