The Penthouse

None of us have any idea what they are, or even what they look like up close, we only know they came from under the city. They emerged without warning, swarming up from the sewers, pouring out of the subway tunnels, and bursting out of basement doors. They came in unrelenting numbers, tearing, ripping, shredding anything that got in their way, and they completely overran eight million New Yorkers in the span of a Monday morning rush hour.

Some amongst us are calling them the Plague, others Pestilence; still others blame the government, the terrorists, or even stem cell research. One guy calls them Hell's Cockroaches, and that's as good a name as any. All I know is the streets below us are swarming with them. There's no escape.

There's about thirty of us here; men, women and children. We're crammed into the top floor of an office building in Midtown--our penthouse tomb. We've collected all the food and water we could gather and barricaded ourselves in, dumping all the furniture down the stairwells and elevator shafts, and locking and chaining every door we could safely reach. Still, it's just a matter of time before they reach us. They've gotten inside the walls. You can hear them scratching when you put your ear to one.

We're all just waiting now. The thing is, we're all waiting for something different. Some of us are waiting for rescue--though that scenario seems more and more unlikely. Others are simply waiting for death, while others still are convinced that Jesus and God's own Angels are going to come riding out of Heaven to drive the devils back to Hell.

What am I waiting for? I'm waiting for the first of those buggers to come through that door. Then I'm going to jump.