The Void

It all started on Monday morning, when several citizens of Tumbler City noticed that the sky didn't look quite right.

Archer Juliani was one of the first to notice the odd black mass quickly spreading across the horizon. It looked almost like the edge of a blanket slowly being tugged over the sky. The edge of its black span barely crested over the mountains that were off in the distance.

Over the course of the next few days, the mass began to get closer, and people realized it wasn't just a cloud, like they'd originally thought. The news stations that Archer had started to watch for updates on the nature of this meteorological enigma tried to say it was just the approach of a rather severe thunderstorm, but Archer clearly saw through the lie. Firstly, the odd blanket of blackness was not pierced even with a pinprick of light; it seemed to swallow up the life and light of the surrounding airspace. Secondly, the edge of the so-called "cloud," if it could really be called that at all, was a clean, perfectly straight line spanning to either side for as far as the naked eye could see. It didn't really look like any storm that Archer or anyone else had ever seen before, more like a great chasm of nothingness that grew wider with time.

Archer began to hear strange rumors about the thing. He heard that anyone that lived in the areas that the Void, as if was now called, had covered was unable to be reached or contacted. It was the only thing the people of Tumbler City could seem to talk about. It wasn't until the Void was close enough to be seen almost directly overhead that the first person got sick.

It was a little girl, the daughter of Mayor Karov. Little Celia Karov had been playing outside, under the watchful gaze of her parents, when she fell to the ground, coughing. Her parents had been getting worried already; she had grown terribly pale lately, and her eyes looked like they were darkening. Scared, her parents rushed over to her aid, only to find their daughter shakily getting to her feet. Bewildered and a bit nauseous, the little five year old managed to stand, and abruptly puked up some blood into the immaculately manicured grass. The mayor and his wife rushed her to the docotr, who was stumped to find that, despite the upheaval of blood and the way that her skin had taken on a horrific bone-whiteness, her test results stated that she was completely healthy.

Others in the town got sick, and it seemed that the weak, the young, and the old got it first. Each of the victims suffered the same symptoms as Celia; sickly paleness, sunken eyes, and, eventually, the vomiting of blood. Oddly, every one of them was found completely healthy when the doctors examined them. Rumor spread that this strange illness was caused by the Void that had replaced their blue skies.

Meanwhile, Archer had acted quickly. After the news of the first illness reached him, he'd barricaded himself inside while he was still healthy. Ever since he could remember, Archer had been the paranoid one of the town. He didn't go outside much, which turned out to be pretty lucky, since he hadn't even gotten a little pale yet. Due to his many weird fears, he'd prepared for any number of apocalyptic or world-ending situations, and had his house fortified in the event that a self-quarantine was necessary. Because of this, he had numerous amounts of canned food and bottled water stockpiled, and his TV was constantly tuned to the local news station.

The newscaster looked pretty sick as well. He reported that there seemed to be no one that hadn't been affected yet, and encouraged all viewers to remain calm while the medical and scientific mystery was tackled by the experts.

The first deaths began about two weeks after Celia had gotten sick. The newscaster, whose eyes had darkened to black and whose cheekbones now seemed to jut from his face like blades, reported that a few of the earliest people to become infected had begun to die off one by one. The cause of death was a mystery. Autopsied victims were said to be bloodless, their blood replaced with a sluggish, foul-smelling black substance that seemed as malevolently dark as the Void that now spanned from horizon to horizon. The victims were actually reported to have been living without a beating heart since around the time they'd gotten infected. People who learned of this were baffled, and very afraid.

Once again, Archer was relieved to have been so paranoid during his lifetime. While weeks passed and the newscasts got fewer and fewer and everyone died under the pitch black, nonexistent sky, he enjoyed his food and lived in relatively peaceful solitude. However, the last newscast before the power cut was what finally scared Archer.

The camera feed lacked the usual quality that it usually possessed, and the report started with a close up of a pale, deteriorated face in what looked like the last stages of infection. Once the face checked that the camera seemed to be working, he turned it to face the reporter whose face Archer had come to know from the previous newscasts.

His voice was low and gravelly now, his eyes blackened and little trails of dried blood in the corners of his mouth. He seemed to have trouble piercing together a sentence. He told the public that if anyone left out there was uninfected and safe, they were not to so much as open their windows or look at the Void. They were told to stay inside and keep the curtains closed. He went on speaking, repeating some of the advice from the earlier reports and talking about how the scientists were wrong, and the doctors were wrong, and they were dead too now. He told anyone watching that it was the end of the world.

At this point, the camera man must have fallen, because the camera fell. The end of the broadcast was a shot of the reporter's feet. That low, growling voice began to shout in desperation for the camera man to get up, saying that he couldn't be dead, he'd better stop messing around, or he wouldn't share the remaining rations. His voice cracked, and he pleaded with the man on the ground, saying that he was all he had left and it wasn't fair if he died too. The reporter crouched next to the camera, picking it up and looking into the lens. He stared directly into the camera with look of hopeless resignation on his face. Finally, in a quiet whisper, he whispered "cut," and the camera was turned off. The last few seconds seemed to be a grotesque parody of the way the reports normally ended, and it chilled Archer to the bone.

No matter what Archer told himself, he couldn't stop thinking about the hopelessness he'd seen reflected in the reporter's eyes. He felt a deep, horrible fear after watching that broadcast. It didn't seem like there was any hope left for anyone, and it was very horribly possible that Archer was the only survivor that wasn't dead or getting ready to die.

After that, the days dragged on, an unbroken chain of lonely monotony. The power cut soon after that last broadcast had aired, so the television was turned off. Archer rationed his food, read and reread his books, and just tried to survive and pretend that there was still a chance that he'd get out of this alive. He was comforted, however, with the knowledge that at least he was still healthy.

He was rereading one of his favorite novels over for about the twentieth time when he felt a bit nauseous all of a sudden. He coughed, feeling something lodged in his throat. He retched and vomited, alarmed by the sudden thought that his food might've spoiled somehow and he now had food poisoning.

He then felt a horrible sinking feeling in his chest when he opened his eyes and saw the blood he'd coughed up onto hands that had turned as white as bone.