Rudy's Apartment Building, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 17th, 2019, 2019.15:00.

The King was dead, long live the Apocalypse.

The whole street-facing side of Rudy's building was destroyed. Not ruined or crumbled but unusable and unstable. The shockwave broke all the windows and dented the wooden structure, causing it to splinter in some places. The top floors would be condemned once another strong rain like the one from a few days ago hit, with water seeping into the wooden structure. The five-over-one was a cheap building concept, in more than one sense. ]

Affordable housing, they called it. Sara would laugh if she weren't in so much pain. Blood trickled down her face and arms, coming from many cuts. Too many cuts.

She dropped the stuff she was packing and rushed back home. Lakeview Apartments was closer to the blast than Rudy's to the north and suffered worse than this. Sara climbed to the top floor, cursing at the idea of leaving her stuff so far from the ground. She should've packed everything into a car already, but who could tell when the stupid cops would decide to go the Hollywood way and blow one of them up?

She entered the room, thanking herself for putting her precious stuff in the apartment further from the "Castle." She checked and everything was fine, though covered in dust. Her mom's photo, Verachiel's feather, and mementos from the ghosts. Except for Mr. Taylor. If she ever went back in time, she'd get him arrested first thing. Not that she wanted to re-live the last ten days of literal Hell on Earth for anything in this world.

With relief came the pain. Her ruined face and ragged clothes were drenched in her own blood. With a couple first-aid kits, she went to the apartment's bathroom. With some safety scissors, she snipped the rags covering her body. The first order of business was to disinfect and bandage her wounds. She picked shards of glass off of her face, noticing how shallow the cuts were. A few were just scratches that didn't draw blood. After disinfecting, she turned her face into a Band-Aid mummy but she didn't care so long it didn't leave a collection of scars nasty enough to look like a street map.

"Fuck. If I ever see the other cop, I'm going to shoot him," she angrily vowed, without much intent behind it. Sara couldn't imagine herself killing someone. "Can you help me heal this?" She begged the fairy.

That didn't sound too reassuring but she felt she couldn't be paranoid all the time. Time to move. She needed to keep her body active because she felt she'd crash should her tension wane. Right now, her blood was still pumped full of adrenaline.

While the Necropolis King blocked access to Jonesboro, the same was true for the other survivors. Now that the threat was no longer there, they would come to loot the buildings and the ground-level shops facing Jonesboro. The ones she never dared to go visit. She had no idea of their intentions aside from kidnapping girls against their will. They could be as bad as the military maniac. At least they had a bigger prize to turn their eyes to, the military base. That would keep them busy for at least today, she hoped.

Another advantage of the cheap five-over-one. She knew the neighborhoods in Forest Park had much higher quality loot.

She sorted the bags she prepared to take with her. Too much time went into collecting these supplies, she wasn't going to give up on them. Her plan was to haul away the important things first, then come back for the rest. Sara took those bags downstairs and out the back door. Her getaway ride was already ready to depart. A station wagon was ready to go wait for her at the parking lot. She lowered the back seat and loaded it up until the rear door took some work to close. She strapped the carry-on with her precious items in the passenger seat, threw another five duffel bags over it, then looked back at the ruined five-over-one buildings. Lakeview Apartments kind of sucked, but she would miss the place. She couldn't believe she spent ten days holed up in there when she had a whole world to explore outside.

Maybe if a murderous psychopath weren't shooting everyone in sight, she remarked. But that chapter was over. Now she had to find a home to live in. Fortunately, she had plenty of houses in the nearby suburbs.

She slowly drove past the pile of ashes and bones sitting in a corner of the parking lot, the remnants of the building's inhabitants. Sara whispered a prayer for them and thanked her foster parents for taking her in. They were the best she ever had.

Later, she would come back to bury them. Now, she had to guarantee she would remain alive and free to do so.

*

*

Jonesboro Road, Morrow, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 17th, 2019, 2019.15:00.

While one girl said goodbye to her apartment, the rest of the world didn't remain still.

Detective Keyes was having the last police chase of his life. It wasn't high-speed because they had to swerve and dodge derelict wreckages all the time. But a chase nonetheless. Without his right leg, he sat on the passenger seat. The last surviving lieutenants of the "Necropolis King" as the black tar girl called the psychopath who took over the military base, were escaping south.

"The I-75 intersection is blocked by crashed vehicles," the cop said. "They'll have to abandon their cars there and proceed on foot."

"Can't we let them go?" Trevor asked from behind the steering wheel.

"You know what they did to the women we rescued. Even if they weren't armed with military weapons, it is damn easy to get a firearm these days. Even children have them after the world went to shit."

"You mean the drug junkie girl you and Jones found?"

Keynes whistled. "Yeah. Craziest thing. I don't want to know what she was high on."

"If they have military weapons with them, why aren't they shooting back?"

"These aren't psychopaths like their boss. They are people who made bad choices under pressure. I believe they are scared and unwilling to escalate things. They've seen what we're capable of. They don't want to defeat us, they want to escape. No way in hell I'm letting these rapists walk."

"You're the boss, detective. We're almost to the overpass on I-75. And… you were right. It's blocked by a pile-up."

The overpass leading to the southern commercial area was blocked by a mass of bent and crashed vehicles. Two of the bridges had collapsed, forming ramps connecting to the highway below. On the other side, the destruction of the meteorites started after a quarter of a mile south of I-75.

Detective Keynes spotted some movement over the wreckage. Figures were climbing the broken bridge, using the ramp to access the elevated road.

"Is that people?" He pointed at the blocked overpass. The interstate was covered in crashed cars as far as the eye could see, without a single gap between the masses of twisted metal and broken glass.

"Where? Damn, more survivors?" Trevor gasped. "They're stopping."

"Pull over and enter this parking lot to the left. We'll catch them on foot." Trevor glanced at the cop's amputated leg. Keynes groaned. "You catch them on foot after you help me get on the roof. I'll set up a camp to snipe them. Go there and tell them they are welcome back. There's no judge, they will have to apologize to the women they raped, and maybe do some community service. Stall for time and I'll get them."

The detective could tell Trevor didn't like being bait. But he was confident in his sniping abilities and his assessment of the fugitives. Keynes was sure he could cover for his impromptu partner.

They entered a roadside motel parking lot. Trevor hoisted Keynes into the roof and the detective crawled on three limbs into position with his sniper rifle kit slung across his back. He set up his nest and looked around with binoculars. Keynes lamented he didn't have a spotter.

The escaping goons were trying to climb the wreckage to get to the other side. Slowly scanning around, he found the other survivors walking on the wreckage. Except that…

"Fucking shit. Are those the real thing or people cosplaying as zombies?" He wondered under his breath.

The survivors on the wreckage must have had a very good makeup artist. Keynes could swear they looked as dead as week-old bodies left to bake in the sun. Their gait also showed a lack of motor skills and he wondered if they were shooting some sort of video for YouTube or even a film.

That is if the internet was still a thing. Yet he couldn't believe they were the real deal. No way. Winston Keynes felt his heart race.

The goons soon met the actors and started shouting at them. Keynes was too far to understand even though the world was dead silent without cars. They screamed at the film extras, who were walking toward the newcomers even though they had guns pointed at them.

"Hell!" The cop interjected as the first shot was fired.

It blew the head of one of the actors like a melon. Instead of running away, the other actors picked up the pace, closing in on the obviously armed and dangerous and deranged perpetrators. Two more shots were fired. The wounded actors kept moving.

For a moment, the stupefied cop forgot the Apocalypse. His mind tried to match what he was seeing with his knowledge of the world before. Were they firing blanks? What the hell was going on? Keynes could only watch.

More shots. The… was it right calling them actors? It… were these real zombies? Three zombie heads burst into a shower of gore.

The first suspect to shoot then screamed and dropped his gun as his body split, no, got butchered, blood gushing everywhere as he was literally sliced into ribbons.

"Holy shit!" He heard Trevor shout. It seemed the guy hadn't advanced on the fugitives and was also gawking at the scene.

"Abort, Trevor! Withdraw to safety!" Keynes shouted back.

All the escaping criminals too started to scream as they shot wildly at the – Keynes couldn't believe he would call them that – zombie horde, dropping dozens of them. One of them stopped shouting when a hole the size of a basketball appeared in his chest as his heart was ripped out and floated in the air, still beating.

The last three dropped their guns and fled over the wreckage in sheer panic, crossing the overpass and vanishing from Keynes' sight.

Keynes found his hands were shaking. He lowered the binoculars and rested on his sniper nest's cushion. First, everyone dies, meteors fall, he spends days unconscious, some guy starts kidnapping people, then he finds a drugged girl covered in an unknown black substance, now zombies? What the hell happened to the world?

*

*

Courtney Drive, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 17th, 2019, 2019.15:20.

Sara met the first roadblock on her relocation plan. A literal roadblock. Courtney Drive, the street that went behind her apartment complex was blocked by crashed vehicles on both sides. That might be the reason nobody approached her building from that side, now that she thought about it.

On foot, she walked the half-mile stretch of street available to her and looked at the driveways connecting to it. A whole new set of two-floor apartment buildings for her to loot and not a single survivor in view. She jumped the wall and disabled the automatic gate from inside, pulling it open before she went to get her station wagon.

Examining her surroundings as she slowly made her way inside, she noticed the place looked abandoned and assumed the people here hadn't yet returned from work when the world ended. She found only two corpses in the parking lot, one of them a young boy that was riding his bicycle.

She pulled over next to the dead kid. His ride still had training wheels. She remembered Joseph, his spectral playmate. Maybe she should take the Lego Daily Bugle with her. She would need to go back to get more loot anyway.

"Abby, did I ask you what happened to the children before?"

She closed her eyes. "They're all dead, aren't they?"

Dismayed, the girl slammed the steering wheel. She was conflicted about whether all children dying was a good or bad thing. Not the deaths, but sparing them this shitty world. No, it was a bad thing, she decided. Fuck Armageddon.

She also suspected their souls weren't given special treatment. Though the Bible said otherwise. Why would Joseph stay behind, then?

"What happens to people after their deaths, Abby?"

"Reborn?"

"Even Mr. Taylor?"

The explanation didn't make her feel better. Yet, Sara was burning sunlight. She had to finish moving before the day ended. The cop might send someone to look after her.

*

*

James Edward Oglethorpe Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 17th, 2019, 2019.15:40.

She drove past the two-story apartment complex a block behind her former home.

Judging by the price of the few cars in the parking lot, people here had less income than those on Lakeview Apartments, not to mention the posh (compared to the region) Rudy's building. This place probably housed the many workers of the shipping companies spread around the county, or maybe airport workers. Would she find anything worthwhile here? Maybe, but now her priority was to find better shelter. One far away from the destruction.

Two cats prowled on the roof, probably in search of a snack. She wondered if they ate human flesh but put them out of her mind as they disappeared behind a building. She noticed she hadn't seen or heard a bird in days. Since Armageddon, to be precise.

At the end of the complex, she found a stretch of grass and trees that divided the apartment complex from the backyard of the suburban houses beyond. Her escape route. Sara took tools from behind the seat and set to work. The girl sawed a fence post and all four side pipes before she cut the chain-link mesh in the middle and created a makeshift gate. She bent the mesh and tied it on the sides. Before getting back in the car, she scouted the way on foot, trying to see if it was safe. The backyards were open and one house had a driveway connecting front and back.

She drove over the grass, into someone else's backyard, then the side driveway, finally ending up in a suburban street full of nice street houses. A stark contrast with the dreary apartment complex.

At the end of the street, she spotted a pack of dogs blur by as they loudly chased something into the next street and vanished behind a house. She wondered if these dogs were cannibals too. Maybe, maybe not. She felt safe inside the car and had no wish to meet them.

She drove around, trying to find a suitable house to claim. Sara went past a church and a middle school, then entered one of the maze-like suburban communities a mile away from her former home. The place seemed to be frozen in time until she noticed the overgrown grass. Neatly parked cars, no crashed vehicles, no debris on the street, a dead body on the lawn, already in an advanced stage of decomposition because of the elements, and two child-sized mummified skeletons on the sidewalk.

To sum it up, it was an idyllic neighborhood, everything seemed perfectly normal for a post-Apocalyptic suburb.

As she went slowly down the street, the girl paid close attention to doors and windows, looking for signs of looting. Nothing was broken, the houses seemed to be intact, the doors closed as they should be. Though the world ended at rush hour, it ended at the early rush hour. Almost nobody made it back home before everything went to shit. And by the looks of it, no survivor came this way yet.

Spotting a very nice-looking two-story house at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, Sara parked her car in front of the empty driveway. She picked this one exactly because it had no cars parked outside, which meant the people who lived here weren't at home during Armageddon. Fewer bodies to clean up.

Reawakening her burglar's instincts, Sara checked her surroundings one last time, then got out of the car and skulked along the driveway, checking if anyone was watching her. She had a 9mm pistol and her foster father's kitchen knife strapped to her belt, and a backpack with a few tools.

The rain washed all the ashes from the fires. Sara thought she could tell which houses went undisturbed since the Apocalypse by checking for footprints on the ashes, but Mother Nature liked things clean, it seemed. Sara didn't find fault with the entity, she would take rain over an Ice Age any day of the week.

The skies were clear, beautiful like a painting. She also noticed the long shadows and low position of the Sun. No time to muse on weather patterns.

*

*

Western suburbs, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 17th, 2019, 2019.16:20.

The girl with a face covered in band-aids picked the lock, then picked another lock, and finally gained entry to the house. It was gorgeous and stylish, and it looked like something that came out of a designer's catalog or the "after" section of a home renovation show. A thin cover of dust gathered in the past days, and obviously, it didn't rain inside the house. She saw no footprints, no disturbance anywhere. She went from room to room, confirming the house was empty. The family that lived here had five members if she could trust the portraits. Two boys, a girl in her early teens, and the master couple. The girl looked oddly familiar but was too young to attend her school.

After clearing the house of any threats, she went to the garage. It had no cars and one of the two parking spaces was taken by a workbench and a few power tools. A stack of MDF and wooden boards on the corner made her deduce the father's hobby was carpentry. Examining the workbench, she found three items that could be very useful. The first was a respirator full-face mask. It was a bit too big for her face but after fiddling with the straps, she got it to seal against her face. It would come in handy if she had to enter somewhere with dead people. And flying bugs. The second item was a pack of signal flares. She had no idea why they were here but maybe they had a boat at Lake Stonecrest. After searching the workbench, she found the keys and deed to a motorboat in a drawer. The deed, keys, and flares went into her bag. She would need a boat later at the end of the month.

She used a rope to open the garage door on manual, then drove her station wagon in before closing the door. Now her loot was safely hidden and she could relax for a while. Sara went to the girl's bedroom and checked her closet. A walk-in closet. Seriously, was this girl a Princess?

Apparently no. The first thing she saw when she opened the closet door was the cheerleader uniform hung behind the door. Her school's cheerleader uniform. Damn, this girl was a classmate. Was she someone Sara knew? Afraid to discover, she nonetheless went to the desk and opened the drawer. Just as she expected, she found a fancy Moleskin scrapbook, the girl's journal.

It belonged to Christine Appleby. Sara tried to remember her and came up empty. Not even with photographic evidence, she could remember the cheerleader. Reading the journal with a guilty conscience, she learned that Christine hated Pamela and had a crush on the school's star linebacker. Sara felt even more guilty. Patrick was a hunk and Christine had very good refined tastes. In another world, they could even be friends, if the whole social station and popularity things didn't ruin everything.

She lamented Christine was most probably dead. She shouldn't be far when the world ended and if she hadn't returned home after ten days, she wouldn't come back, ever. Sara vowed to use her belongings for a good cause. The "Dress Up Sara" charity was founded that day.

"Hello, Sara," Christine's voice came from behind.

Or not.

*

*

Christine Appleby's Residence, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Thursday, October 17th, 2019. 17:00.

The nature of the voice's owner was known even before she turned around; Sara was an experienced burglar and she made sure the house was empty before breaking in. With a fake smile, she turned around.

"Hello, Catherine. Love the makeup, by the way," the ghost said with no small amount of sarcasm. "We have a couple of weeks before Halloween, though. I admire the enthusiasm, though."

Oh, boy.

Christine's face was like an extremely well-crafted realistic porcelain mask. But it looked like polished porcelain instead of flesh. It even caught the afternoon sunlight and glinted. Very long but not exaggerated eyelashes, unblemished skin, all the right colors in the right places, accenting the natural features of her face and making the teenage ghost look gorgeous. Fake, but gorgeous.

"Well, it's very sweet of you to drop by and loot my house, really. No, don't make that face, we don't mind it at all. Everyone died on the interstate and I managed to slip out of the car before... before everyone was taken over by the 'bad-thing'. We do not talk about the 'bad-thing'."

Her first impulse was to ask what was the 'bad-thing'. But Sara wasn't making faces because Christine accused her of burgling her house right away. No, she made a face because her perfect doll-like face didn't move at all. Her lips remained still while she talked, eyes didn't blink or swerve inside the orbits, nothing. It was like she was wearing a mask but it was her face. Christine's sin was excessive vanity and narcissism. Her hips and boobs were also wider than they were in real life, but Sara wouldn't slut-shame anyone. Her stance on the matter was that people should be free to rub naughty bits any way they wanted, so long they weren't doing that in her presence. Or attempting to do it to her.

"Right, the first rule of fight club. I guess you know why we are having this conversation," Sara went straight to the point. "What can I do to ease your passing, my former classmate?"

"So cold," Christine bemoaned. "I... I don't know."

Sara did a double-take, "Beg your pardon? Christine, you're the restless soul here, how can you not know your last wish?"

The apparition huffed, exasperated, "There's so many! How can I settle for only one? This is unfair."

Add greed to her growing list of sins.

"You tell me," Sara grumbled. "So, let's do it like this. Why don't we brainstorm your last wishes, without settling for any of them? Do you have a notepad anywhere around here?"

"Second drawer of my desk," the ghost pointed. "And thank you, Sara. I used to think you were less than vermin, but you turned out to be a really nice person. So, I guess I'm sorry?"

The girl (the living one) shook her head, then swallowed a bit of her pride and put on her "divine redemption" saleswoman smile. "You're welcome," she chalked it to business as usual as she sat next to the desk and retrieved a notepad from the drawer. "So, let's start."

The notepad had a green gradient at the bottom, where stylized flowers spread halfway along the bottom and right edge, thinning at the ends. On the opposite corner, a blue gradient with a flock of hummingbirds apparently flying to meet the flowers also spread along halfway the top and left edges. The pad was slightly scented, reminding Sara of a field of flowers amidst a forest meadow.

"I wanted to have a friend wear my clothes. Do a fashion show, at least once. And of course, get complimented on my great taste and shopping skills. Also, I wanted to own a pony, but that one isn't happening. I wanted to lose my virginity after prom with my boyfriend, but that ship has sailed."

"Really?" Sara asked with feigned interest. She walked right into Christine's trap.

"Yeah. You won't believe who I managed to fuck on that bed over there." The ghost pointed at the stately bed.

"Do tell."

"Andrew Wilson from the football team!" She revealed it with a lot of fanfare. "You won't believe how good it felt. It was glorious," Christine squirmed just from remembering it.

Sara was unsure if she should be disgusted by the ghost's shamelessness. In the end, she let it slide past her like water off a duck's back. "No, I won't. I have no idea whatsoever," Sara replied honestly. Though she knew the guy. Everyone knew him.

Andrew Wilson was the school's star quarterback. A smart, polite guy, handsome like a movie star, and bound to go to some Ivy League college with a sports scholarship. Quite the catch.

Christine, however, misinterpreted Sara's bandaged face. "Oh, don't give me that look."

"I'm not judging your taste in men, promise," Sara explained but the vain ghost wasn't convinced. "I just wished this could go without mentioning men."

Christine gasped, then squealed excitedly. "Sara, are you gay? I always wanted to have a gay friend."

Sara narrowed her eyes and kept her silence. She felt that Christine was very, very prejudiced. Probably a side-effect of her upbringing but she expected that the ghostly girl had formed her own opinion by now.

"I can be your gay girlfriend if that's what you want," she offered, attempting to close the sale and move on with her life after Christine had moved on with her afterlife.

"No, wait. I wanted to drive a sports car worth more than half a million. A Ferrari, or something like that." Sara noted that one down, and readied the next bullet point. "Pilot a helicopter. Base Jump from the Bank of America building. Do it with three guys at the same time, after prom night. Dive in the Great Coral Reef and swim with the sharks. Win Miss America! Participate in a glamorous Reality Show like The Bachelor."

"Or the MTV one where everyone kisses everyone else," Sara suggested.

"That! Oh, you understand me so well!" Christine gushed from behind her expressionless mask. She hung her head, "Why did I have to die? It's so unfair."

"Don't dwell too much on that," Sara warned. "Trust me, you are very vulnerable to negativity."

"Oh, you care!" Christine cooed. "You are absolutely right, I don't want to be taken by the bad-thing. I'm so grateful, my 'gay girlfriend'! I feel warm just by knowing I have you." Right after admitting that, she became translucent and started to fade slowly. The ghost looked at her hands, "Wait, no. That's unfair!"

Sensing that Christine's feelings were turning dark, Sara stood up and hugged the ghost. "There, there. It's okay, there's nothing to be afraid of. I'm with you, and... you have a nice body. Christine, I... I'm your friend, but I hoped we could be something more," the girl lied through her teeth as she purred her confession.

"Oh, no – No," The specter stammered. "I didn't wish for a gay relationship... Or, maybe I did? What the hell, I'm dead, who cares!"

Suddenly, Christine's mask disappeared, revealing her real face just like she was in life. The ghost quickly hugged Sara back and kissed the surprised girl's lips. Sara endured with tightly closed lips, trying to avoid any tongue action as she stifled her rejection. She totally didn't kiss back though Christine was too engorged to notice. In fact, she started to moan and get handsy and then.... squirm? Oh, boy.

Christine Appleby's ghost faded with a smile on her face.

Sara frowned and wiped her mouth with her jacket's sleeve, not that she had any ghost drool on her. At least. That's what she got for trying to flirt with a ghost just to make it vanish faster. Eww. She decided it didn't count.

Annoyed, Sara asked nobody in particular, "Is it over?"

> Assignment Complete! You helped the ghost... well, let's agree not to talk about that again.

> You gained 4 points of Flattery.

"You gotta be shitting me," she groaned at the fairy's whimsical reward, the molesting ghost, and the world in general. "Goddammit!"

Irritated, the girl took the notepad and ripped the page she wrote on, crumpling the paper into a ball and tossing it in the trash bin.

But now she officially inherited Christine's entire wardrobe. She had to admit, that Christine's fashion sense was spot on.