Marin's Dale

X

"We need to think about this," Tyler said.

His finger was on the lighter, and the flame of the lighter was on the wet blunt, drying it and sealing it. He put the blunt to his lips, sharply inhaling the contents. It was a harsh first hit, but a necessary one.

The grape flavor mingled with that sticky piney fragrance almost majestically. Tyler opened his mouth ever slightly, allowing rings of smoke to curl outward. They coalesced in the open space of the front seats. Audrey sat in the passenger seat, idle and quiet.

"You okay?" she whispered.

Tyler turned to her. He passed the blunt, and she accepted wordlessly. "You're the one I'm worried about," he said. He eyed her as she pulled with the force of a vacuum cleaner. The cough came almost immediately—a hacking, struggling cough. Tyler would normally laugh at such a display, but today, he was short on humor.

"I saw it last night," Tyler murmured. "It's what I told you about. That... "He received the blunt and took another hearty pull. He could fill his eyes glazing over now. The warmth was setting in like a nice soak; his eyelids were already heavy.

"...Flash." He finished. "It started with the flash." Audrey received the blunt. "We need to get in touch with Father," she said

Tyler took a sip of the water bottle he got from Seven-Eleven. It was hot as all hell, but he couldn't stop it. His shirt was like a wet towel. Audrey looked sweaty as hell too, but she wasn't making a word of it. As crazy as it was, she seemed to have forgotten about everything: the scar in the sky, the empty town, the incredible heat, the teacher, the students—everything.

Tyler's mind was running at a fevered pitch. The flash had somehow permeated all of their minds. Whatever landed, whatever had come crashing down in those distant peaks, was something terrible. It was killing people.

Everybody was losing their bearings. And it was everywhere. It was in the air, and the dead noise of empty stations. It was bursting in strange forms from the sewers, and spewing from the sky, and practically turning the whole goddamn town into a fucking sauna. Was it telepathy? What kind of technology would allow such power, what kind of inexplicable, indomitable—

"It's absolute mind control," Tyler sputtered, still lost in his thoughts. Audrey turned as he took another hit of the blunt. But he was right, wasn't he? It was some type of power, like a virus, but in the mind—seizing the human brains of every citizen of this town, in one way or the other. It was taking hold, and most these bastards didn't even know it—because before they knew it, they were zombies. Walking around mindless and deathly.

Tyler and Audrey stepped out of the car. They were in the parking lot of the mall: a giant concrete structure with chain restaurants and gaudy displays for high-end clothing stores. As usual, there were cars everywhere. No people though.

Tyler motioned to Audrey who followed his lead. He puffed the sizzling blunt as he weaved in and out of vehicles. Their doors were thrown open. Some were parked randomly against light poles, as if the drivers had stopped immediately with barely enough time to put them in park.

"It's like a virus," Tyler thought aloud. "Some people are hit and they get crushed, right off the bat." He looked to Audrey for agreement, but she was lost, off in her own world. "Then you've got the guys who put up a fight," he said. "They have the symptoms, but can't beat 'em." He nodded, his guesses gaining confidence.

"And then you've got the others—they'll get the symptoms, they'll feel like shit, but then they'll get better." He looked to Audrey, with her hung head. Her pupils had gotten larger, and the coloring in her eyes seemed normal. She was pale, but reasonably so. She looked nothing like Dirby from the convenience store.