Dust drifted about the small room in a parody of ballroom dancing, each mote gliding through the light of the single aperture above the bed. She stretched and sat up, her body ached from motionless daylight hours on her small, bare mattress. During the night she could scavenge outside amongst the bones of a lost civilization, a silent mouse amid the pantries of greater beings. When the moon was out they slept, but too much noise could easily awaken them, so silence was the only way to travel. Sarah was alone anyhow, her last friend lost months ago in a medicine hunt. The pendulum swung the other way during the day. That was their time, their time to hunt. She wondered what else they ate, as it had been so long since she’d seen any of her kind. Humanity could not be all they subsisted on as there were far too many of them, and too few humans left.

Somehow electricity still flowed to the houses in her area in spite of no one seemingly alive to keep it running. Sarah didn’t dare use it though, as it had been theorized they could hear the hum of electrical devices. She laid back down to rest, more than simple movement risked exposing her to danger.

It was then her heart stopped for what felt like minutes. The audible thrum of the old TV set her parents had bought her in the before times, erupted to life. Somewhere in the distance beyond the rubble of her neighbor’s house and approaching the window above her bed was a long, ravenous howl.