hands Ashla had clenched around the steering wheel in a legitimate white-knuckle hold.
“I’ll relax when we’re all at home safe and sound like all those designated driving ads promise us,” Ashla qualified with a nervous glance in the SUV’s rearview at the four other passengers. They had all finally wound down from the excitement of the party they’d attended, and Cristine, her younger sister, had even fallen asleep against her boyfriend’s tuxedoed chest. “We should never have come so far out on New Year’s. Or we should have at least gotten a room at the hotel or something.”
“Oh, c’mon!” Diana groaned, rolling her eyes. “How could we not go? It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance! To party at the Theodore Hotel with so many rotten rich people? It’s one of the hottest parties in the tri-state area. Plus, that guy who gave you the invites is totally into you. He danced with you so many times you’re going to have to have a funeral for those shoes.”
“Bite your tongue.” Ashla couldn’t help her grin at that. “These cost three hundred bucks.”
“And worth every cent.” Diana chuckled. “You looked hot tonight. That man all but grabbed you at midnight to kiss you.”
Ashla flushed with the memory, keeping her eyes glued to the road as she recalled the possessive grasp of Samuel Benson’s hands on her waist and back as he had pulled her into that kiss. The midnight tradition had allowed him to breach usual dating protocols, and he had taken full advantage of it. Ashla had surprised herself with her willingness to go along with him. Sam’s kiss had been one of intensity and impressive skill. Not an entirely unpleasant experience and, now that she thought about it, one she might not be averse to repeating in the future.
“It was just a kiss,” she noted aloud with a single-shouldered shrug. “A very nice kiss. It’s not as though the Earth moved or heavenly choirs sang.”
“God! Ashla, I swear you are so…so…!”
Diana never finished the expression of her frustration with her tightly wound friend. The oncoming truck that crossed into their lane and hit them head-on at ninety miles per hour killed her instantly.
Chapter 1
Ashla stood shivering in the darkened streets of Times Square.
She was almost used to the total lack of light, and even the eerie absence of sound in a city that ought to have been clamoring with noise, but what she couldn’t adjust to was the absolute barrenness of humanity.
How long had she been in this surreal, postapocalyptic version of New York? Had it been a week? Three? She had lost track. One of the most populous cities in America, and she had yet to see a single soul besides herself.
Ashla was a bit hazy on some of the details of when this all had come about, of how and why the world had blossomed into this bizarre, barren landscaping, but she did recall her initial reaction of pure panic. She remembered quite clearly the act of running around to all of the places where coworkers, friends, and even family were supposed to be.
Queens. The Bronx. Eastern Long Island. Eventually here, in Manhattan.
There was no one.
Oh, everything worked all right. Subways. Cars. Machinery. All of it as if the regular occupants of the world would return any moment to pick up and go on just as they always had. Only, there were some strange details missing. There was no television reception or projection. Lightbulbs, neon lights, and anything providing the smallest glimmer of illumination refused to perform their designated functions. That had truly freaked her out in the beginning. The lack of light had made the vast vacant spaces of the city seem somehow claustrophobic and paralyzing. It had gotten better, thank goodness, as her eyes had adapted to the total darkness with a surprising rapidity. She had even grown accustomed to the fact that it always remained nighttime and never turned to day like it should.
Things had definitely improved once she stopped thinking of reasons why there might not be a sun.
Another odd thing was the food. Food was always fresh for the taking, somehow replenishing itself as though invisible workers still carried out their daily duties of stocking and rotating it. She never saw any of it happen, it just did.
In the end, she had realized that the ideal course of action was to not spend too much time thinking about the details. She never got answers when she did, and only managed to scare herself witless in the process. Explanations escaped her for those and many other anomalous details, but she was weary of the constant heart-racing panic that overwhelmed her every time she thought too hard about her shadowed environs. Instead, she learned to enjoy things…like foods she’d never tried before, or sneaking into homes in Chinatown just to see how different they were.
There was one light, however. Moonlight. It was the one and only relief to the dark world. The growing cycle of the moon, with its inevitable turn toward fullness, would shed more and more beautifully pale light onto the world around her. Ashla didn’t even mind all the spooky shadows it cast in long black and gray streaks. She already knew no one was hiding in them.
In fact, her reality remained completely devoid of humanity, just as it had for the better part of a month now. Two months? More? Even time seemed to have given up on this lifeless wasteland that made no sense to her. She supposed she had given up as well, eventually trudging away from the overwhelming grief over lost loved ones and even abandoning her furious frustration at her suddenly senseless world. Now she simply wandered New York and the rest of the tri-state area trying to amuse herself.
Until then, she had never realized how vital the presence of others could be to a person’s sanity.
It had actually been fun for a little while, walking paths and places that were normally so heavily protected by security or warning signs, and examining all the strange inner workings of things she’d never questioned before. At least, it had been fun until she had taken a bad fall in a subway station and it had occurred to her that if she were hurt very badly, there would be no one around to help her; no one to rush her to a hospital for care; no one to care enough to keep her from rotting away from hunger and thirst alone in a dark, tiled tunnel.
She hadn’t gone belowground since that particular panic attack. Aboveground might not necessarily be less hazardous, but it was far less enclosing and she took comfort in whatever she could at that point. Ashla’s sense of security on the open streets was relative. She was safe from dark, creepy subterranean dangers, perhaps, but she was also left feeling even more alone as towering buildings soared above her, miniaturizing her and making her feel as though she were standing at the bottom of a great abandoned canyon. She had struggled with the ever-increasing fear that someday something might happen and she wouldn’t know what to do to help herself.
And then sometimes, some very awful bad times, she couldn’t even remember all the names of the people she knew. It was at those times that she truly became frightened. Down deep to the bottom of her soul terrified. Because those were the times when she feared she had simply lost her mind. After all, what other explanation could there be? What could possibly make her forget her beloved sister Cristine? Or even her brothers Malcolm and Joseph? Her parents. It horrified her to think there was anything that could make her forget what it had been like to grow up in her mother’s care.
She took comfort that today she remembered it all, and tried not to worry about tomorrow.
Other than all of that…
New York City was her playground.
Saks. Barneys. Macy’s. Bloomies. Granted,
