"Evacuate. Evacuate." A loudspeaker had been set up in the middle of the street, propped up by concrete boxes, blasting its message for those who may have missed it earlier, or come late to the party, as Ryan and Brendon had done.
It was incredible how fast a place could turn into a stereotypical ghost town. Unnerving. Just this morning the bustle of commuters and the slam of shop doors opening must have been omnipotent: familiar and warm. Now, cars lay stranded like discarded toys parked carelessly on the curb. The wind blew litter and newspapers over their feet. Even the sky seemed to have lost some of its vibrancy, blues melting into a dirty grey.
"Guess the wave is heading this way," Brendon broke the unnatural silence. "Even the animals have disappeared."
"We should go," Ryan shivered, despite the heat. He was experiencing the sort of irrational fear you feel when you think something could creep up behind you. Except it was the knowledge that there was nothing left to creep up behind him which caused the fear.
"Evacuate. Evacuate." The speaker echoed his thoughts.
"Ryan... I don't want to make light of the situation, but we really need the can opener. Or more food. I mean..." He dropped to his knees and began to sort through the bag, emptying some of the contents. "There's not much here. Some of it," he held up an apple. "Will go bad within a week. And money, what use is that if every place we come across looks like this?"
"Fine," Ryan tugged at his hair in frustration. "You can take things from the shops."
Brendon smiled gratefully. He walked to the first store, which had a rather indestructible looking metal grate in front of it. He shook it, without much hope, gave it a half hearted kick, and gave up.
"Maybe the next one."
He tried unsuccessfully to break in three more times before finding a method that worked, which was chucking a large rock at unprotected glass. The sound was like a clap of thunder on a cloudless day, startling Ryan, who'd grown used to only footsteps breaking the silence.
"Jesus, Brendon," he said through gritted teeth, angry that the isolation of the town was making him feel fragile and brittle, as if he too could shatter as easily as the glass.
Brendon stepped carefully over it, but Ryan's eyes were drawn to something else. The door next to the shop was ajar. Through it, he could make out the outline of stairs in the semi darkness.
He really could not say what it was about the image that drew him in, but he couldn't tear his eyes away and, inexplicably, a different type of tear was threatening to spill out of them. He took a hesitant step forwards, fingers closing around the doorknob. The tension growing in his body had convinced him that the metal sphere would give him an electric shock, or feel deathly cold, or something that would validate the attention he gave it. It felt normal.
The door opened silently and he stepped into the dark, carpeted stairway. It felt cool and airless, with a stuffy, human smell which all visitors had probably lovingly associated with the house, but which the residents hardly noticed.
It was someone's home; that much was obvious from the faded baby pictures and watercolour paintings lining the wall.
The sense of the place having been lived in and loved grew as he entered the flat itself, and became overpowering once he entered one of the bedrooms.
YOU ARE READING
Deus Ex Diluvium (Ryden)
AdventureAt the end of the world, where is there left to run? It doesn't matter, Brendon claims, as long as you keep running. Run, like Ryan, who never made much of the life he had and didn't care much about losing it, but runs anyway. Run, like Brendon, a p...
