Paul Jones - Extinction Point - The End

Overhead, the sky was a deep crimson and she squinted against the change from dark to this diffused light. The clouds seemed to have thickened into an unmoving mass of gray with an ever-growing volume of red bubbling within.

Emily swung her leg over the bike and shuffled her butt around on the seat until it was comfortable. The extra weight of the clothing in the bergen took some adjusting to. She shrugged a couple of times, wincing at the pain in her right shoulder, until the straps repositioned themselves to a more comfortable position.

Emily began peddling,

The sun could barely force its way through the overcast sky. What little light did make it gave the streets she passed through a washed out, black and white tone. The buildings on either side seemed to loom towards her as she cycled north. It wasn’t hard for Emily to imagine a thousand eyes watching her from the empty windows. Strange, alien eyes that belonged to an inscrutable intelligence that regarded her as what? An insect? The proverbial fly in the ointment of their grand plan set in motion just days earlier?

If she was honest with herself, she doubted her presence had caused any more than the tiniest of blips on the radar of these things. She was a minor problem. Inconsequential. And that was fine by her.

72 ndstreet was as deserted as the rest of Manhattan. She took the on-ramp up to the raised section of the Henry Hudson Parkway with a head of steam, but she still had to raise her butt up off the bike’s seat, her legs pumping like pistons, to ensure she kept her momentum up the curving on-ramp. When she reached the top of the ramp, she instinctively looked over her left shoulder to check for traffic as she merged out onto the main road, but this stretch of the freeway looked deserted on both sides of its six lanes.

In the distance, off to her left, past the concrete median and southbound lanes, Emily could just make out the New Jersey shoreline on the opposite bank of the dark sluggish Hudson. To her right, the elegant red brick offices and apartment buildings of Manhattan were quickly obscured by rows of trees lining the side of the freeway as she pedaled down the center lane, heading north.

Emily’s plan was to head directly toward Albany. It was about a 145-mile ride and she estimated it would take probably two days or so for her to complete if she could keep up a decent speed. When she reached Albany, she would take either the 87 north or the 90 west; depending on how everything looked out there. She was leaning toward choosing the 87 route, though. It was a longer, more circuitous route, but it would take her through less densely populated areas and reduce her risk of contact with the aliens. It would be a slower but far safer route, she thought, in the long run.

For now, she was going to stay on the Henry Hudson Parkway until she reached 252 ndStreet. There she would switch over to Riverdale Avenue and follow that through Yonkers as the road transitioned over to Broadway. Eventually Broadway would intersect with the 87 just outside of Tarrytown and she could cross over the Hudson on the Tappan Zee Bridge and continue her journey north.

Riding down a deserted freeway in the middle of the day was quite possibly the strangest experience for Emily so far. It took her some time to stop glancing nervously over her shoulder, expecting some speeding vehicle to come looming after her, horn blaring, driver leaning from his window and screaming at her to get out of his way as he sped past her. It did not happen, of course. The only thing on this freeway was Emily and the ghosts of a million drivers.

A particularly thick blanket of gray cloud hovered on the horizon ahead of Emily. Sunlight strained to push its way through the dense cloud as best it could, but what made it through was nothing but a diffused blur that pounded Emily’s eyes. She hadn’t thought to grab a pair of sunglasses, but the painful glare was forcing her to stare at the bike’s front tire rather than the road ahead. She had to glance up occasionally to make sure the road was still clear, squinting in the light, and then her eyes were back down again. She’d have to pick up a pair of sunglasses at some point, mentally adding them to her to-do list of items to scavenge.

The miles flowed by and Emily settled into a comfortable rhythm. While she considered herself a competent rider it had been a long time since she had ridden more than twenty miles in a single day, so she kept her speed down, pacing herself for what was going to be a very long ride.

Travelling along the parkway, it was easy to forget that beyond the tree line to her right and across the Hudson lay an entire city empty of all life. Human life at least. Apart from the occasional random empty vehicle stalled in the middle lane or canted awkwardly astride the median divider, there was little to draw Emily’s attention to her surroundings. However, when she finally exited off the parkway, freewheeling down the looping off-ramp onto Riverdale Avenue and into the district that shared the same name, it did not take long for the gnawing feeling of isolation to return.

The streets of Riverdale were lined on both sides with beautiful, expensive-looking older homes and an occasional apartment building. Where Manhattan had seemed deserted by many of its inhabitants and workers as they fled the coming catastrophe, most of the residents of this area had apparently made it back. As she slowly pedaled along the deserted avenue, in the driveway of almost every home, Emily saw a car or a truck neatly parked, waiting for an owner who would never return.

But was she right about that? She was struck by a sudden but overwhelmingly positive thought: She had naturally jumped to the conclusion that this little suburb was as dead as Manhattan and New York, but just because she hadn’t seen any signs of life did not mean there weren’t other survivors hunkered down in their homes. Maybe they were too scared to come out? It was an expensive neighborhood, after all. Maybe, they didn’t know about the creatures roaming the streets and were just waiting for rescue. With so many people making it to their homes there had to be survivors like her. There simply had to be.

Emily slowed to a stop outside a redbrick two-story with a late model Jeep Cherokee parked on the concrete driveway. She dismounted and began climbing the stone steps to the entranceway but stopped just halfway up. In the front door of the house was the all too familiar circular hole, cut, she assumed, by the transformed residents as they escaped from the locked home. Emily looked around at the other homes next door and across the street. Shading her eyes against the glare, she could see the same telltale openings in both of the neighboring homes and, she was sure, if she walked to any of the other houses, she would find more of the same evidence of this sleepy town’s fate. While the tree lined street had the appearance of life, of a lost normality, it was just as dead as the city she had left behind her.

Somewhere close by, if she took the time to search, she knew she would find more of the alien trees she had seen back in Central Park. Probably tucked away in some park where kids used to play or lining the bank of a pond or lake where couples would have strolled hand-in-hand and watched the sunset. The alien structures would be all that remained of the residents of this town now, another piece of the inscrutable puzzle transforming what was left of Emily’s world.

Emily walked back to where she had left her bike and climbed into the saddle. Yesterday, she would probably have simply sunk to her knees and cried in despair, but that was a different Emily. Today’s Emily Baxter was stronger, she told herself. Today’s Emily Baxter could get past all of this. Still, a single tear escaped and trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away with a contemptuous swipe of the back of her hand. She didn’t have time to shed any more tears for this dead world; she had someplace to go and she intended to get there.