Alone Together

[Malicon]

You are alone. As far as you can tell, you are the only one left on the planet. You have no idea what happened, but when you wake one morning, you find that you are the only person left. Everyone else has vanished. Your neighborhood is wrecked and it looks like there was a full out war going on during the night. Wild animals are scavenging around for food and paying you no mind. The worst part? You can't even find bodies. It is as if everyone has vanished. Electricity is failing, food is beginning to run out. There is no one nearby…*or is there?

Name: Miromi Hiroshiga
Age: 22

Physical Appearance:

Miromi is 5’5’’ and 145 pounds (of which is mostly muscle). She has a tattoo on her shoulder, which is pictured and another one running down her sternum which is always covered up. This tattoo reads, Nirobi which was her mother’s name. Her skin is smooth but not flawless and has the occasional scars from minor childhood and occupational accidents but none that stand out. Her black hair is strait and falls just past the shoulders. When it’s wet her hair tends to curl up at the ends.

Background:
From the outside everything looked fine. No one knew it, no one foresaw it, and no one could have even guessed at it but those who had to endure it. Fifteen years ago a girl came home from school and shut the door behind her. She called out to her mother but her mother didn’t answer. The girl went to the kitchen to get herself a snack. She called out to her mother but her mother didn’t answer. The girl saw her mother’s body lifeless on the kitchen floor, her chest ripped and oozing from chin to the bottom of her rib cage. She called out to her mother but her mother didn’t answer.

At the age of seven, Miromi was tried for the murder of her mother. Evidence stacked up against her but eventually the true culprit was found. Miromi’s father, who had left them five years earlier had returned for unknown reasons and murdered her mother and then tried to frame his own daughter.

With her father locked away and her mother dead she moved in with her maternal uncle, a motorcycle shop owner. Until she was an adult, Miromi continued to live with him and had a knack for tinkering with bikes and other machinery. However the locals, who knew about her families past, continued to gossip and harass her so eventual she moved out. After getting out of college Miromi took her life in her own hands and road tripped around the US on her trusty motorcycle, Hermes. She did what she needed to get by and after a while took off and headed to a new place.



Miromi…

You wake up after a long, deep sleep and something seems a little off. The surrounding area is always lively and loud this time of day, but right now everything is silent. No, not quite silent. You can hear the sound of birds and the barking of a dog outside. There is also a siren blaring a long ways away. Despite all this, you have an eerie feeling that someone is watching you, but you know that you are alone.

[Irell Starling]

Miromi rolled over and looked at her alarm clock surprised by the amount of light creeping into her room. ”Four am… weird.” she tapped the device, as if expecting that to fix the problem and then sighed heavily to herself. ”I guess the electricity went out in the middle of the night. I don’t remember hearing about a storm. Stupid cheap apartment building.” She was going to be late to work again, which wasn’t too great because it would be the second time this week and it was only Tuesday.

The unusual chitterlings of birds caught her ear as she walked across the cheap, shaggy carpet to the one window in her whole living space. From outside she hear the loud noises of barking dogs and shook her head before closing the curtains tighter. ”I don’t understand how people can just allow their dogs to bark all the time. Doesn’t it get annoying to them too?” She was a little surprised that the barking hadn’t woke her up earlier but she had done a lot of physical labor yesterday so she’d be particularly tired last night.

Walking over to a tiny dresser that had come with the apartment, she began rifling through to find something to wear to work. A tingle ran down her spine as her eyes flitted back to the window. Even as she stripped out of her pajamas and donned a pair of ragged blue jeans and a black tee shirt with the latest company’s logo on it in neon yellow block print, Miromi couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Not prone to the feeling, she tried to laugh off her own paranoia. Filling her pockets with her keys and wallet, Miromi quickly slipped into a pair of beat up, leather work boots before rushing outside.

The sound of the lock clicking echoed eerily in silent cement stairway. Something felt wrong. Something was missing. Glancing around, she observed the rest of the apartment complex. Her one room ‘loft’ was situated on the third floor and through the opening at the end of the stairway she could see her surroundings. There were about twenty buildings, in all, covered in peeling green paint. The color might have been pretty once but now it had faded to the color of dying moss. The pavement and streets were cracked and the ‘grass’ hadn’t been cared for in years. All these factors really didn’t matter to her, however. The place was cheap, allowed you to pay by the month, and most people left her alone. Miromi didn’t plan on staying here long, but then again, she never planned on staying anywhere long.

Descending the steps, she walked out into the parking lot and spotted her motorcycle right away. It was an older model and prone to fits, but Hermes was her trusted companion and one of the few things that stuck with her year after year. Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention but it was only a stray dog wandering around. The animal looked her way for a few seconds before walking off again. ”Where is everyone?” Miromi said to herself as she looked around the area one last time. In the distance, she heard the distant cry of a siren but other than that the air was still and stiff. Shaking her head again, she started up her motorcycle. She had more important things to worry about, like how she was going to explain her tardiness this time.

[Malicon]

As Miromi drove through the streets, she noticed a huge change on the town. Cars were overturned, garbage cans turned over, spilling their contents over yards and streets. A police car sat alone, door open, sirens blaring. A deer ran straight through the street in front of her. Front doors were open, lights were on, news cameras and microphones lay strewn about. There was a shoe here, glasses there, a slipper nearby. It was as if something had come through and ransacked the place. As she passed the local hospital, she knew something was wrong. The helecoptor had been turned on its side. This is where people should have been, yet there were none to be seen.

As she neared her job, she noticed another oddity. Across the street was the dog shelter. About this time, the animals were being fed and so were generally quiet. But there was a chorus of barks, whimpers, and urgent howls coming from the shelter. And, as she entered her work, she found it in the same condition. Tools thrown about. Merchandise tossed and broken, cars left abandoned. No one was here.

Again, she got that cold chill up her spine. Someone was watching her. But with all these people gone, who could it be?

[Irell Starling]

”Hello!” Miromi called out, looking around her abandoned work site. ”Hello?” It was a feeble attempt at best and deep down she knew it would not do any good. Still, she had to try. As expected no one responded, however, the noise coming from the animal shelter increased to a fever pitch. ”Where is everyone?”

While driving over here she knew that something terrible must have happened. Trash was strewn everywhere and everyone was... gone. Still, she didn’t want to just give up and turn around and go home. Stuck in her own routine, she’d continued on to work hoping that somehow everything would suddenly fall back into place once she got there. But the area around her was a wreck and as desolate here as it had been everywhere else. Subconsciously, wanting to hear a human’s voice she began to talk out loud to herself.

”I don’t understand this,” she paced around the empty shell of an office building. Her crew had been laying the finishes touches on the framework yesterday and had begun starting to add drywall in. Her foot hit a hammer which must have somehow made its way into the nearby ground. ”It’s like I’m dreaming… just yesterday everyone was shoving along. It’d even looked like we’d finish the job ahead of time.” Miromi really wanted this to happen since it meant a bonus for everyone involved. Once she received her money she’d plan on skipping town again and finding a new change in scenery. The air was getting too chilly for her likes, even in the day time, so she’d plan on heading south, like the birds.

”This all couldn’t have just happened overnight, right?” she stopped her pacing and looked around the area again. There had to be an answer to what had happened somewhere, right? A news clipping. A radio broadcast. Even a recent piece of trash with the date stamped on it. Her mind was hungry for the answer. A log, low pitched howl of pain reached her ears. ”Poor things, they’re probably starving to death… “ But she wasn’t stupid. Who knew how longs those animals had been locked away without food? The minute she let them out they’d probably turn on her. She knew choosing to leave them there was also choosing to allow them to die but the situation couldn’t be helped. Trying to ignore their calls as best as she could, Miromi walked back towards the parking lot. A few of the cars had their doors wide open so she decided to try those first.

As she peeked into the backseat of a white Camry, the hairs on her neck went up again. She turned around as quickly as possible but as she expected no one was there. ”You’re just nervous because you’ve never raided someone’s stuff before. But if they wanted it so badly they would have taken it with them, right? Besides anyone who’s in enough hurry to leave their car door hanging wide open probably didn’t want this stuff anyways. And you’re only looking for information.”

A child’s backpack caught her eye. It was neon pink and had large black stars sloppily drawn on it but it was a good size. Trying hard not to feel too guilty, Miromi emptied the contents out onto the car’s seat. The papers inside told her nothing other than ‘McKayla’ had problems spelling the word ‘breakfast’. The drivers and passengers seat were empty and clean. Slinging the now empty backpack across her shoulder, Miromi headed over to the next open car as her mind slowly began slipping into survivor mode.

[Malicon]

It was when she started sliding the backpack on her shoulder that Miromi heard the soft moan from inside a wrecked car. There were a few clinks of glass as something moved, disturbing the broken window. There was a bit more moving, several coughs and then a disoriented masculine voice. "Help…"

The person remained silent for a few more minutes and then called out again, more urgently. "Help! Is anybody there?! I'm stuck!" There were several bangs as the man tried to get out unsuccessfully. The car was upsidedown and she could see a pair of hands flailing around uselessly through the broken window along with a head full of black hair. There was blood too, the man looked like he was injured.

[Irell Starling]

Miromi almost dropped the backpack she was carrying as she looked around her. No. She was hearing things. Damn it, was she already going crazy? The sound of broken glass helped dissuade her fears. Sinking behind the open car door, she took in the area around her. Nothing. Her heart was racing as she lifted her head and peaked through the door’s window. Nothing had changed here either. There were no aliens, no zombies, no gigantic spiders, no everything was completely normal. Then the voice came again.

”Help… is anybody there?” Loud banging erupted and from under a flipped car one the right while hands waved at her wildly through a broken window. The barking from the dogs across the street rose to a fevered frenzy. Their chorus didn’t sound fearful but instead seemed… hungry. The noise grated on her nerves until she couldn’t take the howling any longer. ”Be quiet!” Miromi snapped at the disembodied voice.

She stayed low to the ground, hiding behind cars and other large debris as she hurried towards him. A million questions flashed in her mind. Who was this person? Why was he still around? Why was she still around? What if he turned out to be some terrible person? Should she just leave him? Where was everyone else? How long had he been there? Did he know what was going on? Was he the one watching her?

As she came closer, Miro saw that it was a man with dark hair, perhaps black like hers but it was hard to tell. Her boots crunched in the glass as she knelt down beside him. He seemed to be bleeding and his body was in an awkward position in the car.

”Are you hurt,” Miromi asked him and looked through the car’s window, trying to take in the damaged interior. ”Where are you trapped?” If it was easy enough to get him out, she’d help but if not she might just have to leave him. Going for help didn’t seem like a good idea since, as of yet, he was the only person she’d run into but she didn’t know what else to do. Nevertheless, if they weren’t careful he could wind up being killed.