At first, I didn't even realize that he was a human being.
He sat motionless on a streetside bench. The tint of his skin and the dirtiness of his clothes nearly perfectly matched the weathered oak slats beneath and behind him. If anything, traces of white in his hair might have given him away sooner had I been more observant.
After some time spent walking down the quiet suburban street under the feeble warmth of the clouded afternoon sun, a slight fluttering of clothed edges in the wind made him suddenly appear in my vision - and I froze.
I'd investigated the most obvious questions, of course, and found nothing. The Internet had held no traces of what had happened. At the same time, any newspapers I came across were at least a few weeks old, and none mentioned anything related to the world's vast emptiness. Other people were the only source I had left for the truth… and, as much as I felt vaguely pursued by some lurking threat, I hadn't seen another living soul since the power plant.
I darted back around a corner to avoid being seen, and then stared past the edge while I studied him. This man was one of the very few people remaining, and he was alone.
I needed a plan. I had a suspicion, from what the power plant manager had said, that nobody was going to talk to me directly about what had happened. They'd seemed disturbed that I'd asked… and some had even seemed afraid.
Don't ask stupid questions… but why were the questions taboo?
I needed a plan… alright, what did I have? I looked around.
Low on fuel, I'd left my car a few blocks away and proceeded on foot to find a gas station. GPS still worked, and the maps on my phone still helped, but I'd had to be certain before I chose a station to drive toward with my last remaining fuel. No more gas… no more car. I knew I could resort to stealing gas from the cars littered all over the suburbs, but I wasn't exactly sure how to do that, and I didn't want to go through all that trouble if I could avoid it.
Was there a guide for stealing gas somewhere online? I resolved to look it up later. I was more than thankful for those inexplicable men and women keeping the infrastructure running. How inept would I be without the Internet?
A chill sogginess hung over the road. Several shops and fast food places formed low canyon walls on either side of an empty concrete river. A few sidestreets jutted off in either direction. What could I use here?
My eyes fell on a gas station I'd already checked. The pumps hadn't been working, but the station itself had been stocked. I darted down the sidewalk.
One of the glass doors sat unlocked, and I swung it open with mild surprise. I'd generally found very few locked doors. If everyone had disappeared, had it happened suddenly? None of the details were adding up.
An odd smell permeated the interior, like something small and edible molding over in a corner, but the place remained that odd mix of organized and cluttered that could only be found in a convenience store. The shelves hadn't been looted, as far as I could tell… and the refrigerators were still on.
I left the price of my items in cash on the counter.
A few minutes later, I returned to where I'd seen the lone man, this time with beers - five in my backpack, and one in my hand.
He still sat motionless on that brown streetside bench, and I approached him with a tale in mind. As I got closer, I noticed that his extremely dirt-splattered clothes had once been a uniform of sorts. I also noticed that he wasn't moving at all.
Was this the first dead body I'd come across? Eyes wide, I reached over into unkempt grass and picked up a small stick.
He jumped at the prodding, and I leapt back.
Coughing lightly, he blinked wearily and looked around in a wide circle before setting his sights on me. "Oh." He sat up a little straighter. "I was just taking a nap."
I sheepishly put down the stick, carefully holding my beer bottle up to keep from spilling any.
"Got an extra one of those?" he asked, his weathered eyes lighting up with restrained eagerness. "The wife never let me drink…"
"Yeah, sure," I told him, sliding my backpack down to the sidewalk and pulling out another beer. "Blue Moon alright?"
He laughed briefly, took the offered drink, and spun the top off. "Got any oranges in there?"
"No, sorry…"
"Oh well." He smiled. "I'm Roger." He lifted the bottle high and took three large gulps.
I watched quietly until he lowered it. After waiting for his long and satisfied sigh to end, I asked, "Well, Roger, how are things around here?"
"Not from Columbus?" he asked.
"Pittsburgh," I told him, carefully emulating subtle signs of exhaustion. "Walked west, looking for work."
He groaned sympathetically. "I used to be a lawyer." Turning his head, he threw a nod toward a massive white truck parked just around a distant corner. Slashes of rust were visible on various edges, and splatters of dirt were prominent along the bottom. "Now I'm a garbage man. How 'bout that luck?"
A garbage man… which meant that more than just electricity and the Internet were being maintained… and this man had to know where more people lived. "Yeah, things didn't go too well for me, either."
A single laugh followed that. "Hey, at least we're better off than the Hunted."
I tried not to stare at the capital H in the word he had used. What did that mean? Was it a clue? Had someone been hunted, or were they still being hunted now? I shivered at the thought of the ineffable presence that seemed to have trailed me from the Appalachian Mountains. Or… no… it hadn't been in the mountains. Not at all. I'd been free, clear, and alone up until the moment I'd reached my car. What had I felt then? A return to machinery, and human intellect? A return to civilization?
A spark began building in my thoughts - something vital, energetic, important - a connection - but to put it into words, to make it solid, I -
He took another swig, then narrowed his eyes. "I didn't think there was anybody left in Pittsburgh. How long you been in Columbus? I feel like you should have run into somebody by now."
"Um, just got in." Thrust back into the conversation, I gave a sheepish smile. "Tried to hack it back home, but it was too lonely."
"That's what, a four hour drive through mostly empty country?" he asked, brow furrowed. "Long walk without food and shelter."
I nodded. "Grabbed what I could - food, beer, and such - and headed on out. Who's in charge here?" I asked, trying to change the topic away from logistics. "Who do I talk to about a job?"
"Well," he began, thinking. "If you ride my route with me, I could take you later, and -" His words slowed to a stop after another sip of his beer. He looked down at the bottle, then up at me.
I realized the error at the same time that he did. I'd bungled my claimed timeline with the simplest detail… I couldn't possibly have just arrived here. The beer was cold. I'd taken it out of the refrigerators purely by habit - instead of using one of the warm cases stacked near the shelves.
After his realization, I expected suspicion… I expected narrowed eyes, and a subtle game of questions…
Instead, he widened his eyes, full of alarm, and then began fumbling with something in his pocket.
I picked up my backpack and began running the moment I saw it. He obviously wasn't very good with it, or I might not have gotten away, but I did look back once to see him trying to aim the gun at me with shaking hands. He shouted something terrified and angry as I made it around the corner.
Heart pounding, I took only a few seconds to breathe, and then I kept moving. I couldn't take the chance that he might get his garbage truck and chase after me.
As I ran, I tried to understand. What had I done that'd been worth pulling a gun? Jesus Christ… I'd guessed that nobody would talk to me about what had happened, but I hadn't guessed at how terrified and defensive they might be about even basic attempts to get information.
I kept running through the chilly grey afternoon until I found the last turn back to the road upon which I'd tucked away my car.
Heart pounding, breath ragged, I came around the corner and immediately saw the spot where I'd parked it… a spot which was now just a gap between other parked cars. After a brief moment of confusion, in which I wondered if I had the right street, I realized that my car was gone.
Ducking back behind some hedges so fast that I almost tripped, I studied the street. My heart still thumped in my chest, and my pulse still raced, but I did my best to stay absolutely silent. Two-story houses and thickening lawns flanked the road, and regularly-set towering trees shrouded the area in icily breezy gloom. I shook against the exertion still coursing through me, but I kept quiet… and watched.
Pushed forth by the wind, a colorful plastic tricycle rolled down a distant driveway.
An American flag whipped idly up and down, unbothered by the cold.
This was suburban life, just without the living, and I found myself once more overwhelmed by how empty, boring, and normal this all felt. There were no bodies, no bloodstains, and no sense of tragedy. It was just a street… a street in which I had thought nobody would ever see or notice my car.
I saw nothing to hint at what had happened to it. How long had I been gone? An hour? Two?
Had another wanderer somehow happened across my vehicle and… what? Hotwired it? It seemed exceedingly unlikely that somebody had just happened across this street and decided to steal my car, as opposed to the thousands of ownerless vehicles parked all around the city. I felt in my pockets, confirming I still had the keys. That definitely wasn't it.
Or was it… something else?
I whirled around and fell roughly on my butt, my eyes scanning the nearly identical suburban street behind me. I saw nothing but chill grey filtering down between the trees, and uncomfortably cold breezes sifting through hedges and bushes. The frigid lawn beneath me ran an unhealthy brown and green - the grass was only slowly coming back to life after a long winter.
That odd sense of being pursued surged within me, and it became immediately obvious that the theft of my car had been no accident. Whatever it was, it was here, and I was just scrambling around in a suburban yard like a crazy fool.
Running between the houses, backpack straps held tightly to keep my bouncing belongings from making noise, I entered a long valley of back yards that seemed its own half-mile long world. On one side, houses; on the other, trees - and, in between, strewn toys, a soccer ball, and a picnic table or two, all part of a miniature vista of discarded home life stretching out before me like a dusky cave with a roof of ominous dark grey clouds.
One… of these… goddamn… doors… had… to… be…
The third one I tried swung open into gloom. I hesitated only for a split second, and then became propelled forward by the feeling of some approaching titanic and horrible awareness rounding a nearby corner into the soon-to-be-defiled sanctity of my little backyard valley. I dared not breathe. Instead, I turned around as swiftly and as silently as I could, and eased the house's back door closed.
The door itself was still mostly glass, and I was nowhere near safe. Creeping further into the kitchen's shady gloom, I half-crawled behind the island that dominated the middle of the slippery white-tiled floor. I hadn't had time to absorb any other details about the space - all I knew was that the cabinets and countertops converged to hide a very small area from prying eyes that might be looking in the windows at that very moment. I hadn't yet seen any destruction - no broken windows, no busted doors. Would human constructions protect me?
My back to dark cherry oak woodwork, my pack clutched close, I forced myself to let air flow in and out between my lips at an agonizingly slow pace. My hammering chest and burning lungs demanded more breath, but… I couldn't.
The light snap of a branch echoed feebly from outside. Was it… my unseen pursuer?
The door handle rattled. Adrenaline and alarm shot through me like lightning. Had I locked it? Had I thought to lock it?
I could almost see the attention sweeping across the kitchen, like unseen beams of malice-filled light. It scanned every visible corner, narrowly missing my hiding spot… and I stopped what little breathing I had still been managing, keeping completely still 'til the throbbing in my head threatened to knock me unconscious.
My ears absorbed the barest sound of a back door rattling on the house next door.
I almost let out an explosive breath - until the thought occurred to me: I had no idea what was hunting me. What if there was more than one of Them? What if one was still standing behind my back door, and the distant entry attempt I'd heard was a ruse?
Holding my own mouth shut forcefully with one desperate hand, I remained in place, my vision slowly narrowing as each heartbeat brought me deeper toward darkness.
And, still, I couldn't bring myself to breathe. How could I be sure?
At exactly that moment, the patter of rain began tapping against the windows.
Could I use that? If the rain surged, could I -
My body betrayed me. I let out an explosive gasp for air.
At exactly that moment, a loud crack rang out from somewhere beyond the windows.
Loud scrambling echoed on the patio just outside the door I'd entered, and something gracelessly crashed away. A very human shout echoed from somewhere distant.
Jumping to my feet, I took another deep breath, exhilarated by the return of life and chance, and I ran for the door. Spilling through, I saw a wide-eyed and brown-dressed man standing a yard distant under the darkening evening sky. In his hand, he held his gun, held awkwardly forward.
It had been his shot that had driven off… whatever had been outside.
"Roger!" I shouted, incredibly relieved. Clearly, something had changed. It was humanity against the darkness, right? "Thank you -"
His eyes widened into even larger white circles, a terrified contrast to the oncoming twilight. "What the ever loving hell?" His gun swept toward me.
"Christ!" I shouted at him, charging back into the house. After everything I'd been through in my life, was I really going to finally get taken down by some scared old man with a revolver? Who the hell just carried a gun around like that?
As I crashed through the house, accidentally knocking over family pictures and portraits of children hanging on the walls, I realized: if you were one of only a very few people left in the world, and there were otherworldly threats lurking, of course you would carry a gun. He was just a scared old man… and, to him, I looked like a disheveled homeless man, and I'd proven myself a liar. Too, if he'd followed me, he might have seen me running and hiding and rolling about on lawns like a madman. He had no way of knowing I'd been tipped off by the disappearance of my car…
He was just a scared old man - but he had a gun, and, for as few times as I'd actually seen one in my life, let alone seen one fired, guns were undeniably real.
I curved around the last bit of hallway and reached the front of the house.
I almost opened the front door and bolted outside.
I almost did it.
It was only as I had my hand on the knob that I realized this heavy wooden door had no windows alongside it. I couldn't see outside - and, if I was hunting someone, and the situation out back had just happened, I would wait out front for my prey to cut through the house.
It was fear, really, and nothing more. I'd been guided by my honed awareness of fear most of my life, and it had saved me countless times. Whatever was hunting me, it was perfect. It had made no noise, given no solid indication that it existed, and shown no cards. I had no idea what it might be, what it might want, or what it was capable of.
Except for the fact that millions of people had disappeared during my month in the mountains, and, now, those who remained were absolutely terrified to talk about it.
Had this been what had gotten everyone else?
The only edge I had was my fear. Where others might have panicked, where others might have been blithely unaware of pursuit, where others might have made a mistake… not me.
I took the last few steps up to the second floor with the same silent focus that I'd used the entire backwards path away from the front door. I refused to let my eyes off of it. As long as it stayed closed, as long as I could make it down the upstairs hallway and into a hiding spot, my pursuer would have to assume I'd chosen another escape route.
As I'd stepped carefully backward, the gears in my mind spinning, I'd swiftly hung up and reset the pictures I'd knocked over.
As far as it might see if it came in, I'd never entered the house.
Step back, breathe ever so quietly, step back, finally make it 'round the corner…
The front door clicked softly open just after the hallway below disappeared from my view.
The people that had lived here had left everything unlocked. I'd been right to assume that nothing was going to go in my favor without me making it so.
A creak sounded from downstairs.
I couldn't stay in the hallway like this, as much as I wanted to remain motionless. Stepping carefully, pack still held in a death grip, I backed smoothly and inaudibly into what I guessed, from the layout of the house, was the master bedroom.
Where I'd stepped soundlessly on the stairs, my pursuer failed once, eliciting a subtle noise of stretching wood. Was it heavier than me? Was it even human? Even at this distance, it smelled horrible, cloying, like…
I turned my head, but not my body, to examine the room for options.
Oh.
Steeling myself for what I had to do, I eked a window open, studying the rooftop below that might let a person clamber down and leap to the ground.
I made my move, and then lay quietly.
What capabilities did my pursuer have? If it had a heightened sense of smell, my hiding spot would take care of that. In case it had sharp hearing, I kept my breath held, my body still, ready and willing to go back into that dark well of unconsciousness rather than die. Astute eyes would not be a factor with the line of sight broken and my hiding spot already in a shape that might obscure my presence…
If it were telepathic, or had other senses… well, there was nothing I could do about that. It came near, utterly near, and I thought I heard a slight moist organic sound. I felt a shift as weight moved along the master bedroom floor. Was it checking under the bed?
No - it was at the window.
After a silent and tense moment in which everything held frozen… startlingly loud motion and creaking erupted, and I listened to it move back out, down the hall, along the stairs, and out through the front door.
It was only then, deep in a swirling pit of shrunken senses, that I finally began breathing again.
I gasped and choked on that fetid air, and clambered desperately out from between the two soggy, maggot-covered, and fly-infested corpses on the bed. Covered in black rotting gore and various unidentifiable green and yellow and red slimes, I fell to the floor, letting my body force up the scant food I'd eaten earlier.
Rubbing against the white carpet in desperation, I tried to get some of the corpse-rot off of my bare skin.
They'd committed suicide together, in that bed. The entire thing had been stained in the disgusting colors of life and death. There'd been just enough room between to hide under the sticky sheets and blankets. My hunter had either overestimated me - in thinking that I could have silently climbed along and down a roof - or underestimated me - in thinking that I would never climb between the embrace of two rotting suicide-slain lovers.
I'm not invincible. I did break down, finally, at that moment, on the white-carpeted floor now smeared widely with grisly juices and gobbets of flesh from my tearful crawl. I just wanted someone to talk to… someone, anyone at all… what was the point of surviving, if it required such ghastly and desperate acts, and if there was nobody even to go home to?
It was then I knew that I had to get home. I'd been avoiding going straight there. It was too easy, too obvious. My pursuer would know what I was trying to do, that much I felt. I'd never met it, but the pursuit was hungry, and personal. It'd risked another encounter with Roger and his scared trigger-finger to stick around and chase me.
Chris… Caitlin… where are you?
Heath… why aren't you responding?
And it's only now, while I sit in a hole-in-the-wall bar whose WiFi password I remembered from long ago, that something occurs to me: a man and a woman had killed themselves together in the master bedroom of that house… but I'd seen pictures… even knocked those pictures down… shots of kids, of children, happy and smiling.
There'd been no other bodies in the house.
Was that a clue?
I had no way of knowing… not yet… but I had to keep it in mind.
And my life now… sitting in a hole-in-the-wall-bar from my early twenties, alone, eating stale cornbread with hands I can't quite seem to get clean. I'm not afraid the smell of my horrendous hiding spot might never go away. No… I'm afraid I might get used to it. The world has changed, and the change happened without me. Why am I here? What am I doing?
A relentless voice in the back of my head urges me on, even now. I live for the fear, and for the mystery. I always have. I have to know.
I have to go home. I have to figure this out.
I don't even think I can save anyone. I don't even hope that there's anything left for me but empty streets. Even though nobody's around, I'm well aware that I'm unshaven, dirty, reeking to high heaven, and acting like a madman.
It doesn't matter. What point does life hold if there's nobody around to share it with?
There is only one drive: I just… have to know… and when the Sun rolls back around the Earth and dispels the empty and quiet night again, I'll make my play for home, and hopefully have a shot at finding more clues…
Submitted April 04, 2015 at 05:11AM by M59Gar http://ift.tt/1GqCB0i nosleep
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