Scareship_Issue8

are others, terrified, alone, huddled in houses or roaming all over
feverishly.
Back in his apartment, the TV is still minus the news channels.
“A perfect world, for some people.” How long will the channels
last? And electricity, and water? And the phone! He runs into his
bedroom, but the message light is off. He checks anyway. The
absence of new messages doesn’t mean anything. Necessarily.
Most of the people he knows, he wouldn’t be looking for first. He
laughs: he hasn’t looked for anybody, except at work. Tommy
realizes he has to check the messages there as well.
He goes into the hall and up to the top floor. He avoids the
elevator: the thought of sudden darkness and that little box
suddenly jerking to a stop makes him nauseous. And he has
wedged the door to his floor open with a rolled and folded
newspaper.
Time to knock on all the doors. “Wake up, wake up,” he
shouts. “It’s the afternoon... Hello?” The words echo faintly in the
halls, floor by floor, in and out of the stairwell, each door an
unlikely possibility, and he’s exhausted and despairing by the time
he reaches the street.
He goes through the streets in a patternless zigzag, shouting,
“Hello?” and “Is anybody there?” Echos tell him... nothing.
Sometimes, birds complain to him. Scattered clouds between the
buildings listen, but don’t reply. They move on slowly. The trees
whisper, and he realizes that he hasn’t heard that before outside of
Central Park. Cars, storefronts, awnings, mailboxes... all listen and
tell him nothing.
He goes “shopping” at a supermarket near his apartment,
opening the place with a brick through the window and kicking out
the rest of the pane carefully. He’s the only looter in New York—
further evidence that there is nobody alive nearby. They would be
out stocking up on canned goods, bread, meat. Beer, the expensive
kind he wouldn’t normally get, but today he is going to splurge,
what the hell. Dairy, including butter. Breakfast cereal. Fresh
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