Evan stared out through the glass door, peering along the narrow exterior corridor as recent memories circled inside his mind. Running alone through the streets trying to care for numerous paralyzed had been monumentally straining. Once the sea of people had arisen, and begun to be confounded by direct- and obvious- evidence of the startling unknown, their organized shuffling decayed into mindless carnage. Seconds of terror concluded with abrupt finality, and suddenly a voice of which he wasn't quite fully cognizant was barking orders.
There had been nothing he could imagine having done differently. Even his drive to provide help may have ultimately led to the tragic flashpoint. Walking alone in the aftermath through a rapidly emptying, dying world had been numbing. Passively, his eyes had scanned around for something else to do, but everywhere he looked, everything had already been tried. He could only trudge isolated and insensate through the aftermath. As he had returned, he glimpsed faces he thought he recognized, but reflecting upon it now, he couldn't be sure.
With time, the overwhelming shock of the rapid experience had begun to gradually fade into a background disquiet. Languishing in a state of disconnect, he gradually felt his sense of self returning. At some point a towel had been draped over Evan's shoulders. He sat in a folding metal chair in the Mansfield building's lobby, dripping water into a puddle at his feet. Nearby, some people he knew were speaking to each other.
Realizing a fraction of his numbness was due to a watery chill, Evan stood to dry himself with the towel. Those around him halted their conversation abruptly as they stared at him. Zack and Jennifer stood not far to one side while Minoko sat solemnly in a chair at the corner beside the building's elevator. Ryan sat in another chair beside Evan.
Jennifer was already at his side, gently touching at his shoulder. "Evan? Say something."
"I'm fine. I'm okay." Evan touched the towel to his damp clothing, noticing that there had already been considerable effort made to dry and warm him. And clean off the blood he had on his hands. In his disturbed state, he somehow hadn't noticed. "Is anyone still out there?"
"They're all gone. You were the only other one we know of who didn't get on a bus." Jennifer embraced him despite the wet fabric. Evan savored the intimate contact, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply as Jennifer's warmth pressed against him. It helped immensely to soothe his frayed nerves.
"When everyone woke up things got real crazy out there." Ryan added without rising from his seat. "The others returned when the shooting started. We thought you might have been shot."
The commentary was not addressed. Silence dominated during an extended interlude, the familiar downpour of the storm providing a soothing white static.
Breaking away once he felt better, Evan gazed around at those around him and resumed attempts to remove excess moisture from his clothing. It wasn't providing much relief. "I'm okay. I just need some dry clothes. I'll be back in a few minutes." He retrieved a nearby flashlight.
Jennifer hurried to keep pace with Evan as he journeyed into the shadowed stairwell. When they had reached the third floor hallway, she spoke softly. "Evan. You know you can talk to me, right?"
"Yeah, I-" Evan paused as his voice wavered, replaying in his mind how the attempted rescue had become a disaster in an instant. "It just happened so fast. I couldn't stop it."
"Shhh... It's not your fault." Jennifer embraced Evan once more, stroking his back with her hands. "I'm sure you did everything possible. But some things are beyond anyone's ability to control."
Firstly allowing himself some time to recover, Evan gently coaxed Jennifer to release and looked into her beautiful dark eyes. "I'll be fine, really. Thank you." They resumed walking in peaceful silence, side by side. Evan entered his room, emerging once he had dried with fresh clothing. He came out wearing a thin raincoat.
Upon their return to the lobby, Ryan was pacing about the room slowly, something he had seemingly begun doing during Evan's absence. Upon their return he looked to Evan. "So dude, what happened out there? Did the zombies attack while everyone was knocked out, or what?"
"No, I don't think so. It-" Silence dominated as Evan took a deep breath to steady himself again; he continued. "I don't think I saw any zombies at all. When everyone woke up, they just didn't know what had happened. It was blind panic."
"One moment I was standing at the gate. The next, I was just on the ground. I've never had a blackout before." Zack spoke idly as he passively watched the rain. "Once I realized it had hit everybody, I felt this sudden urge to run. Anyone could have been attacked by the zombies while we were out."
"I thought the same thing." Minoko spoke for the first time in many minutes.
"At first, I thought you all became zombies." Ryan added. "Man, that was freaky to see you all suddenly get up at the same time."
Evan stared beyond the glass doorway and the gate into the street, recalling his discovery of twisted,
peeled steel. Thoughts of those barely audible, unearthly whistles and
clacking snaps came rushing back to him. The high pitched squeal of
deforming metal. The sight of discarded weapons strewn across the road as if their
bearers had simply vanished. Something else is out there and I heard it, whispered a compelling inner voice.
"So we're just waiting around here for them to come back, right?" Ryan inquired.
"They said they would return when they could." Zack stood beside the glass doorway, where he would occasionally peer towards gate at the end of the corridor. "But they were probably just as alarmed by the blackout as we were. Maybe they're going to come back after someone figures out what it was."
"Does anybody have any idea what that was?" Jennifer asked to an uneasy silence.
"I don't know." Evan mumbled to himself, thinking. It was too easy to imagine gargantuan, amorphous figures peeling open vehicles like wrapping paper and carrying limp bodies away to a grisly fate. There was good reason for the crowd's terror after all, even if there was no immediately visible threat. Whether or not he imagined the sounds, the evidence left behind seemed clear enough. "Something to stun us. So we can't fight back."
"What?" Jennifer asked from beside him. "Fight back against wha-"
A sickeningly familiar, overwhelming trumpeting tone sliced through universe. A wave of disorientation blasted through the environment, tipping Evan with a fluttering paralysis in every joint. That sound again, he thought as he felt that strange tone threatening to peel him away from his body. Presently, a sensation of floating, then its inexplicable sudden absence allowed him to regain his sense of place and balance.
It isn't over, a thought bubbled into Evan's conscious mind. It was only the briefest moment of perceptible time, but the sickening
familiarity of the event produced within him an urgent impulse for action. Darting towards the doorway, he found it tightly sealed.
"Evan?" Jennifer pushed herself upright upon the nearby wall where she had stumbled. "What is it?" Minoko remained solemnly silent where she had been sitting, but looked up, eyes wide with alarm. Zack stumbled against the floor with a solid crack.
"Whoa, dude. That feels really weird, man." Ryan slumped halfway into a
chair before adding. "That was the same thing as the last time, wasn't
it?"
Looking back at those within the small chamber; Evan observed the others were shaken and still regaining their composure after the momentary experience, but they were all still conscious. He couldn't hear anything audible through the glass, but the door and
distance to the street dampened perception along with the splashing
rain. "I need to listen." He spoke as he retrieved the keys nearby and returned to unbolt the lock.
"Where are you going?" Jennifer chased after Evan as he passed through the entryway.
"Stay here. If something happens to me, run and hide. I need to check on something." Passing the keys to Jennifer, he proceeded towards the minimally visible section of street, his heart racing as he thought of how easily the iron gate could be ripped away by whatever scrapped the vehicles.
Listening through the hammering rain, Evan strained his hearing for the same noises he heard previously. Even right beside the gate, there was nothing he could detect but the drizzling, stormy weather. Seconds passed in desolate silence, but there remained no trace of those eerie whistles or snaps that he could discern beneath the rain. Not wishing to turn his back on the street for long, he ran to the front door.
Ryan helpfully opened the door as Evan drew closer. He fidgeted as he spoke, nervous tension in his posture. "Oh man, are you freaking out on us again?"
"I think we might be okay for a while." Evan exhaled, nervously gazing down the corridor one last time before entering.
Jennifer was kneeling beside Zack near the glass dividing barrier. She looked up very briefly to address Evan. "He's really badly hurt."
Zack blew heavily through grit teeth as he sat motionless. He had been the only one among the five to actually tumble onto the hard floor as a result of the most recent blackout event. "My arm. It's broken." He held his right arm steady, a stream of blood dripping down as Jennifer applied pressure to the grievous wound.
Minoko knelt beside Jennifer, rummaging through a box of first aid supplies those in the building had previously scrounged together. "I'm sorry, I don't know what to do."
"Just hand me that other bandage." Jennifer the fresh bandage to the injury and tightened it.
"Crap, that hurts." Zack exhaled forcefully, pain watering his eyes as he struggled to remain motionless.
To his knowledge, Jennifer had the same rudimentary knowledge of first aid he had, but the severity of this injury seemed too extensive to handle. But he had an inkling of an idea. "Jennifer, can you handle this on your own for a few minutes?"
"What?" Jennifer expressed shock, but strained herself not to look away. "I- I think so."
"Good." Evan retrieved the keys to the iron gate. "Ryan, come with me."
"What? Evan, no don't-" Strain lined Jennifer's voice.
"If anyone hears anything strange, don't investigate. Just hide as fast as you can." Evan departed prior to further protests could be heard. He knew where he might find someone with sufficient medical training to handle the problem. The possibility of finding the aid was all that mattered.
Ryan followed haphazardly, more mystified than anything as he pushed his ratty coat's hood over his head. "Whoa, dude. If you're going out there again, are you at least going to take the axe with you?"
Evan paused on his way to retrieve the weapon, then leaned it against the iron barrier as he unlocked and unthreaded the heavy chain. "Okay. But lock this up again once I leave and wait here for me to return. But if you hear absolutely anything strange, run inside right away and get everyone into hiding away from the doors."
"What would I hear?" Ryan asked just before Evan ran out of range to respond. There was no forthcoming answer.
