The world didn't end

  But so many things did

  No more lights

  No more information age

  No more weekend drives to the beach

  No more cats or dogs or cows or pigs or chickens

  No more relying on everything we'd built before

  No, the world didn't end

  But we did

  "No more" from from "Whispers in the Dark: Poems by Aparna Bhatia"

  September 28th, 2012

  "How much further, daddy?" Simone stared up at her father's back as she adjusted the straps on her backpack. Her shoulders were starting to get sore.

  Her father turned his head, switching hands on the handle dragging the green metal cart but never breaking his stride. "Just a couple more miles sweetie, I promise. Do you need me to carry you for a bit, honey? Are you getting tired?"

  Sweat gleamed on his forehead, sticking a lock of his thinning black hair flat to his skin. He wiped it, pushing the stray lock back in line. The cart ran over a bump in asphalt, causing the food and other supplies hidden underneath the small tarp to jump slightly, the jingle of the metal gate clashing with clatter of rice and macaroni returning to plastic.

  She looked over to Lex, his jaw set and his back straight. He wasn't sweating, but his hands were locked tight around the straps of his backpack, knuckles flashing white with every step. She looked up to her mother, who looked back down at her with tired disdain.

  If her father carried her then her mother would have to pull the cart, and even though she was a few inches taller than her husband, her mother didn't have the strength to match the old carpenter.

  "I'm fine, daddy. My shoulders are just a little sore, I'll be all right." She felt her mother's gaze peel off of her, but she didn't look up.

  "Okay, Simi. Just let me know if you need a break." He turned his body to the right, switching hands again.

  "You too, Lex. This is a lot for you kids to deal with."

  "They're going to have to deal with a lot more. We all are." Her mother said the words in a clipped monotone, all business, but blanched at the incredulous look on her husband's face.

  "It's...something we're all going to have to adjust to, in time. You're doing well, darlings. If you get tired, we can stop for bit.

  Simone's father nodded at his wife, then turned forward, the cart rattling a bit more loudly as he picked up the pace. She put her head down, staring at the endless cracked asphalt, trying to keep her mind off her tired feet and sore shoulders.

  The events of the past couple weeks flooded through her mind, covering the monotonous road like a film. After her seizure her slept, rolling through disjointed dreams until the next morning. They stayed in the basement for another night, Travis going out periodically to test the air and radiation levels.

  No toxins and no radiation. No apocalypse, or so it seemed. After that second night her father and Travis had a discussion. They decided to return to their home, since the world still seemed to be alive and kicking. Their car was beyond use, the internal wiring fried and the terminals flash welded to the battery. Travis, ever prepared, had disconnected just about everything in his truck, and after a couple hours of frustrated reconstruction his F-250 was ready for the road.

  The whole ride home her father and Travis talked theories and ideas of the future. Was it a solar flare, or something else? Travis thought it was probably a solar flare, but it didn't quite match up with what he'd read. He took out all the fuses, yet his lights blew anyway. But his truck was fine, and so was his generator. Her father nodded along, echoing Travis' frustrations, but he offered little input. His mind was for wood, not copper.

  He talked some about building a water wheel and connecting it to the alternator of their dead car, digging up a spot near the creak to set up a more permanent power supply. They got stuck on the wiring, where they would actually get the cable and how much work it would be to bury or string it up, and failed to come to a solution before they arrived at their home.

  Her father tried to deny the cans of food Travis pushed on him as they finished unloading their luggage, but her mother snatched them and took them inside before the charade could get too ridiculous.

  That's when she first noticed it, all the little ways the world had changed. The whole drive home seemed just like any other drive home, the high position and low rumble of Travis' truck much like a schoolbus. The roads were the same, the trees were the same, the sky was the same. But as soon as she climbed out of the truck she could tell that the world was different, the realization so sharp she nearly missed her step.

  Silence pushed at her eardrums, undiluted by the shuffling of bags and her parent's voices. She looked around desperately, and what she saw only made the silence thicker. Almost every driveway was empty, aside from a few junkers who hadn't left their parking spot in years. No cars passing by on the road, no planes high above in the sky. No evidence of humanity besides the houses and what was left behind.

  Even more disturbing was the lack of natural noises, the high drone of the cicada and the many tones of birdsong notably absent. No birds at all from what she could see, nor any of the neighborhood pets she would see from time to time slinking in between houses. There weren't even any mosquitoes or bees vying for nectar from the fading flowers.

  The smell of fire overwhelmed everything, wood and other things that were never meant to burn. She looked to Lex, watched his nose flare as he dislodged his bag from the back of Travis' truck. He smelt it, too.

  "I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but if it starts getting dangerous out here feel free to come back." Travis was carrying the last couple bags back into the house.

  "I've got a pretty good setup, and there's strength in numbers. If things get really bad, we're gonna need that strength."

  "We'll be all right, Travis." Her father took the bags from Travis and set them in the living room.

  "I'm sure it's not as bad as you think. Once the government gets their shit together they'll have everything back to normal in a couple weeks. Government can get things done fast when they want to, when they're not letting the bureaucracy get in the way."

  "Government always lets bureaucracy get in the way." Travis shut his tailgate and gave the truck a loving pat.

  "But I hear you. Maybe they'll surprise me." He clasped hands with her father and climbed into his truck, then backed out and drove down the empty road, the rumble of his truck dulling the overwhelming silence for a moment.

  Then it was gone, and it was only her and Lex as their parents put back everything they had rushed to pack a couple days prior. He took her hand, gave it squeeze.

  "I know, Simi. It all feels weird, but we're home. Your old familiar bed, with Florence watching over you, the sheets tucked in just right. That'll be nice at least, right?"

  She looked down, then over to her mother restocking the pantry. "It smelled like fire outside. Bad fire."

  He drew her closer. "I didn't see any smoke close by. We should be fine."

  "There wasn't anybody else outside. No animals either. It's weird. I was really hoping to see Sam when we got home."

  "I'm we'll see him tonight once he's gotten dinner. He's had to hunt for himself the past couple days."

  She looked down again, accepting the answer but not liking it. Sam was her cuddle buddy, and she didn't like the idea of him having to fend for himself. But he was a strong, capable cat, and she knew deep down that he could take care of himself.

  She just wanted to feel his soft fur slide across her hands, to feel her blood pressure drop as he started to purr. She needed something to break the tension that hung in the air like a poisonous gas.

  Sudoku helped her push the tension to the side, along with a couple of half-hearted games of chess with Lex, but her mind was always half on Sam. She stayed up in the candlelit darkness, waiting for him to come home, but the only thing she saw was the ominous orange glow on the horizon, flickering and growing in intensity.

  She stayed up every night for a week waiting for the cat, but still she saw nothing but that orange glow growing bigger and brighter every night, with others joining them as the nights dragged on. Columns of smoke rose from all directions during the day, lifting to the sky before settling down in a constant haze.

  It was still fairly warm out, and without air conditioning they were forced to keep the doors and windows open during the day. Spare facemasks that her father used for painting did the job keep them breathing, but the smell made Simone vomit more than once.

  Every day their food supply got smaller, the servings tinier in incremental degrees. She could hear gunshots in the distance, mostly during the day, but increasingly more at night.

  Then there were the people moving along the roads, small groups of 8-10 moving warily with a couple rifles at each end, a family or two banding together for safety and escaping the fires. They mostly moved by day, pushing carts and swiveling their twitchy heads from house to house, but as the first week turned into the second they came mostly by night, their flashlights veiled with white cloth so the light wouldn't travel too far.

  One night, perhaps the Monday of the second week, she saw why they were so scared. She had been staying up again, looking out for Sam and seeing if the orange glow in the distance was getting smaller. It wasn't, and Sam still hadn't shown. It was nearly midnight, and as her eyelids began to droop she decided it was time for bed.

  Just as she stood up she took one last look out the window, hoping against hope that Sam would be waiting in the front yard. She didn't see the cat, but she did see the beams of flashlights waving in the distant darkness, where the road dipped down and the land angled towards the nearby creek.

  Simone sat back down, crouching low against her blanket and pillows like she was hiding from something. It was difficult to hear, but someone was shouting out there, along with the sound of someone else talking frantically. It sounded like the loud one was giving orders, the other pleading.

  The two only spoke for a couple seconds before a shot rang out, followed by several piercing wails. One of them sounded like a child's. More shots rang, all of them sounding different. Some were deep and heavy, others just simple cracks.

  The beams of the flashlights crossed the top of the hill and Simone could finally see them, a tall old man with glasses hunched over a shopping cart and pushing madly, his skinny legs struggling to crest the hill with the fully laden cart. There was what looked like a teenage girl behind him, her ankle twisted awkwardly and struggling to keep up.

  There was a baby in the kid's seat near the handle of the cart, facing the old man. She could here the baby's anguished screams, scared but not scared enough.

  A man crested the hill wearing a long black jacket, a pump shotgun in his hands. He worked the action, sending a spent shell bouncing to the ground, then blew a hole in the girl's chest. Blood splattered the man's back, but he showed no signs of being hit. He just pushed harder, his gasps of frustrated effort whispering under the shouts of terror coming from down the hill.

  The man in the long jacket pumped again, sending another shell to the asphalt. Her house was making noises now, her parents making themselves ready. She heard the bolt slide back and forth on her father's hunting rifle, the small click of the tiny pistol her mother kept in her purse. Lex was rousing as well, but she ignored his tired questions.

  The old man, still pushing frantically, caught the front wheel of the cart in a pothole. The cart tipped to the side, spilling canned goods and blankets to the dirt, neither of which cushioned the baby's fall.

  Simone gasped, and Lex leaped to her side. The baby caught air when the cart tipped over, landing a couple feet from it. She thought it was dead for a moment, surely the fall had broken its neck, but that piercing wail started up again, loud as ever.

  Another shot rang out, and the old man lost his head. His glasses flew forward from his face, a single lens landing in the dirt, the other atomized. She could see lights reflected in that lonely piece of glass as more men with guns crested the hill. The man in the long jacket turned around and spoke to them for minute, pumping his shotgun one more time before slinging it over his shoulder.

  The baby continued to screech, broken only by tiny, choking coughs. Either the little thing was burning its lungs out, or its mouth was full of blood and dirt. Simone wanted to scream, to run out there blindly, but she was frozen. She could no more scream than the baby could crawl. They were locked in the fate of that moment.

  Then the conversation stopped, the group of brigands dispersing. Most went back down the hill, but the man in long jacket stayed in sight, along with two other men. The two other men set to searching the bodies of the teenage girl and old man, while the man in the long jacket pushed the cart upright and started refilling it with the spilled contents.

  The baby continued to cry, the coughs getting more frequent, more painful. The man in the long jacket stopped what he was doing, a can still in his hand, and looked at the baby. The can hung in the air for a moment, a cylindrical guillotine. Then he threw it into the small pile of blankets scattered in the dirt, chucking the rest of them in quickly and shoving it all into the bottom of the cart, all save for one blanket about the size of a pillowcase.

  He stood up with the blanket and walked over to the screaming infant. The little thing screamed louder for a moment as the man scooped them up, using the blanket to clean off the dirt before wrapping them in it. They were saying something, or perhaps singing, she couldn't hear over the baby's endless sobs. The baby's screams quieted to cries of intermittent pain, and she could hear the man's soft voice, singing a slow, soft number with long notes.

  The two men had finished searching the bodies, and they approached the man with the long jacket as he returned to the cart. They were animated, their hands gesturing at him and the baby. The man paid them no mind, silently returning the child to his seat on the cart and adjusting the blanket to make sure they were comfortable.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Only once he was sure the baby was situated did he acknowledge the other two, turning to them menacingly, his mouth working out a few quiet words. Then he touched the shotgun on his shoulder and they took a step back, hands brushing against holsters. There was a single tense moment, then they turned away and headed down the hill, leaving the bodies splayed out. The man took hold of the cart's handle, and just before he turned to follow them, he looked up to Simone's house.

  She couldn't see his eyes in the moonlit darkness, and whether he was looking up at her and Lex in the window or at her parents bearing down on him with guns from downstairs windows could not be known. But she could feel his gaze on her, the tunnel of their locked eyes sending a permanent communication of his sin and her knowledge of it.

  Was he looking for forgiveness, or just a judgmental eye, someone to force on him the guilt that keeps us human? She didn't know.

  A familiar sound brought her out of memory, the slide of her mother's little pistol pulling back and then cocking. She looked up to see that they had stopped at a crossroads, a four-way stop to those that still had vehicles. To their right on the perpendicular road stood about ten people, though there may have been more behind them.

  Their view was blocked by tall bushes on the opposite side of the road that shaded a white picket fence decorated intermittently with No Trespassing signs, the border of a wealthy neighborhood that was likely abandoned now.

  The ten people seemed to be of two different families: A stocky white man with curly brown hair next a tall black woman with muscular arms, both of them guarding a shopping cart filled with supplies and the frizzy-haired girl of roughly Simone's age hiding behind it.

  The other family was larger and more scattered, with the two largest men, one looking over the hill and the other not far from high school by the look of their beards, pulling some kind of horse-cart behind them that seemed half empty. Next to them was a woman with straight blonde hair that was trending towards gray, pulling a cart like her father's.

  Behind her was a girl who looked a few years older than Simone whose face radiated teenage angst and annoyance, pulling a Red Rider cart that infant boy sat in, sucking on a bottle and staring around obliviously. Another man, likely in his thirties, pulled another cart along with what looked to be his wife, the cart filled with two infant girls.

  "Not a step farther until I see some hands." Her mother took a step forward, gesturing with her tiny gun.

  "It's nothing personal, we've just seen what happens to people on the road." The memory of that night snapped through her head. The pump of the shotgun. The piercing wail. The look she shared with a murderer. She forced it out of her head.

  Her father walked over, putting his hand out to his wife. "Honey, I think these people are fine. They've got kids for Christ's sake."

  Her mother shot him that trademark look of venom, sharp as a cobra's fang. "You don't know that they're their children! You saw what those people did, they could be slavers! Or murderers!"

  "Hold up now, I said hold up now!" The older man who'd been pulling the horse-cart stepped forward, his hands raised high towards the sky. His arms were thin and fleshy, but there was something about the way they rippled in his loose skin that made her sure that they as strong as steel cables. The voice was a harsh contrast, high and piping, with a twang that reminded her of the big chicken from those old cartoons her dad showed her and Lex.

  "I understand your trepidation, young lady, I understand it quite well, but we mean you no harm. I know of the men you speak, and they are not among us. They're some of them city folk that came in to get away from the fires over in Charlottesville. They got no mind to live off the land, so they set to robbin' those who can. Mothalovin' bastards they is, but that ain't us. We're good country people, we know how to treat our neighbors."

  He took one long arm and pointed to the couple by the shopping cart. "Hell, even them. They've got a bit too much California to 'em for my taste, but they're still good people. I know 'em well, and I'd like to know y'all the same, if you'll let me."

  He took a step forward, even as her mother kept the barrel pointed at him. "Bartholomew Reaves, ma'am, but you can call me Bart. Everybody does."

  Her mother kept the gun trained on him for a moment longer, before her father finally pushed the barrel down.

  "Herman Zhang, sir, pleased to meet you." Her father pushed his hand into the other man's, and Simone saw her his forearm muscles bulge as they both tried to crush each other's hand's. "Excuse my wife, she's always been the cautious one. Keeps me from stepping in snake holes."

  "That's a good woman right there, and I don't begrudge y'all a bit. Times like these it pays to be cautious." Bart released his hand, then bent down to look at Simone and Alex.

  "And who are these whippersnappers? A couple of little troublemakers if I had to guess."

  "They're actually quite well behaved." Her mother was finally putting her pistol back into her pack.

  "It's been a real blessing with all this madness happening around us. Cecelia Zhang, Mr. Reaves. The children are Alex and Simone. What brings you this way?" Her mother's tone was cold, but that was far from unusual with new people.

  Bart gave a smile, showing off a set of yellow-stained veneers. "Same as y'all I'd imagine. Going to the valley to pick crop. Had enough food to spell us for a couple weeks, but our little garden is spent, and the cellar was about empty. Wouldn't have been a damn problem if they'd let my daddy move into the valley, but they've got a good ole' boys club goin' on over there, and they didn't like "our kind" tryin' to move in. Problem is, our kind is the same as theirs, they just got money now."

  Simone's father gave a wave to the other people as Bart continued to grumble to her mother. "Y'all headed to the valley, too?"

  They waved back. "Yeah, hoping to get some food, maybe join with some people who have a good spot. We've only got one gun, so we're going to need some help."

  Herman smiled. "Strength in numbers, good thinking. Maybe we should travel together to the valley. None of us are making it there by nightfall, and it makes sense to camp before we hit the mountain pass."

  The man looked up to the woman, who stepped forward. "That sounds wonderful actually. I'm Ruth, by the way. My shy husband's name is Jason." She walked over to shake his hand, pushing her husband in front of her.

  "I'm not shy!" He sounded petulant, and he probably knew it. He straightened, trying to make his neck seemed bigger than it already was.

  "We've just got to watch out is all. People are doing crazy shit, Ruth. You saw."

  Ruth gave him a sharp look, then pursed her lips in acceptance. "I did. I definitely did, honey. I'll keep it in mind." She bent down and kissed him, perhaps for a moment too long.

  Simone looked over at Lex. He was looking at Ruth with wide, staring eyes, his mouth just slightly open. She'd seen the look on him only few months before, when their father had shown them the movie about the rabbit, the one with real people and cartoons in it together. Their mom had had come home and stopped it halfway through, practically shoving them into their room as she yelled at their father.

  Before she'd turned it off they'd both seen the lady in the sparkling red dress, with proportions like magnets, a look in her eye that sent a tingling sensation down though her stomach. Ruth didn't have that look, but there was something about the way the muscles in her arm rippled and the way her hips curved out from her waist that gave her a similar feeling.

  "Yeah, we saw some stuff like that, too." Her father had a stupid looking grin on his face, one that dissolved after a glance at her mother.

  "Horrible stuff. I think we might have to find a group, too. Our house is fine, and I'd hate to leave it behind, but it's just us in the neighborhood now, and we don't have a garden or anything. It's not very defensible either, but I could change that if I had the materials."

  "You should keep him around, mom." The little girl with frizzy hair appeared between her parents. Simone had heard her walk up. "Every squad needs a builder."

  Ruth bent down and brushed at her hair, almost like a mother cat. "That's a great point, Alicia. We'll have to see if Mr. Zhang and his family want to stay with us first." She turned to Herman. "I think she was talking about one of her computer games, one of the ones you play online."

  "Titans of Myth, mom. I've told you that a bunch of times." The girl sounded irritated. She glanced at Simone, then turned to her parents.

  "Builders don't get enough love, probably because the playstyle isn't that fun. Every wants to be a tank or a healer, but the best teams have a good builder to keep the base from falling apart, or getting sneak attacked." She chuckled. "I love trolling teams with bad builders. It's so easy. They-"

  Bart stepped forward, cutting off the child. "I don't mean to be rude, but we only got so much daylight. I think we might want to walk-n-talk."

  Herman Zhang and his wife nodded, and the family started walking down the road once more. Jason and Ruth stayed close, and with Alicia walking next Simone and Lex.

  "I always wanted to play Titans of Myth, but our mom wouldn't let us get a computer. Too much money." She gave a hard stare at the back of her mother's head. "But Lex got to play it a couple times at his friend Kyle's."

  "I didn't really like it. I'm much for competitive games. I like single player." Lex had found a good looking stick and was waving it about like a sword.

  "You must have sucked, then. People who can't take the heat love to talk about-;"

  Lex was cocking back to swat her in the shins with the stick, but before he could swing Simone had her on the ground, left hand squeezing Alicia's wrist so hard it was turning white. Her other hand was holding a handful of Alicia's shirt, pushing it up into her chin.

  The reaction was all instinct, but the move was practiced, one of the ones Lex had shown her during the summer. A very simple trip and throw, but effective.

  "If you talk to my brother like that again, you're going to need a builder to put you back together." Simone's voice was calm, but rumbling, like a sheet of ice over boiling water. She pulled her closer.

  "And it won't be a single player game, either."

  Tears welled in Alicia's eyes, and for the first time Simone noticed the fear behind them. It was the same fear she had seen in Lex's eyes the year before, when had the bright idea to climb the neighbor's fence to get away from her while playing tag. He'd gotten away all right, only to get up close and personal with the neighbor's German Shepherd.

  She'd screamed to her parents inside to come help, but she wasn't going to wait for them. She'd almost made it over the top when they finally made it, just long enough to see the dog jumping back and forth in front of her brother and barking hysterically. Her brother's face had lost all color, so much so that she'd half-expected to see a wet patch on his shorts where it had leaked out, and his lips were peeled back in a rictus mockery of a smile. It was almost like he tried to bare his teeth but lost nerve, not even having the strength the chatter them.

  She looked up, saw her brother's face and the concern it carried. Adults up ahead were pausing now as well and turning to see what was up with the kids.

  "I'm sorry." Her grip loosened and Alicia sunk to the ground.

  "Just don't talk like that to my brother. I'm sorry."

  Alicia stood up slowly, brushing off her clothes and rubbing the back of her neck. "I, uh...I, just...I understand. I won't do it again."

  Simone turned down the road and started walking after her parents, not turning to see if Lex or Alicia were following. She didn't want to see her faces. The guilt in her heart was enough, along with the fire still burning in her belly.

  They continued along the backroads until they reached Interstate 64, following that for several miles. Disaster movies had prepped Simone's brain for abandoned cars lining the highways, but there were hardly any, just a few on the shoulder with their doors left open in spite. It made sense. There hadn't really been anything to run from, or anywhere to run to. The world hadn't ended, it had just paused.

  What they did see were other groups of people, slowly walking with their carts and backpacks, all of them passing the few cars with frustrated stares. Simone's shoulders ached. Theirs probably did, too. She finally got to give her shoulders a rest at a highway exit her parents called Rockfish Gap.

  It was mostly just a small field nestled between the highway, the exit ramp, and a small road, with only a run-down shack and a few junkers to break up the flat grass. Their party set their stuff down there and set up camp next to a party of seven who had just finished setting up tents, while a party of six had set up around the junkers and the remains of the shack.

  Once they had erected the couple of two person tents their father had scrounged from the shed and filled them with bedding, they ate a quick meal of canned soup eaten hobo style, each can cooked one at a time on a gas camp burner and served with the only four spoons they had. They didn't waste time on shyness once they sun got low and the mosquitoes crept in, pushing their way closer to the fire next to the junkers in spite of the heat.

  Stories passed from mouth to mouth along with cigarettes and small bottles of alcohol. Most were similar to their own: they'd held out, hoping things would go back to normal, trying not to go through their food to quickly in case it didn't. They smelt the fires, heard and saw the growing violence, growing nervous right along with it. Then, after weeks of seeing travelers on the road, fleeing the fires and facing danger every night, they go out to them and inquire as to where the hell they're all going.

  Shenandoah Valley, they say. Fertile fields full of food with only a fraction of the manpower to harvest. Work for food, with more food for trade. None of them waffled for long.

  More stories passed. Some had walked all the way from Charlottesville fleeing the fires, dodging violent looters and thieves by flame and flashlight. One family said they'd walked all the way from Richmond, but nobody wanted to believe them. Somebody ranted about lazy contractors and firestopping, and another got in a few comments about GFCI's and cheap fuses.

  Her father nodded along heartily with this one as he took hits from a community cigarette, offering a couple of his own gripes about unreliable labor. Then came a few stories of violence, the things people had witnessed, the things they'd escaped. The people from Charlottesville said half the city was ash, especially near the university. Everything else had gone to looting. One woman talked about a gang going door to door, searching houses and apartments, taking everything and killing anyone who tried to stop them. They got out before they got to the building they were hiding out in.

  The family from Richmond said the fires were out of control there, basically the whole city. They had seen some efforts to stop it however, along with some attempts to keep order. A group of active military in the city had rallied the firefighters and police. They didn't have what they needed to stop the fires, but they did help a lot of people get out before the city was all gone.

  The stories died down after that, no one wanting to dig too deep, no one wanting to know just how bad it had gotten in such a short time. Everyone was starting to move away from the fire, until a young man with a patchy beard spoke up.

  "Has anyone else lost their pets?" He looked around at the dark faces twisting in the firelight.

  "Our dog Daisy ran away right after the Wave hit and we haven't seen hide nor hair of her since. My neighbor was an old lady who fed the local strays, maybe 10 or 11 cats. She left before us, but she asked us about the cats when she was leaving. She said she hadn't seen any of them for over a week."

  The silence lingered, the crackles of the fire only making it heavier. People just looked at each other, searching for absent answers four 1000 pregnant seconds.

  "Our dog left, too." It was a buff Hispanic man to Simone's right. "Our cat Maisel hasn't come back, either." A tall black woman with hair nearly to her waist from across the circle.

  "Our bird tried to get out, but he broke his neck on the cage, I think." A short college-aged woman with blonde hair at 3 o'clock, staring down at the ground in shame. More and more filtered out from the crowd. Dogs and cats, all missing. Birds and guinea pigs and hamsters killing themselves trying to escape.

  "My fish died, but that was because the filter didn't have any power." That was a balding man in the back, trying to hide his sniggering.

  "Our chickens bugged out, too." Bart was squatting on his heels, moving around like he was stretching out his back.

  "Same as the farm cats. Mule, too. Busted right out of the barn. Matter of fact, I don't think I've laid eyes on bird nor beast since the Wave hit. Have any of you, if you really think about it?"

  Hands rubbed chins and scratched heads, but eventually everyone shook their heads. "Exactly. Talked to a couple people heading out from the very valley we're going to just a few days ago. Cattle people, dairy mostly. All their cows were gone. They'd talked to some other people from the valley, said all the pigs and chickens had done the same. No bodies. No evidence of theft, not that anybody's got the stuff to steal that many beasts quietly, especially now. They just disappeared. And the birds, too! I haven't heard a hint of birdsong this whole hike! Not even a squirrel or a chipmunk! Where the hell did they all go?"

  "We saw some coming from the south. Just birds, though." It was a skinny white man with glasses, lightly pushing himself to the front of the circle.

  "We came from Lynchburg, and about halfway, near Lovingston we saw a huge flock of birds. We thought it was smoke from the fires at first, just a big black cloud. But as we got closer we started to hear all the squawking, just a huge drone of bird calls. And the smell, too. Can't imagine the amount of shit. We tried not to get too close, but we got close enough to see the edges of the flock roosting in the trees. Millions of birds. The ones in the air all seemed to be blackbirds, crows and ravens and the like, but there were all kinds in the trees. Owls, cardinals, jays, starlings, you name it. I used to birdwatch some with my dad before he died, so I could tell. Never seen any kind of flock like that before, not with ducks or geese or nothing. Unnatural, I tell ya. The devil's work, maybe."

  Simone put her head down, trying not to see the terror in the man's eyes. She thought about the drive to Travis' house, the huge flock of birds twisting in the air like a tentacles reaching out from a hole in the world.

  She thought of a beady black eye staring out from inside her mind, watching her thrash and foam on the basement floor. Things were getting bad. It was the first time she'd really admitted it to herself.

  A part of her had thought things would eventually go back to normal, that one morning she would wake up and the police and the fire department and the electric company had all come in the night and fixed everything. Fire put out. Thieves and raiders put in jail. The power back on. Air conditioning. TV. Sam curled up at the foot of her bed as she went to sleep. Normal again. But normal had changed, and there was no going back.

  The new normal was an eerie quiet, peppered with flashes of violence. A relentless consistency in all the ways she thought she was free. Constant heat, constant hunger, constant thirst, constant anxiety, constant boredom. And now that they had hit the road, constant soreness, especially around her neck. Lex said he wasn't sore, but she knew he was lying. She'd seen him rubbing his neck after if got dark.

  The night was starting to wind down, the fire getting smaller as fewer people fed it fuel, more and more drifting back to their tents. Her family stayed, her father chatting with a short Hispanic man about contracting, her mother and Lex playing a game of Go Fish with another mother and her son who'd brought a deck of cards.

  Simone stared off into the night, out at the abandoned gas station on the other side of the highway. She wished they could have stayed in there instead of in the tents. Walls would have made her feel so much safer, a true barrier against all the insects buzzing around them, instead of just a piece of fabric that could rip any day now. But that option had been ruled out by one of Bart's sons, Kyle maybe, after he'd gone over to inspect the place.

  The owner had decided to board up the place before he left, probably thinking the whole thing would blow over in a week or so and he'd come back to set up shop again. But sometime in the last two weeks some people had pulled back the boards and had a party in there, leaving a bunch of trash and spoiled food, even filled up the toilet in spite of the fact that the water was off.

  They left the hole open, and either the bugs came when they left or they got chased out by them, because the whole place was full of flies and maggots feasting on rotted food. She could smell it still, if she got far away enough from the fire.

  That was the world now.

  Rot and fire.