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She was sixteen at the time, travelling through the new wasteland with what family and friends she could find after the sky opened its eye. People didn’t drop as quickly as anyone had expected, but it was the way people died that really mattered. The dirt under their feet would swallow them, filling their lungs with worms and beetles and mud. The person in front would enter a door without a tether, and when others would follow suit, the first was nowhere to be found on the other side.
She would see everyone cling to one another, would feel hands of her loved ones grab her arm, for comfort or to stop her from falling off a cliff that had materialized under her foot. The words would be caught in her throat as she tried to thank them, and all she could do was cry until the ground decided to solidify once more.
They were all afraid, she knew, but she had been so terrible at hiding it, and the longer they went, the more she could feel them turn from concern to hard indifference. It was a time of survival, and after months of trials it seemed the warmth had run out. The hands still reached out to each other but only to stop a grisly death, and even her tears had long since dried to rough sobs.
The day after a harrowing encounter with a man whose hands burned so hot to warp the air around them, the fog rolled in, and she was alone in the blankness. It felt almost dreamlike at first, her own footsteps and breathing muffled, and the sounds of screams left far behind. It was only after what felt like hours that she began to run, cry, search for anyone or anything familiar. Her best friend came to mind, and suddenly she stumbled into the mud, heaving and sobbing, and hands that once held so much warmth brushed the hair from her face, and she saw the tears streaming down her friend’s cheeks.
She buried her face in her friend’s shirt in relief, but in no time at all, she could feel the loveless heat of a burning building and hear the moans of agony from people she could not see. It was loud, so loud, and before she knew it she was stolen from the safety of her friend’s chest and dragged away by the wrist, her friend’s grip like iron.
She explained where she had gone, the fog that had taken her, the terror of that heavy isolation, but all she could see was the exhaustion in everyone’s face. They could barely listen, and the expressions of comfort and sympathy rang hollow in her ears.
Within two days, she was gone in the night, leaving only a note: “It’s safe there, and so very quiet.”
-
It took people quickly, then, and while the remaining survivors of this group attempted to warn others of the rolling fog, all it did was spread the news: a safe, quiet place was out there, willing to take anyone who would give themselves to it. Some knew it to be yet another trap, but the peace it promised was so unlike the stalking hunters and mazes of flesh. Others hoped that maybe a different force, a power for good, had created a sanctuary. One could escape from everything, even the people around them, as the world grew so harsh and cold.
In this world, how does one know that the person they’re clinging to is who they seem to be?
-
On the dark side of a barn, a man with hair much too gray for his age knelt beside a man who was larger and yet felt so insubstantial one could think he was a trick of the light. He seemed to blink in and out where he sat, and the graying man held the flickering man’s face in his hands. His voice was soft, too quiet to hear over the wind, and he brushed the other’s hair back from his face.
His head shot up as the fog began to roll in, and he pulled the flickering man to his feet. They grasped each other’s hands tightly, and ran as far as they could, knowing the cold safety that chased them.