*
They walked for an hour before Alex decided to stop and check the nearest house. At first he only found cold coffee collecting dust, bread growing hard in the toaster, and a prepacked briefcase in the hallway. But when he looked closer, he found the owner’s remains: a single bathrobe, still damp, spread in the approximate posture of a lounging person at the breakfast table. A pair of spectacles lay shattered near one of the chair legs.
He returned to the street with gooseflesh blossoming on his arms and neck. Hurrying away, he could no longer ignore the endless piles of clothing. He was walking over fresh, invisible graves.
From then on, as the hours passed, he checked larger and larger establishments, eventually making his way to police stations, schools and office buildings. He found nothing but more clothing, half-eaten food, and myriad half-completed tasks. Gas hobs blazed, air conditioners whistled, and cooling car engines ticked. But there was no hint of an evacuation, or abduction. Every shred of evidence indicated that people had simply disappeared, mid-action.
On several occasions he considered searching for the man he’d seen while Paul Towers had died at his feet. Where had he come from? Where had he gone? Had he even been there at all?
Each time he found himself shuddering with disquiet—the manner in which that lupine smile had fixed upon him had been almost predatory, as though Alex had been but a scurrying ant beneath a magnifying glass.
He never searched for the man. After a while, Alex even found himself pushing any thought of him from his mind.
He slept that night in the living room of a tiny bungalow, which had belonged to a couple of pensioners, judging by its many framed photographs, stagnant atmosphere, and the flock wallpaper hanging from the walls.
After that, he lost track of everything. Time became a dimensionless entity, settling somewhere between a trickle and a relentless cascade. Villages, roads, and towns passed by, one by one, but none yielded a single clue, just more of the same wreckage.
On the second day, the swarms flew overhead: enormous flocks of squawking birds that wheeled and swirled as one, stretching from horizon to horizon and blacking out the sky. He spent the majority of the daylight hours looking skyward. Millions passed overhead, hour after hour; every species Alex could name, and more. They cast shadows abound onto the ruined world of man, occasionally straying too close to the ground and committing suicide in their thousands, colliding with brick walls and plummeting through panes of glass without any attempt at evasion, as though blinded.
They plagued the heavens until dusk had fallen. When the sun rose the next day, they too had disappeared. Alex hoped that they had merely moved on instead of vanishing themselves.
He pushed on, still accompanied by the dog, which insisted on tossing around the bloody remains of brained birds whenever he stopped to rest. He was moving north, never once diverting from an arrow-straight course, following the roads.
At the end of the third day, while he was hopelessly lost in an area devoid of landmarks or signs of habitation, the sky grew dark and mist scaled the hills. Then the heavens opened, and rain began to hammer down over the carcass of the Old World.
V
Sunlight streamed through the curtains, bathing the bed in an orange glow.
Norman stirred slowly, his body cocooned in the sheets. It was some time before he could bring himself to move, listening to the din of the waking city.
The room grew brighter, and the shifting shadows danced to the birds’ morning chorus. Against the far wall a chintzy sofa lay strewn with his muddied, half-rotten clothing. Surrounding it was a sea of trinkets and half-remembered trophies he’d liberated from countless ruined homes.
As the fog of sleep waned, he found himself disoriented. He could only distantly recall returning home, and had no memory of going to bed whatsoever. The previous day seemed far away and unreal, but the dirt of the wilderness still clung to his skin, matting his hair, and he could smell its concentrated stink high up in the fleshy parts of his nose.
They relied on a cacophony of hastily repaired knickknacks for power. Lighting the city at night commandeered what little they managed to store. Hot water was for daylight hours only, and so he had been forced to slouch away to bed after only a cold, cursory flannel wash.
As wakefulness set in and he hauled his aching body free of the bed, his stomach rumbled to the sound of thunderous growling.
They needed more food. What they had brought back wouldn’t last more than a day or two, even with all the cooks’ tricks and the pitiful portion sizes they had all grown used to.
Rubbing his gut and pulling on fresh clothes, he found his gaze drawn to the walls. Whenever they returned from the wilds, it all seemed more unreal—the fact that endless crowds of people, real people, had once walked the streets outside filled him with unease.
Before the End, his house had belonged to an elderly couple. Their personals spoke of a quiet, contented lifestyle, filling the house with a quaint and wholesome atmosphere that had outlasted not only them, but the entire world. He’d kept it all exactly as it’d been left, every picture and furnishing. It was a comfort to act as custodian to something so undeniably homely. Sometimes it felt almost as though the oldies had simply gone away on a trip, leaving him as housekeep.
Little fantasies like that made the lonelier days bearable.
He crossed the room to crack open the window, shivering as a frosty breeze brushed his cheeks, carrying with it the distant clink of cutlery upon plates and the chattering of sleep-addled voices. Those on field duty were having breakfast in the hall. He suspected that Lucian would be there too, watching for slackers like a hawk as usual—and waiting for Norman to show his face.
But there would be enough time for a shower. He was grimed enough to be stiff as a board. He’d make time. As he grabbed a towel and headed into the hallway, floorboards creaking in his wake, his stomach rumbled once more.