Violet Sky

Violet Sky: Solar Evanescence

     A silence had swept over the city, and it was silence of two parts. The first was the usual absence of obnoxious noise. Heard, rather than felt, by the ears. The second was a much deeper silence. Burned into the very soul, it was a silence of horror, of terror, of dread, and of the orange glow of the afternoon sun turning a cold violet, then vanishing, yet some of its terrible light remained.

Night had fallen with only a glow like that of a full moon, and it had happened in seconds. Nothing moved. Cars were parked in the road, people gaped at the sky then slowly turned toward each other, unable to come to terms with what was just witnessed.

Then someone screamed.

Steven saw the woman, she was clutching her head between her hands and shrieking in panic. No, wait, not panic. As he got closer he could see there was something else. The sudden sound had brought the statues back to themselves. People began running, yelling, and calling out for loved ones. The people closest to the woman tried to help her, but she wouldn't stop screaming.

Her eyes were wet and bulging, her mouth was agape, like she was gasping but no air came in, blood soaked the sides of her neck, coming from her ears.

"Ma'am, calm down! Dear lord, look at her ears!" The closest man was trying to shush the banshee but she wouldn't stop. By this time she had held a scream for forty seconds or more, barely taking breaths. Her voice was cracking but still she kept up.

Until she didn't.

Suddenly, she dropped. Limp as a doll, she slammed the sidewalk with such force Steven could hear cracks. Though whether it was bone or concrete, he couldn't tell. The witnesses were as motionless as the woman now was. Steven reached for the woman's neck to check for a pulse. Where is it? Come on, come on. There! He found it. Fleeting, but there.

"We need to get her to a hospital. Somebody call an ambulance!" Steven called to whoever listened. Terrible day to leave my phone at the house, he thought.

"The lines are down. I can't get a signal!" a man called back. What do I do, what do I do? Think Steven! He was panicking at this point. The hospital was 8 blocks North-east, too far to carry her. A pharmacy might have medicine, but would he know what to look for? Probably not. Though it would still have a first aid kit, and he remembers seeing a Walgreens one block west, towards his work. Amidst his thoughts, Steven didn't notice that now the only pulse he felt was his own. The woman was gone.

His vision darkened. He stood up only to find himself falling again. It felt like fell forever. Did I really watch someone die? He could believe it. A pair of hands gripping his shoulders lifted him from the darkness and onto his feet. Though it was still dark. He looked up. Moments ago the sun was red-orange in its brilliant presence. Now only a ghostly blue hum of light painted the darkening sky.

Steven could still see his surroundings fairly well, the sun's light still lingered like the moon, but he could see stars in the luminous void. Then, a thread of cold light waved. Then another. Soon, before his very eyes, Steven witnessed an effect akin to the Aurora Borealis in purples and blues above all of New York and into New Jersey. It spanned for miles and perhaps reached half the globe. A cold beauty in a cold world. His gaze fell back on the woman. Cold world.

Someone across the street opened a car door.

"Hey, everybody! Come hear this!" a lady said as she turned the volume up to its loudest. Steven the end of a sentence.

"-dent of the United States." a pause, then a deep voice began, "My fellow Americans, I bring damning news for this nation and the world. As you know, our sun is no longer in the skies above us, and its light is nowhere to be seen. NASA has said very little and refuses to respond to our questions. What we do know is that, though sol no longer shines, we have detected a strange source of heat outside of Earth's atmosphere no doubt due to many solar flares by the sun in its death throes. These flares are also the cause for the downing of many cellular lines and power outages worldwide that you may be experiencing.

We know very little on what is going on but what we do know doesn't bode well for humanity. We may be looking at an extinction level event." His voice caught on "extinction."

"At this time I ask all Americans to gather non-perishable foods and warm clothes to prepare for a deadly winter to come early. Next I tell you to find shelter with power enough to provide heat for many months. We cannot count on the anomaly outside our atmosphere to provide enough heat to sustain us. Do not, I say, turn on your fellow man but be generous and sharing. We must stick together in this crisis or we will certainly destroy ourselves. This is all I can tell you. I will continue to make information available as we receive it. God help us, and God bless the United States."

Steven's mind was racing. His father always had a generator and hoarded gas like the apocalypse was tomorrow. Yesterday he was right. Go back to my apartment, pack up, and go to my parent's house. Sounds like a plan.

He was about to be on his way when something caught his eye back on the sidewalk. He scanned the place he had been moments before. What had I seen? The body of the woman lay there unmoving, but something was off. There it was again, the arm of the woman moved. But it wasn't the twitching of a corpse. The arm rubbed her face limply. Next her legs pulled themselves next to her, in a weird fetal position.

Steven stared in awe as the woman pushed herself onto her knees and looked around her. Her eyes were unfocused and never lingered on anything. They passed over Steven, the only person who noticed her, and instead finally rested on a group of people, friends probably, huddling around the hood of a car working out a plan of action. Finally the woman stood.

He tried and failed to bring words to his lips, only able to watch as the formerly dead woman walked, at first slowly as if unfamiliar with this form of movement, then quickly as she gained speed. Moving towards the huddled group, she broke into a sprint only fifty feet away. She didn't stop as she got closer, only let out a spine chilling screech before lunging and tackling the closest man, bringing him down in surprise while his face collided with the hood of the car. The others immediately reacted, some jumping away, while most grabbed at the woman to pull her off.

She bit and swung at the group, bruising a few arms and drawing blood out of a bit hand, before someone finally punched her hard on the cheek. She fell off her victim, who has yet to move, and tried to get back up before someone pinned her arms behind her. She screamed and the people asked her questions but Steven had already decided he'd seen enough.

Without a bus, Steven made it to his apartment an hour and a half later to begin packing. He settled for the essentials- clothes, food, toothbrush, soap-then grabbed his keys and left for his car.

Driving through the city proved hazardous. Twice he almost hit people who forgot that roads were for cars, and four times he had to find a detour because of a dozen abandoned cars. He was about to make it out of the city when a group of thirty people ran out in front of him, yelling at each other with looks of terror.

I understand the hurry but they need to watch out. The roads are still in use. Another group of about ten came running in front shortly after the larger group, except these men and women all had something in common: bloody ears. He saw now the blank look in their eyes as they chased their quarry through a large alley. I gotta get out of here.

The road looked clear from here on out, so Steven went as fast as he could while still safely avoiding the unmoving cars parked haphazardly on a straight road. When he saw the head of a man run right in front of him, he barely had time to swerve himself away and smash into a car. The world started to go black as the last thing Steven saw was a pair of blank eyes in the mirror moving closer.