It's been days now, I know it has, but the sun never moves. I keep heading west, and since the beach I have gone mostly through city. I never did reach the ocean, so I don't know how I could have been in San Francisco then; I'd be miles out into the ocean by now.
Also, I've not slept. I'm not even particularly tired. I mean, I am tired of walking, but I'm not sleepy.
I've been through all of my supplies, and while my backpack is much lighter now, I am getting hungry again, and for something other than chips. The only protein I have had since waking up were the little brown lumps in that jar of Beefy Cheeze that claim to have been beef. I have my doubts.
You would think, having eaten nothing but crap, I'd be having some pretty serious digestive issues, but I haven't had to go to the bathroom yet; not even take a leak.
Am I dead? Is this Hell?
The city has changed, but the change was subtle, so I do not know when it happened. That vague sense of science fiction atmosphere has changed. I finally realize it when I see a beat up blue Subaru parked abandoned in the middle of the road in front of a Burger Bro. Unlike a lot of the vehicles I have seen on the side of the road this one had wheels.
The only reason I even notice it is that the keys are still in the ignition and the door alarm is chiming softly, making it the only noise around for miles aside for my footsteps on the pavement and my own breathing.
I place my pack on the ground, and slip behinds the driver's seat to try the key, there is a small panda hanging from the keyring, and it starts! This is easily my best find since the backpack. I belt up, not that there seems to be any traffic to get into an accident with here, and start driving west.
As the abandoned city passes by outside my windows I turn on the radio. I scan through the dial, AM and FM, and find nothing. No right wing talk shows, no passionate preachers, no music the whole office can agree on; just dead air. I turn it off; the sound of an open frequency is somehow more unsettling than just the sound of the wind is.
I am out of the city now; it ended rather abruptly. One second I am passing a strip mall and the next there is just flat, open, brown fields on both sides of the road. The road itself curves here or there, but I am still basically moving towards the sun.
The weird thing about this road... the weirdest thing, because nothing that has happened to me recently can be said to not have been weird... is that there are no signs along the side. There is nothing identifying what highway I am on, what the speed limit is, how far I am from food and gas (I do not look forward to walking again when the tank on this thing runs dry), nothing.
That's okay though, as there doesn't appear to be anything out here. I don't see so much as a dirt road running through any of these open fields; just dry, dead grass as far as I can see. If it weren't for the paved road that I am driving on, this may as well be unsettled country.
I see something ahead on the horizon. I think it's a building, but it's certainly an oddly shaped one. I increase my speed a bit more, and the needle creeps up above eighty miles an hour.
It's orange, the colour vermilion comes to mind, but I do not recognize it as any type of building I have ever seen. As I draw closer, its shape resolves itself, and I find that I am not particularly surprised to discover that it is a spaceship.
I pull the car over to the curb, cut the engine, and get out. It is definitely a spaceship, and the reason it looked like it was at an odd angle is that it is half buried in the ground. Even with however much of it is obscured by the dirt, it towers above me like a block of flats.
The curious thing about it, and I should stop calling things weird or curious at this point as nothing has made sense for some time now, is that it does not appear to have crashed here. What I mean is that there is no impact crater, nor any path through the surrounding field to indicate that it has made a sliding landing to this point. Instead it looks like someone has placed it here, and it has sunk into the ground like a cookie dropped into a bowl of pudding.
There is writing on the exposed portion of the ship, but it looks like it's in Russian or something: Pocky Nickin Ean Hopper? Well, whoever I am, I clearly cannot even read whatever alphabet that is.
I walk around the ship; it's scarred and burnt in places. The burn marks look kind of like the marks back in that house, only a lot bigger. Maybe it was in a battle? It doesn't look like a fighter though, or at least not what I expect a fighter to look like. It's bulky and blocky, not sleek and flashy.
I am on the far side of the ship now, and I am starting to wish I hadn't left the keys in the car. It's not as if someone is going to steal it, but not having those keys makes me feel nervous. I pull the gun from my waistband, and the weight of it in my hand makes me feel better.
There's an opening up ahead. Not a door, but a circle that looks like someone cut into the hull of the ship with a blowtorch. It's dark inside, and just looking at that inky blackness makes me feel nauseous... or may that's just the junk food.
The torch! The torch is in my backpack, which is sitting on the passenger seat of the car. Damn it!
I walk back to the car, checking out the rest of the ship as I go. I want to run, but my legs tell me that that is simply not an option.
I grab the whole pack, who knows what I may find inside there that I might want to take with me, and make the walk back to the opening. When I get there, I pull out the flashlight, turn it on, and shine it into the hole.
The floor slopes downwards into what looks like a bedroom. The bed is gray metal, and must be attached to the floor or wall, as it has not followed the slope of the floor into the far wall. Across the room I can see what looks like a gray dresser on the far wall next to some sort of black panel set into the wall. Next to the black panel is an open doorway, and I can see a closed door beyond it.
This is a real spaceship. I can go in there; I don't think the angle of the floor is so great that I wouldn't be able to keep my footing. I can go into a real, honest-to-God spaceship; I'm sure I have always wanted to go onto a real spaceship.
It is very dark in there though.
I can do this; it's a spaceship. I just need to master my fear, and go in there. There is nothing in there. There's nothing anywhere, just me and this empty, confusing world. I can do this.
My light passes over it twice before I even realize what it is. I don't really need to even read the crimson letters on the floor to know what they say by now:
“DON'T TRUST THE DARKNESS”
It turns out that my legs are willing to run after all, and I am back to the car faster than I would have thought possible.