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Umbra Ac Cinis by Arthur Wellesley
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Umbra Ac Cinis (Part One)
Date: 22 September 2006, 3:50 am
It shouldn't have been this cold, whatever the condition of the building which, indeed, seemed to rot and fall away before his very eyes. The cold permeated the walls, seeming to pulse from their scarred surfaces almost organically as if the chill was generated from within. The loose floorboards shuddered perceptibly with each step, the quivering seeming to reverberate to the very foundations.
This abandoned warehouse was proving itself to be the least substantial building Sergeant Travis Haverfield had ever been in. In his profession he had come across many such lonely, dilapidated structures, built in such haste in times of prosperity and happiness and deserted just as quickly when fortunes reverse. Left to rot and decay, they soon became the reluctant dwellings for the unwanted of society. Yet denying reality is so much easier than seeing the problem, and so such buildings are ignored by those lucky enough not to live within their flimsy walls.
It was these sorts of places which occupied so much of his time on the job, never more so than recently. The gift of life held renewed meaning to the people of Somnis now, one which left no room for the elaborate trappings of civilization. The bustle of the daily grind seemed pointless with no end to work towards, and so people simply stopped the mundanity of their work. They left the towns and the cities and they did what they wanted to do and they went where they wanted to go. Every day was treated as a gift from God.
For the Covenant had come, and the Covenant had gone, and they yet remained.
There were others, though, who seized upon this blessing in a very different way. These particular people seemed to be drawn to places very much like this one, filling the dark and empty places of an absent civilization as water rushes to fill a sudden fissure in the earth. In these lifeless spots they would indulge in all the vices that the law, as it had been, would enforce yet no longer could. Rotting one's brain away in the black loneliness of these abandoned buildings could be expected to produce all manner of horrific changes in a person, but he could never have guessed the extent to which it happened among some. He had seen things in these recent months that seemed to question his very perception of reality. It was as if sanity and humanity were now to be left behind along with the products of all their labor.
The call that had brought him here would likely require him to deal with just such a person. An anonymous caller—wasn't it always—had reported a scream coming from this warehouse. Haverfield had thought it looked the sort of building that would contain a screaming person. Certainly, he had thought it looked the sort of building he would not want to enter alone, and he had cursed at the surety of having to do just that. So few police remained that he often found himself in such dangerous situations with only the dubious promise of backup from the far off precinct as company.
Did the floor have to creak and crack so! Its uneven surface had accumulated so much glass and debris that even the lightest step produced a sound which could be heard along the entire length of the broad corridor down which he walked, which in turn produced an unpleasant shiver down his spine. The light of the city shining brightly outside was dulled by the filthy windows through which it ran, creating distorted shadows from the piles of discarded boxes and machinery which lined the walls. The floating dust disturbed by his presence seemed amplified many times in the eerie light, and he was sure he could see movement in the distant blackness towards which he struggled to go. His outstretched hand shook more with each step until the barrel of his pistol pointed at nothing in particular.
Approaching the end of the corridor, Haverfield was slowly coming upon the second floor ramparts which encircled the open warehouse from above. In the vastness of this empty space he could begin discern the sound of activity, the nature of which seemed immediately sinister. Rasping breathing could be heard from somewhere along the catwalk, each inhalation like the desperate intake of air from a man nearly drowned. This was interspersed by faint rending and guzzling—the sound of something being devoured.
Estimating the direction of these noises, Haverfield switched on his flashlight and swept it over the general area. The light was reflected back at him with such brilliance that he was momentarily blinded. It was reflected with such intensity by a man who stood on the opposite end of the rampart; from his skin, pale as marble and concealed only by a few tattered rags; from the unnatural sheen of his obsidian eyes; and from the ruby red blood which dripped from his open mouth.
For a moment, Haverfield was stunned to inaction by the sight of this man—if still he could be called so. He was so very near in appearance to a skeleton that he wondered for a moment if perhaps he was: the man's ribs protruded from his belly to such a degree that he was sure the skin would tear. His skin was pulled so tightly over his skull that his eye sockets were partially exposed and his mouth unable to fully close. Clumps of hair were all that remained atop his head, and a few crooked teeth were all that was left in his gaping mouth. He looked…
Hollow.
At last Haverfield brought himself to action. He held his weapon as steadily as his hand would allow and pointed it at the man. "Stay where you are!" he commanded, his words echoing back to him.
In response, the man opened his mouth to what seemed an impossible width and let out an inhuman roar. The hoarse cry filled every crevice of the immense emptiness and reverberated deafeningly within the confines of its rotting walls. Haverfield screamed at him to stop, but he continued unabated, arching his back to such a degree that the Sergeant was sure his fragile bones would crumple under the stress.
Finally, Haverfield found his strength and fired a warning shot into the air, and at the blast the man ceased his howling and fled towards the back. He told the man to stop, but he did not; instead, he ran faster, moving with demonic speed, his pencil-thin legs carrying him faster than any man he had ever seen. Determined this man must be stopped, he fired again, this time directly at his quarry, but he was unable to see whether or not his shot was true. The man leapt out a window and out of sight.
Haverfield gave chase, hoping to see the man dead and broken on the pavement two stories below, but tripped and fell over something in his way. Partially obscured by a mound of debris, he had been so entranced by the sight of the skeletal man that he had not identified what had been occupying his interests before he had been interrupted. Seeing now what it was, and realizing the man's purpose, Haverfield dragged himself as quickly as he could to the edge of the catwalk and watched his vomit fall to the warehouse floor below.
"My God," Dr. Lisa Cooke exclaimed as she approached the mutilated body, realizing as she said it that the volume of her voice seemed inappropriately loud.
"I can't make something like this up, doctor," Sergeant Haverfield assured her feverishly. He rubbed his face vigorously and turned his back on the hideous sight.
He had waited outside for Cooke to arrive, running frantically from the horrible staleness of the building to the fresh air of the crisp autumn evening. Befitting to the scene he had uncovered within, the heavens had opened up to drench the city of Paradiso in its cleansing rain. Haverfield had felt much refreshed beneath the torrent, not bothering to seek shelter despite the chill, and had hoped the doctor would not be able to show up. When she came, he had not greeted her with particular warmth; he never again wanted to step within the cavernous warehouse, knowing what waited for him in its depths.
"I thought cannibalism was reserved for stories on Old Earth," Cooke said slowly as she knelt beside the body. It was a young girl, as far as they could tell, perhaps four or five years old. Her light blonde hair was matted with blood which ran from large tears on the flesh of her face and from the holes which had once held, one could imagine, delicate blue eyes. Her girlish pink dress had been ripped apart and the skin of her stomach had likewise been torn open, exposing bones pointing in the wrong directions and organs resting grotesquely in places they ought not to be.
Haverfield rested his hands upon the railing of the rampart, still refusing to look in the doctor's direction. "Just tell me," he began, his voice faltering. "Was she…"
"There's not enough blood for these types of wounds to suggest she was still alive when she was… when it happened," she told him, guessing his aim. She carefully removed the remnants of the dress and examined the remainder of the girl's body that was still in tact. Eventually, she shook her head and pursed her lips. "I don't see any obvious cause of death," she admitted. "Not unusual for a body in this condition, though."
Haverfield was not convinced by this; he suspected she wasn't convinced herself. Dr. Lisa Cooke was not, in fact, a pathologist but a physician at Paradiso's Public Hospital who was recruited for the task when the university had shut down following the great exodus. While she had gotten some fast experience with the crime wave that had come since, he doubted her judgment in a matter such as this.
Perhaps sensing his misgivings, Dr. Cooke was quick to say, "I'll take her back to the hospital to verify my preliminary findings."
"And how likely is that to happen?" Haverfield asked her, still facing the anonymous blackness. "On the level."
He could hear Cooke sigh deeply. "Honestly, Sergeant, I can't say. There are almost too few doctors now to cover the twenty-four hour cycle and it seems more and more people are being brought in everyday—poisoned, suffering from overdose… sometimes worse…"
At last Haverfield turned to look at her directly, concentrating with undue intensity on her face, blocking out the child who lay liked a mauled animal on the cold steel of the catwalk. "What do you mean?"
Cooke bit her lip, contemplating whether or not she should go on—or whether or not she wanted to go on. "Recently there have been some pretty horrific injuries coming in to the ER," she said at length. "Not cannibalism, no, but people whose faces have been mutilated beyond recognition. Others who are so emaciated they can barely be called human." She put a hand to her forehead which seemed to suddenly be coated in a clammy sweat. "It is enough to drive one mad."
"The man that did this, he looked emaciated as you described. Too starved, I would have thought, to remain vertical."
"The human body is remarkably resilient. It can survive horrendous hardships."
Haverfield recalled the way the man had moved and was not satisfied by this flippant generality, though he did not want to press the issue. He was still not sure if he could swear by what he had seen earlier. "Why is this happening?" he asked instead. "Why now?"
"I really can't say," she said with a shrug. "This widespread drug use in what remains of the city might be the ruin of both mind and body. These days, manufacturing and transportation of all products, including illegal narcotics, have come to a near complete halt. People are probably turning to more and more toxic chemicals to reach their high, and it seems frying their brains."
"I've yet to hear of a drug that induces cannibalism."
"Well, it may be the invigoration we felt after being spared has worn off to be replaced with an empty loneliness. Getting cut off from the other colonies, having the population disperse—maybe people are feeling abandoned and alone and are being driven mad by it."
"You sound like you've given it some thought," Haverfield noted.
Cooke raised an eyebrow at him. "Haven't you?"
They enclosed the mangled body of the little girl in a small casket and lifted it onto a gurney, Haverfield with unfocused eyes and bated breath. As they reached the entrance of the warehouse the Sergeant quickened his pace and nearly sprang through the doors, gasping as he exited the building and inhaling deeply the fresh midnight air. The rain had since been reduced to a light mist, and he lifted his face gladly to the dark sky as the water rinsed the grime he felt clinging to his skin.
Cooke pushed the gurney into the back of a white van parked near the curb. "I'll contact you if I can get any results," she told him honestly.
He thanked her and head down the street towards the back where he had left his own car. As he turned the corner, he heard Cooke's radio crackle to life and her cursing which followed. Her pitied her this night.
But not as much as he pitied himself when he came upon his squad car. The tires had been slashed, the windows smashed, the sirens toppled. He looked around, as if the culprit might be waiting in the shadows to see the anticipated reaction to their labors. He wondered if it was that very man who had leapt from the window in a seemingly suicidal bound. He had not, after all, found the body or any further evidence of him…
But there was no one. Only darkness and silence.
He shouted profanities at the top of his lungs and kicked the passenger door of the vehicle with all his might. The radio remained untouched within, but with the force in the condition it had been brought to he guessed that by the time a ride arrived he could have already traveled to his house on foot. And so that was what he set out to do.
Down the empty streets he walked, spotting nary a pedestrian or passing vehicle. The streetlights still shone, but every building was dark. It was very late at night, and the city was certainly not what it used to be, but it seemed that with each passing day more people left to make it on their own elsewhere. Haverfield did not understand their motivation or what they expected to find out in the expansive wilderness of Somnis. In his mind, people ought to come together in the face of such an ambiguous gift as they had been given, not drift apart. Perhaps people, free of their perceived obligations to society, are more likely to seek solitude than to make a new one.
The abandoned industrial sector now behind him, Haverfield had arrived in the nearly as empty residential district. It was in this part of the city that most of the lower middle class types had made their home, including many on the police force's payroll. With the desertion of Paradiso, Haverfield and his wife, Maya, had considered simply moving into one of the wealthier houses that had been abandoned, as many others who stayed behind had done. They ultimately chose not to, feeling that the home they had was the one they had worked for and had put so much effort into and should be good enough on those merits alone. In a smaller, but no less meaningful way, making the proposed move would shatter any hope that things would return to the way they were.
Images of the girl in the warehouse kept creeping unbidden into his mind, her mouth, devoid of her tongue, opened in an eternal scream. Her face drifted over that of his own daughter, and he tried to shake the thought away. His daughter had left with the first wave, taken along by her enthusiastic husband. He had begged her to stay, told her in such times one must stay with those you know. She didn't listen, the restlessness and curiosity of youth overpowering her devotion to her family. Now he did not know where she was, or who she…
"Travis."
Many things Sergeant Haverfield thought he might have imagined this night, but that whisper was not one of them. He had heard it, sure as if his name had been spoken in his ear. Pulling out his firearm for the second time that night, he quickly scanned his surroundings. He peered down a dark alleyway between two narrow houses, seeming to sense with absolute surety that the sound had come from this spot. The voice had sounded desperate, rasping, almost as if calling for help. He fumbled for his flashlight but was unable to find it. He edged cautiously towards it anyway, but decided by his second step that enough had happened to him this night. Slowly, deliberately, he retracted his foot, returning to the pavement of the sidewalk. Then, very quickly, he turned from the darkness and continued home at a faster clip than before.
So much easier to turn away.
Umbra Ac Cinis (Part Two)
Date: 29 September 2006, 3:57 am
The familiar nightmare crept into his mind at the appointed time. He dreamt of a windswept plain, flat and utterly desolate but for the remnants of a few blackened trees. Their twisted, spindly branches creaked hollowly by the blowing of a hot and airless wind—a heat which he could feel upon his face. The dark gray sky was the same color as the ground, such that the smoothness of the land very nearly obliterated any hint of a horizon. In all directions, the color was that of death, the sort of duskiness one would typically associate with a man whose next breath might well be his last. Above, a few half-hearted drops of rain fell to the earth to be immediately absorbed by the grayness underfoot; the tears of a world weeping for what was lost and would never return.
He awoke, as he always did, bathed in a cold sweat, his skin dancing and twitching in shivers which racked his whole body. The dream affected him terribly, more perhaps in his subconscious than he truly realized. There was nothing overtly alarming about it, other than the chilling feeling of being surrounded by so much death and unseen suffering. It was but a sight, a vision, nothing more than a picture one might think to be particularly horrendous but would simply discard it when a new distraction arose.
The reason, of course, why it troubled him so was known to him, even if he did not entirely admit it to himself. For he knew, with crippling conviction, that the world he gazed upon each night was his own.
Sergeant Travis Haverfield tried to calm his nerves, steadying one hand upon his cool forehead and the other upon the shoulder of his wife who lay next to him on the bed. Her skin was warm and soft and quivered with the gentle rising and falling of her chest. He felt much reassured to touch something living and breathing and quickly settled back into his pillow. The covers suddenly seemed very warm and sleep once again seemed very inviting.
When Haverfield awoke again his wife Maya had already left, leaving only a vague indentation in the sheets and her comforting scent as evidence of her presence. He rolled out slowly, carefully, as if testing turbulent waters. His feelings towards the coming day were mixed and uncertain, and he was not sure how quickly he wanted to rush into it.
Much of the reason he had stayed behind when everyone else seemed to disappear around him was his dedication to his job and the enjoyment he got from the work it entailed. Becoming a police officer was all he had ever thought about when he had not been one, and obsessing about a case was all he thought about since he had joined. His work acted as a sort of anchor when his life became complicated or turbulent, and in these recent months he had clung to it as if it were a raft on a freezing sea.
Yet the image of yesterday's horror had emblazoned itself upon his mind, all the deeper for the night's restless sleep. The satisfaction he had once derived from solving an investigation or lending a helping hand was but a memory now. There was no weeping widow or grieving parent to put at ease with a conviction, no tangible results from the extra hours he now had to put in for lack of fellow officers. There was only death, and ruination.
His wife, however, remained a source of some comfort to him. She cultivated an unflagging belief that all things would return to the way they were. Firmly she held the belief that normalcy was inevitable and inexorable, and that such seemingly life-altering events as the one that had descended upon them were aberrations, brief departures from the well-practiced routine of life. Her faith sustained him and her warmth motivated him when the world got too cold.
Treading softly across the kitchen floor, Haverfield stepped behind his wife and ran his hands smoothly down the feathery robe which hung loosely about her slim shoulders. She jumped at his touch and laughed playfully without turning around.
"That's dangerous, you know," she told him with mock seriousness.
He could sense her smiling as he kissed her neck. Before her on the counter was the assortment of food and culinary accoutrements which had become a familiar sight ever since Maya's job as a schoolteacher had become obsolete. Half a dozen sausages and a mound of scrambled eggs were being fried in a pan while two thick slices of bread toasted in a cheery glow nearby. "Looks good," he said as he did every morning.
"Well, I'm sure yours will look fine as well," she said with a small laugh.
"Oh, very good," he retorted with good-natured sarcasm, giving her waist a light squeeze. He approached the opposite end of the room and tapped the screen of a small console built into the wood-paneled wall of the kitchen. It came to life and brightened at his touch, but offered him only a muted beep and yesterday's news.
"Has the new issue not come yet?" he asked, tapping the screen again and getting the same response.
Maya did not turn to face him when she answered. "No, I guess they're not publishing today. I'm sure it will be back up tomorrow."
She never was very good at concealing her feelings, and the doubt in her voice was painfully evident. The daily news had stubbornly kept going through the abandonment of the city, issuing meager stories on what was left to report and offering encouraging editorials for the prospects of Somnis. Its absence this day gnawed at him more than it should have.
For it presented another departure from normalcy; another victim of the change which was crushing down on the forgotten colony with an invisible yet palpable weight.
He tore his gaze reluctantly from the screen, and what he saw then stole the breath from his lungs. Maya, quietly and calmly setting their plates before their two traditional seats, had transformed into something much different, into the vision that had haunted him since the previous night. Her face had become wasted and scarred; sunken eyes, disproportionately large with such frailty, set amidst gray, sickly skin. Her outstretched arms, holding the plates, were so thin and bony that one might enclose her biceps between thumb and index finger with ample room to spare.
Recoiling in abject terror, he clutched desperately at the wall for support. He squeezed his eyes shut and put a hand to them, as if without their protection the sight would burn through his eyelids. He willed the image out of his mind, willed to see her as she really was.
Slowly opening his eyes once more, he saw the face of his wife, once again whole and beautiful, studying him anxiously. She had a hand on his shoulder and could feel him shaking. "My God, Travis!" she cried in alarm. "Are you alright? What is the matter?"
He stood up straight once more, shaking his head and clearing the moisture from his eyes. "Nothing my dear," he answered quickly. "Only that I believe I'm going mad."
"But other than that, you're fine?" she asked with a light twitter as she often did when she was nervous.
"It was nothing, Maya, honestly," he said, turning from her to sit down at their small breakfast table. "I think, perhaps, my work is getting to me. That is all."
She sat down opposite him, still looking thoroughly worried. "I can not imagine there is much left to enforce. Maybe you should take a little time off, even if it was just the one day."
"I can't do that while so few officers are left," he told her for perhaps the hundredth time. He took a hearty forkful of the bright yellow eggs and stuck them in his waiting mouth, glad for the distraction. No sooner had they entered, though, than they were out again, falling in half-chewed lumps back onto the plate.
Maya, her worry forgotten, looked on with anger as the fruits of her labor were spat out as if dosed with poison. "What on earth are you doing?" she asked crossly.
Haverfield looked at the food heaped on his plate with a face wrinkled in disgust. "It tastes like dirt."
"There isn't much left to buy," she told him indignantly, forcing herself to swallow a mouthful of the eggs. "Not much comes to the market anymore."
"Well, I can not eat this," he said, making a point of pushing the plate away.
The expression on Maya's face became blank at this, and her eyes no longer seemed to focus on anything in the room. "What then will you do?" she asked in a monotonous voice that did not seem hers. "Become like them?"
"What did you say?" he stammered, looking at her with wide eyes.
"I said 'don't eat it, then,'" she spat, collecting their plates and tossing them with some force into the sink, food and all.
Paradiso had been aptly named, for it had once been a very beautiful city. Haverfield did not know why he always thought of his home in the past-tense, as if it were dead rather than just sick. It was a beautiful city still, though as it was now mostly abandoned it had more of the cold beauty of a marble statue, frozen in its pose, than the warmth of a textured watercolor that it once had.
He was patrolling an opulent—or formerly opulent, for can a place devoid of people truly be called so?—avenue where the night before a man had been found dead, heavily overdosed on deadly mix of narcotics and industrial chemicals. He had been camping out in a dark alleyway between two lavish and empty houses, keeping a fire going with the shingles that adorned the exteriors of the neighborhood's buildings.
"Why don't they just usurp the houses, with the owners far away?" asked Sergeant Gordon Traum.
"Maybe they no longer recognize the difference," Haverfield suggested.
He had not patrolled with a partner for some time now, with the shifts for the entire city not numbering more than a handful of officers. These days, though, Paradiso was becoming more dangerous, and with too big an area to cover anyway the safety of the police was being considered more seriously. After the events of last night, Haverfield was grateful for the change in procedure.
It was late morning, yet the dark overcast sky cast a deep shadow over the surroundings, so that without knowing the time one would guess it to be the onset of evening. The rain had so far held out, though the clouds looked heavy and ominous and portended a downpour somewhat less welcome than the previous night's.
"Did you ever wonder why the Covenant did not glass us as they did with all the other colonies?" Haverfield asked Traum abruptly.
He was not entirely certain of what compelled him to ask the question or from what depths of his mind it sprang. He had asked it before, as everyone had, but it had always been in a flippant manner, saying it in celebration rather than in seeking a real answer. Yet now he truly wanted to know why they had been spared when all other worlds in the aliens' path had been reduced to glowing embers.
"I suppose so," Traum said, taken aback.
"Of course you had," Haverfield said with a laugh. "So have we all. I simply wonder what it was about this place the Covenant thought to avoid. It was not as if they missed us."
"I'm not sure what you're getting at," his partner answered warily.
What was that glimmer in his eye? Yes, he was sure he saw a twitch, and Traum now exhibited all the signs of a man desperate to change the subject. He concentrated with far more focus on the path ahead than was necessary for the streets were empty of both people and vehicles.
"I wonder if perhaps there was something specific about this planet which persuaded them to leave it alone. Something that scared them off."
"That's foolishness," Traum said dismissively, refusing to face him. "I wouldn't delve too deeply into the minds of aliens if I were you."
Furious, Haverfield seized his partner's elbow and twisted him around so that he could look into his eyes. "Are you acting so furtively on any particular notion, Sergeant?"
Traum twisted from his grip and edged away from him, his face red and his eyes blazing. "Don't question this God-given gift, Travis. No good will come of it."
"What do you know, you son of a bitch?" Haverfield hissed at him, his hand pressing now against the leather of his holster.
"You gonna draw on me?" Traum asked slowly, not daring to reach for his own weapon.
Perhaps he saw it in Haverfield's eyes—perhaps he had seen enough—but he ran.
Haverfield did not draw his weapon, for he wanted to speak to this man alive. Instead, he gave chase, his feet pounding the damp pavement as he locked singularly on his fleeing partner. Traum was more lithe than he, with longer legs suited for speed, but he was older and weaker too and Haverfield soon found himself upon him. He grabbed the back of his black uniform with both hands and pulled him bodily to the ground.
"I'm sorry!" she screamed frantically. "Just don't hurt me!"
"What do you know?" he cried , drowning out her protests. He had his fingers at her throat and pinned her down by the bulk of his body.
It took Haverfield a moment or two to come to the realization that he was not atop Gordon Traum, nor was he on patrol. He was, in fact, in the modest foyer of his house, the morning sun still shining dimly through the stained glass of their front door, staring into the terrified face of his beloved Maya. Slowly, as if unsure whether or not he should believe his eyes, he lessened the pressure on her neck. She gasped for air upon his release and he rolled off of her to lie, disbelievingly, on their hardwood floor.
Once he was off, Maya sprang to her feet and staggered away from him, her hands clutching her bruised throat. "Have you gone out of your mind?" she rasped, coughing as the words came with difficulty. "How could you do that to me?" With this she ran down the hall, back through the kitchen, and out of the house.
Travis Haverfield watched her go, then closed his eyes and let his head fall back heavily to the floor.
Umbra Ac Cinis (Part Three)
Date: 22 December 2006, 4:15 am
"At her throat, you say?"
"Yes," Haverfield affirmed guiltily. He could not even bring himself to look into the eyes of his friend, Daniel Smith. Partners before the exodus had necessitated their separation, they had been each been the other's crutch through the years of hard police work of their early careers. Over a round of beers they would relieve their pent up stress in the form of great torrents of half-drunk anger and vague complaints at the inefficiency of the justice system. He was oft to say that wife-beaters were the scum of the earth and that the only suitable punishment would be one that fit the crime. The hypocrisy of his present circumstance made him cringe in self-disdain.
"What led up to this?" Smith asked uncomfortably.
"We had a falling-out—nothing big, just a small spat—and the next thing I know, I am on top of her, trying to…" He found himself unable to go on, the freshness of the memory bringing too much pain to the remembrance. He dared not reveal his hallucination to his friend either, lest he think him entirely mad and have him turn in his badge.
"We've all been under a lot of stress since the Covenant came," Smith said.
"Have you yet beaten your wife?" Haverfield snapped.
Smith averted his eyes, embarrassed for his friend. Haverfield shook his head angrily and ran his hands across his face and through his hair. "I think I'm losing my mind," he confided quietly.
"Well, you look like shit," Smith observed. It was true; he had studied his own face with disgust after the incident with his wife. His skin was pale and coarse, his hair dull and ragged. His face was gaunt, his cheeks sunken so that his eyes seemed to protrude at unnatural length. He had not noticed his descent to the wretched state he had found himself in. This city was ruining him, turning him into that which he hunted—that which he loathed.
"I think I'm losing my mind," he said again.
"Stay with me now," Smith said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "This can't last. People will come to their senses, and they will come back."
"How many months have we told ourselves that, Dan?" he asked. "It's only getting worse. We've not yet reached the valley of our despair."
A woman approached their table carrying a large metal tray. She was once the station's receptionist, though since the desertion of the city she had assumed nearly all clerical and maintenance positions, including cafeteria chef. At one time, morning was a busy time for the precinct's lunchroom. Officers coming off their shift would mingle with those coming on; the former grabbing some free breakfast before their day's sleep, the latter grabbing some coffee to prepare themselves for the day's work. Only two men were present here this day, however, served by a single cook. They looked grotesque, somehow, sitting in the wide, open space beneath the rows of flickering fluorescent lights.
The food the woman brought was no less obscene. She brought two plates of what looked like tepid gruel poured on top of some unidentifiable, lumpy mass. It was an entirely gray affair; even the water that accompanied the meals seemed tainted by it.
"I'm sorry," the woman apologized, looking at their downcast faces. "The city's been going through brownouts and I can't get the stove to any decent temperature."
"Some fruit, perhaps?" Smith suggested hopefully.
"Fresh fruit?" the woman laughed incredulously.
Haverfield brought his fist down on the table with tremendous force, rattling the dishes and shocking the woman into silence. "I can't take any more of this fucking bullshit!" he cried.
"That will be all, dear," Smith said, dismissing their wide-eyed attendant. As she hurried away, Smith leaned forward and flashed his friend a harsh gaze. "You've got to pull yourself together, now."
"This can't be happening," Haverfield whispered.
"It is."
"How can civilization crumble in a matter of months?" he asked, more of himself than his friend. "How can they abandon everything at a whim?"
"People just need some time to get over the shock…"
"Only they're not!" Haverfield interrupted his friend with a near maniac pitch. "They go off into the wilderness and seem to evaporate. How is it that we hear close to nothing of those who left?"
"Perhaps they left to avoid just such scrutiny that civilization heaps upon them… upon all of us."
Haverfield tore at his face with his hands at this, half laughing, half crying into his palms. "Why does everyone around me insist on justifying this insanity?"
"This is borderline paranoia, my friend," Smith said quietly. He pushed Haverfield's plate coaxingly towards him. "Come on, try and eat. You look like death."
Haverfield eyed the quivering gray mass distastefully with no real mind for eating. He prodded it with his fork, using it as a distraction so that he would not be compelled to look into the eyes of his friend. At length, he saw that the food before him shriveled and crumbled into ash, his fork raising great plumes of it into the air.
"My God!" he exclaimed, knocking over his chair as he backed away from the spectacle. "It turns to dust before my very eyes!"
"Calm down, man," Smith urged, rising from his own seat. "There is nothing there to see!"
When at last his eyes wandered back to his plate, it held once again the glistening gruel upon its surface. He shook his head and held up a warning finger to Smith who was slowly approaching him. "That is not as it was," he said, trying desperately to seem reasonable.
Smith stopped several paces from Haverfield, unsettled by the look in his friend's eyes. "You should probably take the day off, Travis. I can't let you patrol like this."
"No," Haverfield conceded distantly. "I agree." He turned to leave, striding with undue haste towards the exit.
"Travis!" Smith called after him as he left. "Let me drive you, at least. Your car was destroyed!"
His friend's words were a faint echo to Haverfield as he ran up the stairs. He did not turn at their utterance; he barely even heard them. He was desperate for the respite fresh air promised, nearly sprinting towards the door. The woman was not at her desk in the foyer. Nor was anyone at their appointed positions—the department was empty, silent, lifeless.
Haverfield burst through the exit, flinging the double doors ajar and letting their open air fill his lungs. It did nothing to calm his nerves, though; instead it was airless and oppressive, and far colder than it should have been. The thoroughfare on which the precinct was built was utterly empty, devoid of pedestrians or passing cars or any movement at all. Throwing back his head, he screamed incoherently towards the heavens, willing only that someone might hear him, revealing themselves from behind this gauze of desolation.
No response came to him, only a rushing silence and a blinding motionlessness. He looked up and down the abandoned street, the desperation of a trapped animal in his eyes, and beheld nothing at all. No deserted vehicles, blowing trash, or broken windows. No sign to speak of that anybody had once called this place home. The buildings, too, no longer looked as they did, but rather extensions of the earth itself, great mounds of crumbling dirt piled to the sky. Bereft of human life, Paradiso no longer looked like a city; rather, a shadow of a shadow.
It had at last happened. The last vestiges of sense and reason had fled the city, and with it all hope of a return to the way things were. Paradiso would not be able to endure such complete abandonment, especially now that those who had taken leave of their sanity but not the city would be free to roam its depths…
The image of the little girl flashed like a bolt of lightning across his mind's eye, along with the inhuman figure that accompanied her. Maya would not yet have left without him. He bounded down the department's steps and ran down the opposing street towards his home. Worry gripped his heart and guilt drove his weary legs.
He ran past the tall buildings of the commercial district, the structures around him becoming progressively lower and smaller. In the indistinct blur of his peripheral vision he saw the buildings decay, as if they had contracted rot and were suffering its symptoms at an unprecedented rate. Cracks appeared on their surfaces out of which seeped clouds of dust as beams buckled and floors collapsed. He did not turn to see if this was indeed happening or if it was just the projection of his own mind. In truth he had neither the compulsion to check its veracity nor the will to deviate even for a moment from his intended path. All that mattered now was Maya.
His house was as he remembered it, but darker. He leapt several steps at a time to reach his front door, shouldering it open when he reached it. He ran past the bottom of his staircase where only hours earlier he had half-strangled his wife in a fit of rage and slid unceremoniously into the kitchen.
There, lying crumpled upon the floor, lay Maya, her body looking very much like it had been mauled by a large animal. Haverfield collapsed on a nearby chair, looking briefly at the almost unrecognizable face of his wife, and then hung his head in defeat.
"You weep for her?" a voice asked him.
He snapped his head upright at these words, and through his tears he saw a figure seated atop his granite countertop opposite him. It was one of the disaffected, if possible even more emaciated than the one who had claimed the life of the little girl. He wondered how he did not notice the man earlier, for the rasping of his breath was piercing and quickly grated on the senses.
"Why shouldn't I?" he answered blankly. He felt no urge to attack this monstrosity of a man—he did not even hold any ill will against him. He simply sought the answer to the question that filled him with an unnatural heat. To why he stood over the body of his dead wife without surprise.
But the intruder offered no absolution, saying nothing, his lips only parting to draw rattling, almost desperate intakes of air. As he sat there, staring into the dead eyes of this near dead man, Haverfield began to realize no satisfaction was offered because there was none to be found.
"Did I kill her?"
The man nodded once, silently, the stretched skin of his mouth looking for all the world like a ghastly grin.
"I could never do this," he said, choking on his words. He collapsed from his chair to kneel by his wife. "Why would anyone do this?"
"What if she wanted you to?" the disaffected asked him in a voice that made his skin crawl. "What if the world is not as it seems?" He cocked his head to one side, his unblinking eyes boring through his skull. "It rarely is."
Suddenly, the rot which consumed the buildings outside spread to the kitchen, black veins crawling along the walls and the ceiling and the furniture. Dust fell from cracks which rent every surface, metal turned to rust and then to nothing it all. It was as if millennia passed before his eyes like the passing of seconds. He shut his eyes from the sight, willing it to be a lie, but he could not escape the sound of his reality coming undone.
"What are you saying?" he begged, sobbing over his wife's still face. "What's happening to me?"
"Your eyes are opening," the man told him. "Behold, the world as it is!"
Haverfield turned his head to see, and his dreams came to life. Before him lay an expansive plain, barren but for a few blackened and gnarled trees. The sky was matched only by the ground in bleakness, being at times entirely indistinguishable from the other. There was only grey to be seen; his world was saturated by it.
He tried to scream, but he could produce no sound. He coughed instead, retching horribly at the dryness in his throat, and from his mouth descended a plume of ash. Ash. That was it. It was everywhere, on every surface; it was the bed in which he lay.
He collapsed, weakened by his exertions, marveling at his frailty. He looked at his hands in amazement, and saw only a skeleton, his skin hanging desperately to the protruding bone. His whole body was impossibly thin, emaciated to the very brink of death.
With what strength was left to him, he turned on his side. Next to him lay what must have once been a body, but was now only a collection of twisted bones with meager bits of rotting flesh hanging from them. He wept tearlessly at the terrible sight. Hunger gnawed persistently at his stomach.
A hot wind blew against his face. He closed his eyes. A few drops of rain fell from the sky, landing on his leathery skin and making him wince. He reached for them with his tongue, in dire need of water to quench his thirst. It tasted metallic, acidic, but he swallowed it anyway.
The warm breeze became more insistent, and the raindrops cooler and fresher. He opened his eyes, and was surrounded by an intense white light. He blinked again, and a face was silhouetted above him.
"Maya," he breathed.
"Travis!" she cried, throwing the wet facecloth on the kitchen table. She knelt down and embraced him, holding his head lovingly in her arms. "You had me worried to death."
He weakly raised a hand to pat her reassuringly on the shoulder. "What happened?" he asked her. "Where am I?"
Maya looked at him concernedly, placed a hand on his forehead as if checking for a fever. "You collapsed at the table, my dear," she told him. "Perhaps at the news."
"What news? What are you talking about?"
Maya laughed excitedly, bringing him once again into her arms. "They have come back, Travis. All of them! Soon, we will be whole again!"
- Arthur
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