The hand on my shoulder becomes the hand around my wrist, an iron grip, just loose enough for the thing it’s attached to take my other shoulder and try to force me to turn around. In the dimness, I can see a slight outline of a thin frame, a long snout, and a bit of glare off round disks that might be eyes.

  It leans in close, its snout inches from my face. I hold my breath and pull back, running my thumb along the metal of the flashlight in my free hand. Something sinuous and warm wraps around my left ankle, my left arm still held rigid over my head. Silken fluff runs along my calf.

  Suddenly, it occurs to me that I’m holding a heavy object, so I swing with the flashlight as hard as I can, catching the creature on the side of the head, hitting the switch in the process. It lets go of me, both my arm and my leg, and stumbles against the wall.

  It’s a slender creature, almost humanoid, with a long, mottled gray-white tail ending in a tuft of soft, silky fur. The feet are kind of handlike, with two long, nimble “fingers” that I guess support weight, a thumb, and two vestigial, or close to it, digits. It has a mane of long, pitch-black hair streaked sharply with white, framing a snouted, dead-eyed face whose skin doesn’t seem to be quite attached.

  As it moves, to get up, I can’t seem to run, and just stare at it, trembling. It climbs to its feet and reaches for me again, so I make a move to hit it with the flashlight, but catch it in the face with the beam instead. It cries out in pain, a howling noise far from human, and covers its face.

  Oh, I remember how to run now.

  I take off again down the hallway, clinging the flashlight to my chest, the beam aimed downward, jerkily scanning the ground. I dash down a stairwell and take the door to my left, not the one in front, spilling out into sunshine in what looks like a small jungle, and drop to my knees, dizzy and breathless.

  When the beam caught it, were those eyes under those blank, black disks? Pale blue eyes, surrounded by pale gray skin? With some kind of dark mottling?

  I stare at the moss-speckled cement under my hands, listening for the sounds of footsteps, or that earsplitting howling. There isn’t anything but the chirping of some birds and a gnat crawling on the ground under my nose. When the dizziness starts to fade and I’m not breathing so hard and can hear over the sound of my own heartbeat, I look up, switching off the flashlight absently.

  Thickly overgrown vines and flowers spill out of cracked, cement boxes. Some still, humanoid figures, statuary of some kind, peek from under woody stems. The nearest might have once been of a Greek girl carrying a bowl over her head, but the flowers or whatever long escaped and grew around her like a dress. Frogs croak softly from slimy green ponds.

  A rooftop garden, I suppose, climbing to my feet and dusting my hands off on my knees. The slightly damp cement is abrasive against my swollen feet and my knees are starting to lock up. Nervously, I look behind me and stare at the door, waiting for it to swing open and the creature to come lashing out.

  Next to it is one of those overgrown statues, a girl in one of those Greek statue-dresses, her hands holding overgrown weeds as though she were once picking them like flowers. I lean her onto the door handle and then watch her fall, cracking along where she lands and one of her hands falling off completely, and wedge her up against the door.

  It’s not much, but it might by me time.

  She stares at me, accusatorily.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “It’s not like it was chasing you. Stop looking at me like that, I was trying to use you to wedge the handle.”

  I turn aware from her sour gaze and start pacing around the terrace. I feel like an intruder, like I’m someplace that hasn’t been touched by human hands in years and likes it that way.

  The plants seem to be doing well, more or less. A lot of them are green, and I suppose if you’re a plant, there’s worse places to be abandoned than an outdoor garden. I wish I knew enough about plants to tell how long it’s been since they’d been tended to, or what kind they are, or which ones are edible.

  I turn a corner around an overgrown bush and find myself in direct line-of-sight with an aging greenhouse, or what’s left of the frame. The plants inside are heavy with vividly red fruit, which jump-start’s my stomach’s whining again. I pick up the pace, trying to get near the fruit before anyone can stop me.

  My ankle doesn’t lift off the ground. Something’s holding it by my pants leg.

  I shriek and thrash around, kicking my leg and screaming, dizzy and out of breath again by the time I notice I just snagged on a thorn. If I didn’t feel like enough of an idiot, I’ve torn my pants. Nice.

  Wheezing slightly, I tiptoe in pursuit of the fruit, trying not to snag and keeping an eye out for anything that might be hiding in the garden. Upon reaching the fruit, I drop to my knees and start examining them closely.

  Tomatoes. Tomato vines growing out of plant boxes across the ground, red and ripe and fairly free of worms. I pick one and bite into it, peeling back a piece but not swallowing, confirming by the juicy flesh and yellowy seeds that it is, in fact, a tomato.

  And then I start gorging. Tomatoes have never tasted so good in my life.

  After I’ve eaten my fill of tomatoes, I explore a little deeper in, somewhere between pleasantly full and wondering if gorging on something so acidic so quickly was a good idea. It looks like this was the section where they grew cooking plants. I find some strawberries to nibble, and a few things I don’t know if I can eat raw, like eggplant.

  I wish I had something to carry them in. Or maybe I could just stay here until produce runs out. I've started to suspect helicopter rescue is out of the question.

  I eat what I can, what I recognize and looks mostly worm-free, and then start pacing around the garden, looking off the edge. I can't stay here, the veggies won't last, and even if they would...that thing might still be looking for me.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  At least this building, or this side, at least, is in a drier edge of the swamp, overlooking what might have once been a parking deck. Getting down to it is another matter entirely. Maybe I can scale the wall?

  I look down. Some of the bricks are loose, but at least they stick out. Some look decorative, sticking out to give the building a sense of texture. There's also weeds or vines or maybe something from the garden growing along the side.

  It won't be easy or safe, but I think it might be doable. It's a shame the ground or roof or next building over has to be JUST far away enough to make me dizzy looking at it, though.

  I climb onto the ledge, sitting on it, and swing on leg over, deciding what to do next. I grip the ledge and swing my left leg to join the right, feeling for protruding bricks with my toes. The first one seems solid enough, so I keep moving down, one brick at a time, using for handolds the same one I used for footholds. This would be so much easier if I didn't have the flashlight. Maybe I should have thrown it down first.

  A brick wobbles under me. I cling to the wall as best I can, holding my breath, bloody fingers and toes throbbing, until I'm sure I can move again.

  I'm almost to the bottom, and starting to relax. I might just make it to the bottom in one piece after all, I think, as another brick wobbles under me. There's a strong jolt like a drop on a roller coaster, and then I'm looking up at the sky from the ground.

  That's a new kind of pain I didn't know existed.

  I'm somewhat aware of a raw throbbing in my hands and feet, and a shooting pain in my lower back. I'm having a little trouble breathing, much less getting back up, so I just lie here, watching birds circle overhead. Hey, look at that, I think the clouds a rolling back in.

  I shout up at the statue, "That wasn't funny and there's no such thing as karma!" She doesn't answer.

  I drag myself onto my belly and grab for the flashlight, then at the back of my head. There's a good-sized sore spot, but no blood. I try to remember how to tell if I have a concussion. All things considered, nausea, sleepiness, and dizziness are probably not good indicators today.

  I hold the flashlight like a teddy bear for a while, snuggling it. I need to get up and get moving again. When did I put the box cutter and blades in my pocket? Too bad the flashlight is too big for a pocket...at least my pocket isn't filling up with blood. There's that, at least.

  I get my arms under me, then my legs. I try to stand, but the ground doesn't seem to want to cooperate. It takes me longer than I'm proud of to remember how to do it, and by the time I'm up again it's getting late.

  “Well...crud.”

  So...shelter, I guess. Should have stayed in the greenhouse.

  There’s a drive path going down into the parking deck. I don’t love the idea of going into an unlit parking deck, but I think I’m going to like being outside in the dark a whole lot less, so I start limping that way. At first I think there are some lights still working, but they’re reflectors outlining the drive path, yellow on one side and red on the other. I start shaking my flashlight, listening to the echo of the power supply bouncing up and down.

  I switch it on and cast the beam around, check dark corners and blind spots for anything with eyes or teeth. The yellow paint marking the deck level is almost peeled away. To be fair, it probably wasn’t intact before the world ended.

  It’s also almost deserted. I’m actually a little startled when I see some sort of rusted-out junker, no glass in the windows, and electrical equipment obviously missing from the dashboard. The paint is starting to peel away and some magnetic bumper stickers are warped and peeling, some worn down to the backing and one, if I’m reading it correctly, displaying an election too far in the future to think about. I cast the light in the windows, but don’t see anything useful. I wouldn’t, if they’ve already gotten the electronics.

  I step around puddles and mossy spots where water isn’t draining. They become harder and harder to avoid until they merge together into the swamp. I can almost see sunlight out of the entrance, but I can't get to it past the stagnant water.

  This can't be a dead end. There's probably a service door or...something. I should probably find that, so I cast the beam around the deck, half-expecting something monstrous to come up behind me. Someone spray-painted a biohazard on one of the walls. Still not creepy.

  The door I need is wedged partially open, the lock missing. Sunlight is streaming in from the other side, so I turn off the flashlight for right now. There’s a tree growing in the doorway, a good-sized one, rooting into the concrete. There’s barely enough room to squeeze through on the sides, but I make it, scraping along bark and getting splinters into my shirt.

  I find myself standing on steps heading up onto a little hill leading back down to a curb and a dry portion of cracked and pitted road, the yellow lines down the middle barely visible. I scan down either side of the deserted street, and conclude that, as long as I keep going forward or off to might right, I might have more-or-less stumbled my way out of the swamp.

  In front of me is a movie theater of some kind. To my right is more of the city, I think thinning out into more suburban areas. The sun is starting to dip low and turn red. I need to find some cover…but what if those things are hiding inside the buildings?

  When I hear something that sounds unsettlingly like the bellow of an elephant, I decide I’ll take my chances inside. I switch off the flashlight and scale the hill and step down into the street, wondering how or why someone would bother to turn a car upside-down, trying to be aware of my surroundings. I’m getting hungry again.

  I check both ways for traffic as I step across broken words painted onto the ground, just barely legible as something like, “Evacuation is a lie,” still not creepy. The street sign nearby is leaning off its base, and missing the sign part completely. A wolflike creature I don’t recognize looks up at me from the vacant lot next door, followed by puppies and carrying what looks like a baby deer in its mouth. Completely uninterested in me when it already has dinner, it keeps going.

  I watch it walk away, three small figures following it, and start laughing. “Mad, mad Minka whose parents never got word that the Cold War ended and thought the Russians might invade. Well who’s laughing now?”

  I feel dizzy again, gasping and swaying in place. Movie theater chairs will be a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the ground, at least. I can’t wait to get off my feet for a little bit.

  As I make my way up the steps to the ticket booth, I start scanning the posters. Some of the windows are pulled open, others are clouded over with green. The few images I can make out are not of any movie or actor I’ve ever heard of. The metal pull-down behind the ticket booth glass is shuttered, but rusting through in places. At some point, someone had painted the metal with what looks like one of those propaganda posters, with the biohazard eyes and the slogan, “Registration is a patriot’s duty.” The cloudy residue of a sticker runs diagonally across the cracked glass.

  The doors are pulled open or falling down or missing. To step inside I have to make it across a rotten cardboard ad for some cartoon or another. An open skylight, with more stray branches and a few chirping birds, provides enough light for me to see without making my headache worse.

  It looks like I’m out of luck on getting a soda. The concession stand is completely wrecked, with glass and soda machines thrown about. The display cases are open and empty, bits of faded, stained popcorn buckets and candy boxes litter the ground. A claw machine by the entrance looks like someone smashed it with a baseball bat and stole all the toys inside.

  I wait patiently by the entrance for someone to take my ticket before I decide no one’s coming and keep going inside. None of the digital signs showing which theater is showing what is working, so I just start moseying to my left, absently tapping my flashlight against my knee, nervously waiting for an usher to ask for a ticket stub.

  The carpet is rotting and patchy. Lights are pulling down from the fixtures. Some of the poster windows are in better condition inside, but some of them show more propaganda posters instead of movie posters, reminding at regular intervals to wash hands and “register.” A vending machine has fallen over in the hall, the casing torn open and the candy long gone.

  I pass by an empty theater, thinking how comfortable that bench looks in front of the party room that clearly hasn’t seen many parties, even when the place was running. Just being in here makes me crave not just popcorn, but salt and theater butter to lick off my fingers. And a giant soda, with so much ice I can keep chewing for the rest of the night. And the top-shelf candy, my head resting on Daveney’s shoulder, watching brain-splitting explosions or some sweet-faced startlet realize that the man she loves is just waiting for her to notice him.

  My toes are off the ground, braced by something lean and strong, one sturdy metal rod wrapped across my upper arms and chest, the other across my body. A dry hand tasting of leather crawls its past my chin and to my mouth, sliding something past my teeth, gelatinous and berrylike. The hand clamps down on my mouth as I try to spit the thing back out, working it back across my teeth, my right hand lashing out at a hip or rib with the flashlight and the left trying to get into my pocket to get the box cutter.

  Something hard and cylindrical burrows between my shoulder and my neck, whispering softly, “Shhh, shhh.” It keeps one hand tight against my mouth and the other across my middle, trying to hold down my hands. I shriek so loud I can feel my throat scratching. I kick at something hard with my heels, stomping down on hard, round mounds.

  The berry bursts in my mouth, flooding it with something sickly sweet. My tongue goes numb, the inside of my cheeks. I try to spit the juice out, but it slides down my throat, spreading the numbness as it goes. My knees start to go weak and I drop the flashlight, the thing behind me still whispering, “Shh, shh, shh.” The numbness touches my brain and I sink to the ground in its arms, my head lolling onto the shoulder of a snouted thing.