that was day 1, this is day 2
Nov. 1st, 2007 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzie"Fucking hell," she said. "What's going on?"
She let Oscar in, more out of paranoia than because he'd done his business - although he had - made some coffee and watched TV for a while to figure out what was going on. Even the cable channels had interrupted their normal programming for news reports and scrolling feeds across the bottom of the screen. Marya sat on the couch and watched for an hour and at the end of it all she knew for sure was that half the world seemed to have vanished.
Gone. Poof. Like the little old lady next door had said.
A freaked-out reporter in New York said an entire commuter train from Connecticut never arrived and couldn't be found. An Amtrak train to DC apparently vanished somewhere in West Virginia - How do they know where it disappeared? Marya wondered, because no one had had any contact with it after it left Grand Central Station - and the report was in the middle of interviewing a businessman who claimed that a whole traincar full of people had just disappeared - not the car itself, just everyone in it - when the station cut out.
Marya changed the channel. She kept changing channels and watching worried, confused people interview other worried, confused people. BBC America was broadcasting from outside Parliament, where a man in an incongruously pressed suit and posh English accent informed the world at large that about half the MPs were unaccounted for and an emergency session of Parliament had been called anyway. The Queen and most of the royal family seemed to be fine. Marya wondered if that was code for "We can't find Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Phillip, Anne's kids, or the Queen's corgis, but we don't want to worry the populace."
She couldn't understand the news on Telemundo or the random Italian channel that usually showed soccer games and Italian dramas, but the reporters there seemed like the reporters everywhere else - completely baffled and not a little panicked. No one in any language had any idea what was happening. It was a terrorist plot, it was mass suicide, it was the little green men and the Men in Black, it was the End Times. Somewhere in middle America, what was left of four church congregations gathered in a field and waited to be raptured up to heaven.
But most of the news was about people who just went poof. Planes vanished off radar, submarines blipped off the sonar, subway trains disappeared between one station and the next. A woman somewhere in Ohio told the local reporter that her husband vanished out of the shower. He went into the bathroom in the morning, like he always did, and she heard the water run, and he never came out. The bathroom window was too small for a person to climb out of, and she would have seen him leave by the door. She and the reporter both appealed to the TV viewing audience - If you see Greg Hermann, fifty-seven, practically bald, about six feet tall, last seen wearing blue pajama bottoms and a red t-shirt, although he could be wearing a striped towel, call the station. Tell him to come home.
Marya called her dad again. Still no answer, but she could only connect once out of four tries. She tried both exes who had called her yesterday. She called some of her friends and wondered why none of them had tried to call her. Then she wondered if they'd had the same problem with her phone that she was having with her dad's - were their calls just not getting through? She booted up her laptop and tried to get online. She had a cable modem, and she was getting a TV signal at least, so she should be able to do that.
There were forty-six messages in her inbox, some of them spam, but a lot of them "Are you there? Are you alive?" emails. She answered every single one - "I'm here, I'm ok, where are you, what's going on?"
And then she took Oscar for a walk. She wanted to get out of the house and talk to another human being. She took her cell phone and started calling everyone in her address book while Oscar sniffed grass and lifted his leg at trees and tried to eat bits of paper and the random crap that blew around the neighborhood.
Half of your street suddenly going missing made for a very strangely quiet afternoon. It was so quiet that Marya was starting to think that maybe more than half the population was gone. Maybe it was more like three-quarters. Even Cujo and Cujo II were quiet, although it was more likely that they were inside with the little old lady than that they had disappeared too.
words: 801
total words: 1582
She let Oscar in, more out of paranoia than because he'd done his business - although he had - made some coffee and watched TV for a while to figure out what was going on. Even the cable channels had interrupted their normal programming for news reports and scrolling feeds across the bottom of the screen. Marya sat on the couch and watched for an hour and at the end of it all she knew for sure was that half the world seemed to have vanished.
Gone. Poof. Like the little old lady next door had said.
A freaked-out reporter in New York said an entire commuter train from Connecticut never arrived and couldn't be found. An Amtrak train to DC apparently vanished somewhere in West Virginia - How do they know where it disappeared? Marya wondered, because no one had had any contact with it after it left Grand Central Station - and the report was in the middle of interviewing a businessman who claimed that a whole traincar full of people had just disappeared - not the car itself, just everyone in it - when the station cut out.
Marya changed the channel. She kept changing channels and watching worried, confused people interview other worried, confused people. BBC America was broadcasting from outside Parliament, where a man in an incongruously pressed suit and posh English accent informed the world at large that about half the MPs were unaccounted for and an emergency session of Parliament had been called anyway. The Queen and most of the royal family seemed to be fine. Marya wondered if that was code for "We can't find Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Phillip, Anne's kids, or the Queen's corgis, but we don't want to worry the populace."
She couldn't understand the news on Telemundo or the random Italian channel that usually showed soccer games and Italian dramas, but the reporters there seemed like the reporters everywhere else - completely baffled and not a little panicked. No one in any language had any idea what was happening. It was a terrorist plot, it was mass suicide, it was the little green men and the Men in Black, it was the End Times. Somewhere in middle America, what was left of four church congregations gathered in a field and waited to be raptured up to heaven.
But most of the news was about people who just went poof. Planes vanished off radar, submarines blipped off the sonar, subway trains disappeared between one station and the next. A woman somewhere in Ohio told the local reporter that her husband vanished out of the shower. He went into the bathroom in the morning, like he always did, and she heard the water run, and he never came out. The bathroom window was too small for a person to climb out of, and she would have seen him leave by the door. She and the reporter both appealed to the TV viewing audience - If you see Greg Hermann, fifty-seven, practically bald, about six feet tall, last seen wearing blue pajama bottoms and a red t-shirt, although he could be wearing a striped towel, call the station. Tell him to come home.
Marya called her dad again. Still no answer, but she could only connect once out of four tries. She tried both exes who had called her yesterday. She called some of her friends and wondered why none of them had tried to call her. Then she wondered if they'd had the same problem with her phone that she was having with her dad's - were their calls just not getting through? She booted up her laptop and tried to get online. She had a cable modem, and she was getting a TV signal at least, so she should be able to do that.
There were forty-six messages in her inbox, some of them spam, but a lot of them "Are you there? Are you alive?" emails. She answered every single one - "I'm here, I'm ok, where are you, what's going on?"
And then she took Oscar for a walk. She wanted to get out of the house and talk to another human being. She took her cell phone and started calling everyone in her address book while Oscar sniffed grass and lifted his leg at trees and tried to eat bits of paper and the random crap that blew around the neighborhood.
Half of your street suddenly going missing made for a very strangely quiet afternoon. It was so quiet that Marya was starting to think that maybe more than half the population was gone. Maybe it was more like three-quarters. Even Cujo and Cujo II were quiet, although it was more likely that they were inside with the little old lady than that they had disappeared too.
words: 801
total words: 1582
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-01 07:50 pm (UTC)Even creepier than in The Stand, because then you know what's going down, in that people were sick and dying. But just being gone? CREEPY.
yay!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-01 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-01 08:38 pm (UTC)celebratingfreaking the hell out. I hope little old lady doesn't dissapear.no subject
Date: 2007-11-01 09:50 pm (UTC)The Queen and most of the royal family seemed to be fine. Marya wondered if that was code for "We can't find Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Phillip, Anne's kids, or the Queen's corgis, but we don't want to worry the populace."
Yeah.
Tell him to come home.
...well, okay, that bit is a little sad, but the piece is still mostly barely-contained freaking.
Maybe it was more like three-quarters.
See? Creeptastic.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-10 02:27 am (UTC)