The silence was the worst part.
Adam had thought he’d grow used to it, but after ten months
of empty streets and hollow buildings, it only got heavier. The world had ended
with an explosion of silence, not fire. People had just vanished. One day they
were there, living their ordinary lives, and the next, gone. No bodies. No
explanations. Just an empty planet with the lights still on.
He had scoured the cities, called out into the void, but no
one answered.
He spent his days raiding supermarkets, driving stolen
sports cars down abandoned highways, and reading through books he never had
time for before. He lived in a penthouse suite, drank the best whisky, and
watched old movies as if the world hadn’t stopped turning.
And at night, he wrote. Someone had to record what happened.
He filled notebook after notebook, chronicling the days, the loneliness, the
aching weight of survival.
He poured himself a drink, sat by candlelight, and opened a
fresh page.
Day 313.
I am still here.
The words looked small, fragile. He idly tapped his pen on
the table, trying to think of something more profound. Something meaningful.
Then came the knock at the door.
A soft, deliberate tap, tap, tap.
His glass slipped from his hand, shattering on the floor.
The knocking came again.
Tap, tap, tap.
Adam stared at the door. It was impossible. He had spent
months searching, calling out, scouring each abandoned city, every dead street.
There was no one left.
No one but him.
He stood slowly, his legs stiff
from shock. He grabbed the gun from the table—one of many he’d taken from a
police station—but his hands were shaking so badly he could barely
hold it steady.
Another three knocks.
Louder this time. More urgent.
Adam stepped forward.
“Who’s there?” he called, his voice hoarse from non-exercise.
No answer.
He hesitated. The instinctive part of his mind screamed at
him to run. But where? There was nowhere to go.
He tightened his grip on the gun and reached for the door
handle.
Slowly, carefully, he turned it.
The door creaked open an inch. Then another. Then—
Nothing.
The hallway was empty.
Adam stepped outside the door, glancing both ways. The city
below the ceiling-high hallway windows stretched out in its eerie, abandoned
silence. He was alone. Again.
Had he imagined it? Was the isolation finally driving him
mad?
He shakily lowered the gun. He let out a small, nervous
laugh. Maybe it was just the building settling. Or the wind. Or—
He turned back to go inside.
And stopped.
The candle he had lit was flickering violently.
Adam raised the gun, stepping forward on unsteady feet. His
voice trembled. “Who’s there?”
The candlelight shifted shadows against the walls.
Then, from deep inside the apartment, a voice answered.
“You are not the last.”
The voice had come from the darkness beyond the candlelight,
low and steady, neither rushed nor panicked. Just… certain.
His finger rubbed the trigger. “Step out where I can see
you,” he said, forcing steel into his voice.
Silence.
The candle flickered, the shadows on the walls stretching
and shifting unnaturally, as if something was moving just beyond the edge of
sight.
“I said—”
Then, footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.
A figure emerged from the gloom.
At first, Adam thought it was a woman. Slender, tall, moving
with an eerie grace. But as it stepped into the candle’s glow, something was…
wrong.
The face was human. Almost. But the skin was too smooth, the
features too symmetrical, like a sculpture of a person rather than the real
thing. The eyes—God, the eyes—were black pools, swallowing the light.
Adam took a half step back, gun raised. “What are you?”
The figure tilted its head, as if considering the question.
“We were waiting for you to ask.”
“We?”
The thing said nothing.
Instead, it moved aside—just slightly. Just enough for Adam
to see the hallway behind it.
And the others.
Dozens of them. Standing perfectly still in the darkness.
Watching.
Adam’s instincts screamed at him to run, to fight, to do
something—but his body refused to move.
The first figure took another step towards him. “You were
never alone,” it said.
Adam fired.
The shot rang out. But the figure was still standing.
The bullet hole in its forehead closed in an instant, the
skin knitting together like water swallowing a stone.
It stepped forward and reached out, resting a too-cold hand
on his shoulder. Adam tried to pull away, but his muscles locked, frozen in
place. His vision blurred.
Then, for the first time in months, the city was no
longer silent.
From the streets below, from the alleyways and the empty
buildings, from every shadowed corner, voices began to rise.
Soft at first. Then growing. Then deafening.
And as Adams’ world faded to black, the last thing he heard
was the voices, calling out one final truth.
“Now, you are one of us.”
