Confession

The Fall

I have a confession to make as I sit here, alone. Truly alone... They all left me alone...

I think back to a few days after it all began. I was with a group. We had been hiding for days. We managed to get a minivan and fuel. We escaped this city and were now on the road, heading for home back in St George. I sat in the back. The driver, my brother, and his best friend sat upfront arguing about where to go next.

For days now, the sky had been pitch black. The Sun and stars seemed to have been blinked out of existence and I could see no clouds anywhere. When the sun had not risen the after the night this all began, many people around us began to panic. We drove down a four lane highway coming from Las Vegas, Nevada heading northeast. We had not seen a single vehicle on the road since we left Vegas. There was five of us in the minivan. My brother, Mark, drove while his best friend, Steven, stared at a map. He had relied so heavily on technology his whole life, that when the phones lost service, he didn't know what to do.

The other two people in the car were strangers. A couple that we had happened upon while looking for transport out of the city. They had the van and let us in when we needed it most. Melissa and Nick sat next to each next to me as I stared out of the window. They mumbled things to each other and they kept trying their phones over and over as Melissa cried.

And then there's me, the one and only, Jake. We drove on to the next town in hopes of finding other people who knew what was going on. We passed by a sign that read, "Hidden Valley next exit".

"I think that doesn't have anything, just farm lands. Keep going, we'll stop in Glendale." Steven said.

Eventually, we found ourselves at the exit to "Glendale Moapa".

"We gotta stop and get gas. Find out where the police station is." Mark said as he sighed. "They had better have working phones."

"At the bottom of the off ramp, take a right." Steven responded as they left the highway.

"Where are we going?" Nick asked.

Steven turned back to say, "If I'm reading this right, there's a gas station this way. We can ask them if they know anything and use their phones." Nick nodded in response and we drove towards the gas station.

The ground as well as structures and roads were somehow luminescent enough to see without much trouble, but the sky put a sort of despair in the mind when I looked into it's seemingly endless void. We pulled up to the gas station from the map. The power appeared to be out as there was no lights coming from the building. It was a large gas station with a diner attached and a small motel in back.

"Well, we have to stop and look. I'm running on fumes." Mark said as we pulled into the lot and parked at the nearest pump.

We all exited the vehicle and walked toward the front doors. I noticed many vehicles that appeared to of been abandoned in the lot. Mark pulled his sidearm out from it's holster and held it at his side. The inside of the store and diner was too dark to see much at all inside. Mark looked back at Steven. Without any words, Steven turned around and quickly went back to the van and came back with a flashlight. He switched it on and looked through the pane glass windows in front of the building. Inside was something of a nightmare that made me wish he hadn't owned a flashlight.

Blood lined the shelves and floor. Something awful had happened here. Much like some of the nightmares we had witness back in Vegas. Me, my brother, and his best friend, had gone there for a vacation to celebrate my birthday. During the chaos we watched things in the darkness ravage the city and claim the lives of so many people.

"God damnit." Mark said and he turned away and looked back at the van. Steven turned the beam away from the store and Mark said, "We have to get gas. I'm going to go in and see if I can turn on the pump.