My name is Rise. Like the sun, like a face to the sun. Rise, Rose, Risen. And I am here to tell you a useless story. A story already too late to save the world; it’s in medias res.

But here I am, nonetheless.

Because maybe, just maybe, I could have saved what was left, the last little part of the world. The NEW LIFE.

I stepped out of car 47. BAM! I liked to think I walked like that. BAM BAM with every step. But it wasn’t really like that. It was more like little crunches, ‘cause that’s how it sounded when your shoes, if you had ‘em, landed on the gravel.

crunch crunch

I glared at the little rocks all built up around my shoes. I glared at them slipping in and out of the holes in my tennies. Roo’s was what the brand name was supposed to say, but I couldn’t much read it anymore, all torn like that.

They became gravel Oo’s. My gravel Oo’s.

crunch crunch

But a lot of kids didn’t have the Oo’s at all. Not that I knew any of them.

scratch

And I really wouldn’t until I met Kannon. None of us would know anything if it wasn’t for him. So, I guess this pain I feel now, standing in Utopia, is all because of him.

But we’re not there yet.

crunch

Speaking of Kannon, and everyone else, those crunches I heard I just then realized weren’t mine.

Every muscle in me tensed, from the Oo’s to the little ones around my ears. The mental checklist ran off.

Silver Birds drift in the fog; last wide eye to see

Dead Fish on the shores; await the taste of you and me

Red Rabbits clutch the dust; mouth wide for the howl

Ferrets silent sideways; just before the bite a snarl

crunch

I crouched, making myself as small as possible. I lifted an Oo from the gravel and extended it back behind me, using my fingertips to balance and set it back down again. A runner’s stance, like I’d seen on fading graying billboards out in the City. The equally faded letters: “Ready, set?”

That leaves Ferrets. Nothing else moves with only sound. Deep breath. Last breath. Maybe. Unless-- My phobia hit, that irrational panic that would have tied my feet, would have tripped me, would have let me be taken down if I was correct.

-Echo?!

What would I have thought if I’d seen an Echo? I don’t know, really. I’d never seen any before. No one had. But everyone knew; everyone knew they were the ones behind the NEW LIFE.

Because when people started to disappear the Echo began to show up, Ferrets and Red Rabbits in tow. The Silver Birds came later, then the Dead Fish. All these new things no one had every seen before that seemed to know every single way a human could hide.

And out of those of us who were left, more started to vanish. But not out of thin air like that Thursday morning. No one blinked out like then. They ended up dead.

Bodies on the water for Dead Fish to suckle on, Silver Birds fluttering down for a peck. A taste of you, of us, of the last of us. Eventually a Ferret would get daring enough to pluck the body out, moving too fast for a Red Rabbit to steal and carry you or I back to its den. A whole new kinda crunch.

I sucked in another breath. ‘Cause I’m greedy. Last breath! The Oo’s shifted too loud in the gravel. A real SMASH, all across the railway, all across the City. Every NEW LIFE creature was turning at my horrible sounds, coming for the feast.

And the crunch stopped.

A pause before the kill? How cruel!

I can’t help but wonder how odd it would look to anyone who could see the both of us frozen on two sides of the railcar, rigid with terror. Me on one, more than fast enough to escape; I was fourteen, I could run. And he, a little squatted-up boy who’d been wandering the railroad ties picking up glass between the pebbles breaking into a sweat.

I think we’d have stayed that way forever too, statue people, waiting for something to come down and smash our heads, until we froze over and our bones got all stiff. We’d rot right off ourselves and become real figurines of bones and the rags that clung, forever and ever, ‘til someone used our busts as weapons.

But we didn’t, ‘cause Kannon sneezed.

I screamed at the sudden sound, whirling, to the back of 47, to face death. I’d forgotten my weapon, which was just as well, ‘cause Kannon sneezed a second time, straight into my face. My battle cry stopped short, and he flung himself backwards, buckled over with panic induced hiccups.

There’s Fate having a bit of fun for you.

There he was. Little eleven year old Kannon, which I knew because he would tell me. Well, show me.

He was scrawny, starving like everyone else. A tiny dark furred bunny, all wide blue eyes and thin bony skin hands. He was pale, fear and hunger did that, and impossibly dressed. Helpless from the very first moment I’d set sight on him.

I wanted to yell at him, ‘cause he was getting up without apologizing, but he helped me up to before I could. Kinda stupid, ‘cause he was way smaller than me, but he used his little stick limbs the best he could.

“I’m up! I’m up!” I protested, pretending to still be annoyed. But I wasn’t. I was amused by his effort, and a little sympathetic too, since he was out of breath just helping me. And maybe a bit nervous too. ‘Cause no one was that nice anymore.

The bunny boy stepped backwards from me, nodding his head all cowardly. I stared speculating.

So polite. I wonder if someone keeps him, like as a toy or somethin’. Well, his sleeves are long. Wonder how many bruises are under ‘em?

But I got distracted from my thinking because he started to grope himself, reaching under the inside of his sweater, too big by the way, with the neck looping down around his shoulder.

“Gross!” I complained. The bunny was a pervert!

He looked up at me, all confused. But his hand came out again, in it a wrinkled bit of paper. He’d pulled it from a pocket he’d sewn into the inside of the sweater. One of so many in and outside on his sleeves and even down outside of the jeans with the top folded twice and wedged under the belt to hold it closed.

He smoothed out the paper with his palms, concentrating real hard to get the corners straight. When they were he held it by both of the rectangular ends and lifted it up over his nose, looking at me over the top.

It was an old candy wrapper, green and red. White lines from the folds criss-crossed the writing on the front, and I had to look around his finger to get it. He nearly tucked it away before I even figured out what it said:

Above the rail station another girl slinked up to a windowsill. She leaned out a bit until a man from behind her rapped the wall for attention, urging her back in.

“Don’t lean out so far.” She tapped her chin as if she was giving his words a thought and then leaned out all the farther, shielding her eyes from the bit of light that escaped the clouds. “Yenza,” her partner warned, “I said come back in. It’s too gray out there. I’m worried about Birds.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not. And neither are they, apparently.”

“They?” the man questioned, getting up from his perch in the corner of the broken down hotel room, glancing easily over his companion’s shoulder. He spotted the two children without Yenza’s directions, even through the scratched goggles over his eyes. He pushed them up over his dusty hair, taking time to scratch at the spotty beard he never could keep clean.

Yenza pawed backwards until she reached the end of his blazer, pulling the wrinkled end in closer to herself. “What do you say?”

He pulled away, jerking his jacket free of her grasp. Ignoring her pout he took to his half of the room they’d used the night before and unfolded a duffel bag he’d kept underneath his belt. Tossing it to her he removed a second and began to organize his few belongings inside.

“Get yer crap together. We’re going down there.”

St. Mary’s Way Cathedral banked the hill above the railway on the opposite side of the motel. It overlooked everything; Third River Rail Station, the City it belonged to, Third River Elementary, a various stretch of small businesses, and from a bit deeper in, some big ones, as well as a motel or two across the way. The great stone Cathedral saw everything, but ever rarely was there anyone within to see out of it.

Places of any sort of worship had become abandoned residues of a previous life, old mementos of misleading faiths tossed aside in the effort to survive. No Holy resonance remained. They were empty shells. Skeletons. Those left knew this, as did Rain.

She slept restlessly underneath one of the few pews someone hadn’t been able to rip out. As she entered the olden marvel she looked over what remained with a cold familiarity and wondered only if the one who had collected most of the pews simply couldn’t free the last few or had died on a trip back to get it.

Whatever the reason it gave her a place to sleep, and she did as much as she could. Unfortunately, the Cathedral had been a bad choice, as the wide stony halls refracted any sort of noise from outside, so much that every stir of wind startled her awake, heart racing in her chest.

Once again a sound broke into the air and she dashed from under the pew, sliding on the burnt and frayed carpet to get behind an old desecrated statue in wait.

Outside the Cathedral the resonance of Kannon’s second sneeze faded.

He chewed the fingernail of his right thumb, fingers up against his nose. Any sort of distraction would do. Anything. Just so long as he didn’t have to think.

Just keep walking. Just keep moving.

Leaning against a building the young man stopped for a rest. He pulled back his hand to glance at a pink wristwatch around the tight black sleeve of his shirt.

17:03:56

Five minute rest?

Two alleys down a window smashed outwards into the street and Leone was running before he’d even told himself to.

He folded his paper back away and smiled at me, a kinda goofy wide toothed smile. Almost embarrassed of himself. I smiled back, probably just as awkwardly. I hadn’t done anything like that in a while.

But he almost didn’t notice, which made me a little mad. Not like I didn’t put any effort in it. But he was off and turning away from me anyway, moving back down the rail ties, eyes scanning the gravel.

At that point, I was really mad.

“Hey!” I shouted after him, “where do ya’ think you’re goin’?” I stomped up to him, BAM stomps, and ground my Oo’s into the gravel in front of him. His eyebrows furrowed. “You’re not going already, are you, ‘cause we’ve only just met?”

Kannon tried to side-step me. I stepped in his way.

“What’s with you, anyway? You’re not even gonna say good bye, or nothin’ like that?”

The bunny stared at me, then shook his head.

I’d never been so angry in my whole life before. No one was forcing manners these days, but there was no need to be rude. So when he skirted around me, holding his arms close to his chest to protect his pockets full of trinkets, I reached back and grabbed the neck of his sweater.

The little boy twisted immediately, trying to escape. It was all instincts, which was just fine, except he swiped me across the chest. I whacked him on the back of his shaky little head with the palm of my hand and threw him backwards on his butt.

Kannon hit the ground with a bit of an “Oof!”, nothing more than that. And I would have smacked him around good if we weren’t interrupted.

Gravel crunched and I ducked down too late to get out of the grab of someone’s arms. He looped his gangly dirty-gross arms around my back, all the way to my stomach and back around to my sides again. With an easy heave I was off my feet. Kannon stared in surprise as I kicked at the air, and with awe, as it got me nowhere.

“Little tussle?” A woman was beside Kannon, as sudden in appearance as my captor was. He squeaked as she grabbed him too, but she released him after he was on his feet. All of his dirty face went pink as she patted the dust out of the seat of his pants.

“Hussie!” I snapped, and the man holding me gave me a good shake, but he finally let me go. “Bastard!” I finished, getting up to my feet real quick.

“She’s feisty,” the man who had held me commented to his friend. “Kinda reminds me of someone.”

Both me and the woman snorted, looking the other up and down. I opened my mouth to tell her one other thing or two but she cut me off, talking over both my head and Kannon’s, who by now was too stunned to try and run off.

“She’s too loud. Let’s get inside somewhere before Rabbits or worse show up.”

And just like that, everything started to happen. Like I told you, it was all his fault.

Kannon was the first to point the way. As soon as the Hussie said “Inside,” he began to point and motion up the train tracks. Both the man and woman followed his gestures without a word, the man dragging me by my wrist, his stupid wide fingers going all the way around. They were dirty like every one else’s, but I liked his the least because they were stained darker than the rest of the skin, all oil and cinder stains. I knew he’d leave marks on me.

But I followed all quiet, dragging the Oo’s (the woman had fancy Oo’s, pointed in the toes that shifted the gravel out of the way before she stepped down and super shaky at the heels) and grumbling, but I shut up real fast when he threatened to put one of his grimy hands over my lips. How revolting!

The Hussie held Kannon’s hand as he led the way, smiling and praising him like he was doing something so cool and whatever. But really he wasn’t. He was only leading us to a train car, and it’s not like there wasn’t a ton on the tracks anyway. When we stopped in front of it she leaned down to pat him on the head.

Both me and the man saw it, Kannon looking straight forward, right down the neck of her shirt. Pervert bunny. I pulled my scarf tighter around my throat and the old man pushed her back upright from her shoulder.

And then something happened, a little smile between the two. When I looked back at Kannon, pink-faced bunny, and back at them, I knew she’d done it on purpose.

All the paint had peeled off from the side of the car that normally would have had its number on it, but instead it left a mark a little tanned against the sun-bleached sides of the carriage.

14

Underneath, a section of tracks had been ripped out of the right side, all dug up so even the sharp ties that had been pounded in super deep were gone. Wherever they went was where they were now because there was no sign of them, but Kannon moved around them as if he didn’t notice. He scuttled underneath the train car without a word and with only just a bit of shuffling in the gravel, then was gone in the dark.

The woman wrinkled her nose and looked to her companion. “Can’t we find a better place? My clothes are going to get ruined.” And they damn well would too, ‘cause she wore the nice ones, the soft sheer cloth that only left the empty store windows to be used to filter dirty water or as a last resort when nothing else could be found. They certainly weren’t warm, and they wouldn’t offer a lot of protection. Or cleavage cover.

I pulled free of the man so hard his goggles flopped out of his hair and got caught on his nose, but I didn’t run away and he didn’t grab me again. Instead I stepped to the edge of the opening beneath 14, and then turned back.

“Hussie Priss,” she snorted at me, but I ignored her, getting down on my knees to crawl down into the crevice beneath the train car. I was only a little way in, my butt and Oo’s still out in the cold air when I stopped.

The underside of the carriage was dark, but a bit of light ran in all sparkly from the other side, illuminating mountains of weird odds and ends stacked up underneath. All the ground below had been dug out and carried off somewhere and now there was almost enough room to sit right up underneath. I looked over broken plastic cups stacked and hanging against the inside-side of the train wheels, plus some raggedy blankets tucked up on the right end. Above the blankets dirt had been stuffed up all around, rocks too, so that no light came in. So nothing else could come in on a sleeping bunny.

I saw many things I rarely ever saw any more or had ever thought could be useful. And in all of that there was no Kannon. The bunny was gone.

“What are you doing?” the Hussie complained from outside. Her voice was all shivery, like she was cold, and I smiled just a little bit. Then I felt the toe of her ugly fancy Oo’s on my butt. “Move your ass!” she snarled, kicking me the rest of the way in.

I crawled extra fast, trying not to fall, but lost it anyway and went head first into Kannon’s blankets. They smelled windy and a bit dusty, like no one had ever slept there, but I threw up my head all fast, trying to get away from it. I didn’t want to be in anyone’s blankets, especially not the MIA bunny’s. As I turned, trying to figure out if he’d somehow slipped out the extra thin places on the opposite side, I felt something grab the hair on the top of my head.

Screaming resounded hollowly from the train car, followed quickly by a few bangs and a curse directly after. The young woman laughed.

“Look’s like he pulled her into the carriage from the trap door,” the gentleman observed. Another bang reverberated out into the cold air. “Think she slammed him against the wall?” he asked, his voice, for the most part, emotionless.

Yenza shrugged. “He’s a cute kid. I hope not.” Then bitterly, “Why not just go through the door of the carriage?”

The man got down on his hands and knees, wiping his dirty hands once over his tan coveralls before proceeding to the lip. “It’s probably jammed from the inside. So hurry up an’ get down here, Alice. Yer gonna be late.”

Yenza watched her companion scoot in, a bit more slowly and carefully than Rise had due to his size; she folded her arms over her chest.

“And that’s Wonderland?” she asked the rusted sides of the rail car, now that she was alone outside 14. The sound of the man restoring order within sounded as the soft thumps of his boots on the metal announced his arrival within. Yenza sniffed.

“Fuck Wonderland.”

The Hussie rearranged her top a thousand ways once she got inside. Kannon kept his eyes to the floor of the carriage, trying his hardest not to watch. The old man seemed not to notice.

“Yenza, what’s the time?” She grumbled some stupid thing, but I really doubt it was the time. I certainly don’t think she would have been able to read it from her breasts anyway. The man stole one of her hands, flipped the wrist over, and peered into the shiny face of a faded teal wristwatch. “Eight-thirty-five,” he said aloud.

“What’s the point of knowing the time?” I asked, taking the oil lantern Kannon had stowed away in the carriage from out of his hand. It was shaking too much. Kannon whimpered a bit, like I’d taken his last scrap of food and snarffed it, and I made a face at him, so he shut up. “It’s not like you’re going to be able to use it for anything. No meetings to go to or anything like that.

“Or maybe it’s just habit. You think that’s what it is Old Man?”

The old man was sadly not all too mad about my nickname, though the Hussie’s mouth dropped on the other side of the carriage, and I bit my lip in frustration. He instead mumbled a reply as he checked his own watch, cross-referencing the times.

“It is a habit to be honest. I did live in the time when it was all still important. Meetings with CEOs, catching the right bus,” he paused, tapping the face of his own watch. He held it up to his ear. Apparently dead, he removed the watch and jammed it into his pocket. “All that stuff is still ingrained into my mind. Hell, I could still be thinking of meeting with your father in Downtown, for all I know.”

He flashed me a bit of a smile. Browned-teeth. He smoked once.

“But I’ll bet he’s not still around waiting for me is he? He’d never leave his little girl all alone if he could help it.” Gross browned teeth. It was a nasty habit.

“I’m not a little girl,” I snapped back, and then everyone was quiet.

Everyone was thinking the same thing, thinking about those people that weren’t there anymore.

But how could that be? How could people just disappear? How could the world just stop like that, everything frozen in place, cars in the middle of the road, boats all floating around like they’d jus’ been turned on with no one steering? And why those who did vanish, and those who didn’t? What was so special about those that were gone?

The Hussie coughed into her palm in the corner, running her hands up and down her arms like she was cold. The old Man took this as time to speak. Mourning over. There never was enough time for that.

Just as he opened his mouth to speak the last little thought ran through my head. I never could shut it up.

Or is it what’s so special about us that we have to stay?

“Introductions are in due order, I suppose,” he began. “Who should start?”

Both Kannon and I stared blankly at him, Kannon looking dumbfounded as to how he was even in 14 to begin with and who this person was talking to him. “Are you stupid?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer me.

The Hussie contentedly was picking at her nails, pretending not to notice her companion’s eyes. The Old Man sighed.

“My name is Virgin. Virgin Wellis. I was thirty-two right when the NEW LIFE started, so now I’m about-”

“Thirty-seven,” the Hussie chirruped from the corner, without looking up.

“About that old,” he continued, giving her a dirty look. I looked him up and down. He was a lot older than I’d expected.

Virgin’s hair was as long as his ears, and all feathered out. He wasn’t balding at all or anything. And he was thin too, not super thin like Kannon was starving thin, but thin like he was healthy enough. Muscles. Not fat. He was pretty neat too, except for the gross hands and gross teeth, or in his clothes at least. He wore a coverall, like he fixed cars or somethin’, with this kinda navy-kinda black jacket, and a bunch, well three, tool belts around his waist. You know, the kind with the pockets. He had pockets in everything he wore, like Kannon did.

I tried to do some quick math.

If he’s thirty-seven years ancient now, and he was, what, um, thirty-two, so it’s been five years. No four. I counted on my fingers. Five.

So, how old was I?

The Hussie had started without me noticing; not like I cared or anything.

“-Yenza Artilla Materecca, and I’m a lot younger than this old fart.” She gave a little laugh, and I made a face at her. “I like nice clothes and nice places-” I tuned out, turned off my brain, saved myself before her dialogue turned my mind to mush. I was annoyed too, ‘cause it sounded to me like she’d made her name up to make it sound cool, especially the way she made the ‘R’ in her name run long and back all deep in her throat. She ignored me and waved her hands all over the place while she talked, but mostly towards Kannon, like he was the only one in the room.

Virgin, on the other hand, or whatever it is, moved around Yenza to sit next to me. I started to back up, but he whispered into my ear, just before I did: “Watching the performance.”

And right there, my eyes got all big. ‘Cause Virgin smiled at me, real sweet, like my Daddy used too.

Leone sprinted out of his hiding place, making for the long red building across the parking lot. He weaved through cars, keeping as low as he could. His sneakers reverberated off the pavement, and he cursed himself for not realizing it would in such a wide place.

Somewhere behind him metal screeched, and a sprinkle of glass hit the cement. The young man hit the pavement, and scurried as quickly as he could under a car, out the other side, and around another. He skipped between rows, zig-zagging, trying to shake off the Red Rabbits at his heels. Their bodies were too cumbersome to get around the cars easily, but a Ferret on the other hand…

My turn.

“My name is Rise.”

Yenza scoffed, “Rise? What, like a dick?”

Rain’s foot slid in the loose stones beneath the Cathedral’s hilltop edge. She gripped the edges of the rocks as tightly as she could. The ground swam a hundred feet below, rocks from the crumbling cement wall that had bordered off the hill, weakened over time and now jumbled at the bottom.

I’m going to fall!

Virgin sat between the Hussie and I, quieting her with little pats to her hand. She pouted, the corner of her hand wet and all shiny with spit from where I’d bit her. I still had a bit of her hair in my left hand, pulled right out of her fat ugly braid. The sensitive spot on my left knee was starting to bruise already, and I slapped the blood off of it from where her ugly Oo’s had scrapped my shins.

“Go ahead, boy,” he urged. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Kannon,” I grumbled, but Virgin shushed me.

He looked Kannon up and down. “He’s old enough to talk for himself.”

Kannon shook his head.

Thump

Dust rose out behind the edge of the building and Leone pivoted. Rabbits had infested the building, using it as a Den. Dust rose on both sides, and he broke for the middle.

Damn it, it’s right out in the open! The train tracks are all open air. He glanced up, looking for fog. Please let the Birds be nested.

With eight terrible feet to go the bottom part of the wall gave way. Rain scrambled to grab hold of the edge and it came apart in her hands. Her boots began to slide, and suddenly she was rushing down, kicking up dust along the back of the railway’s main office, stones dropping into the wall’s red siding.

He presented his stupid candy wrapper to Virgin, but he pushed it away. Halfway back he reached out for Kannon and took it.

“Kannon, huh?” The bunny nodded. Virgin returned the paper, being all careful with it, like it was glass and was gonna break and the whole world with it. “Kannon, can you talk?”

My eyes went all big again, and even the Hussie was quiet. Kannon blushed under all this attention, and nervously licked his lips. And just as he did, I saw it, a bunch of black stitching in the pink flesh of his tongue. A black X.

Kannon shook his head.

11