From Lookout Point I drove down the hill. Tina rode with me just as beautiful as the day I’d met her, except her face was white, ghostly white.
The city was the same. Dead people were frozen in their beds in each house I broke into. I decided to stop checking houses when I came upon a dead couple naked in bed. An all-night diner was full of corpses, their plates of food untouched on their tables. A squad car rested against the diner’s front door. The cop inside the car had been driving when the Reapers claimed him.
I drove Tina to the cemetery, and I busted down the chained gates. There was an open grave, ready for a morning funeral.
“This is it, honey,” I said. “This is good-bye.”
I carried her over my shoulder and laid her gently beside the grave. I climbed inside and pulled her body toward me. I laid her in the grave, kissed her cheek, and climbed out. I broke into the storage shed nearby and found a shovel. I buried the love of my life, watching her face slowly disappear beneath the dirt.
The next day I browsed the internet, thankfully it was still active, and searched some on-line newspapers, but I found no clue as to what had happened. Some cities lost power, but most continued to function since their electricity came from dams. While on top of one of the taller buildings in my city, I surveyed the world that I now ruled. I saw a black light in the distance. The strange thing is that it was in the middle of the afternoon, but I still saw the light as if it were night. It reminded me of the black light the Reapers had emitted, and I knew I had to find the source of that light.
Five days later, while thinking about the wise men that had followed the star to Bethlehem, I drove toward the black light. Christmas was two months away, and I thought about all the holidays I would celebrate alone. The strange light strengthened in intensity the closer I got to it. I began to think it was leading me. I drove through four States, each place the same, full of corpses. I had to drive around semis and sporadic clusters of cars when I got to Arlington, Texas. Most vehicles had gone off the road when their drivers had died, but some coasted to a stop, and every once in a while I had to pass a multiple car pileup on the shoulder of the road.
The black light shone from the middle of the city. I had to walk because vehicles blocked all the roads, a virtual gridlock lasting for eternity. I walked toward the black light, resolved to learn its secrets. The source was a black orb, about ten feet in diameter, floating above the roof of a hotel.
On the seventh floor of the hotel, the penthouse suite, I saw black light beneath one of the closed doors. The door was unlocked so I went inside, still intending to investigate the black orb above the building. I found a wizard in the room. I didn’t know that’s what he was at first. He was dressed in preppy clothes, and although his body had begun to decay, he seemed normal.
In the middle of his bedroom sat a desk instead of a bed, and upon the desk rested a computer. Across the monitor flashed words that created a strange, dark poem. The same black light that had led me hundreds of miles now shone from the computer screen instead of the usual glow.
Behind the computer was a small altar filled with various items such as crystals and knives and arcane symbols. There was also a sheet of paper which, I eventually determined, told of the proper procedure to summon Grim Reapers. It had a spell written on it:
