Static

“How do you know your family’s still in New York, anyway?” I asked, carefully making my way around the shrapnel of what had once been a flaming car wreck on the I-287, now reduced to charred metal and old bones. The highway looked like this for the next several miles, thanks to the Pulse picking the absolute worst hour of the day to end the world.

“I’m sure of it, Nathan,” Rich answered firmly.

“How can you know? Last time I checked, all the Psionics got their brains boiled in the Pulse,” I said.

“It was more like a microwave oven,” the graying man said. “And I just know it. I can feel it.” He placed his hand over his chest, where he kept his locket tucked.

I let the silence stretch on for a few minutes before trying to make conversation again. It helped keep me calm and it kept Rich grounded so he wouldn’t get his head stuck in the clouds while we traveled. “What the hell did you research in New York, anyway? Almost a month on the road and I still don’t even know what your job was.”

Richard took his time answering. “Zayin and I were doctors…. Neurologists. We studied the Psionics when they first started manifesting their abilities. When Naya started to manifest hers, it was… a golden opportunity to study one from a young age. She was a 'specimen,' Zayin would say. Powerful. Our… our strong little girl. That’s why I was in Texas in the first place, instead of in New York, with them. The government wanted me to report on our progress personally. Some agency or another. CIA. CDC. NASA. It’s all alphabet soup now. I can hardly find certain words these days, let alone a slough of meaningless letters.”

I stopped walking. “Are you serious?”

He turned around to look at me. “What?”

“You studied this? Before the Pulse?”

“Yes,” he replied with a frown. “Why?”

“You didn’t think it might’ve been important to mention that you know what the hell is going on?”

Rich recoiled like I’d slapped him, his frown deepening as he looked at the ground. “I… didn’t think about it. Besides, I- I don’t know what’s going on.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out his locket, fixing it with the same gaze I’d seen every morning and every night since we’d started traveling together. It was a small, humble brass thing, shaped like a heart. It had a picture of his wife and daughter inside. “Not enough to help anything…”

Shit. He could shut down for hours at a time when he got like this, and then I’d start spiraling in the silence. “At least Static won’t chase your ass across twelve city blocks like those assholes in Lexington,” I said as we walked on.

Still gloomy and holding his locket, Rich answered. “Desperation makes people do foolish things. I can’t blame them for being hungry.”

“Well I can blame them for taking potshots at me while I ran for my life,” I grumbled in return. Rich didn’t say anything back. I’d sent him into one of his ‘contemplations,’ as he called them. That really just meant I’d have to watch his back and mine for the next hour or so. Nobody was really all there after the Pulse, Rich said it was probably to do with ‘altered fields’ or something, but drifting off in thought was far from the worst of it. A lot of those who didn’t get their brains fried or hearts stopped by the Pulse ended up… worse off.

And wouldn’t you know it, a few dozen feet ahead of us on the crowded highway I saw something furry looking duck behind a derelict eighteen wheeler. I grabbed Rich’s shoulder and pulled him out of his trance with a quiet hiss.

“Eyes up, dreamer, we got company.”

Rich looked up, blinking away whatever had been in his head, and scanned the highway. I pointed out the truck I’d seen movement by with one hand, drawing our only weapon with the other. It was just a little Glock I’d snagged off a dead cop back in Texas, and we’d spent our last bullets a few days ago scaring off a pack of dogs, but whoever was hiding from us didn’t need to know that. That bluff would only work if we were dealing with a human, though, which I couldn’t be sure of. I’d just seen a gnarled mess of brown out of the corner of my eye.

“Come out with your hands up. We’re armed,” I called, keeping my gun down for the moment.

Seconds passed. No answer.

“Where are you headed, friend?” Rich tried after a tense stretch of silence.

Another brief moment. Then, an answer.

“I’m right where I wanna be,” a gruff voice said. Then, laughing, he added “and so are you.”

“We’re heading to New York. Heard there were people there,” I curtly responded.

The man laughed again. “Nah, nah, you're not heading anywhere anymore.”

“We have plenty of food to share. Please, just let us move on and we can part ways peacefully,” Rich said.

I elbowed him. “We have two fucking cans of beans and a day’s walk to Morristown,” I growled. “You’re not getting any of our damn food,” I yelled to the man hiding behind the semi.

“Yeah we are,” a woman’s voice jeered from off to my left, “I see plenty of meat right here!”

I pivoted to face the source of the new voice only to see nothing but cars and the dried-up corpses of their passengers. A shout from Rich was the only warning I had as I whirled around and saw a behemoth of a man dressed in a stained flannel and jeans sprinting towards us. He was closing the distance fast, but I had enough time to raise my gun and scream a warning. He changed course, taking cover behind a rusted sedan in the next lane over from ours.

“Nathan,” Rich shouted, pointing behind me. I spun around again, this time too late as a wiry lady with grey hair scrambled across the cracked asphalt at me on all fours, lunging for my leg with a rusty piece of scrap wrapped with leather. I kicked at her wildly and caught her in the neck, but she rolled with the blow and got around me, slashing at the back of my leg and tearing through cloth first, then flesh. I screamed and stumbled, clutching my shredded leg as I fell to the ground. The frenzied woman was already on top of me, rearing back for another strike. I got a good look at her face for the first time. Her eyes were filled with the faint, eerie glow of Static above red-stained teeth bared in a feral grin. She brought the makeshift blade down, but I caught her wrist in my free hand and bashed the side of her head with the grip of my gun. Pale, thin flesh split open next to her eye. Even though blood immediately started pooling in her eye, she didn’t seem to notice. She had freakish speed, but she was as light as she was quick and I shoved her off, getting up to my feet before she could recover and attack again. She stayed low, keeping a wary distance from me and snarling. I heard a struggle coming from behind me and glanced over my shoulder to find Rich trying to fend off the overweight bulldozer that had rushed us first. They were grappling over a tire iron one of them must have picked up off the road. Rich was a big guy, but he was past his prime and the Static-scrambled attacker looked twice his weight. The man let out a wordless roar and threw Rich into a car; I saw my friend’s head collide with the side mirror and heard a nasty thud. I limped over to him as fast as I could, almost reaching him before I heard the woman behind me shriek and felt her land on my back, her twisted shrapnel-knife ripping at my neck and shoulder. My wounded leg collapsed under the added weight and I managed to land on my back, raising my arms to shield my face from a blow that never came.

That was when I noticed it, waiting to feel the bite of the knife; the smell that anyone who was still alive after the Pulse could recognize: burning ozone. Static. Static was coming, Static was already here. Primal panic consumed my thoughts and I sat up, looking around for my attacker. The wiry old woman was cowering underneath a pickup truck, whimpering like a beaten dog with her hands over her face. The obese giant that had downed Rich was just standing still, staring up at the sky with a slack jaw. The third of them - the one who must have been the leader - was now in full view as I hoisted myself to my feet against the Ford next to me. He was a middle-aged man with a matted mess of brown hair knotted with leaves and twigs and a matching beard. He was standing upright, arms spread wide, face upturned to the swirling, shapeless mass of color and sound tearing through the air in front of him. Static. Just looking at it made my head feel like it was being torn apart by the atom, my heart nearly giving out from the terror pounding in my chest. I forced myself to look away, to look down at Rich. He was awake, but barely. Blood streamed down his head and stained his shirt, his eyes were half-lidded and listless. He was holding something in front of him - his locket. It was open, he was trying to focus his vision on the pictures inside. I could hear the leader of this little pack of freaks shouting something as I hobbled over to Rich’s side, blood gushing from my leg and my neck. I could feel myself fading through the terror of the Static.

“We’re doing what you wanted,” the man wailed. “We’re making them good for you! We’re making it tasty and right! Why are you here? We’re doing what you wanted! Go away!”

His cries turned plaintive, then he began screaming, agonized shrieks piercing through the howling of the Static. I lost my balance when I got to Rich, falling into the side of the car with a pained grunt and sliding down to my friend’s level. I left a Nate-sized smear of blood in my wake. As the Static screamed closer to us, my vision began to tunnel out, and the only thing I could focus on was the locket in Rich’s hand, the faces of his wife and daughter blissfully smiling up at us as we died. I closed my eyes - at least I thought I did, I couldn’t feel my face anymore. Then the Static was on us; I squeezed my eyes tighter, unwilling to let it rot out my brain in my last moments.

I expected a slow, painful death at the hands of the psychic maelstrom above me, but instead I heard a voice. A young girl’s pained, terrified wail through the howling whirlwind, layered over itself again and again to the end of time. It said one word.

“Daddy?”