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Empty Silence
Gahh!" Nick was hoping to   noted with relief the lack of the post-apocalyptic mise-en-scène feature films had trained her to expect, hasn't happened. He was wrong.....




Overturned cars scorched burnt buildings busted windows. Empty to the facade of hell on earth.






Nick   walked toward the main street and saw that Mother Nature had started to reclaim part of the city.



 

He walked toward the coffee shop on the corner and noticed that the sign was faded and swinging in the breeze.

"Maybe they still have some of those crunchy, inedible, rock-hard granola bars," he thought.


This in good condition.




He grinned as he noticed a fat rabbit crouched in the thick grass that had taken over an empty parking lot. Harvesting more carrots into it's hideaway home underground.




He took it as a good omen,  topped othe rabbit's attention only focused on  mysterious one human still here. Haven't seen any I'm awhile.


Nick was on the other side bowing  for the rabbit.

Thanking the creature  he is not alone in this deserted city.




Peered through the glass door making sure it was empty to begin with.

Looked like a low budget  bar.

Red comfy stools  right by the receptionist front desk.

Flattened once you set on them. Once you get off it pops right back up high.


The sizes graph lowest to highest in a order fashion for all sizes for everyone may have. Floor looked shiny furnished. Flying pillar fan rotating blades repeating at the top of the ceiling.


Flat screen TV shutten off, in the cut of the far left end of the ceiling wall.


Went the pull open the glass door.

Smiled seeing the “hippy bars,” as he called them, were there by the register.



He sauntered towards it.

  Grabbing as much  granola bars, stuffing lots in his pockets, as much as  he pleased.

Given himself the audacity the tear  one open to test it out.

It tasted like cardboard—just as he remembered.

Despite the flavor, the bar whetted his appetite,  gluttoned choke down four more. 

He suddenly noted something in the distance, behind him.


An  stack of newspapers by the front door, rustling near the whistling blown wind radius.


Dangling half way from both sides of the  out an inside   of the cafe. 


"The  New York Times and the Chicago Sun Times News,"  it says, barely shown so much feet away it's been from Danny, himself.


Nick's mouth was munched.

Crumbs of the bar  he'd shoved in his mouth,  spreads all over his cheeks an watering  lips.

Haven't finished chowing down it fully. 

Nick's mind kicked in some memory.

Remembered what newspaper were referred as.

Knew what they was for.


"Yes, give me my answers at last," he muttered.


He ran  over and grabbed one  squatting down to read them in the dusk  light.




“WHITE HOUSE EVACUATION,” read the New York Times. It was a full-page story, but Nick's attention was drawn to the local paper: “Riot Attacks Presidential Bunker” stretched across the page, which was dated December 17, 2012.


Danny scanned the paper again and again.


The stories all centered around one incident.


The president of New York City  had been moved to a bunker, and a mob of relentless citizens had managed to discover the location and attempted to take the bunker by force. 



“The visitors landed on the roof of the Library of Congress at approximately 6 pm.


There has been no word on whether their requested exchange between their representative and the representative from NASA has taken place.

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and the United Nations are both involved, but we do not yet know the extent of their participation.”



Nick abruptly scrutinize the words over, unable to process what he's was absorbing.

He scrutinize more intensely. Extraterrestrial intelligence. Again. Once more Extraterrestrial intelligence. ENTRATERRESTRAL INTELLIGENCE! 

He needed more. He couldn’t understand.

As someone who worked as a reporter just out of college, Nick knew a hastily cobbled together story when he sees one.


No quotes, poor word choices, and lousy sentence structure riddled the piece.

Definitely something you didn’t usually see in the New York Times.


He threw the newspapers down in frustration.


He needed older prints—ones with a bit of backstory. That would have to wait until morning, though.

He didn’t feel confident enough to travel on  about in the darkness.

The sky went from orange to white to indigo to black.


Nick crawled behind the register and curled up under the counter behind a curtain.


He lay awake for what felt like hours, just listening for any sound indicating someone else was out there.


And then wondering if he really wanted to hear someone else—and what it would mean if he did.

He didn’t remember  succumbing to sleep last night,  but the next thing he knew was an  soft orange sunlight crept open his eyelids and he awakened with a head good start of the morning day, searching for them fine print newspaper, including his assignment finding any survivors near by.


© Tita