An Hour By Sun (Unfinished)

That night, the sky was a deep purple, like a fresh bruise cowering from a devastating, malevolent blow. There was no wind, no sound, just stillness as the fear of what was to come crept slowly through the city. In that moment, as I sat on the cool concrete steps outside the house that I called home, I knew that the world was changed forever.

* * *

It was July, and the summer heat was in full swing, causing the stench of decomposing flesh to virtually bake into the nostrils of those still fortunate enough to be breathing in the putrid air. It had been four days since the bomb was detonated in the heart of London, by day two most of the world was sick, by day three my parents had died. It was day eight before I discovered that I was not the only one left to navigate the sea of corpses that used to be loved ones.

The stench in my house was sickening, as the bodies of my parents lay rotting in the bed where they once slept. It was almost as if they were just sleeping, as if soon enough they would get up and everything would carry on as it always had. Yet, this delusion was spoiled by the red and black liquid that oozed from where they lay to form a heinous puddle on the floor by their bed. I considered moving them to another area of the house so that I could be free of the smell and the constant reminder that death had taken what I cared for most. As I entered their room my heart stopped me dead and I realized that my last memory of my parents was about to be of me hopelessly dragging their lifeless bodies to their final resting place. I said my goodbyes, knowing full well that that would be the last time that I would ever enter that room. The only solution was for me to leave, leave the only home I’ve ever known, leave everything I loved, leave what made me feel safe, and search for life within what was now nothing more than a ghost town.

Attempting to take a car would have been utterly futile, even if I wasn’t bother by running over the lifeless bodies that littered the streets, virtually all roads out of the city were blocked by abandoned cars, monuments to the frantic idealists who thought they could out run the horror that lay behind them. For now I was content to undertake my journey on foot, even though such a choice provided me with a front row seat to both the utterly repulsive effects of this remorseless sickness and, more disturbingly, the depravity of humankind when faced with a vile and eminent annihilation. A river of bodily fluids, dark and thick with decomposing flesh ran through the streets, while the burned out homes of the originally infected continued to smolder. Entire families burnt alive by their neighbors upon the very suspicion of infection. Now was not the time to dwell on such a loss, I pressed on.

On day seven I began to notice that something, even for my bizarre new world, was eerily wrong. The roads that I had become all to accustom to traveling were now vacant of abandoned cars, clear of the nameless dead; even the air lacked any trace of the putrid smell of death that enveloped the city. Deep within my heart I had hoped, had prayed, that somehow I would find a place untouched by the nightmare that I had left. Maybe here, in this peaceful respite, life was able to hide even from the vigilant touch of death. I continued deeper into my newly found Eden, yet I soon became painfully aware that, even in the absence of death, life did not dwell here. There was no one in their homes, no one in the stores, in the streets, or even the churches. Maybe they were hiding, waiting for Armageddon to pass them by? Could they have left before the infection reached them, and if so, where did they go? As I stopped for food in the entirely undisturbed supermarket I finally noticed the all-encompassing hush that fell over the town. There was not a sound, no birds, no crackling blazes, nothing. Even within my decomposing city the birds cried out, dogs barked for their owners, the city mourned it’s loss, but here, there was nothing.

Night fell and my unease with my new situation increased. The ensuing darkness stripped me of my vision, and with the punishing silence still pressing against me, I felt something that had not touched me since I lost my family; fear. My pounding heart made sure that I did not succumb to sleep that night as it pumped primal adrenaline through my veins, providing me with one last chance to escape death if we once again came face to face. At daybreak my heavy eyes assured me that I was safe and I quickly fell into a dreamless sleep.

It was just before noon that I arose from my makeshift bed of foraged quilts and pillows pilled high in the corner of a local department store. Within a ghost town, all the beds were empty, but it still felt wrong to sleep where another used to rest their head, who knows, maybe they would return, and no one likes a stranger in their bed. The large storefront windows also provided me with as much light as possible from the moonless night sky and gave me fair warning of when it was safe enough to let down my guard. The day was bright, and it was time for me to collect what I could and move on, maybe the next town would still be breathing.

Within an hour I was fed and my knapsack was filled with all the necessities and comforts I could carry. It would be a hard walk, with more resources came a heavier burden for my body to lug up and around winding roads, but I couldn’t part with any essentials or treasures that I had collected, they were now all I had. Assuming that the roads would be equally clear ahead of me as they were so briefly behind, I made the fateful decision to find myself a car, any distance that could be covered would be more than worth the effort. Streets of cars passed me by, none of which could be reunited with their all important keys, yet, as I reached what appeared to be the end of town I finally found that all important combination that eluded me. It was a gas station and possibly the most hauntingly desolate place that I had come across during my tour of the dead lands of the end of man. It was like everyone continued to go about their normal days and then vanished into history, into another time and place.

I had my pick of abandoned cars, some of which even had the keys still left in the ignition, all I had to do was gas it up and drive to what could be the next in a long line of deserted towns. As I slid into the driver’s seat a sense of normalcy rushed over me, maybe this was all a bad dream, maybe I just woke up and instead of driving into the forsaken unknown perhaps I was driving the fast, lively road to university at the heart of my beautiful city. My hand reached for the key, already nested in the ignition, when the weight of his body hit the windshield in a frenzy that only takes hold when one’s own life is at stake. My heart pounded in my ears as he reached in through my open window, snatching the keys from my trembling hand and throwing them into the overgrown brush.


This is how I met Norman.


“Cars attract them,” he said, “they know that only food can start a car” and he began to walk away, as if he had done or said nothing out of the ordinary.

“What? Wait, what the hell is going on? Where are you going?! Talk to me!”, I yelled after him, frantically pulling myself out of the now impotent car.

He didn’t stop. I continued after him, nipping at his heels like an abandoned puppy, desperate but hopeful. Still silent, he veered off the road and began to trek into the increasingly dense forest. Sunlight became scarce through the thick brush and soon I found myself following merely fleeting glimpses of his tattered jeans against a backdrop of endless dark. I pursued him for what seemed like an eternity, when suddenly he stopped just as abruptly as he had appeared, staring motionlessly out into what appeared to be a clearing.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” I quietly demanded as I approached the now stoic figure.

“Because I thought it would be easier just to show you.” he replied.

As I stepped up to his side, my eyes caught sight of something that my brain could not understand. People, dozens and dozens of people slowly and aimlessly walking about what looked like a public park, no one spoke.

“What’s going on? What are they doing?” I whispered over the silence.

“There’s something wrong with them” he said as he nervously bit at what was left of his nails. “They’ve been here for days, more turn up all the time, they only leave at night or when they hear something that sounds like food.”

“Sounds like food?”

“Yeah,” he scoffed, “us.”

I stared back at him in disbelief, but the look on his sullen, sparsely shaven face told me that this was no lie, no figment of a lonely imagination. We stood in silence while my mind tried to make sense of what it had just learned and I took a brief moment to thank god that my family had died and not become the soulless brings that now walked before us.

“Let’s get out of here” he said, and began to retrace our steps back into the protection of the forest. “It’s getting dark, we should hide out until morning. I’ll take you back to the road and you can go on your way tomorrow.”

I had no intention of going on my way alone come daylight, but I was in no place to argue, at least for the moment.


* * *


As the sun sunk low into the sky we reached Norman’s home away from home. It was a child’s tree house hidden within a lush backyard, an almost identical, pint size version of the home that sheltered it from view.