Foggy Cities

Day 36
Fog
July 15, 2012

It was an ordinary Sunday afternoon (in truth all Sunday afternoons are ordinary - Sundays are boring). The last day of normalcy to ever grace the island of Manhattan. Children played, mothers shopped, teenagers crammed for tests, a boy from Brooklyn made a date with his girlfriend in Manhattan. In fact the entire day was ordinary. It was only when the afternoon's light faded, and night set in, that things became strange.

That was the night the fog came.

No one really remembered when it had arrived. Could tell what moment divided when the fog was from when it was not. No one was awake that night to witness it's arrival - at least, no one who was still alive. The next day was Monday(of course). If Sundays are boring, then Mondays are malicious. This Monday would be no different. And the city slept on, oblivious.

It was the noise that woke Sam. Usually his quiet street in Brooklyn would be silent at this hour. But not that Monday. Blearily he staggered over to his window trying to find the source of the disturbance. That was when he saw the fog. It rose in the distance to enclose the island of Manhattan like a snow globe in white out, betraying nothing of what lay within. It hurt to look at for too long, and the barrier felt evil. He swallowed. Angeline lived in Manhattan.

It was the silence that woke her. Normally the blare of her alarm woke her, but today was anything but normal. Today was the day her world went silent. No birds sang, no breeze rustled through the leaves of the elm tree outside her window. It was rush hour. There should have been throngs of people jostling for space on the roads to get where they needed to go. But the streets were empty. No sun filtered down to the light-starved earth below.

And in the distance, mere miles from where she stood, was the fog.

Over the next few hours, several things quickly became apparent:

First - an eerie fog had descended around the island of Manhattan.

Second - all forms of electricity had died within the island. Phone lines went dead. Street lights burnt out. Any planes that had been unfortunate enough to be overhead that godforsaken night fell from the sky. There was no longer any running water and the clogged streets, were flooded with raw sewage as sanitation plants failed. Streets were clogged where thousands - millions - of cars, buses, bikes, shopping carts - anything with wheels - had inexplicably ceased to move the night before. Half the cities food was destroyed as freezers dripped their contents onto newly mopped floors, but nothing came to eat them because...

Third - every other living creature in the city had fled. Pets ran away from home in record numbers in the weeks before the fog. Central Park Zoo emptied. That morning the bridges and roads leading to Manhattan were packed with every living thing that had crawled swam or flew in Manhattan. Even the cockroaches had fled. Every creature on the bridge there was silent, staring grimly into the city as if some great tragedy were about to occur. It was.

The fog came, and with the fog came death. Every plant within the barrier shriveled and died. Vegetables spoiled. Fruits withered. Panicked goldfish unable to escape went belly up. The few creatures that hadn't made it out in time were struck down where they stood.

Fourth - some electricity still worked. Specifically, the screens. Worldwide every clock, laptop, and cell phone's screen was now lit with the same set of flashing numbers counting down. But not the TV's. those were left alone so the world could watch the horror unfold. In fact, while the rest of the city had gone dead, it was impossible to get any of these to stop. You could unplug it from the wall, throw it upon the ground, smash the circuits, and scream all you liked because the clocks would keep resolutely counting down to zero.

All communication between Manhattan and the rest of the world had been severed. The NYPD and the military on both sides of the wall sent in search teams. None of them came back. They tried three times. That meant three radios crackling into silence, masking dozens of screams. They stopped sending people in.

On day two, the people of Manhattan found the fog had moved. An evacuation was ordered, but no one was sure where to - they were fenced in on all sides, and more and more people kept getting drawn into the fog - some more willingly than others. So Angeline and her family left with everyone else, pushing towards the cities center, as the clocks counted down.

Her father was the first to die. He tripped one morning (or was it afternoon - it was impossible to tell now), fell into the fog, and never came out. Her mother, griefstricken refused to believe he was dead - people had survived exposure if they were pulled out quickly enough. But hours passed, and it was only Angeline's unending pleas to think of her children that at last convinced her to keep moving.

The next day her mother was very quiet, eyes dull as they walked. That evening, she kissed both her children on the cheek, held them close, and whispered for Angeline to look after her brother Jamie. Then she turned, and walked calmly into the mists white embrace. Angeline tried to grab her but her fingers slipped free, and she heard a faint scream from within. Then it stopped. For a long time Angeline stared at the spot where she had last seen her mother, chest heaving, willing her to walk out, unscathed. But she didn't. At last she wailed and turned to her little brother, holding him close as she sobbed.

After a long time she stood, and they kept walking. She would protect Jamie. She had promised. So they kept moving

With two hours left in the countdown they were the only people left alive, huddling in the lobby of the Empire State Building. Outside, the rest of the world waited and watched the clocks with bated breath. Sam wept over the side of the Brooklyn Bridge, besides hundreds of other grieving families, then sat beside lion and a lamb, and stared at his watch. One hour.

At 30 minutes 19 seconds Angeline ordered Jamie to his feet and started up the stairs, past the long dead elevators and the fog creeping across the lobby. The fog had been closing in not down, and the upper levels were still free of mist. If they were lucky, they might be able to pass straight through the fog and up to open air. They were on the third floor from the top when they hit fog, and Angeline's heart sank. 1 minute exactly. She had failed.

The world was silent for the remainder of the countdown, eyes glued to the nearest screen. Sam sat on the Brooklyn Bridge. Angeline clutched Jamie to her chest in the dead city, as the final seconds counted down. She wondered what would happen when it reached zero. She realized she didn't care anymore. Just as long as Jamie was ok..

...3...

Angeline squeezed Jamie's hand

...2...

Sam started crying again.

...1...
She closed her eyes.

Without a sound, the fog surged inward one final time, coating every inch of the city, Angeline shielding Jamie's body with her own. Her agonized screams echoing loudly through the empty city for no one to hear.

Zero. Outside, Sam watched with bated breath for something, anything. Nothing happened for a long time. Then the fog screamed, and to Sam It carried Angeline's voice. A woman next to him heard her son who had recently moved to Manhattan. A man in Oregon heard his best friend since childhood, who had been flying over Manhattan when the fog came. The animals all around howled. As one the dead cried out to their loved one, weeping, pleading, begging screaming WHY?

Why didn't you save us?

Then the voices went silent. And the fog went away.

In its place were the bones. The woman on his left started screaming when a small pile of bones appeared by her feet, with a neat black label on top reading 'Jeremy Thatcher.' The man in Oregon sobbed over Michael Kilm. Dozens of bones appeared before the NYPD. There was a bundle for everyone on the bridge. But for every claimed pile there were a dozen more. Angeline's name was not among them. Sam hadn't had time to process what this might mean when his phone rang.

"Hello?" He choked.

"Sam?" a child's scared voice crackled over to him.

"Jamie?"

...

Angeline woke up in a Brooklyn hospital two days later. Both she and her brother were filthy, traumatized, and severely malnourished, but Jamie was otherwise fine. She on the other hand was brutally burned, and the fog had caused serious nerve damage, but still, she was alive.

Angeline knew she was lucky. Being one of only two survivors of a catastrophe that tore down your world is enough to make anyone feel lucky. But that wasn't how she knew it. It was waking up in an unfamiliar city after her whole world had crumbled, where the light burned and everything hurt, and still being able to smile because Jamie and Sam were there waiting for her. And that was enough to tell her she was the luckiest woman in all Manhattan.