One

The first chapter of ongoing fiction

Before she could say anything, I sat down on the stoop she was perched on. There wasn’t anything that could be moaned about; this decrepit pillar’s top had room for four people to sit above the ground below. An expression of both fear and anger took hold over her face, and there was no way to decipher which one was going to win out the battle for total dominance. This was no longer the day and age of people meeting face to face, or even having a prolonged conversation about the littlest things in life. That’s not because the world’s obsession with handheld technology or the reliance of dating websites to meet. No; the world we knew, the one everyone was raised in, died sixteen days ago. Anyone alive now is a survivor, and as I’ve learned over these past two weeks, anyone will do anything to survive.

With this fact in mind, there was no way to blame her for her reaction, as far as she knew I could be up here as a distraction for someone else to put a bullet in her skull so we could take whatever was in the small pack hanging from her shoulder. After a long moment she took her eyes off of me and looked down at the streets under out dangling feet and gazed over each stopped car. The world kept spinning, but everything on it stopped moving. Those first few days everyone clamored together in sheer curiosity, but shortly after that everyone turned on one another. Families stuck together, barricading themselves in, keeping everyone else out. Skyscrapers and other statures became a safe haven, high above the streets and dealings below.

Which is obviously what she was trying to do: segregate herself from the hell that now covered the empty streets. It was clever. Before I could take my wondering eyes off of her it was impossible to notice her fixation on something in the distance. Golden beams from the low hanging sun reflected off of her green eyes, as my gaze continued I could make out a faint reflection of what she saw. Dust kicked up one city block away as a line of men and women scurried in our direction. From what I could make out they didn’t look malicious, in fact it was the polar opposite.

One by one they tumbled. With each fallen corpse their pursuers became clearer to see. My concentration was broken by the sound of the woman sliding down the column. Hesitation could not be afforded right now, so without a moment wasted I slipped off from the top onto the roof of a desolate delivery van. She did not wait for me; before my feet were firmly planted on the cracked cement there her bag was swinging several feet in the opposite direction. I’ve been through three days by myself. I’m not going to risk another person I could have protected.

I made way with my own pursuit.