Lights Out

Another day in the dark. Who knew how long it had been? Shari began the day
by asking if her husband was awake. This was her biggest fear: being left
alone in this madness.

"Now I am. Can't you feel me breathing?" Brent said. Shari felt him sit up
and swing his legs over the side of the cot. She wasn't ready to face
another day yet and stayed still.

Presently she smelled the instant coffee, the aroma licked her nostrils and
persuaded her to try for an optimistic outlook.

"Did you hear anything in the night?" Shari asked. She would not have heard;
once her head hit the pillow Shari was dead to the world. Brent, however,
awoke often and easily.

She heard Brent set her mug on the bed and, crazily, she noticed she could
follow his movements in the small space. Not by sight or sound. This sense
was queer and new. Shari hoped they'd be out of here before she could
develop it fully.

"I thought I heard some rustling near the door. Could have been a coon."

He sat down beside her on the bed, bringing his musty man-scent along. Shari
waited for her sense of smell to acclimate and zero-out the odor.

"When do you think it'll be safe to go out?" Same question, different day.

Brent leaned into her and kissed her on the mouth; she tasted an altered
version of her own--poorly disguised morning-mouth.

"I don't know sweetie. We can't chance it yet, not with those people running
around. Look at what happened to the Smiths. Poor fuckers."

Shari heard the rough scrabble of Brent's hand running down his unshaven
face. He had said the Smiths, but she knew he was thinking of his own
parents, who had lived only 300 yards away.

A few weeks after the power went out (for good) the urbanites trickled to
the outskirts leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. At least the
couple's deaths had served an important lesson in survival: hide or be
killed for your food. Unless you were armed (and had a stomach for killing).
They had neither.

"Ok. I guess," Shari replied. And it was ok, for now. But Shari understood
it was a only a matter of time until she lost control and rushed through the
wooden doors into sunshine or oblivion.