[Azure] In the Beginning

[z012]

April 4, 2013 / Day 1

Kyrstal

The portfolio strap dug into Krystal's shoulder, heavy with the weight of vellum paper and hours upon hours spent at the drawing desk or easel. The marbled hallway echoed back a dozen conversations from other students as she made her way to studio 15; she had projects due by the end of open studio today and that meant less than a half-hour to get them turned in. Not that Tricia, her Advanced Art Seminar advisor, usually kept to strict timelines, but still, better to get them turned early than late. Slipping into the studio, the sounds fell away to the whisper of pencils and charcoal on canvas. A few fellow artists looked up when she came in, their expressions ranging from friendly smiles to jealous glances when they recognized the young rising star artist.

Tricia straightened up when she came in, giving the student she’d been speaking with a pat on the shoulder before winding her way through the room to Krystal. The older woman tucked a stray strand of greying hair behind her ear and gave her a quick hug. “Krystal! You’ve been scarce the past week. Is everything okay?”

“Fine, Tricia,” Krystal hugged her back and returned the smile. “Sorry, I’ve just been busy with deadlines. But! I wanted to make sure I got these to you on time.” She slung off the portfolio and held it out to her advisor.

Tricia’s eyes widened in pleasure, taking the portfolio and quickly snapping open the latch. She held it open, fingers still nimble despite the many years of art and teaching behind her rifling through the nearly two dozen drawings carefully settled inside. Krystal glanced down, a small smile of pride sneaking onto her lips as she remembered working on each one until they were ready.

The portfolio slipped, falling to the floor and blooming open, the drawings in the center waffling for a moment before falling one direction or the other. Krystal gasped and looked up to make sure Tricia was okay, but she wasn’t there. A strange staccato echoed after the fall of the portfolio, drawing her attention to the rest of the room. Pencils and charcoal were clattering against easel legs, saw horses, and tile floor. There was no one else in the room.

,,

Helena

“I just think you should consider it,” her mother pressed, sipping at her coffee and sitting primly on the white pin-stripe chair across from her daughter.

Helena sighed and shifted on the couch in annoyance. The coffee was great, as usual, but the conversation was getting tiresome and repetitive. Her father had already abandoned the conversation on the pretext of making a run to the store for dinner provisions.

“Mother,” she said, trying to keep her tone light, “counseling isn’t going to help. Ben wants something else, someone else, as a wife. We’ve grown apart.” She settled back against the plush cushion and tried to enjoy the delicate aroma of the coffee and arched a brow at her mother over the rim of her cup. “As his affair rather indicated. He’s just hasn’t accepted it yet.”

“Lena, darling, men make dumb decisions when faced with a young, pretty face,” her mother waved away Helena’s retort. “He made a mistake and you punished him for it. Now he’s trying to make up for it, if you’d just let him. He came back to you.” She clucked her tongue, “Really, dear, you should learn how to be more forgiving. However will you handle when your children disappoint you if you cannot learn how to let go?” The same arched brow, three dozen years more practiced, mirrored Helena from across the sitting room.

,,

The two women set their cups down on their saucers at the same time, far too similar in some ways to actually see eye to eye. Helena looked up from the coffee table to find herself alone in the room.

,,

Adam

The day had been a slow blur. He’d found bits and pieces – a name here, clothes there, and of course, there was Tulpa. The large dog walked obediently beside him, a comforting companion as he tried to fit the pieces together into something coherent.

,,

He’d spent the first couple of hours in the apartment, hoping it really was his apartment. The dog had startled him, but he seemed friendly and he followed Adam around like…well, like man’s best friend. The name had been on the collar, along with the address of the apartment. After the sixth or tenth round of walking the rooms, Tulpa made his decision on what to do next by pawing at the door and whining to go out. He’d grabbed the leash and doggie bags on pure instinct, but it buoyed his spirits that the apartment was his. It took another twenty minutes to find the keys, but still.

,,

Outside, it was bright and warm and slightly breezy. Tulpa trotted close beside him and wagged his tail, walking his human instead of the other way around. Once he’d concluded his business and the doggie bag had been deposited in a trashcan, they continued to meander through the apartment complex and then out into the general neighborhood. Yards and sidewalks were mostly empty, only the occasional car passing on the street.

,,

He’d been hoping for someone to talk to, someone that recognized him or felt familiar. As nice as the sunshine was, the quiet afternoon was becoming more frustrating than pleasant. Tulpa barked suddenly as the minivan coming down the street failed to turn with the bend in the road. It bumped over the gutter, ran over a suburban lawn, and smashed into the front wall of the small blue house he’d passed just half a minute before.

Kylie

The office smelled of magazines and waiting people; it was a familiar smell, the smell of waiting rooms across the world. She’d already checked in and gotten her shot and was sitting in the semi-comfortable chairs, passing the twenty-minute wait checking her email and picking out a couple of recipes to buy ingredients for making during the week. A Whole Foods run, a stop by JoAnn’s for the fabric to finish out the skirt she was working on, and then home again.

She smiled and told the tablet to compile the shopping list from the recipes; happy she’d actually gotten the dishes done last night and did a little straightening before heading out that morning. Coming home to a clean house and before sunset on an errand day was an accomplishment all on its own. The timer on the tablet chimed at her and she slipped it back into her purse, rising from the chair and making her way back to the nurses’ desk.

None of the nurses were there, and she sighed in a moment of annoyance. Usually at least one nurse was out here; all she needed was for someone to check the injection spot and confirm that she wasn’t about to explode from an allergic reaction to the allergy meds. She tapped her finger on the desk, trying to see where the nurses had gone to. She glanced over to the paperwork desk, but no one was there either. Maybe there was some staff meeting?

,,

She glanced around the room, but she was the only patient left. Frowning, she leaned over the desk and called out, “Um, nurse?”

No one answered. The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the silence.

Tejah

He was babbling on again, something about trade tariffs and export laws. Not that he was really explaining what those meant, just complaining about how they cut into his profit margins. The complaints meandered into the strange smell of the American airport and the cramps from the long plane trip. He murmured to her that the hotel wasn’t far away and there was plenty of time before they’d be having dinner with his American clients.

Tejah smiled prettily, acting just the right amount of interested and airheaded to make him happy. People were staring. They always did, but this time it wasn’t just at her breasts or ass. Mostly it was at her hair. And the clothes, of course. Not many “sailors” at the airport, and she certainly wasn’t wearing a regulation outfit. Or have bright pink hair. She saw one woman cover the eyes of her little boy and flush in either embarrassment or anger.

,,

Tejah didn’t frown, but she did pull closer to her husband. He smiled, sure she was excited to get to the hotel and be everything he’d trained her to be. He slipped an arm around her, his hand brushing low down her back and his fingers playing idly with the large bow sewn on the back of the outfit. The mother wasn’t staring at Tejah anymore and her flush took on the bright red of flustered indignation. She had leaned out of the check-in line, and seemed about to say something as they passed.

,,

Then she vanished. Tejah had been staring directly at her, tense at the impending snit between the disapproving mother and her husband, who certainly couldn’t care less about some foreign woman’s offended morals. And she, the child, and the husband Tejah had been clinging to just vanished. She looked around, turning to see everything around her in the concourse – everyone was gone.

,,

A flash of sunlight on metal caught her eye beyond the glass walls of the gate she was standing next to and a moment later the floor rattle beneath her boots.

,,

Mathis

He’d arrived hours ago with a long layover before his flight home to New York that evening. He was tired, and as fun as Thailand had been, it was nice to be back in a place where he knew the local language and where he didn’t have to watch himself around one of his firm’s big clients. Right now, the booth at the airport Applebee’s, the cheap beer, and the mediocre food was a small slice of heaven.

,,

The news was running on the TV over the bar; he’d been catching up on recent events and flirting with the waitress when she’d wander by. He checked his watch: still two hours to go before he needed to be at his gate. He looked back up at the news, hoping the segment on the purchase of Sprint Nextel was coming up soon. He frowned at the screen. All the ribbons with financials and teaser texts were still running, but there wasn’t a talking head to go with the inset picture of a large office building.

,,

The inset flipped over to picture of a middle-aged man, text appearing underneath it to identify him as Nevil Calbrit, whoever that was. Still no anchor. He glanced around the restaurant to see if anyone else was seeing this, too. Plates and cups and food were sitting abandoned at tables and the bartender was missing. He glanced at the other TVs he could see, two showing reruns of soap operas and another running a baseball game. Except there was only one outfielder left to play the game and a handful of fans spotting the stands. The outfielder was staring around the stadium, then fell to his knees and began to pray.

,,

The silverware rattled on the tables and Mathis felt a rumble through the seat of the booth.

,,

Lily

Airplanes were great, but airports were a bitch. It was hurry up and wait from this line to that one, even with the electronic tickets and check in. Open the suitcase. Take off your shoes. That’s too big to be a carry-on, miss. You’ll have to check it. Yes, we’ll be careful with it, miss.

,,

After she’d run through all the mazes and done a few turns on the treadmill, she visited the water bottle and bought herself an orange juice to drink during the half hour before she and the rest of the mice could board the plane. She put in her earbuds for her iPod and dialed up a shuffle list of songs, settling back and grinning, thinking about Los Angeles and finally, finally, getting a good break.

,,

After a half-dozen songs she pulled out the buds and sat up, expecting people to have already creeped up into an impatient line to board. The boarding gate was empty. Shit. Shitshitshitshit. Had she missed the plane? Had she really missed the damn plane?!?

,,

She jumped up, scrambling over to the floor-to-ceiling window wall that looked out on the tarmac. A deep sigh of relief went through her when she saw the plane still sitting at the gate. There was still time! She looked around, trying to find an airport employee or a steward or someone that could take her ticket and put her on the plane.

,,

Movement caught her eye out the window and she stumbled to the floor to the ground as a plane slammed into the runway behind the boarding and taxi area.

[Kestrel]

Lily had time to note how the carpet fibers in the floor were so tight, and apparently sort of gummed together by who knows how many years of shoes and food and so on, that she couldn't tell them apart anymore. It was like slightly springy tile. That the pattern showed was miraculous.

,,

Then the windows blew in. If she hadn't been just about to board the plane and just hand her ticket to the stewardess. If she'd still been asleep in an uncomfortable chair in front of the big bay window looking out at the tarmac. If she'd decided to walk over to the info desk over there, instead of just getting on the plane.

,,

Her ears rang. Her hands were shaking. She didn't feel like she was entirely in her body anymore. Or...she was IN it, but it wasn't hers. As she moved her hands, checked her arms and face for cuts, it felt like a puppet. Just something she was staring out of. Not herself.

,,

Glass was tinkling from the top of the now almost-empty pane to the bottom. Glass covered most of the waiting area, and extended out into the wide concourse. Shining and sharp, like diamonds. Like ice. Heat poured in from outside, immediately wrestling with the immaculately air-conditioned atmosphere of the airport's interior. It carried smells with it. Dust, yes, but mostly burning. Lots of burning. Burning fuel. Burning plastic. Burning metal. Presumably burning people too, though Lily had never smelled that, and wouldn't know it if she did.

,,

tink...tinktink...tink... Glass fell.

,,

Reassured that she wasn't going to bleed out, Lily stood up and gazed hollowly at the ruined window. She thought she might be panicking. Outside, horrifyingly 'not-that-far' was the wreckage of the airplane that had crashed. And then she realized why she wasn't panicking.

,,

No alarms. No fire trucks. No screams. No men in uniforms to tell her what to do, or where to go.

,,

This wasn't real.

,,

The realization was so elemental, and so revelatory, that all she could do was emit a slightly choked bark of laughter. At herself. At the universe. Good one, me. That was pretty funny. Joke's over now, so lets wake up and catch the flight before we miss the biggest shot of my career, okee-day?

,,

But it wasn't ending. She wasn't opening her eyes and seeing the airport crowd, or hearing the boarding announcements overlaid on the thin whine of jet engines idling just outside. She was still standing there, hot wind on her front, cold air on her back, nose full of frying hydrocarbons, absolutely alone as she watched an airplane burn.

,,

There was no one else in the concourse, so finally Lily moved cautiously forward, into the boarding ramp. The pilot had a uniform. He had a radio. He'd know what to do.

,,

"Hey!" she called ahead as she rounded the little corner at the end and saw the outside of the plane. "Hey! Should we...still get on the plane? Hello?"

[Adam]

He knew the streets, the neighborhood, even some of the houses and the people who lived there, but he didn't know them, any of them. Faces were a blur of memory, a haze in his mind and the more he tried to recall something the more his mind distracted him with other things and random thoughts. The longer he walked the streets with Tulpa, the less things made sense. Who was he? Why was this happening to him? Why did he know he hated asparagus, but couldn't recall what school he'd gone to, what neighborhood he grew up in? He knew he had to be at work in two hours... but not who he'd have to report to.

,,

The sound was like a wrecking ball as the minivan smashed through the home. Adam and Tulpa jerked their heads about to look at the wreck and before Adam had a chance to ask himself what had happened he was already running towards the scene.

,,

"Hey!?" He shouted in his deep voice. "Was anyone hurt, can anyone hear me!?" He jumped through the debris and looked about, racing for the vehicle. It had torn through the living room and half way through the kitchen before it was slowed to a stop, the engine still running. He bolted up to the driver's side door and looked through the window. "Are you hur-" No one was there. No blood, the door was still closed, the seat belt still latched across of the lap of the seat.

,,

"The hell?" This was suburbia. Where were the gathering crowds? The nosey neighbors coming to help and get in the way? The lady who said she saw the whole thing? Tulpa scratched on a doo rand whined for him to take a look. The two walked in to the master bedroom and it was empty. Children's bedrooms were empty, the house was vacant but Adam could smell the pasta boiling on the stove. He dialed the police on his phone, there was an accident, but no one was injured... hell, no one seemed involved, but there was no answer.

,,

"What's going on, boy?" He looked to Tulpa. "C'mon, lets get to work, we'll send a car by."

[Krystal]

Krystal blinked, rubbed her eyes, then looked again. She'd been up late last night, taping and mudding the drywall in the basement she was finishing and one venti cappuccino hadn't been enough to recover from four hours of sleep. But everyone was still unaccountably and impossibly gone. Despite her vocation, Krystal prided herself on being practical and pragmatic with few flights of fancy. This was just some trick, some misdirection, Tricia and the class was playing on her, for some reason.

,,

Absently picking up her portfolio and its contents, Krystal peered around the classroom and peeked inside her professor's office, but there was still no sign of anyone. "Tricia? Guys? Where are you?" In the resounding silence, her voice sounded loud and lonely, save for her sneakers scuffing across the linoleum. "Okay, okay, you got me. You can come out now - Aha!"

,,

Krystal dashed out the classroom door, pointing an accusatory finger, but the hallway was obstinately devoid of pranking students. A faint frown marred Krystal's pretty face, a furrow blooming between her brows as she walked down the hall, alternating looking forward and back. The silence was oppressive. It was quieter than the slowest weekend day. The hallways and other classrooms she passed were as abandoned at Tricia's classroom.

,,

"What the fuck is going on?" Krystal snarled as she barged out of the building and headed towards where she had parked. Even outside, she only saw one other person, a guy on the other side of the next lot over, yelling something unintelligible as he ran away. "Did I miss a bomb threat or something?"

,,

There was the slow, terrible crunching of metal, but when Krystal heard a howl, she forgot about the eeriness surrounding her. With her portfolio held across her full chest, she ran. She breathed a sigh of relief, finding Fraz, her beautiful Akita hybrid uninjured, but the streetlight post she had tied her to was tilted at a steep incline.

,,

At over a hundred-and-seventy pounds, well-trained, and loyal to a fault, Krystal hadn't been concerned about someone trying to steal her dog, and she wasn't about leave her in the car. Besides, Fraz had been on campus enough to be known and always drew admirers. But there were none today. It looked like a SUV had coasted into a row of parked cars, pushing one into the post Fraz was tied to.

,,

Krystal untied her pet and best friend, who barely had to lift her front feet off the ground to lick her in the face. She pressed her face into Fraz's thick and soft white and grey fur then led her towards her smoke grey Lexus RX hybrid, which seemed unharmed. A press on the fob unlocked the doors. She opened the rear door and gestured Fraz to climb in.

,,

"C'mon girl, I dunno what's going on, but I don't like it."

,,

Fraz hopped, laying down in her usual spot, looking out the rear window and Krystal climbed in behind the wheel and started the car. Carefully, she wove her way out of the parking lot, avoiding abandoned cars idling in the way, and needing to drive in the entrance lane to finally make her way out of the parking lot.

,,

And that was when she saw the mysterious disappearance of, well, nearly everyone stretched further than the campus of the Art Institute International - Kansas City. There were only few flickers of movement that hinted at people, but whenever Krystal took a sharper look, it seemed like only curtains blowing from an open window, or some animal.

,,

More abandoned cars littered the roads, many crashed into railings, medians, sidewalks, and each other. Others idled forlornly at stop signs or what she presumed had once been red lights. To make any distance towards her home, Krystal had to avoid the main thoroughfares and take side streets through residential areas, and sometimes still had to backtrack. Fraz began to make a warning whine completely at odds with her huge size.

,,

One time when she had to backtrack to find another route, her eyes fell on the rolled up white bag sitting on the passenger seat, a shiver of worry racing up her spin. It was Ian's prescription, his meds for dealing with his bipolar disorder and paranoid delusions. Delusions that would only be exacerbated by mass disappearances on a Rapture-like scale.

,,

Krystal slammed on the brakes - causing Fraz to chuff as she lost her balance and fell on her side - then pawed through her purse, digging for her phone. She sent Ian a text, then another, then called him, anxiously listening to it ring.

,,

"Pick up, pick up, pick up!"

[Mathis McAstor]

Mathis half-sprung from his booth seat, half jolted by the rumble pitching him a shudder step forward before he regained his balance. Brushing aside the plate of half-eaten, cold apple piece slice, Mathis took several steps around, searching out the small restaurant for anyone.

,,

But inexplicably, impossibly, waiters, cooks, patrons like himself. All gone. This... wasn't right. Couldn't make sense. Mathis snatched up the remote at the bar counter, still showing the lone outfielder and handful of baseball fans from afar. No announcements, no ambient sound, no motion or fade to commercials.

,,

The rumble set back into Mathis' head. Did a place crash into the airport. Was there really only him? There had to be many more people out there in the terminal. Mathis rushed out, swinging his head around a vast and empty indoors expanse. "Hello?! Is there anyone else out here?!"

[z012]

Lily

,,

The loading ramp swayed as she trampled her way down it, another detonation of metal and fuel hitting the tarmac outside. The door to the plane was open, but there were no sounds coming from inside; no restless passengers trying to get off, no flight attendants gossiping about pilots. And no pilots, with their uniforms and radios and air of authority to tell Lily what to do. The plane was as empty as the gate area she'd just run from.

,,

A third impact rattle the plane and boarding ramp again; she nearly lost her footing and remembered in a flash of adrenaline that boarding ramps were three stories above the pavement.

,, ,,

Adam

,,

The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Dimly, Adam could hear other thumps and crashes from neighboring streets, but no screams. Tulpa whined next to him, leaning hard against him and nearly pushing the well-muscled man over. He set off back to the apartment and the car he owned, switching between trying both the station's regular number and 911 several times. He saw over a dozen more crashed cars before he made it back to his apartment complex, but still no people. No blood, no victims. No one. Just mangled steel and glass and the occasional slanted light-pole or ruined wall.

,,

Things inside the complex were a little less disaster-zone, if only because there were fewer cars and not the space to have been driving as fast. He grabbed the car keys and started dialing the personal numbers in his phone; it took some off-roading to get around, but fifteen minutes later he pulled into the station-house. There were patrol cars still parked in the lot and the same eerie silence only punctuated by the occasional hiss of a broken engine or the far-off car alarm set off by all the impacts. The station had thirty officers and staff on-duty at any given hour and near shift-changes that could get as high as fifty. There was no one inside.

,,

He'd just finished his check of the building when he heard the crackle of static on the police CB receiver coming out of the dispatcher's office. "Hello?" a young male voice asked, his tone a mix of hope and fear. "Look, I know we're not supposed to be on police bands, but I'm out on 70 and there's like a whole highway of pile-ups. I tried calling 911, but no one answered. Does anyone copy me?"

,, ,,

Krystal

,,

The phone rang five times and then clicked over to voice-mail without a message. That was typical Ian for you: either you knew who you were calling he didn't need to say so, or you didn't and he wasn't going to tell you. "Ian, call me as soon as you get this!" She was close to tears and Fraz whimpered in sympathy with his owner. "Dammit!" She hit the steering wheel in frustration and had to swerve sharply to avoid a car that had idled at the top of the hill in front of her while she called, and had then slowly gained momentum down it once the pressure on the breaks had been released.

,,

She sucked in a deep breath, half up on the curb now, and closed her eyes to count to ten. Hopefully the world would make sense after ten. Fraz whined on eight and Krystal opened her eyes, staring up into the rear-view mirror. A man was standing behind her car in the shadow of the row of willow trees shading the sidewalk. The shadows were wrong somehow, darker than they should be in the mid-afternoon sun; there was a palpable menace lurking in them and she knew somehow that the man was holding them in check. He was nicely dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, handsome in that polished, somewhat nondescript businessman way; the shadows made his curly brown hair look almost black and she couldn't make out the color of his eyes for the dimness surrounding him. He put slid his hands into his pants pockets, staring down at a little girl, dark-hued and dressed in a yellow flower-print sun dress.

,,

The two odd figures stared at each other for a long moment; Krystal couldn't tear her eyes away from the mirror. The little girl crossed her arms and started to tap her foot, the picture of childish impatience. The man man let out a huff of a laugh and shrugged, then gave the girl a small bow and stepped back into the blackness. He glanced up at Krystal just before he disappeared into the depths of the more-than-shadows, dark brown eyes full of both warmth and danger at the same time, and touched his hands in a lazy salute to her. Another time, Krystal. I promise. She didn't hear the words, she felt them like fingers running up her spine.

,,

Fraz growled and barked at her, breaking her away from the mirror. The dog whined once he had Krystal's attention and butted his head against her arm for reassurance that everything was okay. A quick glance behind her confirmed what she already expected from the horror-movie excerpt her day had become: there was no one there and the willow trees and their shadows were once again innocent arboreal bystanders to the insanity of the day.

,, ,,

Mathis

,,

The concourse was studded with broken glass along the gate areas to his left and he felt another shuddering impact from the direction of the landing strips as he called out. Down the curve of the building to his right he could see what appeared to be a adult real-life version of Sailor Moon's Princess Rini, sailor outfit and bright pink hair, clutching a carry-on bag. She'd started at his yell and slowly turned around to face him, but hadn't yet spoken with a third plane crashed to ground. They both stumbled in the wake of the shockwave and the girl looked out at the tarmac through the two walls of clear glass in horror.

,,

Mathis did a quick calculation in his head, the kind he'd learned to do when making final arguments in his cases while he judged the mood of the judge or jury. KCI was an international airport, if a small one. At any given time there were a dozen planes taking off and landing in the area. Three crashes so far, and likely at least three more in the next several minutes. None had hit the building itself yet, but if the planes were as empty of pilots as the concourse was of patrons, it was only a matter of time. The building was sturdy, with concrete ceilings and all the improvements that the paranoia of life after 9/11 could make, but it was still subject to the laws of physics. It was only a matter of time before the entire area was covered in huge burning chunks of metal falling from the sky.

[Kestrel]

Lily flung out a hand and caught herself against the wall of the ramp, managing to keep her footing. No one on the plane. No one in the airport. Explosions.

,,

Oh Jesus, fuck me.

,,

She turned and ran back for the airport, even her cellphone forgotten in her pocket. Survival demanded that she run now, and she'd had experience with that; yes, plenty of that. She didn't question those impulses now. Somewhere in the back of her head she was enraged and terrified, that she could have missed this. Surely there'd been alarms, and announcements, and people leading people away. You couldn't have terrorist attacks without those. Usually they came AFTER the attack, of course, but hey maybe this time they got lucky.

,,

Except for her, of course. Story of her life.

,,

How had she slept through that? How had no one noticed her? Of course, that all paled beside the immediat question.

,,

How was she going to get out before the whole thing exploded?

[Kerilia]

She looked around in confusion. Muffled by corporate concrete and insulation, she could hear nothing other than the ticking of the clock and the whirring of the refrigerated units that held the immunotherapy shots for dozens of Greater Kansas City allergy sufferers. She hurried over to the window and pushed aside the vinyl blinds. She watched in horror as several cars slammed into each other at the intersection of Antioch and College, then pulled out her cell phone and dialed "911", hitting the speaker button. She waited for a moment as it rang once, twice, three times.. then it dawned on her that no one was picking up. She stared at the phone for a second, then hurried back into the corridors of the doctor's office, calling out for help.

"Hello? Hello?! Is anyone there?! Anybody?! There's been an accident!" But there was no response, and she felt panic starting to well up in her chest. She hurried out of the office and through the waiting room, skipping the elevator for once in favor of the faster option. She hurried outside, her phone still ringing for 911 with no answer. As soon as she exited the building's lobby, the sounds of chaos hit - at least four or five car alarms were sounding in the parking lot, and at least a couple more cars rolled down the slight incline of Antioch and slammed into the pile-up at the intersection outside her doctor's office. She hurried across the parking lot as fast as she could manage, though her breath came in rough gasps by the time she reached the actual street. She made her way to the first car, but there was no one in it. She hurried to the next, but it was the same. After inspecting several cars, she stepped back from the street onto the sidewalk, trying not to freak out. She glanced down, noticing for the first time in several minutes that her cell phone was still ringing. She hung up, then loaded up Yahoo News on her web browser. Then CNN. There was an article about the North Korean missle capabilities, and another about the upcoming movie releases. She loaded the local news app, and that was also devoid of anything useful.

The uneasy feeling in her stomach became full-blown fear. She flipped over to the phoneapp, and as she hurried back towards her car, she started dialing phone numbers, starting with her mother.

"C'mon, pick up, pick up, pick up!" She fumbled with her keys, unlocking the door (without, blessedly, setting off the faulty alarm on accident), then hopped in and turned the keys. Her mother's machine picked up, so she hung up and dialed her cell phone, then her work phone. Then she tried the home phone again, which picked up with the machine again after four more rings, since she hadn't left a message the first time.

"Mother, it's Kylie, please call me!!!"

She hung up the phone, staring at it for a second before buckling her seatbelt and pulling out of the parking lot. As she drove down College, trying to maneuver through the crashed and stalled traffic towards Metcalf and I-435, she began calling other people she knew, praying that someone would pick up.

[Helena Lindsay]

"Look, Mom-"

,,

Helena blinked, the retort that sprang so readily to her lips dying without fanfare in the all-encompassing silence. She stretched hesitantly across the table, slim fingers brushing the coffee cup on her mother's side as if to reassure herself it was still solid. It was, and still warm; she watched as tentative wisps of steam curled lazily up over the rim. The clock on the mantel was still ticking just as it had been a moment before, and a cursory glance confirmed that all was as it should be.

,,

Except that her mother had, apparently, vanished.

,,

"Not possible," the young doctor muttered into the quiet of the living room, then suddenly sagged in relief as reality realigned and logic won out. She'd heard the arguments, the well-reasoned points and not-so-subtle urgings so many times, she'd obviously just sort of... zoned out. Her mother had just gone out of the room, probably miffed that her daughter wasn't paying proper heed to all her valiant attempts to save a crumbling marriage, and she'd just go find her and smooth things over. Admittedly, it was a teensy bit odd that she hadn't huffed or made some effort to draw attention to her departure, but Helena shrugged it off as she headed into the kitchen; if she'd been so lost in thought she hadn't seen her mother get up and leave the room, chances were good she wouldn't have noticed the snit she left in, either.

,,

"Hey, Mom?" she called through the quiet house, pausing at the coffee maker to refill her cup. "I'm putting another pot of coffee on, but you're almost out." She peered ruefully into the foil-lined bag before resealing it, dumped the used filter into the rubbish bin, and poured fresh water into the carafe. "Should I call Dad and ask him to pick some up while he's at the store?" A muted burbling filled the sunlit kitchen as the java began to brew, but no other reply was forthcoming. The pretty blonde waited for several moments, anxiety slowly outstripping curiosity. "Mom?" Helena called again, a bit more urgently. Did she fall? Was she hurt and unable to cry for help? Did she lock herself in the bathroom again? "Mom, you okay?"

,,

Abandoning her coffee cup on the island countertop, Helena began moving through the house, checking bedrooms, bathrooms, the den- even the garage. Her mother's car was still there, so where the hell had she gone? There wasn't a history of early-onset dementia in her family, she considered, and her mother wasn't the sort of woman prone to fits of whimsy or flights of fancy, so the chances she'd just decided to wander off were implausibly slim. That being said, Helena had no idea where she'd disappeared to, so the next logical step (barring a search for secret passages and hidden compartments) would be to just call her father and see if he'd heard from her. It'd only been a few minutes, but it was a nice day out, and even if she'd gone for a walk to settle her nerves it wouldn't take long to circle the block.

,,

Helena revisited the living room, glancing briefly at the half-full cup still sitting on the coffee table before fishing her cell phone out of her purse. As she dialed her father's number, she paced around the room, concentrating on her breathing in an effort to remain calm. No one had broken in. She hadn't gone anywhere outside walking distance. She hadn't collapsed in the house. That her mother had gone somewhere was evident, and Helena was as pragmatic as her parents, so either Her Royal Highness would reappear on her own, or her father would be able to tell her where she was. Somewhere in the midst of this processing of factual information, her brain registered, dimly, that the phone was still ringing on the other end.

[z-Tejah Ebadi]

Tejah stumbled as her husband’s support disappeared. The knee-high white boots with their four inch heels didn’t help her but Tejah was used to walking in various heeled instruments of torture. Mohammed wasn’t behind her either; he was just gone. She opened his mouth to call after him but the glint of metal and rumbling floor caught her attention. A man shouted, and Tejah jumped, twisting to see she was alone with a white man. Terror clenched her gut; he was nicely dressed in a suit and the woman realized she was alone with an infidel white Christian. Everyone knew they were secret rapists who drank the blood of one of the prophets.

,,

The woman took two steps back from the windows and the man, frozen with indecision. What should she do? Normally Mohammed told her what she needed to be doing in an emergency. Her gaze darted between the infidel and the windows; the next plane crashing, much closer to the building, jolted her into action.

,,

Turning, Tejah hurried away from the presumed cannibal, further down the terminal. She wasn’t quite running, but it was close as she speed-walked on her tiptoes. Tears stung her eyes; she didn’t like being alone. She’d never been alone before in her life – not in the orphanage and not as a wife. No, she realized after a second – this was worse than being alone. There was a white infidel behind her and she had no one to protect her from him. A quick glance over her shoulder showed that he was still here, and staring at her. Tejah’s breath caught in her throat as she imagined the hot lust that burned in his gaze.

,,

A patter of feet was her only warning before someone slammed into her. Tejah yelped in pain and alarm as she tripped over her feet and sprawled to the floor of the airport. When she looked up, she saw a woman with dark hair who looked just as shaken and afraid as her.

,,

The woman is Lily, and the ST requested that we have a head-on collision in full view of Mathis.

[Kestrel]

"Shit! Sorry! I didn't...see...."

,,

Lily scrambled back to her feet, still revved on adrenalin, and was already offering the woman she'd run into a hand out of sheer instinct when the situation penetrated her admittedly half-panicked brain's queue of things to deal with. Another person was here.

,,

Her eyes widened. "You...oh, my god I am so happy to see you. Do you know what's going on?" The ground shook slightly. Right. Bombs. Imminent doom. The little things in life went on without you.

,,

"Hey, we've gotta get out of here," she urged, still holding out her hand. "I think there's been some kind of terrorist attack or something! A plane crashed...and there's explosions...and everyone evacuated the airport. Come on, we gotta move!"

,,

And only then did it sink in what the woman was wearing.

,,

What the hell?

[Mathis McAstor]

Blessedly, Mathis caught sight of another woman... well, that was an eye-opening example of what Mathis heard as the concept of cosplaying. Mathis forced himself to shake off the distraction in this time of danger, and opened his mouth to alert her. Then she inexplicably seemed to panic and run from him. What the fuck, and we're about to become physical examples frequent flyer mileage?!

,,

He started to move after her, and find his voice to calmly communicate - when another woman appeared around the corner and crashed into the second woman. Fortunately, the dark-haired lady had already gotten up and seemed to be offering a hand to the pink-haired woman.

,,

"It's worse than that," Mathis announced, moving past them a fraction to point down the stairs nearby. "But yes, we need to get out of the airport before it becomes flaming rubble. I know where the nearest exit is." Having seen a wall-mounted building map, it was still fresh enough in Mathis' memory for him to plot a course for them to get outside and away from the circuit of terminals, if nothing else.

[Krystal]

Krystal leaned back against the headrest, scratching Fraz behind the ears as she tried to slow the beating of her heart to something that didn't threaten to exceed the speed of light. I swear to God, when I get home, I'm shutting down Ian's Alien Conspiracy site, she promised, for the twentieth time.

,,

She'd been pushing herself hard lately, Krystal tried to convince herself as she reached into her purse. Work on A Thousand Broken Dreams and her and Gaiman's project was blending into the lingering remnant of Ian's delusions, exacerbated by the utter weirdness surrounding her. She might even have been more infected with her mother's beliefs in psychics and ghosts, aliens and crystal, and other such rubbish than she was willing to admit, now that strangeness was all around.

,,

She pulled out a pad of paper and several coloured pens, and with quick, sure motions, sketched the man and girl with distinctive detail, including the too dark shadows. Drawing them on paper, it was much easier for Krystal to believe they were something she had imagined than something she had actually seen - they wouldn't even have been that out of place in her graphic novel.

,,

Feeling marginally better, Krystal tucked away her sketchpad, twisted to let Fraz give her a comforting lick on the face, then started up the car again. The world wasn't making sense yet, but she'd find a way to assimilate whatever was going on without going as crazy as Ian was without his meds on a bad day.

,,

The Lexus jounced as she drove back onto the street, and carefully navigated her way home once more. She turned on the radio, flicking through the stations as she called Jolene. Commercials, the same songs repeating over and over, and the occasional empty air ran in counterpoint to the lonesome ringing of the phone. Krystal wasn't surprised her mother didn't answer. This time of day, she still might be in bed with what boytoy she was with now, or out with her girlfriends before their shifts tonight.

,,

She reached into the backseat, grabbing a shoulder bag, while with her smartphone linked through the bluetooth in her car, began calling various local friends. As she got voicemail after voicemail, checking her newsfeeds on her tablet shed no greater light on the insanity plaguing Kansas. No new posts, not even any new comments... Except one, proclaiming the Rapture and being left behind, under a story about a missing local teenager.

,,

Her anxiety was building again, the closer she got to home. Other than she muted rumbles and smashes of occasional crashes near and far, the city was eerily silent. It had taken Krystal a while to get used to sounds of Kansas, after moving here from Las Vegas, but had grown used to them - if not to shoveling snow - and they absence was very conspicuous.

,,

Fraz seemed to be feeling it too, twisting in and turning in the back seat, trying to look out every window. Krystal blew auburn hair from her face, beginning to eye Ian's meds, while yearning to get home to settle down with a beer or three, while waiting for responses to any of her messages.

,,

After climbing into an idling bus - again, there were no signs of foul play, or of anyone - and managing to move it enough she could get passed it, Krystal called 911. After ten rings, an automated message came on, asking her to stay on the line and someone would answer shortly, Krystal hung up, and called the local emergency services, the police and the fire station. If there was really some apocalyptic threat, surely someone would still be there, trying to help the stragglers out.

,,

But Krystal knew it was just a desperate stretch. Whatever was happening, it wasn't something as mundane as a terrorist attack, no matter how disturbingly Krystal wished that was the case.

[Kestrel]

It's worse than that.

,,

Lily looked up, startled to hear another voice. She left her hand extended for the woman in the crazy outfit, but her attention focused on the man like a ray of sun in a magnifying glass. "

,,

You...you know what's going on?" she asked. For a second the questions were backed up behind her mouth that she couldn't even speak. Later she snapped at herself, when we survive this. Then we can find out what this is. Survive first.

,,

Sound advice, and she nodded. "An exit would be good."

,,

She looked back over at the boarding ramp, feeling an unexpected ache. Her guitar was still on the plane. Or...or maybe on one of those baggage trains? She had only a hazy notion of what happened to luggage once it vanished behind the straps of rubber on the conveyor belt. Her guitar.

,,

Survive first.

,,

"Lady, are you okay? We have to go!"

[Adam]

Adam

The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Dimly, Adam could hear other thumps and crashes from neighboring streets, but no screams. Tulpa whined next to him, leaning hard against him and nearly pushing the well-muscled man over. He set off back to the apartment and the car he owned, switching between trying both the station's regular number and 911 several times. He saw over a dozen more crashed cars before he made it back to his apartment complex, but still no people. No blood, no victims. No one. Just mangled steel and glass and the occasional slanted light-pole or ruined wall.

Things inside the complex were a little less disaster-zone, if only because there were fewer cars and not the space to have been driving as fast. He grabbed the car keys and started dialing the personal numbers in his phone; it took some off-roading to get around, but fifteen minutes later he pulled into the station-house. There were patrol cars still parked in the lot and the same eerie silence only punctuated by the occasional hiss of a broken engine or the far-off car alarm set off by all the impacts. The station had thirty officers and staff on-duty at any given hour and near shift-changes that could get as high as fifty. There was no one inside.

He'd just finished his check of the building when he heard the crackle of static on the police CB receiver coming out of the dispatcher's office. "Hello?" a young male voice asked, his tone a mix of hope and fear. "Look, I know we're not supposed to be on police bands, but I'm out on 70 and there's like a whole highway of pile-ups. I tried calling 911, but no one answered. Does anyone copy me?"

,,

"This is Sergeant Adam Bristow, KCPD." He picked up the radio and the words flowed smoothly as if he'd done it hundreds of times. Had he? He released the button and listened for a reply and he fastened one last strap of Velcro on his Kevlar vest. The station was vacant, the floor littered with files and papers as if someone was carrying them, disappeared and they were just left to fall and scatter. The silence was the worse part. We take for granted the noise we hear all around us in the daily grind of our lives... now strip all that away. There were no conversations, traffic, background noises... there was nothing but the low warble of a phone ringing in the background. "Go ahead."

,,

"Oh, Lord... Sergeant... I'm on I70... and you won't believe this..."

,,

Adam rolled his eyes, sliding a fresh mag in his side arm and pulled the slide, cambering a round and held it there for a moment to examine the the ejector before letting it go with a 'click'. "Go ahead. Shock me." The sarcasm in his tone was obvious, but the guy didn't notice.

,,

"It's terrible, man!" He was in a panic on the other end of the radio. There was no noise, or screaming, not even a the wind seemed to be blowing in the background. "Cars man... cars are all piled up out here on the 70. But... but... get this."

,,

"No one's in them?" Adam finished his statement.

,, ,,

"No one's in em, man!" The guy sounded like he was loosing his grip.

,,

"Alright, I'm on my way to check it out. I need you to calm down, relax, and try to regulate your breathing a bit, okay? You sound like this is taking a toll on you so just sit tight, help's on the way." He scooped up his duffel, holstered his side arm and gave whistle for Tulpa who was searching the station for survivors. Adam couldn't get over how smart the dog seemed, they he would act on his own like he was trained to know what his handler's commands were going to be before they were asked. He looked down at his companion, unable to hold back a slight grin. "Nothin' huh?"

,,

Tulpa barked in reply.

,,

The phone was still warbling as Adam passed it on the way to the exit. At this point his day was on a tier of strange he wasn't sure could be measured. His stress levels were at new apex, hell, he didn't even know if he should clock in. How many more levels of weird could this day ascend to? Instinctively he grabbed the receiver as he passed the desk. "Sergeant Adam Bristow, KCPD. Go ahead."

,,

He held the receiver on his shoulder and knelt down to scratch Tulpa behind the ears as he waited for a reply.

,,

The phone call Adam has picked up is the one Krystal is placing to the police department. Someone's alive!

[Krystal]

Adam just heard the sound of breathing over the phone for a long moment, before a pleasant alto with a faint, husky burr began speaking. "Um...oh, I wasn't actually expecting anyone to answer. Officer Bristow, you're the first person I've managed to get on the phone, since..." Krystal was trying to sound calm and collected, but Adam could hear the effort it was causing her. "It's good to know I'm not actually the only left in Kansas City."

,,

Krystal's chuckle was shaky, the humour of their situation grim. "My name is Krystal Johannson, and I'm calling to see if I missed some evacuation order or something, while spaced out in some fugue state." To Adam, it was obvious the woman on the was just going through the motions, that she didn't believe her explanation, and just as obviously, wished she could. "I was at the Art Institute - on Melrose Drive? - I blinked, and suddenly, I was alone. I'm crossing Brookside boulevard now - trying to get home - and I haven't seen anyone since. It's slow going, there's cars everywhere, just abandoned it looks like, and a shit-tonne of crashes, but there's-"

,,

"Nobody," Adam and Krystal said in unison.

,,

"Uh, right. I... I'm not sure what the protocol is for a... an... emergency like this." Krystal grunted, frustrated at having to admit that - it wasn't like she had been around for missile drills during the Cold War. "Should I be holing up at home and waiting for responses from the government, or should I be driving for the hills, fast as I can?"

,,

Notes

If Adam asks for her address, Krystal lives at 6043 Walnut St., on the corner of Walnut St and 61st St. She lives with her boyfriend Ian, who is out of town at the moment, but isn't answering his phone (which actually isn't that unusual).

[z012]

Helena

,,

She started pacing the room as her father's phone continued to ring, eventually flipping over to a computerized voicemail message, confirming that despite his protestations otherwise he never had figured out how to get his own message recorded. She was about to leave him a message when she heard the sounds of metal on metal outside. Glancing through the windows, she saw a mica-green Prius being tipped over on it's side by a geyser of water. The car had run into the fire hydrant in the yard across the street, knocking the foot-high metal cap on the highly pressurized water line off it's bolts. Thankfully it seemed to be the only car on the street at the moment, but no one was climbing out of the driver's side seat yet.

,, ,, ,,

Kylie

,,

She got her aunt's voicemail after the fifth ring, just like she had with her mother. She left another, hopefully not too panicky, message to give her a call back, and then went to the next number on the list. She called the landline first, but again only got the voicemail message, which mostly just meant Khris' mother wasn't home since neither she nor her husband hardly ever answered the main line. Thumbing through to Khris' cell number, she had to wait a few seconds to actually start the call as there was a massive pile-up of cars at the triangle of Blue Valley Parkway, 119th Street and Metcalf Ave. She pulled over onto the sidewalk area and idled there while she put the call through.

,,

"Hey, Kylie," came the half-sleepy, half-out-of-it voice of her friend after the second ring. "What's up?"

,,

The voice, the actual I-am-there-voice of another human being nearly had her in tears. "Khris? Oh thank gods! Are you okay?"

,,

"Um, I have a killer headache and everything's kinda fuzzy, but that's not....Kylie, are you okay? What's going on?"

,,

"Have you been outside today, Khris?"

,,

"No. I just woke up from a nap when you called. Felt all weird earlier and went to lay down." Kylie could see her friend's face in her mind, her furrowed brow and rising alarm; it didn't take much to set her temperamental friend off into worry. "Did something happen?"

,,

"I don't know. It's...everyone's just gone! I've tried calling my mother and my aunt and I'm at 119th and Metcalf and on the sidewalk because all the cars are piled up on the road but there's no one there-"

,,

"Kylie, calm down, take a breath! Start over. Who's gone?"

,,

She did take a breath and let it out slowly, knowing she needed to be at least a little calm if she was going to explain the situation and not sound completely nuts. Which was a little ironic, given who she was talking to. "Everyone, Khris. I was at my doctor's office for my allergy shot and when I went to get checked by the nurse, no one was there. I thought maybe they were having a meeting or something, but then I started hearing car cra- uh, car crashes." She said the last softly, not wanting to set her friend off.

,,

She could hear Khris take her own breath, but she only asked, "Okay, so there was a car crash at your doctor's office?"

,,

"Not just one. Dozens, mostly out on the street." She paused, then pushed on. Even if it set her off, Khris needed to know what was going on. "All along 119th. I've been driving for maybe ten minutes and I'm only at Metcalf. Cars are everywhere, but there's no one in them and they're just going until they hit something."

,,

"Kylie, are you fucking with me?" The question was asked half lightly.

,,

"No! Khris, I'm totally serious! I know this sounds crazy, but it's true!" Kylie knew she was right on the edge of a hysteric breakdown. Fighting back another wave of frightened tears, she hit her steering wheel in frustration; the horn went off and startled both of them.

,,

"Okay, okay. Um," Kylie could hear Khris trying to get her head together enough to process everything, "look, just head over here, okay? I'll see if Mom or Kevin are home and know anything about what's going on. Do you think you can make it here?"

,,

Kylie nodded, then remembered that she was on the phone and managed a, "Yeah, but it might take me a little bit."

,,

"Well," Khris quipped back, "if it is the Rapture, remember two things: we finally have the planet to ourselves, and the cops probably aren't worried about handing out speeding tickets at the moment."

,,

Kylie gave an almost-not-hysterical laugh back. "Okay. I'll be there as quick as I can." She hung up and looked at the road, debating. "Ah, screw it." She started down the sidewalk greenway, which was at least a little more clear of cars than the road, heading for her friend's home.

,, ,,

Everyone Else

I'm letting you guys rp with each other right now. Lemme know in OOC or in chat if you need/want ST direction right now.

[z-Tejah Ebadi]

Tejah stared up at her assailant, her heart pounding. Once she realized that she’d been knocked down by a woman, her anxiety eased a little. This was still clearly a Western woman, which meant that she was likely immoral, but her true danger was to men. Tejah glanced fearfully at the man approaching them, only to have him start to talk to the woman. She remained on the floor, willing them to ignore her. That worked for a time, until the woman addressed her.

,,

Unsure, she took the woman’s hand and allowed herself to be drawn her to feet. Picking up her carry-on, Tejah inched behind the woman, trying not to stare at the man while keeping an eye on him. Perhaps if his carnal desires became too much for him, he would take the Western woman instead of her. She would probably enjoy it, while Tejah would not. She was a good wife.

,,

The man spoke again and indicated a path for them to take with a pointed finger. Tejah followed when the woman moved as well, sticking close to her and smiling when the woman looked at her. The smile was uncertain but hopeful; clearly Tejah was frightened and was clinging to Lily for comfort.

,,

Sorry I don't have more; I didn't want to write more than seemed obvious for your PCs.

[Kestrel]

"I'm Lily," the singer told the shy, quiet woman in a kindly tone. She smiled and nodded, tapping her own chest to indicate she meant herself. "Lily."

,,

She then looked back at the mysterious man who seemed to know so much.

,,

"Okay. Lead the way. Looks like our new friend doesn't speak English, but at least she's ready to follow us out."

[Mathis McAstor]

That seemed to explain things to Mathis, who showed a wan, yet sympathetic smile to Tejah for a moment before the seriousness of the situation returned. Poor lady, came from out of the country, and frightened out of her mind. Hell, so was Mathis... this was a petrifying series of events.

,,

Of course, Mathis didn't know the half of it - which was better, since the issue at hand was getting out before the airport became rubble-dough with airplane fuel toppings.

,,

He led the way, the two women following him at a quick pace down a flight of stairs to the ground level. The exit outside was along the baggage concourse this way...

[Adam]

Adam just heard the sound of breathing over the phone for a long moment, before a pleasant alto with a faint, husky burr began speaking. "Um...oh, I wasn't actually expecting anyone to answer. Officer Bristow, you're the first person I've managed to get on the phone, since..." Krystal was trying to sound calm and collected, but Adam could hear the effort it was causing her. "It's good to know I'm not actually the only left in Kansas City."

,,

Krystal's chuckle was shaky, the humour of their situation grim. "My name is Krystal Johannson, and I'm calling to see if I missed some evacuation order or something, while spaced out in some fugue state." To Adam, it was obvious the woman on the was just going through the motions, that she didn't believe her explanation, and just as obviously, wished she could. "I was at the Art Institute - on Melrose Drive? - I blinked, and suddenly, I was alone. I'm crossing Brookside boulevard now - trying to get home - and I haven't seen anyone since. It's slow going, there's cars everywhere, just abandoned it looks like, and a shit-tonne of crashes, but there's-"

,,

"Nobody," Adam and Krystal said in unison.

,,

"Uh, right. I... I'm not sure what the protocol is for a... an... emergency like this." Krystal grunted, frustrated at having to admit that - it wasn't like she had been around for missile drills during the Cold War. "Should I be holing up at home and waiting for responses from the government, or should I be driving for the hills, fast as I can?"

,,

Notes

If Adam asks for her address, Krystal lives at 6043 Walnut St., on the corner of Walnut St and 61st St. She lives with her boyfriend Ian, who is out of town at the moment, but isn't answering his phone (which actually isn't that unusual).

,,

Normally the drill was simple: keep people calm and maintain order in the event of a crisis. At the moment Adam had no clue what was going on or how to handle things. To day amidst the chaos, improvisation was the rule of thumb. They shared a few facts for a moment about what had been going on, or not going on, as the case may have been. "...Honestly, Ms. Johannson, I haven't a clue what's going on. What I do know is that no evacuation was ordered, this 'event' just sort of happened. For right now, I think it'd be best if survivors like yourself come to the police station and we'll work on what to do from there. There's medical supplies and provisions. I'm on my way to pick up a survivor," He hated using the word 'survivor', but he wasn't sure what to call people who were left. "Out on I-70, if you need me to, I can pick you up along the way... traffic seems light today."

,,

It was a terrible joke, but with all his training nothing prepared him for the world pulling a Houdini. Injecting a bit of levity was all he could do to keep focused on what, as an public servant, he could do to help those that were left.

,,

"I have a vehicle, I could meet you there."

,,

I-70 guy was waiting. Adam sighed and considered it. "Alright, come to the station and wait. I should be about an hour, give or take. Do you have a pen?" Krystal rummaged for a pen and when she found one Adam gave her his personal cell number. He instructed her how to use the police radio once she got there. She had two means of reaching him in case something went wrong or she needed him to help others. "Keep your phone charged and if you need me, for anything, call my number. I know this has been a strange day Ms. Johannson, but we're all we have right now, I going need to know I can count on you."

,,

It was Krystal's turn to take a deep breath and ground herself. "I'll be there in ten."

,,

"Fifteen." The boyscout replied. "Keep it under the speed limit."

,,

He set down the receiver, grabbed his gear and headed for I-70.

[Kerilia]

It was easier once she got past the 119th and Metcalf intersection. She’d been worried about the congestion, had almost considered switching to the back roads in order to avoid the mayhem. If she’d been on the Missouri side that would’ve been perfect - the streets were laid out a lot more grid-like the closer one got to the city. But this far south, especially on Kansas side, the subdivisions were winding messes of cul-de-sacs and dead ends, and she didn’t know them well enough for it to be an efficient shortcut. There was, indeed, a mass of wrecked and stalled out cars – she could see them as she crested the hill at around 115th St. So she wizened up, crossed over the median and across the east side of Metcalf, and made her way into the parking lots. There were still wrecks, but the wide-open parking areas were much easier to navigate through, and one strip mall connected to the next over here. Between the medians, the strip mall parking lots, and the winding but fairly barren roads of the Sprint Campus, she made her way to Khris’ neighborhood without incident, even if the normally ten minute drive had taken her closer to forty-five minutes.

The pristine Leawood subdivision was far easier to navigate, but even it had been touched – she cringed at the sight of a car that had missed a curve in the road and slammed straight into the side of one of the more elegant brick-façade homes that lined the curvy street, and swallowed back her nausea at the sight of a small tricycle sitting unattended in the middle of the sidewalk.

She pulled up in front of the lovely, 1970’s style story-and-a-half home, and jumped out of the car, locking it behind her out of sheer habit. She hurried up to the front door and let herself in, hoping her less-than-stable friend hadn’t had a freak out yet, or left the house for any reason. “Khris? It’s Kylie, I’m here! Where are you?”

She heard the pounding of feet up the carpeted basement stairs and an odd sliding-click sound she didn’t recognize at first. When the door didn’t open, she frowned and tried the knob. Then she understood: someone had [i]locked[/i] the door when they heard her. “Khris?” she called out again, concerned.

“Um, yeah,” came the reply from directly on the other side of the door. “At least, I think so. Uh, I, uh, locked the door. Sorry about that. It’s just, um, there’s this...there’s a...you...you gotta promise not to freak out, okay?” She was speaking in rush, the words tumbling out in that way Kylie knew all too well from Khris’ manic modes. Or panic modes. “I’m pretty freaked out right now myself and really, [i]really trying not to go full on curl-up-in-a-ball wig out and I haven’t taken anything yet because...well, because I went through the whole basement looking for Kevin and the kitties and that included the bathroom and the mirror and....you just gotta promise not to freak out on me. Call me nuts, I hope, ‘cause that would make a [i]ton more sense, but no wigging out, promise?”

Kylie closed her eyes and took a deep, grounding breath; drawing it in slowly through her nose, and releasing it out of her mouth, her lips pursed softly, like she was blowing out a candle. She could hear the panic in Khris’ voice, and knew that of the two of them, she was going to be the one who could hold it together the easiest right now.

“I promise,” she said, her voice calm and controlled, full of empathy and patience. She’d had a lot of practice with that voice, and used it on everyone from her bipolar friends to agitated customers. “I’m scared by what’s going on, I’m not going to lie to you about that, hon. But I promise you, I will do my absolute best not to freak out.”

“Okay.” There was a long pause after that and the door remained locked, then she spoke again. “Remember, you promised.” The lock on the knob twisted back to unlocked and the door opened into the kitchen. Khris was standing on the top step wearing her black turtleneck and black pants, barefoot as usual, but without the usual handkerchief covering her head and holding her hair back.

All that only registered peripherally with Kylie, though, as she stared at her friend’s hair; usually it was a mousy brown color with the occasional auburn highlight. Now it was chunked stripes of deep green and blue-black, too evenly split between the colors to claim one was the base and the other the thick stripes. Her eyes flicked down to Khris’ face and she drew in a sharp breath and started back a step. Green eyes, not irises, but the entire eyes including no pupils, blinked back at her as Khris held out her hands and stepped hesitantly into the kitchen. “You promised, remember? ‘Cause I’m about to [i]really[/i] lose it here and we can’t both be too messed up to figure out what the hell is going on.”

She nodded, but her wide eyes and indrawn breath had told Khris that she wasn’t imagining the reflection she’d seen in the bathroom. Kylie stared at her friend’s strange appearance for a beat or two, before she let out a nervous laugh. “That’s a different look for you. I think it rules out the Rapture, anyway. Revelations doesn’t say anything about crazy-ass makeovers for the people left behind, right?”

Khris tittered back, still on the edge of hysteria. “I have no fucking clue. I was kinda hoping I was hallucinating, because then all of this was probably a hallucination....You...you’re kinda glowing.” She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “Nope, still glowing. I...everything looks...different? I mean, I can still see, but it’s all...different. English sucks for words.” She opened her eyes again and glanced around the kitchen and the silent house. “I-I guess it’s just us? I mean, I couldn’t find anyone here and no one’s answering their phone. Except you.”

“I.. stopped calling people after I got you. I had to concentrate on the traffic.” She glanced down at her hands, took a couple steps, into the powder room off of the kitchen, and glanced at herself in the mirror. “I don’t see any glowing. So that, um.. that must just be you.” She pulled her cell phone out of her purse, and starting plugging in a text message to everyone on her list with a cell phone.

This is Kylie Kendrick. Please text me back if you get this message, ASAP!

She clicked send, and then navigated to the main Yahoo page again on her iPhone, to see if anything else had posted since the last time she checked. “Let’s see if that gets any responses. I didn’t see anyone the whole way over here. Have you checked the internet or anything? Everything looked normal when I was looking on my phone earlier, but that was back when I called you.”

“N-no....I sorta had a little freak out in the bathroom and, yeah...no, I didn’t check the ‘net.” Not that it was doing much good to Kylie, anyways. There weren’t any new updates on Yahoo, thought a quickly typed in search did pull up a couple of blogs with new posts asking what was going and if there was anyone else left out there. One even had a dozen or so replies, everyone asking the same questions and generally freaking out in the written word. No one seemed to be texting her back, either.

“Okay.. we’re not totally alone. There’s a website here with some people, a blog. A bunch of people flipping out, mostly. But at least it means we’re not the only ones, right? So let’s be logical about this.” She drew in another grounding breath, and let it out slowly. She was doing a pretty good job of holding it together, but she could still feel a heavy knot of fear and nausea at the thought of almost everyone in the world she loved being gone. She pushed it as far into the back of her mind as she could, thanking the gods for Khris. She might be on the verge of freaking out, but it was someone she loved and cared about, and it gave her someone to talk to and focus with. “I’m gonna post something, but let’s think about this for a minute. I need you to be smart right now, cause you’re smarter than me about this stuff. Most of the people in the world are gone. The only reasons I can seriously think of are some sort of crazy magic thing, given your appearance.. aliens.. or the rapture. Which all sound absolutely ridiculous to me, except maybe the first one, but that’s only cause I’m pagan, and that still sounds pretty out there. So there we are. Are we in danger right now, do you think? Do we need to get out of the city or anything? Will things start exploding without people to run them?”

“Um, yeah, stuff’ll explode. Mostly power plants, but we’re not near any of them right now and it should take a little while. A few hours to a few days. Mostly stuff’ll catch on fire and no one will be around to put them out. I think getting ou-”

She stopped mid-word and closed her eyes again, her face pinching into a wince of pain. “Ow ow ow ow ow!” She shook her head, like she was trying to shake something off of it; when she looked back up, she had black pupils again, but they were expanding past how far Kylie was pretty sure a pupil could. The black didn’t take over completely, but Khris blinked several times, like she was staring into a bright light. “We, uh, we should go...over there....” She pointed back behind her, almost like she was pointing towards the basement, but not down. “Yeah, I’d like to go that way because my head doesn’t try to stab me in the brain when I think about going that way.”

Kylie blinked, and let out a slightly shaky breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding since Khris had started ‘ow’-ing. “Um.. okay. Okay, we can do that. I’m fine with that. Do you want to pack a bag? You should grab your pills and stuff for sure, just in case. We don’t know when we’re coming back here. Where are your cats? Are they still here or have they gone missing too?”

Khris shook her head. “They’re gone, I couldn’t find them anywhere.”

“Okay then. Why don’t you grab your medicine, and pack a bag of clothes or whatever you think you’ll need, and we’ll get out of here, okay?” She started punching in a message on her phone as she spoke, to post the fact that there were at least two survivors in the Kansas City area, asking where everyone else was, and stating that if anyone was near a power plant they should get away from it, because it might blow up within several hours or days. Khris hurried downstairs and dug out her largest suitcase, and as soon as Kylie had finished her post, she followed her down the stairs and helped. She ended up taking over the packing, quickly and neatly loading the things Khris brought her in tetris-like fashion. Once they’d packed her clothes, vitamins, pills, and a handful of other odds and ends, Kylie zipped up the suitcase and dragged it up the stairs, while Khris threw the last few things into her backpack.

They headed out the front door, but as Kylie unlocked her bright red PT Cruiser, Khris stopped her. “The Priuses* will get better gas mileage, we should take whichever one has the fullest tank.”

“Oh.. okay. Yeah, that makes sense.” Kylie glanced at her car a little sadly as Khris grabbed the keys to the two Prii*, and swallowed again as she felt her throat tighten in sorrow. Thinking about leaving her car was oddly painful, even though she wasn’t really a ‘car person’. It made her think of other things she might not see again, and she blinked furiously to quell the tears that swam to the surface of her vision. As Khris checked both cars, she drew in a sharp breath and forced herself to be practical. She just couldn’t let her emotions rule her at the moment. “We’ll stop at a gas station too, hopefully the automated pumps should still be working. I mean, the internet’s still a go, right?”

And with that, they loaded their things up in the newest of the two vehicles, a shiny little silver car with three-fourths a tank of gas that Khris and her family called ‘Moonlight’. She paused a moment to grab her iPhone charger and a couple other things out of her own car, and threw them into the Prius along with her purse. Then she climbed in and started up the car.

“Okay.. I’m just gonna start driving, and if I need to go some other direction, you just let me know, okay? You’re the one who seems to know where we’re going.. though I’d like to go by my house and pack a bag too, if I can.”

Khris nodded, “Yeah, just sort of north right now. There’s...strings? Spots? I don’t know. Just...head towards your house and I’ll say something or, y’know, bang my head on the dashboard, if we need to go another direction.”

Kylie let out a laugh that mostly managed to not sound too hysterical, and nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Yes, the plural for two Prius cars is apparently Prii, according to Toyota. Yes, the character would still call them Priuses. So there you go, LOL! Annotated!

[Krystal]

It was just over thirty minutes when Krystal walked into the police station. She'd been right outside her house when her call with Officer Bristow ended, so decided to stop there first. She wrote a note for Ian, telling him where she was and leaving Bristow's number, in case he was having an issue with his phone (hopefully that was the case) and she missed him.

,,

She gathered Fraz's saddlebags that contained poopbags, a collapsible water bowl, and a small tub of kibble for her dog, then grabbed the Tupperware of chicken Caesar salad from the fridge that was going to be lunch tomorrow for herself. Not sure when she'd be back, or Ian would - if he will... - Decided to bring the slow cooker that was cooking the pot roast for supper with her to the station. Bristow said there were provisions, but he hadn't said how edible they were, and besides, the pot roast only had another hour or so left to go in the slow cooker.

,,

One more quick look around the house, then she juggled her supplies with the help of Fraz out the door and climbed back in her Lexus. She plotted a course to the police station using Google Maps, which didn't help that much, with the cars left unattended on the road. Driving half or completely on the sidewalks did, but she couldn't but feel guilty, and kept glancing at the rearview mirror, almost expecting Officer Bristow to spontaneously appear behind her.

,,

The Police Station was in good shape - the heavy, reinforced street pylons deflecting any runaway vehicles from crashing onto the lot. Krystal eased into the parking lot, parking next to the row of police cars, feeling a little odd. She'd only ever been in a police station three times in her life.

,,

Once to bail out her mother, who had been picked up on a soliciting charge - the charge had been dropped. Her mom might have been a slut, but she never claimed to charge. Another was to bail out Ian for trespassing - don't ask, it was during a really rough time, before he started taking meds. And the first time, she'd been picked up at a Rave, while underage.

,,

The Kansas City station house might have been a different indeterminate institutional colour, but otherwise, it felt the same as any of the others police stations she had seen in Vegas. Except for the lack of people - she imagined even some podunk, one sheriff town in Wyoming during lunch break wasn't this empty. The only sounds were the rustle of paper kicked up by her and Fraz's passage, and the burbling of the coffeemaker, though the smell suggested something only distantly related to coffee.

,,

Krystal slipped pass the front desk and plugged in the slow cooked and her phone charger next to the coffeemaker while Fraz padded around, sniffing things and exploring. After setting out Fraz's water dish, Krystal did her own exploring, getting acquainted with the layout of the place and where things were.

,,

Some places she couldn't get into, being locked, and she left them for later, if it was necessary. She was still stubbornly hoping this... this whatever it was would blow over and things would make sense again. It better not be aliens - Ian will be even more insufferable than he can already be...

,,

Instead, Krystal decided to treat this like an extreme scenario, like when the CDC used a zombie outbreak as a model for an aggressive epidemic. What would you do if it was the Rapture and you were left behind?

,,

Debating what to do - resources would suddenly be plentiful, but infrastructure would begin to suffer, and swiftly - Krystal reached Dispatch. With Adam's prior instruction and a bit of fiddling, it was easy to figure out the CB radio system.

,,

While waiting for the rest of the hour to pass before calling Adam - she'd be damned if she was going to sound needy despite starting to grow anxious to hear another human voice - Krystal turned to the nearby desktop. Thankfully, whoever was on it last was still logged in, so she didn't have to worry about a password.

,,

She began surfing the net, glancing at news sites and marking down the locations of power stations and substations, water and sewage treatment plants. She was more than handy around the house, but she wasn't sure what she could do about those facilities. She wasn't sure if safety features would shut them down safely or if being unsupervised would lead to catastrophic failures, but she would start trying to find out.

,,

Might not be enough of them left to fight a fire. You know, in case this really was a Rapture-like event and not an over elaborate hoax.

[z-Tejah Ebadi]

Tejah followed the man and the woman in a state of shock. Mohammed would be furious with her leaving the last place they’d been together. But Tejah had the horrible feeling that her husband’s feelings didn’t matter, not anymore. The impossible was happening in front of her eyes and there was nothing she could do to get back to her family.

,,

The thought terrified her. As much as she’d been shamed by him at times, or had felt bad because of how far he’d taken her from the Prophet’s commands, he was all she’d known since the orphanage. He’d guided her, directed her and protected her. She’d wondered, once or twice, what it might be like to be completely on her own. But now that it was happening, she wanted nothing more than to be safe again.

,,

Old instincts from the orphanage took over. Basic needs. As they hurried through the airport, Tejah broke off from them to hurry to the nearest gift shop. She grabbed and stuffed prepackaged food into her bag. She also grabbed some drinks from the cooler. As she boldly stole rations and sodas from the Kansas City International Airport, Tejah secretly wished someone would come out and stop her. If they put her in jail, Mohammed would have to come and release her. That would be normal.

,,

But her theft occurred without any shop keeper showing up to stop her and her husband didn’t materialize to berate her for criminal activity. Still hurrying, she rejoined her companions and continued her walk toward the door. She kept her eyes on the other stores on their way, though; the habits of an often-hungry child were coming to the fore.

[Kestrel]

Lily glanced after the foreign lady when she broke off. She'd been just about to go get her, try to get it through to her that they had to move...there wasn't time for that...when she'd realized maybe she had it backwards. Lily remembered watching the aftermath of disasters. Katrina in particular stood out to her. Who knew what things were like out there? Did she really want to kick around, waiting for FEMA to deliver stale bread and mucky water? And who knew how long even THAT would take?

,,

"Hey, uh..." he'd never introduced himself, "Hey! I think she's got the right idea," Lily said to their guide, indicating Tejah as she scavenged. "Won't take but a few seconds to grab some stuff from one of the airport stores."

,,

As Tejah returned, Lily nodded at her, then went to get an armload of stuff as well...then realized better and took one of the plastic bags from behind the counter and started loading it up with water bottles and whatever snacks were on hand that looked like they might have SOME nutrition in them.

[Helena Lindsay]

Helena

,,

She started pacing the room as her father's phone continued to ring, eventually flipping over to a computerized voicemail message, confirming that despite his protestations otherwise he never had figured out how to get his own message recorded. She was about to leave him a message when she heard the sounds of metal on metal outside. Glancing through the windows, she saw a mica-green Prius being tipped over on it's side by a geyser of water. The car had run into the fire hydrant in the yard across the street, knocking the foot-high metal cap on the highly pressurized water line off it's bolts. Thankfully it seemed to be the only car on the street at the moment, but no one was climbing out of the driver's side seat yet.

,,

"What in the...?" Helena murmured incredulously, then realized she was still holding her phone. "Oh, hell, I- Dad, it's Lena, please call me when you get this? It's about Mom- we were talking about Ben again, and now I can't find her, so I was hoping you'd heard from her," she explained quickly, unsure of how much time she had left to record a message. "I love you. See you-" The phone beeped again, cutting her off, and she sighed in exasperation. She could feel a headache building just behind her eyes; her flight home left tonight, and family drama was the last thing she wanted to deal with before heading into the madness of the airport.

,,

Glancing out the window again, Helena frowned. Despite the plume of water jetting into the air and the overturned car, there were no onlookers, no concerned citizens checking to see what was going on. An uncomfortable sensation, heavy and cold, uncoiled in the pit of her stomach. As the moments passed, anxiety over her mother gave way to worry for the driver, and without thinking she walked outside toward the wrecked vehicle. The deluge from the ruptured water line surged down the street in sheets, nearly drowning out the sound of the car's engine. It was still running, and, afraid that someone might be trapped inside and seriously injured, she braved the steady stream of water and the localized downpour to peer inside the window.

,,

It was empty.

,,

A woman's purse, one of those brightly-patterned leather abominations she thought was so tacky, lay upended against the passenger door; an empty carseat was still strapped in the back. Her brown eyes wide, Helena stared into the car as her brain tried desperately to process what might have happened. She looked up the street, and then down again as the water soaked through her clothes and plastered her hair to her head. Swallowing hard, she began walking up the sidewalk, her pace quickening as knock after knock, doorbell after doorbell went unanswered.

[z012]

Adam

The highway was a nightmare of stretches of clear road punctuated by who-knows-how-many car pile-ups. His progress was back and forth, having detour back onto to regular streets around the crashes that blocked off the entire road in the places that didn't have a open margin or shoulder space to slip by. Or where the fires were so hot that the asphalt was starting to shimmer and shift. In the entire trek out to meet Eric Forrester, the Walmart Fleet truck driver that had radio'd in, Adam saw a total of three other people. All were in cars in pile-ups and all were most definitely beyond the help of ambulance services no longer available anyways.

,,

Eric had pulled his truck over onto the meridian shoulder of the highway on an overpass, hemmed in for his large vehicle by a snarl of cars on the off-ramp behind him and a cluster of metal and fire further down the road before the next exit. Adam found an emergency crossing point across the highway just before the ground dropped away for the overpass and edged his way over to the semi. Eric was pacing and sweating in the afternoon heat, turning his blue t-shirt almost navy; he brushed a nervous hand through his short-cropped hair and pulled his ballcap back on as Adam pulled up. "Officer Bristow?" he asked.

,,

Tulpa gave a helpful bark and whined at the door of the car to be let out.

,,

"Jesus!" the twenty-something trucker swore as he startled back from the car at the sight of the large dog. "Uh, sorry 'bout that. Just, that's a big dog. You K-9?"

,, ,,

Helena

Door after door after door returned no answer. One was even standing open, keys dropped just outside the home on the concrete steps leading down to the driveway. Even with the hydrant in the background, it was quiet. Not that comfy-with-tea library kind of quiet, but a soul-chilling silence of the hum of humanity that filled the background noise of a day on Earth. She checked every house on the block, and even the next block over, just to be sure. She was alone.

,,

She called 911. That's what you do in an emergency, right? The automatic machine answer kicked in and placed her on hold until someone could answer. Usually that took seconds. She waited a full five minutes before hanging up and going back to her parent's house. She pulled the phone book out of the drawer in the kitchen and flipped it open to the government numbers section, skimming down through the listings until she found the local numbers for the police stations. She started with the nearest one, the one she knew was nearby, and then just started down from the top of the list, not know the city well enough to know where each address actually was. She gave each station a good two to three minutes to answer the call before hanging up and moving on to the next one, casting a wider and wider net as she tried to hold on to the idea that this was a hallucination or some weird hoax.

,, ,,

Krystal

Wikipedia was both a wonderful and terrifying thing at the same time right now. Krystal learned several things over the course of a half hour of poking around the open-source encyclopedia:

1. Coal power plants would simply shut down as they ran through the last of the fuel put into the large ovens. It could take anywhere from one to six hours, depending on the size of the station and the usual loading procedures.
2. Locations of power stations were not public domain information, at least in Kansas City. She found one picture of the main station inside KC (coal powered) that was obviously on the riverbank, but an address was nowhere to be found.
3. Nuclear power plants would shut down after some time, anywhere from one to three days, and any storage facility for depleted rods would explode from lack of cooling sometime between three and ten days from the day the coolant power supply was cut off.
4. The closest nuclear plant and storage facility was about 150 miles south-west of the city. There were about a half-dozen north of the city as you headed towards Chicago.
5. Wikipedia was being downloaded by people who had also started at "End of the World?" article, trying to connect with others still left out there and ensure that the Terminal Event Management Policy (Level 1) protocols were being followed.

The people downloading Wikipedia and compressing it to send to some satellite in space seemed pretty spread out, with a few clumps in major cities and most scattered over the developed world. Whatever was going on, it wasn't just local. Immersed in the world of Wikipedia, Krystal nearly jumped out of her skin when a phone a few desks over began to ring.

,, ,,

Lily, Mathis, and Tejah

The foraging was slim pickings for anything healthy, but there was a good stock of bottled water and even some beef jerky packs. Backpacks caught Mathis' eyes as the girls were stuffing plastic sacks and he grabbed three down, bringing them over. "Here, these'll be easier to carry around."

,,

As they were dumping sacks into backpacks, more explosions rocked outside. They'd just finished stuffing the last of the food supplies that would fit in the backpacks when the building itself rocked violently, the sound of tearing metal and crashing concrete far too close for comfort. Tejah screamed and wrapped her arms over her head.

,,

"Come on," Lily snapped in her own fear, pulling the other woman's arms down so she could get the backpack on her. The three dashed outside the terminal, dodging taxis and busses idling along the drive lanes or crashed into each other. The parking lot beyond the loading zone seemed almost pristine, with cars obediently parked and not on fire or moving when they shouldn't be and no planes dropped on top of them - yet. They could smell burning jet fuel and feel the sting of acrid smoke now.

,,

The three looked at each other, barriers of language and upbringing set aside in one mutual question: where did they go now?

[Mathis McAstor]

Indeed, there around the trio was a zone of shock and mystery. It was long an understanding - nay, cardinal rule for a lawyer - that in examination and cross-examination, never ask a question you're not sure of an answer to. In this case, all the questions had no clear, certain answers for Mathis' purposes. Well, shit.

,,

"Ok, what I was going to explain is that-" Mathis stopped, foolishly aware that the third of their group had the language barrier. Well, she had a mix of Middle Eastern and Caucasian features... smartphones to the rescue! The wireless seemed to be running as Mathis dug his phone out and accessed Google Translate.

,,

"Pouvez-vous parler le français?" Tejah looked at him like he was talking baby babbles. Mathis tried Greek, the other most likely option of European languages if she knew any. "Boreís na milí seis elli̱niká?"

,,

This went on for a few more tries until finally Azerbaijani did the trick. Mathis smiled politely and decided to make overdue introductions. "Çaves olmaması üçün üzr. Mən Mathis edirəm. Siz var?"

,,

Translation Please?!

Çaves olmaması üçün üzr. Mən Mathis edirəm. Siz var?

Sorry for the lack of introductions. I am Mathis. You are?

[z-Tejah Ebadi]

Outside, her companions stopped and the man turned his attention to her. Tejah took a step back from him; she couldn’t help her reaction. It was better when he didn’t notice her at all. Worse, he was speaking gibberish at her. She glanced at Lili with a worried expression, but the woman seemed more curious about Tejah’s reaction than concerned about what the man was saying.

,,

It took several tries before he said something that made even a little sense. She thought he was trying to speak Azerbaijani but the words were all wrong. They also didn’t make sense. Still, she had the idea that his name was Mathis. With a hesitant smile, she guessed that he wanted her name. “Tejah,” she said shyly, taking another step back from him.

,,

The roar of a large vehicle caught the group’s attention, and they turned to peer out at the circular garage that was in front of the airport. A moment later, an old blue and white FJ nosed out of the parking lot, paused, then roared around to the entrance of the horseshoe-shaped entrance to the concourse. With a squeal of tires, the off-road-capable vehicle drew even with them, revealing a woman driving. She had a dark tan and long dark hair pulled into a ponytail but her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. Her well-muscled arm put the truck into neutral with a casual gesture as she turned to them. Peering over her shades, she asked with a Yiddish accent, “So you guys want a ride?”

[Kestrel]

Tejah...what kind of name is that? And how the hell did this guy pick the right language?

,,

Lily's questions...and they were piling up over the overflow bin by now...would have to wait though, because a RIDE was exactly what they needed.

,,

"Holy hell, that would be amazing," she said to the driver. "I'm Lily, and this is Tejah, I guess...still don't know who he is, but it seems like he sorta knows what's goin' on." Her Texas accent thickened as she tried to talk fast before this lady changed her mind.

,,

"We've gotta get outta here though, there's bombs or something. A plane crashed too."

,,

She went over to the door and peered up at the driver plaintively.

,,

"Do you know what any of this is about? How much trouble are we in here?"

[z-Tejah Ebadi]

“It’s not bombs, my friend.” The woman leaned over and unlocked the door, flashing a hint of cleavage with her v-neck shirt. She was a bit unrefined; her features were too coarse for her to be beautiful, though she was definitely attractive. Tejah glanced away from the indecent neckline, wondering how a woman could feel comfortable wearing that. “I saw everyone disappear, and so I think that the planes up there without pilots are now coming down. We should get to the south side of town.” A sardonic smirk twisted her lips. “And keep an eye on the sky.”

,,

“Disappear?” Lily blurted in startled reply. “You mean they...left? But how...” She shook her head. “You don't mean they just...vanished, do you? Because that isn't possible. How is that possible?!”

,,

“Got me.” The woman shrugged as she reached back and manually unlocked the back doors, too. “One moment they were there and the next not. I’m not worried about it, though.”

,,

“You’re not?!” Lily stared at her.

,,

“First priority is survival. Next is figuring out where everyone else went.” The woman stared at the pink-haired woman for a moment before reaching back and opening the door for her. “In.” She pointed to their foreigner and then to the seat. Mathis quickly looked up the Google translation of “get in the car” to add to that, and the young woman seemed to get it. With a hesitant smile, she climbed into the backseat, clutching her backpack and carryon bag. Lily scrambled in, and they were off with a roar.

,,

As their driver edged around an idling bus and finished the loop of the airport entrance, she said, “I’m Bili, by the way. And you are Lily, Tejah and…”

,,

“Mathis.”

,,

“Mathis. Very good.” Bili slowed as a group of crashed cars forced her into the grass median between the two roads. “So, who lives where in KC?”

[Kestrel]

Bili, thought Lily with giddiness born of shock and dawning horror. Bili and Lily, sitting in a tree...D Y I N G...no, that's not enough syllables. Damnit, I wish I'd gotten my guitar...

That thought made tears start to well up in her eyes, which she furiously blinked away and wiped her sleeve across. Goddamnit, she was NOT going to be like that!

"Not me," she said. "I was...I was waiting for a plane. Layover. Guess I'm going to be late." Lily managed a half-hearted pale imitation of a laugh.

[Krystal]

What had begun as a mental exercise to help her keep calm with the impossibility surrounding her was turning into something entirely too real, and too dreadful. Using the app on her smartphone, Krystal set her home PC and personal server to download and compress Wiki files as well, then posted a request on the 'End of the World?" thread, to any nuclear technicians out there, if there was a manual way to shut down the storage facilities for depleted rods safely, and signed it Krystal - Kansas City.

,,

But Krystal did those things practically on auto-pilot. Her thoughts staggered and stopped, flickering like a strobe-light from idea to idea. The... event was far more widespread than she had been willing to believe. Power stations going down. Need generators. Without power, no refrigeration. Need ice, hit perishables first. With the Rapture in effect, there would be a lot of missed deadlines. Krystal suppressed a titter, biting her lip nearly hard enough to draw blood.

,,

Krystal was almost willing to lend credence to her boyfriend's and her mother's beliefs in aliens. Almost.

,,

The ringing phone startled the ever-living-shit out of her, but it did have the benefit of slamming the train-wreck of her thoughts back on the rails. Krystal brushed deep auburn hair from her face and stared at the ringing phone for a long moment, loud in the silence of the depopulated city. Depopulated world.

,,

Krystal took a deep, shuddering breath, then got up and answered the phone.

,,

"Hello?" Krystal cleared her throat, trying to dispel the hint of uncertainty in her voice. No need to fall to pieces. It's only the end of the world as you know it. You dealt with finding out Ian slept with Jolene, you can deal with this too. "I'm Krystal... manning the desk for Officer Bristow. I guess that makes me a Deputy. There seems to be a shortage of manpower at the moment."

,,

Krystal chuckled with forced cheer - it was better to laugh at the absurdity than cry, since she worried once the tears started falling, it would a long time before they stopped. "What seems to be issue?"

[Mathis McAstor]

"No, I was passing through the flights back to New York." Mathis' voice had a certain dull weight, now in the car and having enough leisure from the risk of fatal injury to really let the facts sink in. "And it's everywhere, I swear. The anchors have disappeared from cable, there was an LA ballgame on one channel that was empty of everyone bar a player or few fans..."

,,

That was more than enough for this group - Mathis found himself taking on the unenviable responsibility of trying to communicate to Tejah via electronic translation and non-verbal gestures and expressions.

[Kestrel]

Lily felt her throat try to clench with panic, and had to really fight for a second to keep breathing, keep thinking.

,,

"It's not everyone," she said thickly, "We're still here. There must be other people too. We...we should go to a radio station, or...or a police station. Police station is better. People will try to call there when they realize what's happening. Even if the police are all gone, they'll call, and then we can talk to them. And the phone there'll be working. We can try to get in touch with people."

,,

And there'll be guns, she thought, but didn't say. We'll need those, soon enough. Everyone will.

[z-Tejah Ebadi]

Bili was silent for a long moment, focusing on maneuvering onto I-29. “I know where the local station is, at least from my house. But that’s way the hell downtown and I’m not sure we can even get past the river. That’s the main one, though, and that’s likely where the cops themselves are going to gather to regroup.” She spared a quick glance to the others in the car. “That’s the plan, anyway.”

,,

After that, their driver was silent, navigating south, ever south, dodging cars and pileups. Sometimes, her ‘acquired’ FJ went over level ground, but more often it rolled down slopes and bumped over curbs. The travel was harrowing for the passengers as well as the driver; Bili was pretty good at driving but the route she had to take was torturous. When they reached the Bond Bridge, they had to leave the truck. The traffic was a gnarled mess of impassible accidents, filling even the shoulders of the bridge. Bili did it reluctantly, mumbling under her breath as she grabbed a green kit bag and slung it over her shoulder with a swell of muscle.

,,

Walking over the bridge was relatively easy, save the moments when they had to climb over wreckage. Most of it was just crumpled plastic but a few of the cars had worse in them. Tijah put her hand on a windshield only to have it collapse inward. The safety glass didn’t cut her but it put the young anime-wearing woman face-to-face with a bloody man’s corpse. Panicking, Tejah caught her shirt on the window frame and found herself unable to pull away. Her screams of fear drew the other three to her.

,,

“Hold on. Stop!” Bili ordered as Mathis tried to translate to her. Tejah didn’t comprehend the garbled Google-Mathis speak and continued to pull against the hook holding her in place. Bili had to grab her by the head and physically restrain her long enough for Lily to unhook the sleeve of her sailor shirt. Bili let her go and Tejah shivered and cried for a moment in reaction.

,,

Once they’d passed the mess of cars on the bridge, Bili went hunting for another car. Finding another 4x4 idling with the door open and the keys in the ignition seemed like a god-send. After they loaded up, they were off again, maneuvering through unfriendly, clogged roads. Finally, she pulled up on the sidewalk in front of a brown stone and gray glass building. It loomed like a tower, all straight lines up and down. Putting the truck into park, the woman said, “Here we are.”

[Helena Lindsay]

"Hello?" Krystal cleared her throat, trying to dispel the hint of uncertainty in her voice. No need to fall to pieces. It's only the end of the world as you know it. You dealt with finding out Ian slept with Jolene, you can deal with this too. "I'm Krystal... manning the desk for Officer Bristow. I guess that makes me a Deputy. There seems to be a shortage of manpower at the moment." ,,

Krystal chuckled with forced cheer - it was better to laugh at the absurdity than cry, since she worried once the tears started falling, it would a long time before they stopped. "What seems to be issue?"

,,

Leaning against the island in her parents' kitchen, Helena started suddenly at the sound of another human voice, then sagged against the granite countertop in relief. Just knowing that someone was out there gave her hope that maybe this wasn't some sort of bizarre mental break, summoned up by stress or undiagnosed intracranial pressure, or- She exhaled. The woman was waiting for a reply.

,,

"Hello, yes, this is Helena Lindsay. Doctor Helena Lindsay," she began. "I'm visiting my parents, and they, ah... Well, honestly, everyone in the neighborhood seems to have spontaneously and simultaneously walked away from their lives. I'm supposed to be going back to San Diego today, I need to get back to the hospital, and I haven't been able to reach my ex- my husband there, either." She didn't like thinking about Ben, but her parents were MIA, which made him the closest thing to family she had right now. He'd betrayed her trust, broken their vows, and left a wound in her heart she'd done her best to mend by helping the patients in her care, but a tiny part of her still loved the man she'd married. To lose everyone, everyone she cared about was unthinkable. To accident, to illness, to age, yes- she dealt with loss every day, and a certain level of detachment and pragmatism was required to work in the medical field. She could accept that, eventually, everything that lives must die, but like this? No. This wasn't right, whatever it was. It wasn't natural.

,,

"Can you help me?" she asked finally, hoping that whatever this was, it was localized.

[Krystal]

Krystal felt a pang of guilt. After getting an idea of just how widespread this... event was - unless it was the most elaborate hoax ever! - and the ramifications of losing so many people, her first thought upon hearing the woman on the phone was a doctor was: No, but you'll be able to help me, when society breaks down into post-apocalyptic anarchy.

,,

I read too many comics and watch too many movies. Ian, this is your fault. Now, get your ass home so I can chew you out about it and know you're okay. The practical and pragmatic part of Krystal still thought hooking up with a Police Officer and a Doctor was a good thing, considering. Despite being an artist by trade, Krystal was pretty good with her hands and around the house, though she wasn't sure how helpful her computer skills would continue to be.

,,

"Umm, I'm afraid the... the whatever is happening covers all of Kansas City, at least. I've been having trouble contacting out-of-towners too," Krystal admitted, if not admitting everything she feared to be true - she didn't want to distress the woman too much too quickly. Krystal was distressing herself enough as is. "It might be best if you can make you way to the police station, so we can pool our resources, see if we can help each other out. Sound fair?"

,,

Remembering that Helena said she was visiting, Krystal stood up, palming her forehead as she made sure she had her keys. "Oh, right! Do you have a car? If not, I can-"

,,

"No, that's alright, I have a rental," the doctor interjected.

,,

"Good, good." Krystal gave Helena the address, then texted her route on Google Maps after finding out where she was. She hoped the Great Google Gods would inexplicably find some way to survive the apocalypse. "Be careful on the roads, they're crazy and don't be afraid to drive on the sidewalks. See you soon."

,,

The two women said their goodbyes and traded assurances, then Krystal headed back to check on her pot roast, thoughts flitting back to potential post-apocalyptic survival. It wasn't just an idle mental exercise anymore.

,,

Krystal was dwelling on water treatment plants, water pressure, feasibility on digging wells, and how long so few of them could use purely bottled water, when Fraz suddenly went on point. A moment later, Krystal heard a faint commotion outside the front of the station.

,,

Frazetta padded towards the front doors, nails clicking on the linoleum, and Krystal followed her, considering that looters were always the first to strike. But she had to see to be sure. Fraz reared up and pawed the push-bar on the door, slipping through, and Krystal peered through the tinted glass.

,,

There were four of them, a man and three women, one of whom appeared to be a refugee from an anime convention, and another in a suit. Hardly looked liked looters, but one of the women was pretty buff. Fraz sat down on her haunches at the top of the short flight of stairs, and barked once, tongue lolling - not in warning, but to tell her mistress it was safe enough.

,,

Krystal slipped out behind her dog and gave them a tentative wave. The dog was gorgeous, white, grey, and brown, with a reserved, friendly look, but she was huge, easily outweighing her mistress by fifty pounds. The dog's mistress was short, well-endowed and very pretty, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a snug t-shirt under a light vest, hardly the sort who would typically be found in a police station.

,,

But these were far from typical times.

,,

"Er, hey!" Krystal looked either way up the street, looking for others, then gave the group a wry smile. "Guess there's more than just four left in the city, huh?"

,,

Guess there ain't going to be any leftovers from the pot roast.

[Kestrel]

Lily was out of the car and shading her eyes as she looked at the police station and waiting on the others to get out when she heard the dog bark. Oddly, the noise was something she associated so much with people that her heart lifted, even as she tried to talk herself down and remind herself that the police dogs would probably still be there even if the cops all vanished.

,,

But then the girl appeared. She looked young and...kind of soft. Not like Lily imagined a policewoman would.

,,

Even seeing one other person was a relief, even as she started thinking about the dire, dire shortage of surviving men they'd found so far. If this ratio held true, humanity was in for some interesting times.

,,

"Hey!" she called, returning the wave. "Are you all that's left here? Do you...work here?" Lily glanced over at the others quickly, then said, "Can we come in?"

[Krystal]

"Work here? Oh, dear God, no," Krystal chuckled, holding the door open, then giving a sharp whistle, urging Fraz back inside. "No, I'm an artist - graphic novelist, really. I was calling emergency responders about..."

,,

The woman brushed auburn hair from her face and shrugged a slender shoulder at the eerily silent city surrounding them. "... well, y'know, and officer Bristow was the only one who answered. But he had to respond to a call - so that's at least one other person - and suggested meeting him here. So here I am."

,,

Krystal led the newcomers into the precinct, pointing out where things were, that she knew off. "I was just talking to another woman, so there should be another joining us," Krystal was saying, having just found the bathroom herself. She eyed the group, trying to conceal any signs of eager hope. "I don't suppose you guys have had any more luck contacting friends and family than I have, hmm? Or happen to be nuclear technicians or wastewater treatment plant specialists? I was checking the net and this... thing, it's extensive guys."