The Apocalypse

Prologue

After months of tedious searching, there it finally was, the object of her desire: a bundle of black scrunchies.
Up until now Kate had managed with a few rancid housekeeping gums, but those stupid things always got entangled in her hair and were annoying when tying up her hair as well as annoying when fumbling them out of her hair again. Of course she had thought about simply cutting it off - that would definitely be more practical. But she would only do that in the very worst case. After all her long, beautiful hair was all that's been left of her old, beautiful life in her small, beautiful loft - apart from her dead smartphone maybe.
But open hair could be a very dangerous thing as it offered much potential for accidents of any kind, so she had tortured herself with this method - up till now.
Happily Kate put her new aquirement inside her backpack, but not before she had pulled out one of the ties and switched it with the old, neon green provisorium.
Then she let out a looong sigh.
"Finally. This is great."
A big smile on her face she walked out of the convinience store that she had plundered. The sky began to turn dark.
Twilight.
Looking for so long was risky, I'll have to hurry-
Suddenly Kate heard steps behind her. In one quick and smooth motion she turned around and pulled her gun out of the holster - but too late. All that she managed to see was a pair of thick military boots and a brown trousers before her vision grew black due to a heavy knock on her temple.

When Kate came to her, the first thing she noticed was that it couldn't have been much time since she had been knocked out, a few minutes at most, as it was still considerably bright. The second thing she noticed was the hammering headache as she came into a seating position. The third thing she noticed was the absence of her backpack and her weapon.
Crap.
She wanted to go looking for the asshole that had robbed her, but she would have to do that later.
At least they left me my phone. Not that I could use it anyways.
She could feel the familiar preasure of the smartphone in her pocket and pulled it out. She did that pretty often, it was a comforting feeling to hold the little thing in her hand.
Oh, how she wished she could call her best friend Kiomi right now - may she rest in peace. Of all accidents and endeavors in her life, this was the first time she had a cellphone with her.
Kate almost laughed at the face of the irony.
But she knew there was no point in feeling bad. At least she still lived. And to stay that way meant quickly finding shelter before nightfall.

You see, the world which Kate lives in right now is pretty much the same as yours. With one big difference:
When the apocalypse hit about a year ago, evil befell the world. Entities of dark matter roamed the planet and killed every living thing they encountered. Not even plants were safe, making surviving at daylight barely easier than surviving at night. That is, because these entities only could live in the absolute darkness. Nobody knows how they actually look, how many there are, if they are intelligent and why or how they got on earth. Everyone who did try to capture, get a closer look on or interact in any way with one of these creatures did not live to tell the tale.
Kate stumbled onto her feet and started running down the street. For an efficient shelter, she needed one thing in particular: a steady source of light. But as she herself also always threw a shadow, the other thing she needed was a thick wall behind her. In the best case a complete shut off room.

Burnable stuff was almost as hard to find as food nowadays, as most ressources came from living things which gradually died off the planet without hope of revitalization or rebirth.
And of course her flashlight had been inside her backpack. But Kate always kept a lighter at her body and so there was at least a slim chance of survival.
Ok, I need an idea. Think, Kate, think!
And then she remembered the sign of a library when she had been on her way to the store before. Without another thought she ran, as fast as she could.
A few minutes later she arrived. The sun was long gone and not even the moon shone through the dark clouds. The bit of light that still lit her surroundings got dimmer with every second.
Kate scrambled up the stairs to the glass door.
Locked.
Of course.
Kate cursed.
No time.
She pulled her jacket over her head to protect her face and threw herself against the door as hard as she could. The glass in fact did not shatter - it was pretty resilient. However the old door in itself wasn't very sturdy - the hinges were rusty and the wooden frame was rotten. Luckily this was enough for Kate to gain entry without much more than a bruise on her shoulder.
Inside everything was intact. Shelves of books towered in front of Kate wherever she looked and the air was dry enough to make sure that those books would be excellent fire material. Kate's heart made a junp. Her plan could actually work!
Hastily she grabbed a box and filled it with books. She would need a few to keep the fire burning until dawn, but she also wouldn't want the flames to spread and accidentally set the whole building on fire.
Kate found a perfect corner in the next room, a smaller one with less high shelves and even pillows to sit or lay on the floor.
This must have been the children's section.
She ripped out a bunch of sites, scrunched them up and threw them into a metal bin she had found under the librarian's desk. The small holes in the metal would guarantee a good flow of air as well as lit the surroundings evenly down to the floor.
Then she set one piece of paper on fire and threw it inside as well. In the following hours she laid books into the bin, one after another, so that the fire had a steady supply without growing too big.

It happened when she had only one book left. "Short Stories - a collection of works by 2l8" it read. It was a good book, Kate had already read inside to distract herself since sleep was not an option anyways. She hadn't moved one inch out of the corner up until now.
Crrsthshsstrrrrhhss.
Just in the moment she thought she could risk it to quickly get up and get a few childrens books to further feed her life insurance she heard a screeching sound from the door, as if something heavy slowly crept through the library. Something not human. And it was definitely coming closer.
Srrrthrrssss.
If Kate would've thrown herself into the shadow, quickly grabbed a few books and jumped back to her place in the corner, she maybe would have made it in time, gaining enough fire food to last a few more hours. Maybe this would've been enough. Maybe this would've saved her in the long run. But Kate did not jump into the shadows.
Krstttrrrss.
In fact, Kate did not move at all. The sounds she heard in combination with the knowledge of how bad her situation was she simply fell into paralysis. It was only when the movement stopped right outside of the light circle that she came back to herself.
Now, of course there would've been solutions to her problem. Kate could've ignited the last book (as sad as this would've been) and thrown it next to a shelf in the hope that two light sources would soften her shadow enough to not give the monster any opportunity to sneak up on her while she grabbed more books. She could've thrown the fire at the beast in an attempt to scare it away, or even tried to burn down the whole library.
But Kate did nothing of this.
You see, Kate was unbelievably afraid. She didn't want to die, yet she could not think of any way out of this situation. The looming presence of her total extermination only a few feet away just so she could not even see it made her nearly mad.

And so, second after second went by, and Kate's panic grew bigger and bigger as the flame of the fire grew smaller and smaller.
Rttssstsshhsh. Trhstthshshtsss.
With every passing moment, the presence crept a little closer.
Trrststtsttss. Kkrksk-
Suddenly
Rrrriiiiinnnggg. Rrriiiiinnnggg
echoed the shrill sound through the library.
A cellphone?
Kate was under shock, but she almost instantly realised that this was her cellphone that rang. She even felt the vibration.
A dream. I knew it. Please, I want to wake up!
Bit she did not.
For a short moment she was convinced to finally have gone completely mad, but then she reached into her pocket and yanked her smartphone out. She knew that she had only seconds left.
With shivering fingers she picked up.
"Help mee! Heeeelp!" she screamed in panic.
"Use you flashlight!" a familiar voice answered.
Without thinking too much Kate obeyed. Not a second too late - just as her fire went out, the flashlight went on. And for the split of a second she was able to catch a glimpse of the monster that had been standing almost in front of her before it zipped back into the darkness at inhuman speed.
It was a gruesome sight so terrible, that words alone could not describe it. But Kate would never be able to forget its appearence - the picture had been burned inside her brain, inprintet on her soul. The simple sight of this entity had such a dramatic effect on her that it would change Kate completely in the course of only a few weeks.
But, she lived.
When Kate looked at the display of her phone one thing caught her eye: the number next to the little power smbol showed 0%. Her smartphone had virtually no juice - yet it worked.
How in the world?

Well, dear reader, it turns out, that those entities have such strong magnetic fields, that close to them some electric devices are working again. They are also the reason why electricity as we used to use it did not work anymore. How exactly that works however I do not know myself.
It surely makes you happy to hear, that Kate came out alive of this situation. Nearing dawn the creature disappeared from the library and at the same time Kates phone stopped working and turned black again. Before that though she took a look at the number which had called her. It was...
Kiomi?! But I saw her die?!