Turn away from the lights! “Mom, don’t look at the sky!” I shoved her back from the door.
She blinked, rubbing her eyes, as though coming out of a trance. “Evie, what is that noise?”
A roar was building in the night, the loudest, most harrowing sound I’d ever imagined.
Yet Mom’s demeanor grew icy cold. “We are not going to panic. But we will be locked inside the cellar within thirty seconds. Understood?”
The apocalypse . . . it was now. And Mel was out there alone.
“I have to call Mel!” Then I remembered she didn’t have a phone. “If I drive across the property, I can try to catch her!”
Mom clenched my arm and swung me around toward the cellar.
“I’m not going down there without Mel! I have to get to her!”
I lunged for the front door, but Mom hauled me back, her strength unreal. “Get in the cellar NOW!” she yelled over the roar. “We can’t risk it!”
The sky grew lighter—
“You both will if you try to go after her!”
I flailed against Mom, but couldn’t break her hold. Arms stretched toward the front door, I sobbed, thrashing in a frenzy as she dragged me back to the cellar stairs.
When I clung to the doorway, she yanked on me, peeling my fingers from the doorjamb. “No, Mom!
Then came a shock of light—a blast of fire that shook the ground—my eardrums ruptured—
A split second later, the force of the explosion hurled us down the stairs, the door slamming behind us.
14
DAY 246 A.F.
REQUIEM, TENNESSEE
“Arthur, what was that?” Evie asks.
I blink. And again. I’d been utterly caught up in her tale of the Flash. “What was
She shakes her head hard—as if to throw off her drug-fueled fog.
Everything is moving along according to my schedule.
“I thought I heard a thud downstairs.”
She likely had. I use the spacious cellar as my lab and containment facility. One of the little bitches down there was probably straining to reach the waste bucket. I’d left it just close enough to give them hope.
I never miss an opportunity to demonstrate the godlike power I wield over my subjects.
“Probably rats,” I tell this one, inwardly laughing at my joke. “Just ignore it. Please go on.” I’m eager to hear more of Evie’s story.
Even though I believe little of it.
She tilts her head and gives me an appraising glance. “Arthur, what were
I’m taken aback. None of my visitors has ever asked me this before, and for a moment I grope for an answer before settling on a lie. “I was preparing to go to college in the spring. Majoring in chemistry at MIT.”
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been interested in chemical concoctions, in the transmuting of one substance into another. A chemistry degree would’ve given me a good base for what I truly wanted to study.
Alchemy—the ancient occult art of potions and elixirs.
“I’d intended to be a chemist.” An
“Wow.” Evie is genuinely impressed. Her expressions are so telling. “You must be really smart.”
“I prepared all my life,” I say with false modesty. My intelligence is off the scales, unquantifiable by even the most sophisticated measurements. “So now I study on my own, still working toward the dream.” My own independent research—conducted in the cellar of my stolen lair.
God, I love to . . . learn.
But I don’t want to speak about myself any longer. Evie will have plenty of time to discover exactly what I am—and what I do. “On the side, I compile these histories. Are you ready to recount more?” When she nods, I press record. “What happened to you and your mother after the Flash?”
“I was knocked unconscious from the explosion. When I woke up, we waited in the dark for hours. At dawn, we peeked out. You can imagine what we saw.”
I could. Laserlike shafts of sunlight had blasted the earth for the course of one entire global night. Those fields of green cane she remembered dreamily would’ve been charred to ash. Anything organic—any living thing caught outside shelter—was incinerated.
And so many people, transfixed by the pretty lights, had wandered from their homes, drawn like moths to flame.
As if by design.
All the travelers who have visited me at these crossroads—those who’ve involuntarily surrendered to me their clothing, food, and even a rare daughter on occasion—brought tales from their regions. Before I slew them.
Certain details remain uniform.
Bodies of water flash-evaporated, but no rain has fallen in eight months. All plant life has been permanently destroyed; nothing will grow anew. And only a small percentage of humans and animals lived through the first night.
In the ensuing days, hundreds of millions more people perished, unable to survive the new toxic landscape.
For some reason, most females sickened and died.
An unknown number of humans mutated into “Bagmen”—contagious zombielike creatures, cursed with an unending thirst and an aversion to the sun.
Some call them hemophagics—blood-drinkers. I believe they are
They drink and drink but can never be slaked. Like my quest for knowledge. “Why do you think it happened, Evie?”
She shrugs, and curling golden locks tumble over her slim shoulders. Again, I am spellbound.
For a moment, I truly consider keeping her as my helpmeet, my companion. Though I am devoid of compassion, I do have
Loneliness preys on me. Perhaps I have at last found a girl who can understand my genius, the importance of my work.
Maybe she will excuse my eccentricities, since she herself has tasted of sweet madness.
I ruthlessly eliminate distractions.
“All the theories I’ve heard of make sense in a way,” she says. “I guess it was a solar flare.”
Yes, but we’d had them before, often. What made this one so catastrophic? Why has the entire planet gone barren?
Some say the very tilt of the earth’s axis wobbled, disturbing the balance of our world, lowering its defenses.
