After the end of the world, there wasn’t much use for stoplights. But good habits die hard, and Molly held down the brake pedal as she approached the intersection, glancing both ways as she rolled to a stop before the dimmed lights. Maybe this time, there would be someone else there.

There wasn’t.

Sighing, she let off the brakes, peering through the cracked windshield of her dad’s old Ford as she rolled through the intersection. It was lucky for her the truck still ran at all; every other car she’d tried had been dead since then. The ones that weren’t on fire, anyway.

Molly tapped the steering wheel with the palms of her hands. She didn’t know much about cars; truth be told, as far as she was concerned, they were things you put gas into and they ran. And sometimes oil. Cars these days were more complicated than that, she knew, but her attempts at resurrecting her own car had been less than worthless. Almost as useless as her attempt at resurrecting her phone.

And resurrecting the people, but she tried not to think too hard about that.

Molly glanced down at her radio and pushed the volume dial. It had come with the truck, as far as she knew, but it was as dead as her phone was. Either that, or it wasn’t even picking up static.

“Could be worse,” she said to herself as she inched down the road into the center of town. Friendship had seemed like such a welcoming place on the map; off the Interstate by miles, a small little town in the heart of Wisconsin. Maybe whatever had happened to the world wouldn’t have found it.

“Well, you win some, you lose some,” Molly said with false cheer as she rolled down the empty road, the only sound the chugging of the Ford’s diesel engine as she headed down Main Street. Turning her head to the left, she squinted. “Ooh, the school’s putting on a play. I bet they’ll knock ’em dead.” Her laughter sounded hollow even to her ears as she flicked on her turn signal, then hesitated.

“No. I’ll come back to check later,” she said, shaking her head. “Sorry! I’m not from around here.” She lifted her hand to wave at the non-existent traffic behind her before depressing the gas once more, inching through the school zone at the mandated 15 miles per hour despite the lack of any sign of life on the streets.

“And a motel. This town is welcoming. Sure must get a lot of visitors. No wonder they call it Friendship.” Her eyes flicked over to a nearby house. “Ooh, and a flag! If they know the flag code – and I bet they do…” Molly’s hand flicked her turn signal once more as she turned to pull into the empty driveway and coming to a rolling stop. Carefully putting the truck into park before turning off the ignition, she unbuckled her safety belt before reaching down to yank on the door handle and leaning into it with her shoulder, the door giving way with a loud, rusty creak.

“Oh, don’tcha complain. I gave you grease in Eau Claire.” She patted the door a couple times before pushing it shut with a loud thump. “Okay, so, let’s see if anyone’s about. Hello?”

Her voice echoed through the silent town as she walked up towards the front door of the house and lifted one hand to knock firmly. “Is anyone home? I haven’t seen anyone for three days and was just hoping to see a friendly face.”

After standing outside the unmoving front door for a minute, Molly carefully looked around her in all directions before stepping off the concrete steps leading to the front door to peer in through a window. “Hello?” she called, tapping on the glass. “I promise I’m not some sort of monster or whatever is doing this.”

Silence.

After a minute of pressing her glass to the ear, Molly sighed. “Well, sorry to be rude. But if any of you are here, I’ll be down at the gas station filling up my truck. Would love to see a friendly face!”

The old Ford creaked as she climbed back into it, the ignition cranking a few times before the engine rumbled to life. Letting out her breath, Molly cautiously looked back over her shoulder, before carefully backing out into the empty street, restarting her journey south.

“Oh, well. Maybe they were in such a rush they didn’t lower their flag.”

The town gave her no answer as she continued to creep down the street, slowly speeding up as the school zone ended, only to quickly put on the brakes again as she reached the next intersection, a darkened Kwik Trip sign announcing her destination. “Ooh, they never say how much gas is on their signs these days,” Molly fussed as she turned on her turn signal once more, pulling into the gas station behind a white van at one of the pumps, its owner slumped against the curb.

Molly left her truck running as she climbed out of the vehicle, moving over to the fallen woman. “Oh, let me help you,” she said to the corpse as she bent over to grasp her by the shoulders and pull her out of the way, pausing only momentarily at the warmth still clinging to the body.

“Just like the last three towns,” she said, sighing as she pulled the poor woman out of the way, checking for a pulse almost automatically as she laid her down.

“Well, I know it can take a while to fill up when you’re dying to get going, but it’s supposed to be a metaphor.” Molly laughed nervously at her own joke before her expression fell, her hand flicking across her chest in the sign of the cross. “Rest in peace.”

She returned to the luckless woman’s van, pulling the nozzle out of the van and carefully setting it on the curb before retrieving the gas cap and cranking it shut. Molly glanced back at the dead woman before climbing into the woman’s unlocked van and turning the key still in the ignition.

Nothing.

“Oh, well, the truck carries more anyhoo,” she said to herself as she pushed down the brake pedal, shifting the van into neutral and taking off the emergency brake before climbing out and moving behind it. Grunting, she slowly rolled the van forward into a parking space in front of the Kwik Trip.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” she said as she moved back around the van to re-apply the brakes and remove the key before locking the doors. Heading back over to the prone woman, she knelt next to her as she slid the keys into the corpse’s pocket and gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Your van is right over there,” she said, pointing, before rising back to her feet and walking back to her own truck to move it into position and start pumping.

“You know, I don’t know what I’d do if one of these didn’t already have a car there,” she said to herself as she listened to the precious liquid flowing into the Ford’s gas tank. Glancing all four ways down the empty streets, she shrugged before turning around and walking into the gas station store.

“Hello?” she called. No one answered. They never did, these days. Still, it didn’t hurt to be polite. “I’m on pump number four.” Leaning against the counter, she noticed a slumped body on the other side of the counter. “Oh.” Moving around the side, she knelt next to the fallen clerk, reaching out to touch the side of his neck. Warm, but no pulse; just like the woman.

“Well, I’ll just be leaving my payment when I’m done, then, okay?” she said, her voice echoing through the store as she shuffled towards the back to look over the racks of magazines and newspapers, carefully stepping over a second customer to do so. “Ah, sorry, just taking a look at the paper,” she said as her shoe brushed against his limp arm.

Molly’s eyes quickly flicked past the glossy magazines to settle on the few newspapers on the stand. “Oh, the local paper,” she said, glancing at it before sighing. Five days old. “Bit out of date.” Her fingers slid over the other papers on the stand before settling on one of them. “Oh, this is from yesterday,” she said, pulling it out and setting it out on the counter.

SWATH OF DESTRUCTION ACROSS MINNESOTA

Millions feared dead; cause still unknown

By Ethan Anderson of the Journal Sentinel

FARGO – Police from around the state flooded Fargo looking for survivors, while an area 200 miles across around Milwaukee and Eau Claire and 400 miles along Interstates 35 and 94 have been ordered evacuated. There is no official count, but President Stevens said that millions have perished. The calamity has already been ranked as the worst ever to hit the United States.

The cause of the disaster is unknown. According to reports from members of the National Guard on the scene, every living animal in the city, from humans to insects, appears to have spontaneously dropped dead. While traffic on Interstate 94 was light, automobile accidents still stretch for hundreds of miles between Fargo and Minneapolis, and people in nearby communities appear to have died where they worked and went about their daily lives. “It’s like they just all dropped dead,” said Lieutenant Noah Johnson of the Wilmar police department, who travelled north to Alexandria, Wisconsin, to help deal with the disaster.

Molly looked away from the paper to stare out the window. It had all started out so simply – sleeping in because the power was out and her alarm clock didn’t go off. Her phone was uncharged, and her car didn’t seem to want to start – but it was only when she went to her neighbor’s house that she really understood what was going on.

Jessica had been dead for hours by the time Molly found her, but that hadn’t stopped her from trying to revive her friend. Nothing worked in any of the houses along the street, and everyone lay dead in their beds, save for the college students in the duplex, who were slumped over their computers.

Licking her lips, Molly kept reading.

Information gathering on the tragedy has been impaired by the destruction of all complex electronic devices within the area. Widespread power outages have been reported over the middle and northern half of the state due to failure of electrical transformers, but simple electrically powered devices, such as flashlights, appear to be unaffected. The swath of destruction is not limited to ground level – planes flying over the area crashed, killing all aboard. It is unknown if the same effect causing the electrical malfunctions is responsible for the deaths, but the two appear to be related.

Nothing worked. Eventually, Molly took her old bike out of her garage and biked to her parents’ house on the other end of town. It took hours, checking on people, trying unlocked cars, eventually giving up and just biking to where her parents lived, hoping that they, too, had somehow been spared.

They hadn’t.

It is unclear if there are any survivors within the affected area. While a handful of local residents have been found within the zone of destruction, it is unclear if they were present as the disaster unfolded, or merely entered the area after the danger passed.

While the initial catastrophe appeared confined to the town of Fargo, it spread several hundred miles across the state Tuesday, reaching the city of Minneapolis after nightfall.

Molly laughed bitterly. There were plenty of roads out of Fargo, but she had to choose the Interstate. She still didn’t know what possessed her to try her dad’s old truck, but after sitting around for two days, she knew that she’d have to go looking for help. Turned out she made the wrong choice; if she’d just stayed put, she’d have been found by now. Instead…

She could still see the expressions frozen on the people’s faces where they had tried to flee through the city ahead of whatever was killing them. The piled-up cars that forced her truck along the median.

Authorities have erected barricades along the major roads leading out of the cities of Minneapolis and Eau Claire. “We don’t know the cause of the disaster, but it will end here,” General Myers said during a press briefing.

The barricades. The Interstate had been completely blocked off, and it was only through the use of backroads that she made it out onto Highway 29, then 73… now where was she? 13?

She licked her fingers, then turned the page, flipping through the paper, looking for any useful information. Her chest rose and fell as she read article after article, eyes skipping past the pictures, satellite photographs…

“Twenty to thirty miles?” she muttered. Folding the newspaper back up, she stuck it under one arm while reaching into her pocket with her other hand to fetch her wallet. “Forty should cover it, right?” she asked the man behind the counter, ignoring his non-response as she pulled a pair of folded bills out and set them on the counter.

Stepping outside, she walked to the truck and threw the folded-up newspaper into the passenger seat. Pulling out her yellowed map, she spread it out over the hood, her hands moving over the paper. She spread her finger and thumb over the scale, then slid her hand between the Interstate and Friendship and shivered.

“Not even twenty miles,” she said, wrapping her arms across her chest and shivering in the cool October air. Stumbling out towards the sidewalk, she looked down the long, empty road, narrowing her eyes as if she could spot the highway from here.

A flicker of movement in the sky caught her eye. A plane? Her eyes widened. It was heading this way. Laughing, she ran to the back of the truck, reaching over the back to grab out her dad’s emergency toolbox. Pushing aside the jack and patching kit, she pulled out the old road flares. Fumbling it in her hands, she rolled it around, reading the instructions printed on the side in faded blue ink.

After a few seconds, she yanked off the plastic cap and struck the tip, the flare bursting into life despite its long life in the bed of the pickup. “Hello!” she called out as she walked out into the empty street, waving the flare up at the sky, the stink of burning metal filling the clean Wisconsin air as she waved at the plane.

Slowly, the plane began to turn, but as she watched, the contrail behind the sleek jet vanished. Its nose turned towards the ground, and slowly but surely it fell from the sky like a great steel brick, smoke and fire emerging from the distant trees where it went down.

Molly dropped the flare and looked back at the map. Twenty to thirty miles…

Quickly, she dashed back to the truck, grabbing the map and throwing it unceremoniously into the passenger seat before climbing in herself. The door protested loudly as she yanked it shut before she crawled over to the driver’s side, sticking her hand into her pocket to retrieve the key before jamming it into the ignition and turning the truck over. The sound of the engine cranking filled the suddenly oppressive silence smothering the town of Friendship before it finally chugged to life. Her hand jerked to the parking brake, then the shift, throwing the truck into gear as she stepped on the gas.

A pop, followed by a scraping sound caught her attention, and glancing in her mirror, she could see the nozzle and hose falling out of the side of her truck and onto the cement. “Sorry!” she called back to the dead gas station even as she pulled out into the road. Her signal flickering, she turned north, glancing at the smoke and flames rising in her rearview mirror, as if she could see the deadly maelstrom behind her.

---

“Sir!”

“At ease, Lieutenant. Has the source reached the spike strips yet?” General Stevens leaned heavily over the table, staring down at the myriad images flickering beneath its glossy surface, tracking the movements of his troops.

“No, sir,” the lieutenant – what was his name again? – said uncomfortably, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“Well, what is the ETA according to the satellite?”

“Never, sir. The source changed its direction of travel.”

“What?” General Stevens slammed the palms of his hands into the table, thrusting himself up to glare at the lieutenant.

“Satellite photos indicate it turned around near Friendship and headed north, sir. Satellite pictures indicate the source is already halfway to Wausau. They’re probably there by now, sir.”

The general sighed heavily. “Is it evacuated?”

“Yes, sir. But… the people evacuated to upstate Michigan, sir, and to Green Bay. They’re trapped. If the source decides to go to Green Bay…”

“My God. Do we have anything up there?”

“No, sir. And communication is spotty on account of the power issues, sir.”

General Stevens groaned, lifting his hands to rub at his tired eyes. “Contact whoever you can. Have them set out road strips. Slow them down.”

“Sir, I was wondering. Why can’t we just deploy mines? Or—”

“We’ve already examined the options, Lieutenant. Mines won’t work; the damn things are made to be safe, shut themselves off after a few days, and that means electronics. We can’t use smart bombs, because they become dumb bombs and miss. Can’t fly over it; satellites are okay, but any aircraft that comes within thirty miles or so…” He shook his head. “No. The artillery was the best option. Take ’em out from over the horizon line.”

“What about nukes, sir?”

The general sighed heavily. “They’re too smart, too. And too small to reach. We used to have big weapons, but now they’re designed to hit limited targets. Even the B-83 only gets us a third of the way there. They’re working on something down at Oak Ridge, but it won’t be ready for a couple days, even if it kills half of Wisconsin.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“You’re sorry? Why the hell didn’t we know all this an hour ago?”

“The spy satellites are optimized for operations over China and Russia, sir, not the United States.”

“Ugh. Politicians.” The general sighed and slumped back in his chair. “Is there anything else?”

“Captain Flores offered to keep an eye on the situation if you needed some shuteye, sir.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Which will be soon, at the rate this operation is going.” He sighed again, staring down at the digital tabletop laid out before him. “Can you get me the latest satellite maps on here?”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said, saluting before marching off.

Rising back up from his seat, the general sighed as he slid his hands along the side of the table. As the icon popped up, he quickly pressed it, the satellite image filling the screen, a tiny red dot at the middle of a huge gray circle marking the no-go zone. Leaning forward, he slid his fingers across the table, expanding the image as the dot resolved into a circle around an old pickup truck.

“What the hell is in that thing?”