The wind slipped almost quietly between the buildings that remained in the plaza, whispering tales of death and decay on its passage. The largest of the skyscrapers, the ones that formed the Exchange, showed no signs of doing any business, if anything it appeared as though these old buildings had cashed out many years ago.

If you were wise, you wanted no business with them.

Trash still covered the edges of the roads, stuck in gutters and inlets, pressing up against the buildings, mounded around poles, and caught in doorways and alleyways. Vines grew up and along many walls, and broke through openings in the litter much like the weeds fighting their way up through the pavement. One of the buildings, the First Regional tower, was the second tallest tower in the cluster, and was mixed use in its previous life. There were shops and restaurants and more on the ground floor, apartments on the lower few, and offices on the upper half of the building.

Lloyd sat, with his back against the wall of a 6th story patio, the highest residential floor, remaining perfectly still. He’d been in this building before, years prior. He and Rachel worked a few blocks over, albeit in different directions. He at the law firm, the most prestigious one in the city, and her at the recruitment center, always scouting for future marines.

They met at the Italian joint downstairs a couple of times for lunch, usually in the summer, and those had been some of the better lunch dates; since they were earlier on in their marriage. They were memories which he held onto dearly.

His grey camouflage didn’t quite match up with the stone colored bricks behind him, but they were the closest texture clothes he could find to match this west-facing wall. He liked this building because of the three exits on the ground level. Lloyd always liked to have options.

The sun was flirting with the horizon now, hues of orange casting a sheen on the open air; and he took plenty of time taking it in. Lloyd felt like in earlier life the owner of this apartment would have a cocktail in hand, would have smooth jazz playing, and wouldn’t be hunched against the wall with binoculars in their lap.

Lloyd kept his guard up, since he knew there was a chance he wouldn’t be alone here. She and her crew been chasing him for months and though he was pretty sure that he had this section of the city to himself, he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.

The string and glass bottle alarm he’d set inside the apartment remained silent in the day plus he’d been here, and the only noise which came from below was the whipping wind and the occasional rodent scurrying nearby. He’d been out here for the past few hours watching the horizon through the glass railing and decided he’d soon retire himself to bed. Just as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon.

It couldn’t have been more than 5 minutes out from setting when he saw a new light on the horizon. It scattered rays of red through the glass, and his eyes focused, then squinted, his brows furrowing. Lloyd peered down at his chest, confirmed his suspicion, his fear, and saw the red dot fixed squarely over the area of his chest that contained his heart.

The sight took a few moments to fully register, but from the perspective of whoever was on the other end of this red dot, it might as well have been a full minute. Lloyd had given them plenty of opportunity in his delayed reaction.

He dove to his left, throwing his body onto the tiled patio, hoping to at worst catch the bullet with his leg. He heard the loud and sharp crack break across the sky and echo between the hills and the building. By the time he’d landed on his left side and started crawling toward the apartment, the bullet, which must have been huge, obliterated the glass railing and ripped a 3 inch wide hole in the wall behind him.

The slight delay taught Lloyd that the sniper was pretty far away, a quarter mile at least. As he shuffled his way into the apartment over bits of glass, which found their way into his hands and elbows, he groaned from the ache in his back. He pressed himself against the other living room wall which he’d noticed was at least a foot thick based on the space between the it and the exterior visible from the porch.

As he caught his breath, Lloyd froze, hearing shuffling in the alley a few stories below. Then, all of a sudden, a whoosh sound, and a small brown package landed clumsily on the porch, denting the corner of the cardboard box appreciably before coming to rest.

He backed away and into the room quickly, initially suspecting that someone had just lobbed an explosive right into his personal space. He listened for more movement in the alley below but all he could hear was a muffled noise coming from the box.

Upon closer evaluation, albeit with his head held low and out of suspected view, he realized there was a speaker in the box. He grabbed it hoping for the best, carefully cut the packing tape with his pocket knife, and found inside a two-way walkie buried in now yellowed packing peanuts.

He had heard noise from it previously, and it had been mostly quiet while it was unpackaged, but now that the radio was in his hand it startled him when it chirped again. A female voice greeted him, “You’re lucky there’s a northerly pushing bullets around today Lloyd”.

“God dammit Rachel, why won’t you leave this and leave me alone”. His words hung in the air for several seconds and he felt the contemplation on the other end of the radio.

“Why didn’t you leave that secretary of yours alone?” She said, and another round struck the wall behind and a little right of where he now sat.

“That was years ago! And it was nothing, she means nothing!” Lloyd explained, sounding exasperated and desperate for belief.

“Just like you”. Rachel said into the walkie. just a degree over whispering.

It was then that Lloyd heard the footsteps scaling the stairwell and the radios chirping. outside the apartment. He decided in that moment that he was tired of running from his wife, from his fate.

He slumped back against the wall, his head coming to rest against the unpainted concrete with thoughts spinning in seemingly every direction.

He took a deep breath and tried to push as many of those thoughts out of his mind as possible. He pictured the pasture at his parents house upstate, and a teenage winter, with a foot of pristine snow covering the hills. He remembered the silence, then sat up a little straighter just as the door to the apartment erupted. The white pasture in his mind started swallowing the blue sky until it reached all the way up to where Lloyd couldn’t see.

In that moment last Friday night, we didn’t care about our clean new tennis shoes. We didn’t care about the years of hearing stories of people taking their life and being haunted at the old Avery Gorge Bridge. We didn’t care that it hadn’t been crossed by train in at least 20 years, and probably had missing or failing members.

We didn’t care whether that dark thing with deep burning orange eyes in the woods was still chasing us.

We ran like it was, like our lives depended on it. and we had no intention of stopping until we made it back to the city.

As God watched, millennia tumbled by aimlessly, much like a stone chipped free from a cliff and bouncing down a rock covered face. It splashed when it hit the water. The plume left in it’s wake resembled the bombs which ended the previous species.

The sun looked on daily, exhaustedly.

Revolution then revolution then reformation and back to reactions again.

The sun grew weary of seeing men squander its light.

As dusk drew near, the sun decided enough was enough. Tomorrow, at least the type of tomorrow this world was used to, would no longer come. They’d had their chance.

In the mid afternoon sun, Daphne walked, shoulders obviously sulking, though the mostly empty field behind Potter’s Ranch. She was flanked by several trees which were scattered throughout the valley and appeared to be standing guard for intruders like herself. The field sloped up relatively gently on both sides to a hill, meeting in the middle to form a small drainage channel, which she now walked along. There was no water flowing today, it hadn’t rained in weeks, but she liked to look at the rocks collected in pools. To the northeast, a several hundred foot wide rock face stood tall and immovable. It looked as though it’d been there for all of time.

The golden grasses brushing against her feet danced in the breeze and after a while it pissed her off how elegant and oblivious the grass seemed. As if it held absolutely no regard, and no care.

She walked slowly, taking her time. Some would challenge if you could even call it a walk. She found hersef tracking to the far end of the field near the big, ugly, gray wall. There was a pile of several dozen boulders strewn about at the base, and there were even a few kids there today, several dressed in bright colors, and a handful showing off their muscular torsos. Their chatter had been making it’s quiet echo down to her the past few minutes.

After walking for the better part of an hour, she stayed a few hundred yards away, out of courtesy to the group of kids that’d beat her here and claimed the spot. She instead found a spot next to an older looking tree, and plopped herself against it’s trunk.

A sigh let itself go, and she replaced it with a deep breath in. “Hey kiddo” she said aloud, to the open air between her and the group of kids at the wall, some thousand plus feet away. She was careful not to say it too loudly, hearing how clearly their voices carried back toward her. They were talking about the route, and about a girl named Valery Vaughn. She was sure that Jacob used to do the same. She wasn’t as sure, but didn’t think it impossible that he might have once climbed with that very group.

There Daphne sat for at least half an hour, though she never watched the time out here, only the sunset cast against the wall from over her shoulder. She stood to leave, and noticed she’d been spotted by a couple of the kids, some of them now beginning to pack up their things for the evening trek down the valley. She turned to face them exactly, and called out as clearly as she could “You kids be safe up there!”

A few hands shot up to acknowledge and wave the woman thanks for the concern.

**The breeze, which had previously been singing and laughing at her through the grasses, felt like it stalled for a moment, and then gave a drawn out sigh of it’s own. Daphne heard it as “Hey Mom”. **

There really wasn’t enough time to hang around after the job was done. Cheyenne had just rounded the corner before the first siren sounded, and her black sweats were making a swishing noise as the sheen pant legs rubbed together at a much faster than usual, faster than on her morning walks. The noise was lost on her, she didn’t hear much of anything, only focused on what she could see ahead of her.

She was a block away when she turned back and saw a few still-scared locals spilling out of the lobby and onto the street. She was three blocks away before she heard the faint whoo-ing sounds of the nearest police unit responding to the scene. By that point she was beginning to breathe noticeably heavier, an icy puff forming from her lips with every exhale. As she trodded forward, it occurred to her that this morning’s walk wasn’t usual at all. It was far, far from it.

She was five blocks away when that first cruiser she heard coming sped past her, obviously in a hurry to First National Bank on 27th. Her gaze had been fixed ahead of her for the past few minutes, nervously charting a path through the morning crowd of people shuffling through the streets. They just idled right by, many silently, granting no special attention to the brown woman dressed in all black athletic wear who was now working up a sweat. Cheyenne wondered if any of them had ever considered robbing a bank. As she did, she pulled her arms nearly to her chest, and tightened the straps of her back pack closer to her. Now she craned her neck down and now watched the joints of the sidewalk pass beneath her like credits at the end of a movie. She watched it as if she expected it to tell her where to go as she power walked along.

As she looked closer, and paid more attention, it occurred to her that there were more broken and splintered lines and cracks in the pavement than not. She wondered if someone would fix them someday, or if the cracks would eventually cause the concete to fail; and crumble. She wondered if she herself were beginning to crack, or whether she had already fallen into disrepair. In her haste to get as far away as fast as possible, she’d missed her street, by several hundred feet.

She figured there was no point in her losing her cool, and reasoned with herself that it actually made sense to keep moving. To not have a record of going straight home should any cameras be watching.

Yes.

She’d go to somewhere with poor camera coverage; and ditch her bag, change her clothes, something like that. Something smart, like from a movie.

So that’s what she did, she booked it north, then turned a few blocks later and went east a ways, then found herself on the perimeter of the old City Park. She eased her way in, sticking to walking trails to not stick out too much. Cheyenne found the first restroom she could, and as she scurried into what was surely some local architecture student’s project, based on the overly complex roof structure and ample natural light entering a shared entry area. As she made it completely into the room, the door to the men’s room opened, and a uniformed cop walked right out. He wore similar colors to her, his uniform a shade lighter than her sweats. Either by design or by years of washing and fading.

She froze for about half a second, taken aback at the situation she’d found herself in. Then she realized that there’s no way he knew who she was, he had no reason to suspect her. So, she adjusted her frame, and continued her stride to the women’s room, more confidently than when she walked in.

It took the cop about two full seconds to realize what he was looking at as she crossed the room; he movements jittery and suspicious. Hardly missing a beat, the officer whose badge read Johnson said calmly but assertively, “Ma’am I’m going to need you to stop right there.”

So Cheyenne stopped in her tracks halfway through the room as ordered, immediately losing all that confidence she’d just mustered.

“Yes off- officer? Can I help you?” Her voice cracked as she said it, which she hated because it did not make her look less suspect.

“Ma’am have you been to this restroom before? Perhaps to exchange money for drugs?” the man named Johnson bellowed, with arms now crossed about his burly chest.

“What? No. God no! I’m poor and I never come here.” Cheyenne offered then realized just how shitty, entitled, and rude that must have sounded.

“Am I free to use the restroom now?” she protested, some of that confidence restored since he evidently didn’t recognize her as a bank robber.

Before Johnson could stop her, she’d already made her way into the ladies room. The door shut behind her, and she heard him say something; but nothing important enough to have stopped her, because she heard his boots shuffle out of the building and onto the grass.

Cheyenne slumped against the wall, caught her breath, and thought about what to do next. A minute couldn’t have passed, and she heard footsteps back outside in the open room between the men’s and women’s. They weren’t Johnson’s, too light to be his. She realized that she hadn’t locked the bathroom door behind her, and reached up for it now on the off chance a woman was approaching the restroom.

They door swung open as her hand was coming to the bolt. She yanked it back, like she’d burned herself on a hot pan. The woman which entered the restroom was clearly stoned. It was inside of a few seconds, mainly because of the clothes she wore and the scent she bore. The two women locked eyes, and it was obvious to Cheyenne this lady was not in her right mind.

She realized that’s probably what Johnson thought of her initially. She must have welcomed herself into a sketchy area. The other woman just cocked her head at Cheyenne a little, who was seated on the ground and clutching a black bag. The black bag was by all appearances ordinary enough on its own, but the zipper to the big pouch was slightly undone, probably from all of the hustling done up to this point.

The other woman’s gaze was fixed on the little (but thick) triangle of unmistakable green paper poking out of the big pouch. She lunged at Cheyenne, bearing the face of a woman who doesn’t play fair. They played an intimate game of tug of war over the bag, until eventually the bad lady had put all of her weight into pulling the bag free from Cheyenne’s grip. She suddenly let go, and her body shook freely as if she were seizing. Turns out she was seizing, since Johnson had snuck back in and tazed her.

Seeing the woman shaking, and Johnson’s concerned frown were the last thing’s Cheyenne saw before the released tension from the backpack was transferred to her, and her head catapulted backward toward the tiled wall. As contact was made, an uncomfortably loud smack echoed in the small room. The white and green tiles behind Cheyenne’s head were now spattered with a little bit of red, and had a spiderweb of cracks running throughout them. Cheyenne’s lifeless body slumped to the floor, and the other two were too stunned to speak, so for a few moments they just stared in awe, then called for help.

“I’ll be Chuck E, you can be Mickey” said Evan, the loud crack of a 12oz can following his comment. “You can be Minnie, the cops would get a good laugh at least”. Darrel quipped back without hesitation.

The recliner cried out for help as Evan briefly leaned back even further before getting up to do his best Minnie Mouse routine. “Heyo folks get your hiney’s down on the ground or you’ll make like cheese and have some holes in you!” he chirped in his best high-pitched voice.

He’d hardly finished before Darrel cracked up, and once he had, they both broke into laughter. The impression was the spark to be certain but the 6-packs of cheap beer had gotten them combustible in the first place.

“But seriously,” Evan continued somberlyi after the laughs died down. “We put on those big mouse helmets; and we act like ‘em too. Move quietly across the room, don’t let nobody know we’re there until it’s too late. Then we get our cheddar.” The plan seemed plenty developed in the early morning hour, and they men decided they’d pull the figurative trigger tomorrow.

Neither of the men quite realized until they’d tugged on the door handle, breathing heavily through their whisker-lined masks that they’d attempted to rob a bank on a Saturday. Each of them scurried back to the car exactly as planned, just like a mouse.

Thrusters eased their force as the ship approached the surface of Varion-3. Captain June cast her gaze down upon the desolate surface which was littered with dark brown stones and sand kicking up around the landing site, an old air traffic facility.

A voice came from across the glass-walked room. “The landing ramp has been deployed ma’am, you can now head for the exit if you would like.” She muttered back a delicate thank you, and held her eyes on the horizon, much closer, much rockier than she was used to at home. The stars above the cliffs appears to be smiling at her, beckoning her back into orbit.

A few moments later she turned, sighed while grabbing and fastening the blue and white helmet, and began her descent into the sea of emptiness below.

White-turned-gray towers of crumbling concrete were dwarfed by green and brown columns of life. The city remained a city, but it’s inhabitants were no longer lawyers and doctors and retail workers. Those jobs and the people that worked them died ages ago. They were strangled to death by their arrogance, and their monuments are now choked by the vines of their assertion over the land.

“So, who’s going to die today?” asked Death, leaning back into his vintage Eames chair. The room was cool and bright, light from the bright summery day was beaming into the office from over the skyscrapers. He (if you could call him that) was dressed in a light gray suit, sporting a black tie and shoes. His feet took their time ascending the desk and found their place on the corner, propped one atop the other. The notebook lay sprawled on his lap now, the pen clicking repetitively in his hand.

Across the planet from that stylish New York City office, a 13 year old girl named Sophie was laid out on a grassy hillside. At the foot of the hill was the valley, and littered throughout the valley was a mixture of reds whites yellows and purples. The wildflowers had taken over this particular area, and would run rampant for the next few months. Sophie herself used to run rampant through these fields, either with her friends chasing her, or her dog Murphy sprinting ahead of her looking happier than ever before to be enjoying a most beautiful day.

Her blond hair complimented the daisies which surrounded her and her companion was panting away next to her on the blanket. She looked down at him and wondered if he ever broke into a sweat beneath all that dark fur. She was sweating now despite it being a cool 70° out.

Sophie’s parents were leery to let her roam from the house or be on her own at all since she was so weak lately. They knew better though, that if they tried to stop her she’d only make it her mission to do what she wanted.

Sophie laid back onto the picnic blanket and closed her eyes. She could feel the sun beaming down onto her face. For half an hour she laid there, lost in her thoughts, worried about the impact she’s left in her time here. Her face chilled, and she felt the shadow creep over her head. When she opened her eyes, there he was.

She wasn’t scared, and instead looked up at Death with intrigue and a mild agitation. After a few moments, and based on the outfit, she knew her time was up. She sat up, studied Death closely, and only asked one question of her captor: “Can you make sure Murphy makes it back to the house? He’s quite clumsy.”

The sun was roaring directly overhead, and even a blind man would know it. This day was a scorcher, and the girls had planned to spend it in the pool. Just after 9 I told Natalie that I’d needed to spend some time at the office, and her eyes burned into me hotter than the sun. It was a Saturday, a family day, but she knew that this deal was huge.

Microsoft was building a new Tampa office and liked to hire local architects where they built, and the it couldn’t have happened at a better time. The firm was pretty much being kept alive solely by this project. She was wrapping up breakfast for the kids, and I gave them all a kiss on the head before taking off in my khaki shorts and sweat wicking shirt.

The walk from the house to the car, combined with the time for the car to cool, had put some sweat in my pitts. Nothing new, we’d been living here all our lives, but it still managed to piss me off. I couldn’t even drive to the office without getting a little sweaty, and thankfully everyone was adjusted to it here, otherwise early morning client meetings would be pretty uncomfortable.

I made a couple of lefts and a handful of rights and was out of our neighborhood. The house we lived in was a far cry from the structures I designed, and was in no way like the houses the movies would have you believe that architects live in. I was probably 10 minutes into my commute, stuck in traffic on highway 91, when Natalie’s name appeared on my phone. I answered, secretly frustrated I couldn’t even have the drive to myself, but happy that if she’d wanted to talk we would get it out of the way before I got into my work.

“Hey what’s up?” I said before she got a chance to speak. The phone sounded like it was on speaker when she spoke, and I inferred from a hundred similar calls before that she was in the living room. The acoustics were noticeably different from the rest of the house.

“Hey Cliff, I need you to turn around and come back. Stevie is throwing a fit that you’re not here, and refuses to stop crying.” There was an uncertainty in her voice, and it seemed like she was nervous more than irritated, which is what I would’ve expected would be paired with an upset Stevie. I paused and chose my words carefully, my grandmother taught me to choose my battles wisely.

“Honey you know how behind I am on this project and-“ she cut me off before I could finish. “Cliff I get it but I am not taking no for an answer, I need you here. Now Ralph is using it on the neighbors lawn again. Just hurry back.” The phone made a beeping tone between my hand and ear, and I brought it down to a few inches in front of my waist. I held a confused gaze at the traffic in front of me for a moment and ordinarily would have contemplated what to do for the next few minutes. But the problem, the thing that rang out from the phone and into my ear, our dog’s name is Roger.

I peeled out of the middle lane as soon as there was an opening and got off of the highway. I took the local road which snakes through a few neighborhoods but I wagered was faster than dealing with the highway again. I tried calling back, as the fear sunk into me like a stone in a pool.

My stomach turned and I drove like I was inviting an officer to stop me and write down every law I was breaking on a ticket. Thinking about getting a ticket was a fortune. I was less than five minutes from the house when I realized I should call 911. An officer was dispatched to the house and would be there a few minutes after me.

I was torn between storming into the house but was also worried that there was someone there expecting me to do just that. I parked two houses up and hoofed it. Remember that sweat in my pitts I was complaining about earlier? That wasn’t the half of what I had soaking into my shirt as I scuttled around the backside of my own home like an intruder. I didn’t hear the girls playing in the pool like they planned to. Like they should be. I did hear a deeper voice than Natalie’s coming from inside the house.

I peered from around the corner of the pool house, careful to watch for my shadow being cast long and revealing my position some 28.5 feet (I designed the pool house) away from our living room. It was still mid morning and the sun was creating shadows left and right. And west, thankfully, right now. I had my shadow behind me was I started tip-toeing toward the house along the panes of glass.

I halted and took an immediate step back when I saw the figure of a huge looking man in the kitchen beyond the living room. He was in a greenish camouflage shirt. There was a black mask pulled over his head. There was a gun trained on my wife. When I slowed and realized he was facing the road, and not toward me, I kept moving. Maybe this guy had some sense and was watching out onto the street to see visitors before they arrived. I was glad I hugged the property line by the Peterson’s on my way in. He probably would have put a round in me if he’d have seen me.

I couldn’t go into the living room from the sliding doors because of the alarm system. If the doors were to open even just enough for me to slide through, the system would chirp. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. I composed myself and spent a moment thinking. The cops should almost be here. But Natalie and the girls are in immediate danger. I hope that we’re never in this situation again.

I snuck around to the front, my steps careful and quiet. Once I was there I could hear the gunman talking. “Come on lady. I’ve seen your husbands car. Look at this house. I know you have some cash or something here. Just tell me where and I won’t hurt you or the kids.”

Natalie had a quiver in her voice, worse than I’d ever heard even despite our many emotional conversations over the last 12 years. “I swear I don’t remember the passcodes, my husband handles all of our finances” she trembled out. I hated that she was right. I’d have preferred he get his money and go. I contemplated revealing myself and the safe’s passcode.

A cop car pulled onto the street, thankfully he’d listened to my request to the dispatcher not to use his siren, but he had lights blaring just as loudly on his hood. The intruder must have still seen them, because just as the cop got out of his car to approach the house, his weapon in his hands, a bullet shot out from the kitchen and brought most of the window over the sink with it. I was crouched down and thankfully not looking up, so I didn’t get any glass in my eyes. Once my ears stopped ringing I looked up and around.

The cop was laid out in the yard, squirming. I felt sorry that I called. He was reaching now for his radio, presumably to call for backup, when another round cried out. I was more prepared this time but still plenty startled. The man in the kitchen cried out now. “Fucking cops? You called the cops?!?”

Three more gunshots. Once I digested what happened I sprinted to the front door and ran into the house. He was near the doorway and wasn’t expecting me. My weight was enough to put him on the ground, and the tumbling toward the ground was enough to let loose another round. I rolled off of him and checked myself. Kicked the gun across the tile and into the study.

He managed to stand up and limped hurriedly into the direction of the back yard. Blood streaked across the living room floor, and eventually the back patio. The sun was cooking it into the pavement, and by the time the red was already staining the concrete permanently, the murderer took a couple of missteps in his drunk-looking state, and collapsed into the pool. He sunk toward the bottom like a stone.