Where am I, and how do I leave? I have been asking myself this since I awoke. I had gone to bed in my own room, trying to ignore the party downstairs. It took ages to finally drift to sleep. Drunk and tone deaf Germans shouting along to old Britney Spears albums will turn a narcoleptic into an insomniac. However, I must have succeeded in falling asleep, for the next thing I knew, I was blinking my eyes open to this hell.
Hovels made of cardboard and cubicle walls pressed thickly against one another. The space between them ranged from two meters to two centimeters wide. Paths slithered through the clutter forming a labyrinth of sorts. The whole place was cloaked in the varied grays and blacks produced by dim starlight. Yet, when I glanced at the sky I found none. A flat, featureless ceiling stretched as far as I could see. Where I stood, it was perhaps five meters above me. Elsewhere, the ground rose up almost to meet it or sloped away into deeper darkness. I still did not know where the light came from.
Taking a closer look around me, I saw a man crouched in the corner where two dilapidated forts met. He wore only a blanket with a hole cut through for his head. His untrimmed hair hung in black strings around his face. He clasped his arms around his tucked up knees and stared at nothing in particular. Before fear and better judgement could take hold of me, I approached him.
"Excuse -"
"It's all inside, you know," he muttered without lifting his gaze, "There's no outside. We pretend, but I'm not outside the houses, I'm inside the world and I can't get out. We can't get out. We're all inside, and we can't get out."
"But then how did I get in? Where are we?" I tried hopelessly to reason with him.
"All inside, it's all inside. You and I and they, ever since we hardened the sky. Why did we do that? Why did we turn everything inside out? We go down and down and can't go up again, can't stop going in, and they're in here with us. Why?"
"Who are they? Sir?"
His head twitched to face me, transfixing me with a watery stare. "Do you know how to eat? They do, and they're teaching me." Just then, I heard something from the other end of the alley, a hissing. As I glanced up, a pale hand appeared on the corner of a building. A head came into view next. Hairless, its white flesh glistened damply in the half-light. Its lips curled away from jagged teeth through which a serpent's tongue flicked. Only two small slits above its mouth belied a nose, and where the eyes should have been, skin stretched unbroken over bone.
For a moment, the creature, the man and I seemed frozen. Then the creature screamed. I leaped back at the earsplitting screech, tripping over a chunk of refuse. As I scrambled to my feet, the monstrosity loped towards me in a lopsided gate. Seconds before it reached me, the man flung himself howling upon it. The monster writhed and clawed at him with taloned feet. However, he had curled his fingers about its neck and refused to let go. At last, the creature went still. Immediately, he lifted its skeletal arm to his mouth and ripped a hunk of skin away. Black liquid oozed from the wound and dribbled over his chin. He wept as he chewed, but whether from grief or joy I could not say. I simply fled.
When I felt far enough away, I tried entering one of the makeshift buildings. A rug served as a door flap for one of them. Pushing it aside, I found a room filled with various objects. Baskets, dolls, unlit candles, balls of string, and so on lay scattered across the floor and in disorganized mounds against the walls. I could see another room further back. Poking my head through the door, I saw canned food lining the walls. In the center of the room sat a plump woman shoveling carrots into her mouth from a tin.
"You want this food, you'll have to kill me," she stated between bites. It did not sound like a challenge or a threat, just the establishment of ground rules.
"Oh no, I don't want to kill you. This will probably sound like a dumb question, but where am I, and do you know anything about the eyeless monster I saw a couple minutes ago?"
The woman glared at me. "You're in my house. If you're being chased by a skinner, then you can leave right now. You'll probably just lure it here."
"No, it's not following me. Someone killed it."
"That was foolish. It'll just attract more of them. You don't fight the skinners. You run and hide. Everyone knows that."
"Well, I think the man that killed it...he needed it for...food."
"Then you'd best kill your friend now. Waiting for them to fully turn isn't any mercy."
"What do you mean, turn?"
"My aren't you a stupid girl. Go on, be gone." I considered pressing her for more information, but then I noticed something protruding from under a pile of empty tin cans. It looked suspiciously similar to a foot. "You want this food, you'll have to kill me." Shuddering, I hurried from the room.
The hours eked by. I scurried from shelter to shelter searching for answers. The largest group of people I ever came upon consisted of twenty men, women, and children. They had congregated to share food and water and welcomed me to join them. When I told them I didn't know how I had gotten here or where "here" was, they exchanged queer looks. Was it fear that I saw? Pity?
"Listen," a middle aged man with a tool belt strapped around his waist spoke, "you don't need to worry about all that. Just content yourself with a good meal under the open sky."
"But we're underground." This time I recognize the look they shared; it was anger.
Before they could respond, a shriek cut through the air. Everyone jumped up and fled in a different direction. Their supplies they left scattered on the ground. I spun around to choose a direction to run. To my left I could see a woman already disemboweled by the skinner. The alley to my right was already packed with fleeing people. I clambered atop the nearest shelter and over to the other side, then kept running. When I came to a rest, I was once again alone and have been ever since.
It gives you time to think, you know, huddling in corners until a skinner or madman chases you off. The thoughts are not pleasant, but they fill the emptiness. The prominent thought I've had is how very much I hate the ceiling. I can feel it pressing down on me, choking me. It's better in the hovels. With a roof and walls that I can leave, it's almost easy to pretend that there aren't any outside. I can go where I want. I just choose to be in this hovel.
Every now and then the shadow of a memory creeps into my head. An important man in a suit, a child holding a Marlboro, a news broadcast about...something I can't recall. And I shouldn't recall it. These memories do not belong to me. I have never seen that man. I am certain of it. I am just the victim of some trick. Perhaps this is just a delusion. I have gotten sick and started hallucinating. Or it could be a nightmare, yes just a terrible dream. I'm still in my room. The party is probably still going on. Their bad music is just messing with me, haha! Well if it's a dream then I should have some fun, shouldn't I? I control this world. And if I control it, then I will make it beautiful. I will give it back a sky! Oh look! That isn't a ceiling. It's a lovely sky, just clouded over. That's why it's so flat and gray. Yes, I am just enjoying the night sky while I wait to wake up. And I will, so there's no need to worry about that hissing sound.
------
Michael Leibowitz hurried down to a nearby hotdog stand. 8 at night and he could only take a measly half hour for dinner. That was just another reason he'd be glad when the whole radiation mess was over. He payed for a dog and was on his way back when he passed a lamp post with a cartoon posted to it. It showed a caricature of Leibowitz stuffing cash into his pockets as people were struck by radiation. Beneath the cartoon it read "I promised to save. I didn't say what." He scowled and pressed on. If people had any idea how pointless their bunkers were or how complicated relief logistics on a global scale were to manage...but no. They were convinced that burying their heads in the sand when the sand had already been hit by two tons of radioactive garbage would save them.
He glanced at the people scattered around him. A couple on a bench, a crone shuffling along the sidewalk, a child with a cigarette running from a young woman trying to take it from him. The latter noticed Leibowitz watching and scowled. Great, either she thought he was a pervert for people watching or she recognized him. He hoped it was the former. Eventually he made it back to the Department of Disaster Relief. Seconds after taking a seat his secretary leaned in.
"Sir, Dr. Gourd wants to see you."
"Couldn't he just call?"
"He probably could have, but he isn't answering now."
Leibowitz grumbled to himself as he trekked down to the labs. In the eery glow of vats and equipment serving no purpose he could suss out, he found Gourd. The scientist had bent himself over a beaker containing the preserved body of a bald, eyeless mouse.
"Why are you leaning over a rat in a glass in the dark alone?" Leibowitz said flatly, "That's what I'd ask if I weren't talking to you, Adam."
"It's a mouse, not a rat. Look at it."
"It's one of the mutants born after the meteor shower hit, right?"
"Wrong. It's a normal mouse that mutated after the radioactive meteor shower."
"Okay, what does that mean?"
"It means that it lost its hair, its eyes, and its sanity all while living in a perfectly controlled environment."
"You mean, there's no way that it was exposed to radiation?"
"Well, it's gotten plenty of normal radiation in the form of heat and light, but the sort you're talking about from the meteorites. What's more, the physical changes happened literally overnight." Gourd held up the beaker. "This little guy was acting a little off for a few days, but nothing too out of the ordinary. This morning I found him hairless, blind, and nibbling on its cagemates."
"What was that last part?"
"Oh yes, he went cannibalistic and savage. What bothered me most was not knowing how it happened. Even if we ignore that he had no exposure to radiation that could alter his cells, the manner in which they changed was so sudden, and it didn't look random like you'd expect from your basic irradiated rodent."
"I hope past tense means you've come up with something."
"Not anything good. I haven't had any time to properly research it. I only started seriously considering it an hour ago, so I can't give you proof, but...I think radioactive isotopes weren't the only thing on those meteorites. I think we're looking at an extraterrestrial virus."
"You can't be serious," Leibnitz scoffed.
"I am dead serious, Mike. Like I said, I don't have evidence, but I will get it. I don't expect you to make a broadcast today, but if we need a quarantine -" something shattered. Behind him, a lab tech stood surrounded by the broken shards of a beaker, "Jefferson, careful. That's the second time today."
"Sorry sir," he rubbed his eyes, then dragged a hand through his hair and shook the loose strands from his fingers, "I haven't been feeling too good."
"You mean well," Gourd corrected without hesitation. He turned back to Leibnitz who continued to stare at the lab tech open mouthed.
"No, sir. That's not what I meant at all."
