Chapter One: Saturdays in the Fall

Alan Wilkes had finished his husbandly duties for his wife for that Saturday: mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, fixing the leaky faucet, and all the others on his "honey-do" list, and he now intended to partake of his reward: a full afternoon of watching college football on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It had been a long week at work in the office, and he was so looking forward to kicking back and watching Florida State take on Virginia Tech in the marquee game of the day, followed by Texas taking on LSU. He stocked the fridge downstairs with plenty of his favorite brew and put out plenty of snacks, as he intended to also watch the prime time game as well down there.

His wife was getting ready to take the kids out of town to a place called Fun Station, a massive indoor theme park that had just been opened up in Spartanburg and had become the latest trendy place among the kids to go. He hugged his kids and his wife as they began to make their way to the door, and watched as they departed. After that, he made his way down to watch the games in the basement rec room.

It was 24-23 at halftime in Blacksburg, Virginia, as the Seminoles trailed the home standing Hokies, and Alan was soon overcome with all that had transpired earlier in that day, as well as the lack of sleep he had the night before. His wife had been rather frisky after putting their three boys to bed, and they lost track of time as they made love like they did before they were married. He dozed off as he thought of those pleasant memories came to his mind's eye.

He woke up and first noticed that it was dark out. He cursed himself as he went to turn on a light for sleeping so long. He couldn't hear his kids upstairs, so he figured that his family was still at Fun Station. He made a call on his cell phone to reach her, but she didn't pick up. Alan shrugged and hung up, then his eyes found the TV and that's when he dropped the phone.

On the TV, the score was 38-35, in favor of Virginia Tech, and it was in the third quarter, with 4:22 to go. There was only one problem: there was no one there. The field was almost completely dark, as if someone had forgotten to turn on the stadium lights.

Alan's sleepy mind still had a hard time processing what was going on, so he flipped the channel over to another channel, this one a news channel. To his utter shock, the CNN set was abandoned, as the anchor chair stood empty and the graphics from the lead story, "President Bush meets with Prime Minister Blair in London", were still on the screen. The news crawl was still going at the bottom of the screen, but it was obvious that no one else was in the studio.

He flipped over to the Weather Channel, and all he saw there was a radar screen of the precipitation on the eastern seaboard. However, there was no weather person there to explain when the rain would pass over upstate South Carolina.

Another channel, this one ESPN2. They were supposed to be showing a tennis match, but all he saw was the tennis court, with a racket at each end of the court and a few random balls scattered around the playing area. It was then that the question struck him: where was everyone?

He cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier, and he sprang from his seat and went outside. He went to his neighbor's house, Bill Hodges, and knocked on the door. Bill was supposed to be hosting his in-laws for a cookout this afternoon, and their car was in the driveway. He went around to Bill's backyard and there he found that the deck had been laid out for a late afternoon feast. He went up the steps and watched as flies were buzzing around the meat left out. The grill was still warm, and he noted that the charcoal had burned itself out.

He was spooked when an outdoor light came on, but relaxed when he remembered that Bill had it set on a timer to come on at 8pm. He found that the patio door was open and he went inside. "Bill? Hey Bill, are you around ol' buddy?," he called out to no answer. His sense of calm was beginning to fracture, and he went to each room, not seeing any sign of Bill, his wife Helen, or their daughter Vanessa or son Chris.

He threw the meat in the trash compactor and turned it on, because the flies had already begun to do their number on it. He grabbed a bottle of water out of Bill's fridge and drank it down, giving himself time to think. He decided to leave a note on the fridge to call him and left the house, locking the door as he left. He picked up the keys to his own car from his living room and got into his car to drive into town.

No one was around at all. No teenage cruisers to enjoy the last of the warm weather. No evening shoppers at the local Wal-Mart Super Center. It seemed that everyone had disappeared, and it was beginning to scare Alan to the depths of his soul.

He had a friend that worked at WSPA-TV Channel 7 in Spartanburg, so he made his way to US 221 and that's when he saw it: cars abandoned on the highway. For a moment, it had seemed that the Rapture had come, as he had learned as a kid in church. He felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness as he realized that he had been abandoned by Christ.

But then it came to him: there was no one else there. He spent the rest of the evening exploring Spartanburg, making his way through the maze of parked cars on Highway 85 and the other main routes. He went to Westgate Mall, and there were plenty of parked cars there, but when he went inside, no one was there. Items were scattered all over the place: shopping bags, pocketbooks, various food and other things in the food court.

Alan finally made it back home sometime in the early morning hours, after stopping off for gas at an abandoned gas station. Dutifully, he charged the gas to his gas card, and he left the station and soon was back in his driveway.

He remembered that he was using his TiVo to record another game, so he rushed back downstairs and brought up the game. He started the game right at the beginning, and fast forwarded the game until he came to a certain point.

The game was Auburn at home to Vanderbilt, and the game had started at 12:30pm that afternoon. As the teams kicked off the second half, something happened. The Vanderbilt kicker put his foot into the ball and the camera tracked it to the Auburn return specialist, only to find that he had disappeared. The ball bounced around and went out of bounds through the end zone.

He started to panic. He called everyone on his cell phone directory. His boss, his secretary, his friends, his church pastor, and so on and so forth. No one answered. He called 911, but no one was there. He called TV and radio stations, newspaper offices, and so on and so forth. No one answered.

He went to his computer and looked up phone numbers to the major networks and started calling them. His calls went unanswered. He searched for numbers at random and called them, again without success. He knew of a friend of his wife that lived in London and he called her, but there was no answer there.

Alan couldn't take it anymore, and he collapsed onto his keyboard as the first rays of the sun began to peak into his den. He looked up and realized that he needed to sleep. He lay down on the bed and looked over to wear his wife normally slept, and the dam finally burst. Tears raced down his cheeks as he broke down and cried like he was a little kid, something he hadn't done since the birth of his last son, Jeremy.