February 29

Chapter 2

It was cold. So cold. So frigid that my breath came out in frosty, iced puffs of vapor. My teeth chattered, and my arms were plagued with gooseflesh. My hands were ice. I couldn't feel my feet. I opened my eyes slowly, glancing around.

I didn't know how long I'd been unconscious, or if I were even dead. I didn't think to check the time. My eyes lay upon body after body of immobile people. Blood was splattered crudely on each of their heads. Occasionally, I would find the object that had hit them. Bricks that had a splash of red. A small though sparked in my mind. Either I was the first to wake up, or they wouldn't be waking up at all...

I rubbed my arms and hands together, trying to conjure some heat. It wasn't snowing. There was no wind. The heater was on. So why was I so cold? I looked out the window.

The sun was still gone, hidden by the giant black thing. Now it was darker than ever. That thing, it was so absolute. To go inside would be like...like to fall forever. A twinge of fear gripped me. If the sun was gone, everything would be gone. Every food chain, every thing for that matter, was branched off the sun. Plants would die, animals would die.

We would die.

"Ethan!" I heard a sharp voice whisper. I turned at the sound of my name. My gaze fell on Dean, who was still curled up in a ball. I crawled over to him.

"What the hell?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "You just got hit and fell. I thought you were dead too. Jessica...she didn't duck fast enough either. She..." he trailed off.

"Oh no," I whispered. "What going on? What's with the sun? Why is it gone?"

"I don't know the answer to any of your questions," Dean snapped, which was usual for him. "But I know one thing. We need to get out of here. Now."

I gave him a quizzical look. Dean's eyes shifted from left to right, as if to see if someone were watching. He leaned close.

"Do you believe in aliens?" he asked. I would have laughed another time, but he looked dead serious, evaporating the little humor in his question. I nodded uncertainly. "There are things here. Shadow things. I, I saw one. It just drifted in here, scanned the place, and left."

"Wait," I said, putting a hand up. "What did it look like?"

"Uhm," he started, thinking. His face contorted in thought. His eyebrows rose in inquiry. "I don't remember. I just," he paused. "It was just there, pictured clearly in my mind, but now it's gone."

"You're not joking, are you?"

He glared at me angrily, then his eyes clouded with fear. A lone tear fell down his cheek. "It took her," Dean said softly. "It almost saw me. I could feel it looking for me. But it took Jessica."

I felt sick to my stomach. I'd seen her every day since I'd been going here. I hadn't had the time to introduce myself, but seeing her was a reassurance. It told me that the day would be as average as any other. "Where did it go?"

"Out there, somewhere. Who knows?" He began to rock back and forth. "It took Jessica away and killed everyone else but us." He gulped. "What the hell is happening?"

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "But we need to get out of here. This building is unstable. It could fall at any given moment." I'd known about Dean's crush on Jessica for a while. I small smile tugged at my lips. "Maybe we can go find her."

"Everyone dead," he murmured, standing. "Mrs. Hock. Mark. Samantha. Bentley. I did not expect any of this when I walked in this morning. Everyone dead."

"Yeah well," I said, trying and failing to shake it off. I felt tears of my own pull at my eyes too. People I'd never see again. "Let's not join them."