Remnants (Remnants Trilogy, Book 1)

By John Hennessy

In a single heartbeat, the face of the world changes forever when virtually every living animal disappears without a trace.

When high school senior Darrel Reid wakes up to find his home empty and the neighborhood eerily silent, with the same strange mark on every door, he’s more than a little shaken. Then an alien shows up in his backyard and his life spirals into a living nightmare. Reunited with his two best friends, Maggy and Félix, the trio makes for a natural disaster bunker on the outskirts of town, but a new mark draws them into a house, where they find an unconscious schoolmate—and a trap.

Barely surviving the night, they set out in search of safety, only to discover a landscape that promises a gruesome death, as each passing day becomes more treacherous than the one before. But when Darrel is abducted, a much more sinister plot unfolds, one that leads to a single choice: Fight or go extinct.

About Remnants:

Set in a critically overpopulated near future, Remnants is told through two shifting points of view: Darrel, a gamer geek unprepared for the end of the world; and Maggy, a brainiac tech genius who wields a replica axe from Lord of the Rings. The pulse-pounding action of this apocalyptic YA thriller will appeal to fans of alien invasions, survival stories, and pure sci-fi adventure.

Release Note: This second edition was published on August 30th, 2017.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hennessy
• Release date: Apr 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310136993

John Hennessy

Born in 1988, John Hennessy became entranced by the world of fantasy and sci-fi at a young age, playing video games and reading books for many long nights/early mornings. He started writing his debut novel Life Descending during his junior year of High School in 2005. He wanted to write something different for fantasy readers, something without any stock copy/paste characters, supreme evil lords, who you never see and who are just evil because they are evil. A story without class-defined skills, mana potions, and the usual D&D adventure group out on the same old quest. He wanted to write a new story that gets away from the stale fantasies with farmer boys, blacksmith apprentices, and peasants who turn world heroes. Oh yeah, and he really wanted to get away from stories with prophecies and 'chosen ones.'After he graduated from Western Washington University in 2011, he hired Sara Stamey, the editing/publishing professor at Western, edit Life Descending (The Cry of Havoc, Book 1), finally releasing his debut after six years of crafting, learning, rewriting, and absorbing caffeine as fuel so he could stay awake at the keyboard. Life Descending has since been praised by reviewers, even earning a finalist spot in ForeWord Magazine's 2011 Book of the Year Awards. Darkness Devouring (The Cry of Havoc, Book 2) has since been released in late 2012.In 2012 he released At the End (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) as a self-published book. Having spent all his cash on Life Descending (sadly without return), the book went unedited by a professional editor. Despite this major flaw, At the End was well received by most. In February 2013, Permuted Press approached him with an offer to re-release At the End and publish the rest of the trilogy. A second edition of At the End (fully edited!) is forthcoming 2013.John now lives in the Rose Lands of Portland, Oregon, with his wife Katherine, their furry feline Phoebe, and their two budgies Lola and Pablo. He is now at work finishing The Road to Extinction Trilogy. Visit his website at: http://www.johnhennessy.net

Book preview

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An Innovation Today Book. Go Indie.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 John Hennessy

August 2017 Second Edition

All rights reserved.

http://www.johnhennessy.net

Cover by Damonza.com

Edited by Trish Ledoux

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Also by John Hennessy

Novels

The Remnants Trilogy

Book One: Remnants

Book Two: Defiants (forthcoming)

Book Three: Dirges (forthcoming)

Black Bloods Quintet

Novella Prequel: Curefinder (free eBook)

Book One: Black Blood

Book Two: Red Dusk (forthcoming)

The Cry of Havoc Saga

Book One: Life Descending

Book Two: Darkness Devouring

Short Stories

A Stalker’s Game (free eBook)

Dedication

To my Grandpa John,

whose enthusiasm to read each

chapter the day it was finished,

week by week, propelled the story onward.

And to Katherine,

who never stops believing.

Table of Contents

Also by John Hennessy

Dedication

Part One: They’re All Gone — Darrel

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Part Two: Empty Shelves — Maggy

9

10

11

12

Part Three: The Long Road South — Darrel

13

14

15

Part Four: Red Tread — Maggy

16

17

18

Part Five: The Assistant — Darrel

19

20

21

22

Part Six: Shadow Stalkers — Maggy

23

24

25

26

Part Seven: Bones as Sweet as Candy — Darrel

27

28

29

30

Part Eight: The Speech — Maggy

31

32

33

34

Part Nine: Go Engines, Go — Darrel

35

36

37

Part Ten: Project Ranger — Maggy

38

39

40

41

Part Eleven: Hero Time — Darrel

42

43

44

45

An Excerpt from Black Blood

Connect

Acknowledgements

About the Author

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WE’RE BEING OVERRUN, I shouted into my comm.

Everybody down, Maggy ordered.

All ten members of Divinity Squad ducked in unison as an intelli-bomb flew over our heads and stuck to the rock wall above us. Activating shield pulse, Félix said, enveloping us in a field of energy that repelled the exploding particles. The narrow path we stood on threatened to give out from under our feet, the weight of our battle suits stressing the fragile surface, but when the debris cloud settled, it remained solid.

We can do this, guys, Maggy encouraged the squad. Only sixteen, she was the undeniable leader of Divinity, with an astute mind for strategy and an ability to command that none of us possessed, which had earned her the nickname IQ. Plus she owned the best gear and the most kills among us, two huge factors that swayed the majority when we voted her captain. We’ve made it this far and haven’t lost anyone yet. I can see the Kransuri Brain down in the valley. All we have to do is figure out how to take out that Warpgate and stop the reinforcements from coming through and we’ve got this. We can do what no one else has accomplished. We just have to play to our strengths and work together.

I watched as Hoban, the youngest member of Divinity at fourteen, rose above the natural dirt barrier that provided our transient cover. Bullets peppered his advanced suit of armor and he smacked the rock wall at our backs.

Ah, shitballs! Are you kidding me, Hoban? After the speech I just gave, you go and die like that?

He can’t hear you, IQ, I reminded her. With seventeen years under my belt, I was at the ripe age for deployment, a fraction below the mean of Divinity.

I know that, Darrel, she said. I’m aware of what reality means.

Jar, Félix demanded. He was a month younger than me, and my closest friend.

Jar, I parroted.

Really guys? Now? Her voice strained with anger. You want me to do it now?

That’s the rule, Félix said.

I’ll do it later. Let’s get this done. Energy blasts rocked the ground as the Kransuri launched a wave of death at the dirt barrier protecting us. Right now we have to take out that Warpgate, and I think I know how.

There’s no way we can do this with only nine, Cantwell asserted, the oldest member of Divinity at twenty-two, and the second-most decorated soldier, with a black and yellow battle suit that made him look like a wasp. And without our medic this is just ridiculous.

We can do it if you follow my plan, Maggy said confidently. Darrel, Félix, and Cantwell surge into flight and draw the aggro west of the valley and away from the gate. Spiers, Nagel, and Botha jet above the gate and attack from the air. Brocato, Vaz, and I will charge in from the ground and plaster it with explosives. Everyone clear on their assignments?

What’s mine again? That was my sarcastic charm at work. The rest answered with a simple yes.

Maggy’s authoritative voice came over the comm. We can do this, guys, I know it. Go, go, go!

I looked over at Félix in his blue and yellow armor while my fingers found the belt controls to my jetpack. Before Félix raised his reflective blue visor, he nodded at me with a stolid expression that said, We got this, bromigo. Rocketing into the air, I jetted towards the Kransuri line, and pulled a dozen soldiers west with dispersed fire, rotating through the array of attachments on my REC3A assault rifle. Félix and Cantwell pulled even more troops away from the Warpgate. With the army heavily thinned, the others stormed in to pick off those that remained.

The Kransuri, an insectoid alien species with several metamorphic stages, looked like a cross between a devil’s flower mantis and a fat-tailed scorpion in its fourth phase, by far the most aggressive and physically formidable of its forms. Fourths were also the most numerous of its kind, and it took more than just one bullet to deal with an individual, for their hard carapace deflected the first few rounds thrown at them. Eventually firepower won out, given time. But time wasn’t what we had. Fourths swarmed the valley in daunting numbers, protecting the Brain, the controller of the hive mind on this planet, and what we were here to destroy.

We could really use Hoban right about now, I shouted, spraying acid on ten Fourths. The bugs lashed out as they crumpled to the ground, hissing and howling in agony.

We’re losing them, Félix warned. They know what we’re doing and are rejoining the Brain.

Keep them off us just a bit longer, Maggy screamed into her comm. Most of the charges are set.

Félix, Cantwell, and I took to the air once more, unleashing acid from above to cut off the returning soldiers. The maneuver worked, dwindling their numbers to nothing, with Spiers, Nagel, and Botha adding their acid to the devastation. The word EMPTY flashed in my heads-up display in bright red, signaling that the acid tank went dry, so I switched backed to high-velocity rounds.

Got it! Maggy declared. Clear the area. She counted down from ten. The blast that followed shook the valley, a plume of red and black ascending to the clouds, debris scattering like fireworks in all directions.

I waded through the smoldering wreckage, regrouping with the squad. Félix gave me a thumbs up. The others cheered and hollered.

Nice job, squad, Maggy said. Now all that remains is that bad boy. We peered at the monstrous Brain, a forbidding cybernetic organism twenty meters tall, with ten gargantuan legs and four arms ending in menacing pincers. Each Brain bore a unique appearance and this one, designated Doomgunner, resembled none of those previously encountered, boasting an arsenal across its body at various parts, including rotary autocannons at each of its major leg joints, hence the name. The trick is to make sure it doesn’t focus on any one of us for too long. We have to spread out in a circle, and hit—wait! Vaz, what’re you doing? Stop, you’re going to pull it!

Before we could retreat, the Brain sliced Vaz in half, and a split second later launched a hundred intelli-bombs from its cannons. Félix, next to me, raised his shield pulse and encompassed me in his protection, but the barrier only lasted long enough for me to watch everyone else die before the explosion overpowered the shield.

The world went black as a green countdown timer flashed across my eyes. After one, I was transported back to our ship that orbited the raid planet Orsaga.

FRAK! Maggy screamed. What the frak was that?

What—what happened? Hoban asked over the squad chat channel.

We wiped, I said. Our virtual reality characters stood in a circle around a transporter crystal that connected us to the instance. Right when we got to the Brain. Sweat moistened my forehead under the VR goggles, so I slid them up, wiped away the perspiration with a towel I kept in my pocket, then ambled over to the southeast corner of the VR room where a glass of ice water waited on an end table. Blue padding surrounded me on the walls and floor, the ceiling the only normal surface, white and textured. Most middle-class families dedicated a room like this one to the VR experience, not just for games but interactive movies and concerts, too, and a hundred other uses I never took the time to enjoy. Years of rolling around on the mat playing video games had imbued the fabric with sweat and now pervaded the air unless filtered out, though I hardly noticed it after a few minutes with the door closed.

Hydrated, I entered the square sensor grid that acted as the safe zone so no one would accidently crash into furniture, and rejoined the virtual world.

We needed ten players, Cantwell chimed in.

We needed Vaz and Hoban not to act like dweezles, Maggy snapped. Our chance at being the first to take down Doomgunner in reality mode is gone. I’m sure Cataclysm is doing it right now.

Sorry, guys, Hoban apologized. I got a leg cramp while squatting, and I just couldn’t stay down any longer. I’ll make it up to everyone though, I promise. I’ll farm extra Lythenium minerals for the squad vault.

No one cares about Lythenium, Brocata sighed. Doomgunner is supposed to drop the Morphell Blaster.

Plus new armor sets, Spiers added.

And Vaz? I asked. What happened, dude?

I had a crazy itch on my eyebrow, Vaz said. I think I need a new pair of goggles. Mine are too worn. They keep bugging me.

No one responded to that lame excuse. We can try again, I suggested. Even if we’re not first, we can still get the loot. The raid, a typical Saturday night activity of my senior year of high school, often ended in the same fashion, with everyone dead and placing blame. And the squad wondered why none of us wore much high-end PvE gear.

We have to get to the Brain with the tank and the heliwing intact, Maggy said. The squad debated the merits of this option and agreed. The tank, critical to surviving the intelli-bombs, needed to be the priority on our second attempt.

Before we do anything, though, you owe the jar twice, Félix said. Of the ten Divinity members, Félix, Maggy, and I were the only friends in real life; the others I didn’t know beyond their voices and pictures from various social media apps. Their computer-generated faces, like mine, didn’t look anything like their real ones.

Twice? The confusion in Maggy’s voice left room for doubt.

Once for when Hoban died and again after we wiped.

Oh, frak you guys, euphemisms don’t count. You know that.

We’ll have to get clarification from Debra about that, I joked. Debra, Maggy’s mother, disliked the use of curse words, and three months ago set out to correct her daughter’s foul mouth with a punishment jar. For every curse Maggy was caught saying, she had to pay five dollars to the jar, all of which she kept secret from us until we overheard her mom demanding payment after a particularly bad raid wipe a few weeks into the experiment. Since then Félix and I had taken over as profanity police.

Hey, my dad just came home, and he’s in one of those moods, Félix announced. I don’t think I can—

Félix’s character vanished from the room in midsentence, a bad sign. That was no logoff, Maggy said.

He’ll be fine, I told her. He’s always fine. Someone in the squad coughed awkwardly. Félix’s home life was an uncomfortable topic that most of us avoided. His dad had a predilection for alcohol, which didn’t work well with his temper, and once in a while resulted in a pulled power cord, or something much worse that he’d have to hide at school the next day.

Well, Cantwell started. I guess that ends raiding for the night. Anyone want to do the Temple Floor quest?

Sure, why not, Spiers said.

Maggy jumped Antillica, the squad ship, back to Terran occupied space and we dispersed to pursue different interests. Waves of Extinction, the expansion to Death Squad, had only been out two weeks and there was a lot yet to explore even though we all had level capped within a week.

It’s only ten, I noted. You up for two-v-two, IQ?

Yeah, all right. We formed a group and joined our own chat channel. Do you think we should call the police, Blue? Like the lump in her throat, her worry was palpable.

Blue—my nickname. What started as Big Blue—I was built with the size of a lineman who’d never stepped foot in a weight room—was eventually trimmed to just Blue. Unfortunately my body didn’t follow suit with the reduction. The moniker described a lot about me: it was my favorite color, and thus the majority of my clothing came in shades of blue, and it pointed out the strange deep blue of my eyes. We don’t know what happened. It could be nothing.

I don’t think it’s nothing. I texted him and he hasn’t responded.

His dad always takes his phone away when he pulls the plug. I scrolled through the list of player-versus-player arenas. The expansion added over thirty new combat zones, and we hadn’t tested most of them.

"Hang on, he wrote back. He said, Fine. Talk tomorrow. Goodnight. That doesn’t sound too good."

He wouldn’t lie about it. I was never very good at calming Maggy down when it came to Félix. The best I could offer was distraction. It worked for me, allowed me not to think about it too much, which Félix requested I do after I called the cops once, four or five years ago. The phone call resulted in a night spent in the drunk tank for his dad, and that only made the situation worse, not better. Let’s try the new desert CZ. My suggestion diverted her back to the game, as I knew it would—she hated desert maps.

I’d rather try one of the jungle zones, she said. From that launch point we played through the night and into the morning, climbing our way up the PvP rankings with every victory. We were in the middle of a match, my finger holding down the trigger on my REC3A assault rifle controller, when my VR goggles switched from a craggy upland to blackness and the flashing red words SERVER CONNECTION LOST.

Oh, come on! I screamed. I tore off my goggles, bolted for the PlayStation Infinity in the northeast corner of the padded room, and hit the power button. The modem, sitting next to the game console, displayed an unlit Internet symbol, meaning a dead line. Restarting the connection did nothing, but that didn’t stop me from trying two more times, hoping it would solve the problem because that was the only measure I knew. Unlike Maggy, who was a tech wizard, my competence with electronics maxed out at the troubleshooting basics.

When I checked my phone, the signal strength read zero bars. So the issue originated with the service provider, which meant it was beyond my ability to fix. Past two in the morning, I decided to call it a night. How disappointing, because we were on a roll, hitting a real groove with IQ on sniper and me spouting molten fire with my flamethrower.

Almost forgetting the VR gloves and sensor patches on my legs, I stripped them off and put them away in a drawer, otherwise I’d never hear the end of it in the morning, a promise my mother made every day of the week. The lights shut off after I left the VR room and entered the kitchen. The mellow scent of pine trees struck my nose with a cool touch of peppermint from the aerosol deodorizers scattered around the house. Mom preferred the smell of freshness to sweat and must, and I didn’t blame her. Dad and I could really stink it up if left to our own hygiene routines.

On the dining room table, the latest and last college rejection letter stared back at me, full of judgment and condemnation. I picked it up and read it again. My fingers impulsively tightened on the paper, desiring nothing more than to wad it into a ball and toss it in the trash, but something stopped me. I’ll deal with you tomorrow, I said. Shaking my head, I folded the letter back up, placed it on the table, and trudged upstairs to a welcoming bed.

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THE HOUSE WAS normally quiet on Sundays, but this was unusually quiet. Dad liked to pass the day in the garage woodworking, and Mom could spend every moment of her life fussing over the yard and her precious plants. No hammering, sawing, or cursing came from the garage, and no busy sounds of my mother shuffling to tidy up disturbed the house.

I lit up my phone: 11:13. Getting up before noon was also unusual for a Sunday, but I felt rested, so I swung my legs out of bed and stumbled the short distance to my computer chair. The screen reported the same news as my phone, no service, which meant I’d have to survive the real world for the day. Mom would probably put me to work in the flowerbeds. Ouch.

My laundry hamper, overflowing with unwashed clothes, choked the room with staleness. I opened the window to a shock of cold air, gathered up the dirty garments that didn’t fit, stuffed them into the hamper, and plodded downstairs to the laundry room where I dumped off the load.

The modem was still dead, as I knew it would be, and concluded this was the reason for the silence: my parents had gone to the store to resolve the issue. After all, a house without the Internet was a dull house indeed. Luckily, it was March and not September through the first of February, or my dad would’ve gone ballistic without football. Though if he’d become truly desperate he could’ve tuned in using the local broadcast input, an option none of us had bothered with since the installation of the satellite dish over ten years ago.

The rejection letter, in the same spot on the table, glared at me. I ignored it as I prepared breakfast, intent to not let it spoil a school-free day.

With a bowl of sugarcoated wheat flakes, I plopped down on the family room couch, and said, On, Bruce. The brand new twenty-five decimeter screen, complete with over thirty thousand horizontal pixels, fired up. Bruce, the chosen name of the software intelligence, controlled all the voice commands. Load ‘StarCraft: The Fourth Armada,’ season two, episode six. The TV switched from the menu to the selected episode, playing from where I left it a couple of days ago.

Halfway through the bowl, a roar rattled the walls, but it wasn’t coming from the surround sound speakers. Bruce, pause. The show stopped. That odd silence overwhelmed the house again, unnatural to my ears, a signal that something in the world was off, out of balance. I couldn’t quite place my finger on it though.

A roar shook the walls a second time, much closer now, accompanied by a scream. I appraised the street through the open curtains. Another scream compelled me to investigate further, scampering to the giant window. I scanned left, right, left one more time. Nothing.

Then something. Movement down the road, a streak of legs and flailing arms. The screams belonged to a man, young, perhaps in his early twenties. Help! Anyone—anyone! Help! Please!

From above, out of my visual field, dropped a bulk of yellowish fur. The attack, so abrupt and horrific, sent a staggering jolt to every part of my body. The bowl in my hands crashed to the floor and cracked like an egg. The man shrieked in agony as monstrous teeth ripped open his back, blood drenching the beast’s muzzle and the asphalt, all right in front of my family room window.

I gagged at the sight. The animal glanced my way and I ducked to the floor, not daring to breathe, bits of porcelain sticking into my flesh with a thin coating of milk. The man’s screams started to grow farther apart, weakening, and faded into the distance as if he were being hauled away. On my belly like a caterpillar, I crawled to the staircase, out of sight of the glass pane, and scurried to my bedroom, peeking out the open window. The beast, an unfathomable feline mutation, was dragging the man down the street. The man’s wound left a trail of blood so vivid it burned an image in my mind that I’d never forget.

What is this? What the hell is happening?

The man called for help one last time before he was out of earshot. Only silence answered him. The whole incident seemed like a scene from a movie. I kept waiting for someone to yell, cut, or that’s a wrap, or some other cliché a film director would say on TV. No one said anything. In fact, I didn’t see anyone else in the neighborhood, like I was the sole witness to this unimaginable atrocity.

Impossible. Not everyone could be at the store. I scanned Mrs. Cowinski’s house across the road. The old lady never went anywhere; she didn’t even do her own grocery shopping. Surely she saw what I had. You could find her spying through her front window at all hours of the day, seven days a week. Yet for some reason she was uncharacteristically absent from her perch.

Then I noticed the mark on her door: a slanted line with three lines pointing upward, like a tilted E, colored black and red. Examining the houses, the same symbol was etched into all the doors within sight.

An ominous chill ran up my spine.

My gut twisted into a thousand knots, unable to process the last few minutes. I backed away from the window, bumped into my desk, and collapsed to my bed.

That wasn’t real. No way. It couldn’t be. Panic set in. I cleared my throat, always a bad habit of mine. An idea sprouted in my brain and grew into a plan as I lay there. My feet found the floor and I bolted downstairs, grabbed a kitchen knife, and entered the backyard through the laundry room. Karl, my neighbor and friend since the sixth grade, would’ve seen the same thing, if it were real. Maybe it was a movie set and I didn’t know about it. Things like that happened when you played as many hours as I did. Three years ago I lost track of time so much that I hadn’t even known it was New Year’s Eve until Félix asked me how we were going to celebrate. So, yeah, it was in the realm of possibility.

Under the cover of a patio chair, I surveyed the terrain, a field of grass and flowerbeds hemmed in by various trees. A stillness clenched the atmosphere. Why is it so quiet? Try as I might, the answer still eluded me. If my parents saw me now, crouched behind deck furniture, chef’s knife in hand, they’d think I lost it for certain. Part of me believed I had.

The boundary between our backyard and the Bogdanovic’s, which consisted of a row of arborvitae on their side and a wooden fence on ours, made it no easy task for me to slip from yard to yard unseen from the road. Scaling the fence, an option for some but not me, left only one route: the front gate. I unlatched the gate, hooked a hard right, and squeezed between the tall evergreens, accounting for the small descent. A short wooden fence enclosed Karl’s place, easy enough to climb over even for me, and ten seconds later I said goodbye to the Bogdanovic’s backyard and landed in Karl’s.

Karl O’Donovan’s ugly lime-green house popped into view after navigating the shrubs and overgrown weeds of his tangled yard. I knocked on his sliding glass door. A minute went by, so I knocked again, this time with more urgency. Karl, I whispered loudly. Karl, you home? I grew impatient, or nervous, or both, and sidled up to the southeast side of the house. Unlike most houses on the block, whose garages faced the street, Karl’s faced the forest of Whatcom Falls Park at the end of our peaceful little cul-de-sac on Rhododendron Way. I spied through the window: two cars. Peeping around the garage to the curb, I spotted Karl’s beat-up Ford Fairlane parked at a crooked angle.

Someone had to be home, unless the entire family went for a stroll through the park, but that wasn’t Karl’s thing—he hated the outdoors. After one more try, I gave up, rooted around his back patio, uncovered his hide-a-key, and inserted it into the backdoor. The lock, of course, wasn’t bolted, and the door swung in when I twisted the knob. I stashed the knife under a leafy plant and crept inside.

Karl, you awake? Hello? Anyone? The family room, devoid of life, greeted me with a creak. At this point in my seventeen years, roaming around Karl’s house, uninvited and without anyone’s consent or awareness, was the creepiest thing I’d ever done. I felt like an intruder. Despite this, I didn’t cease my search, ascending the stairs to the first landing. Karl? Anyone? This is weirding me out, dude. Say something already. I cracked Karl’s bedroom door, half expecting him to be asleep in the buff, covers off, an unplanned joke at the expense of my retinas. An empty bed laughed at me as I shielded my eyes in assumption.

I browsed around. His phone, propped up against his computer tower, spoke volumes about the situation. There was nothing ordinary about it. People our age didn’t leave their phones behind unless circumstance required it. Even though password protected, I lit up the device to see if he had service. This time my prediction came true. His Internet was also down, and they used a different company than we did, which meant a large-scale problem.

Where did you go without driving and without your phone? The question plagued me as I exited the backdoor, retrieved my knife, and replaced the hide-a-key in its secret garden gnome residence. If their cars are home but they’re gone, and my parents are gone . . .

I hurdled the fence, sprinted up the slope, cut through the arborvitae, and raced for the backyard gate. Sped through the laundry room, down the hall, and into the garage. I could feel my jaw drop in terror. No. I shook my head. No way. Both cars, parked in their cozy spots, gave no hints of recent usage.

Just to make sure, I investigated my parent’s bedroom before I flew off the edge of sanity and into the abyss of a psychotic break. The bed was empty, same as the rest of the house. The comforter, wrinkled with usage—Mom always made their bed—explained the scene: they’d been taken in their sleep. I examined the room with a keener eye and detected no sign of struggle. It was as if they’d simply vanished, abducted in the night like a thief stealing art, leaving behind no clues to follow.

I crumpled to the bed, the world out of focus, as if a doctor had just told me I had a month to live and my brain couldn’t handle the blow. My face fell into my hands. Tears flooded my flushed skin, and my body convulsed in intense waves. By the time I collected my emotions, or what pieces I could manage, the sun had crossed over the midday hump. Injecting my mood with manufactured resolve, I embarked to explore the rest of the block.

The stream of blood in the middle of the street forced me to pause for a moment and consider the best way to proceed. Obviously, I couldn’t go walking about in broad daylight. I had to employ stealth, or the art of ninja, as Splinter might say to his four sons. The glaring hiccup: I didn’t possess a stealthy bone in my body. My eyes roamed the neighborhood from my bedroom window and mapped out a path. A loop from backyard to backyard of the closest houses would eliminate any doubt and might provide more answers. Heavy emphasis on might.

With another injection of determination, I gripped my knife and entered the backyard again, following the same route as before into Karl’s yard, but this time I continued into the thick coverage of the park, which wasn’t a normal park with open grassy fields, but rather a series of hiking paths through dense woodland. Circumventing the exposed cul-de-sac, I trudged through the brush and trees, wishing I’d worn pants and something with long sleeves, the plant life scraping and poking my limbs the entire way to the hidden house across the street. Most of the time I forgot the house even existed, blocked from the road by greenery, a longer driveway giving it space from the road.

It took an hour, maybe two, to search most of the houses on the block. I crept around as quietly as I could, stumbled into a few walls from time to time, knocked over some glassware on accident, and tripped over a wheelbarrow while avoiding a concealed rake. All in all, I escaped without making too much noise pollution. For me, at least.

By the last house, I drew the only possible conclusion: everyone was gone. The shock of it throttled my throat. Unable to breathe, I rushed home to my inhaler, shook for ten seconds, puffed once, and held until a cough broke loose. Then repeated. Asthma, a plague of the early twenty-first century that afflicted a fifth of the world, was now combatted rigorously by medicine, making it little more than a nuisance. I remembered from history class that it had something to do with a lack of air quality control starting in the 1970’s and wasn’t truly dealt with until the ’30’s, but all the details were lost in a haze that school so often produced, a gap between paying attention and caring for the subject matter. Overpopulation factored in somehow; there wasn’t much it didn’t affect.

When I regained my lungs, I decided it was time to move on and brave a trip to Félix’s. So far I hated the statistics I’d collected, but maybe, just maybe he’d be there.

For a third time I found myself in Karl’s backyard, then hit the park trail that connected to Iowa Drive, the next road down from my block, where Félix lived. His place sat nine houses west of where the trail emerged from the park. A short distance, granted, but before I reached the sidewalk, I halted. Two houses away, in the front yard, an animal the size of a rhino lay on its stomach in the grass, tearing apart a woman’s body.

Disoriented by the image, I fled home, and puked in one of my mother’s flowerbeds. It’s not real, I lied to myself. More denial, more delusion. I wanted to tell myself it was only a dream, but instead I hurried inside, locked all the doors, lowered every blind, and drew shut all the curtains.

The house, completely dark, shuddered. Or was that me? I checked my phone for reception. No change. What the hell is going on? What was that thing? An alien? How? Why? Questions overwhelmed my brain.

To calm down, I did something simple. Loading up my toothbrush with paste, I brushed my teeth, then rinsed with mouthwash to get rid of the acrid taste stuck on my tongue and gums. Sitting on the couch, I tried to form a new plan, but my mind couldn’t let go of that image of ripping flesh. Attacked again by nausea, I resumed watching the episode from breakfast, and the next ten after that, the volume barely above a whisper. I thought about fortifying the house, but that seemed pointless; if I truly were the last person on earth, what chance did I have against an army from another world?

When night fell, I retreated to my room with enough food and water to last several days. I dragged furniture from the guest bedroom that we used more for storage than anything and blockaded the stairs. My hope was that the obstruction would permit me some peace of mind so that I could sleep, but of course that was just wishful thinking. I knew the next time I fell asleep, it’d be because I was dead.

I scanned the neighborhood a hundred times through my window. Lights still shined in the houses, left on by residents before they were snatched from their homes. Nothing disturbed the absolute quiet of the street. The stillness twisted my stomach. I replaced the blinds and climbed into bed. The TV powered up across the room and the next season of StarCraft began. I turned off my nightstand lamp and settled in for the longest night of my life.

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MY ROOM BECAME darker the longer I stared at the ceiling. Master Chief pointed his MA5B at my face from a remade Halo: Combat Evolved poster. Everything was so still, so quiet. It was almost as if I lived on a mountaintop, in a sanctuary of solitude. Darrel Reid, the last dude on Earth—seventeen and soon to be dead.

The alarm clock on the nightstand pierced my ears as if it sought to kill me. I hated that sound, always had, and probably always would. Although this would probably be the last time I listened to it. Would that be so bad?

Programmed for a six thirty wake-up call during the school week, I forgot to tell it school was canceled, forever. Slapping the clock to shut off the damnable noise, I moved as if a reptile waking up in the cold, blood running slower than slow. Numb to existence, maybe, but I had never experienced this feeling before; I could’ve misinterpreted the emptiness. My finger must have made it to the correct button because the alarm finally ceased.

Perched on my desk, the computer tower pulsed with a soft blue glow, the black tape obscuring the LED peeled back in defeat. My eyes darted to the odd, disco ball-looking object Maggy had made Félix and me, which hung a sliver to the right of my feet, so that if it fell, it would crash on the floor and not shatter on my skin. The mirrored shell reflected the blue light in a hundred directions. It had taken a while to warm up to the device, dubbed the Spy Interference Machine, or SIM, and eventually I had to cover any LED indicator—which every tech gadget possessed—to prevent it from catching light and darken the room at night. It would’ve been simpler to take down the SIM, but Maggy had built it for me and so there it dangled. Its purpose, according to Maggy, was to disrupt spy equipment so that no one could listen in on our super secret conversations of world conspiracies, most of which revolved around aliens or Bigfoot. In actuality, I didn’t think it did anything, though I often wondered if she gifted them to spy on us. But that wasn’t Maggy’s style.

My phone, buried in my sheets along with my headphones, reported that the world was back to normal when I unlocked the screen. The bars were at max, the modem and Li-Fi router were up and running, and there was even a newscast alert on my home screen that read: DARREL, DON’T WORRY, MOM AND DAD ARE DOWNSTAIRS EATING BREAKFAST. YOUR WORLD WASN’T DESTROYED AFTER ALL. HURRAY!

Okay, so that was all bullshit. Nothing had changed during the night. I hadn’t slept a wink, and after eight hours of TV I switched to music to help drift off, but that failed to provide the usual comfort and relaxation. So then I just stared into space, for hours, and came to this verdict: today was my last day on this planet.

It was hard to get out of bed with this in mind. I cleared my throat. Stupid tic. Just go away already! But it never would. As I rolled out of bed, I contemplated my life and the funny decisions I’d made, like my futon bed from freshman year. At one time I believed it would be awesome for its versatility, giving my room way more space, until the crummy mattress kinked my neck so badly my life literally turned on its side. It took several visits to a chiropractor to level my eyes parallel with my shoulders. The very next day my parents bought a normal mattress and I abandoned my vision of gaining twelve decimeters of room in the daytime.

And that was what my life had been, a series of random actions that led from one day to another, full of miscues and small achievements, none of which mattered much when you were about to die.

I replaced the black tape over the tower LED and drifted into the kitchen, possibly thirty minutes later, or maybe three. Where did time go these days? If I only knew, but I wasn’t certain about anything anymore, except that I was about to eat my last meal. Better make it count, Darrel.

Clearing my throat, my eyes glazed over, and the cabinets vanished, hidden in a mist that did not exist. Spacing out was a large part of my survival mode for the last few hours, trapped in a perpetual daze.

Reality came back as a finger nudged a spoon that sat in wait on the counter. The countertops were designed to look like wood, a modern kitchen built of neo-plastic, a type of super plastic that I knew very little about. Maybe I should’ve paid more attention in school. The feeling of regret swelled in my chest, and I couldn’t shake it.

I poured a bowl of cereal. Sugarcoated wheat flakes, I could’ve eaten them every day for the rest of my life, but the crumbs from the bottom slid out and announced an empty bag. Mom was supposed to get more yesterday . . . The thought prompted me to glance at the fridge and the grocery list clinging to the metallic surface. I squeezed my eyes closed to stop the tears. I’d already done enough of that.

Drifting off into la-la land, reality slipped away again, and by the time I made it to the couch, the flakes were soggy. Damn. Some last meal, right? Still had an unopened box of corn puffs though, so maybe I’d follow up this bowl with seconds.

The couch was