the Zone of Silence

Chapter two

I know I am asleep. I know I am because I haven't been to this church since I first found it. I'm standing in front of it: a small building made of wood, a modest charcoal colour that feels like it's meant to be brown. Whatever brown looks like. It seems dirty beside the pristine white streets and buildings all around it. It has two small windows at the front either side of a single-sliding door. I hadn't seen a single-sliding door before. The church has a tiny silver cross, sitting elevated on a pole. I want to go in, but I know somehow that I am not supposed to. That it is too early for me. But still, I enter. The thin door clatters as it slides open and when I step through the doorway I feel something. I don't know what though. Something like relief, and I expect to see someone. I expect to see a person, maybe even Davinia.
Inside, there are no pews, no pulpit for a preacher. This church is nothing like all the others: in the middle of the room there is a circle of pillows. They aren't cushions, nothing intricately designed or meant to appear impressive. They are the kind of pillow that you rest on. Where you can sleep vulnerably, cry into, tell all your secrets to and know everything you say is safe. All the pillows are the same size and same shade of grey and it makes me want to know what colour they are. In the centre of the circle are two things. A piece of something- a newspaper. A newspaper with a headline that reads

   "Ghosting" isn't real! Look to the FUTURE!
The FUTURE newspaper is featuring today...

The First celestial body found in moon's hidden constellations!
Davinia Autumnbell...'  and there is device of some species. A tablet. What is a tablet? When I pick it up, it buzzes to life in my hands and on the screen is a triangle. A video. A video? I stare at it for while, wondering what to do. Eventually, I tap the triangle and a noise comes through - along with strings of moving images and different faces of people who are smiling and waving.

How do I make the noise louder? Absently, I notice the echoes of my movements in this place are more benign, a lot shorter. I search along the sides of the device, but the sound turns louder as soon as I say it. I smile at the ironic lyrics. Salty tears roll down my face as I rest on one of the pillows. A soft song filled with different voices fills the room:
"Happy birthday to you~
"Happy birthday to you~
"Happy birthday dear ... (we love you!)~"
I laugh weakly when a woman shouts in the background over the other singers.
"Happy birthday to youuu~
"Yayyy~!" It ends in applause and I sniff. The screen goes black.

    I am truly alone.

~~~

    I wake abruptly. I had passed out.
    Sitting up in the hammock, I rub my damp eyes. What am I doing? What is the point? Why am I so alone? Where are you? I clutch my head attempting to tear my hair. How can I be the only person? I grit my teeth and throw myself onto my back. Why am I still surviving? Where are you? The hammock sways beneath me and from the corner of my eye I notice you look up from a book. The semi-darkness filling the room allows us to make eye contact. Your eyes are still red, your face still drained, you are shaking. I must look the same. You smile wonkily, your wide eyes make you look crazy. You breathe in air like there isn't any. Like you are lost in space.
    My glance flickers away to the source of the light. It is from a broad crack in the wall because of the reset barely moments ago. The posters we have pinned over it do almost nothing to stop the light. Dust and stones are strewn heavily all over the floor where some newspapers have been torn- the one with Davinia is safe though, I had hidden it in my top a while before so that you would think I had gotten rid of it like the other newspapers about people. I wish the dome building was still here. I need it. Many of the posters on the wall have fallen, or been shredded by the shrapnel that had broken through into the room and created the crack. We don't know if it is because we were hit by the shadow or if another dying building had fallen onto this one. But somehow we survived. I don't know how long the city will though. The whole of the train skyline had already been pummelled into nonexistence many time miles ago. Now there are more crevasses than streets and more debris than buildings.

    Heaving my aching body out of the hammock, I go to you and lean against the wall. I slide down to sit beside you and we both watch the window opposite us, the hammock rocking itself in and out of the view of the window. The stars are no longer on the pane. The once black glass is now naked- the paint has completely flaked off. I've run out of ways to cover it up.

    But why I am remembering the beginning now? I ask no one, suddenly remembering what I had dreamt. But you aren't smart enough to understand when the question is only for me. You ask what I mean, setting the book down. I don't answer. I start bumping my head on the wall which crumbles under the force and you look at me incredulously. Clenching my teeth, I glare at you. You glare back. Where were you? I abruptly soften. Your brow wrinkles in confusion. You ask me what I mean. When I first woke up, where were you? When did you come to me? You shake your head and laugh. Stop it. You continue laughing.
I stand, pick up the tablet from the shelf and push it into the backpack (which no longer zips open meaning I was forced to make an incision in the top), then head to the door. You leap to your feet, alarmed, and remind me unhelpfully the reset only ended a few minutes ago. The buildings will still be falling. But I want to go. I want to go to where this all started and I want to end, I reply. You look mortified. You try to get between me and the door but you aren't fast enough and I dodge around you and am racing down the stairs, you trailing behind. I don't understand why you are scared.

~~~

    We trek through what is left of the collapsing city. Balancing along crumbling shafts of floor and clamouring either over or around mountains of fallen buildings and the progress is slow. We trip, scrape our hands and knees, find many dead ends in the forms of uncrossable gaping chasms, unclimbable rubble or ground so weak it disintegrates under our feet. The original boots I had long ago wore out and now my feet are raw by the time we make it halfway there. You are still trying to stop me, attempting vainly to hinder. But I ignore you because I just want to see people again. Something catches my eye, the shadow. Enormous, gigantic, impossible to not see. It's arms reach for me, but as it leans against a building, the helix cracks. Starts to turn.
I stop. You do too. We hear it at the same time.

    SHATTER! CRACKLE... HISS...

    A window falling and then a moan: the moan of old stone slumping and pillars bending. Glass spitting and wires snapping in eerie augur.
MMMNNNNNN. CRKK. K-CH. CRACK! Spittle... MMNNN...
It is close. Too close. We don't wait. I sprint across the marble, my feet lacerating as you shout to move faster. I am! I yell as the moans grow louder and louder and louder. We fly over fissures, trip every few feet on shrapnel and search for the cover of a building least likely to be fallen on.
MMNNNNNNN SNAP! CRACKCRACK TCHH.
You point at a squat building, broken in half, up the street. We aim for it. I feel the ground shudder, an electric pulse scorches my veins as I glance behind me. I almost collapse; the massive building is leaning directly over me, falling, falling right on top of us. It's splitting grey face dropping boulders like teeth from a cracking grin. Beams and cables slow it's fall. But they won't do much. RUNN! I scream. You can't hear me over the moaning, the crashing, the waves of dust and stone cascading from its dropping corpse. You jump over a pit, the ground starts shattering behind us. I charge, everything in my body screaming. My chest burning in hopelessness. We won't make it. The world blurs, I dive over a barricade of debris, you just after me. Then I feel an impact on my back. I fall head first, rolling over and over, every inch of me caught in scratches and tears. For the strangest moment the stars stop spinning, I think of you and how distant you are, I think of Davinia's story and how scared the world must have looked to her. I remember something she said that I don't think I read, she said '... you deserve it. Suck as much happiness out of every moment you can, take as much happiness from everything as you can because you deserve it. You deserve to be happy.' Then the building hits. It lands on top of me.

~~~

I wake abruptly. Gasping, my heart hammering, my body burning. I jump to my knees and spin on the spot. But it can't be...
This is wrong...

This is wrong! Where are you?! I need you...