“Something is wrong,” he wrote at the beginning of the last page.
“No shit, something is wrong,” I muttered. I carried the diary with me out into the hall. I shattered the glass of a box that read “In Case of Fire, Break Glass.” I took the fire-axe from the case and walked down the hall to the stairwell door. After climbing to the top of the steps, I found another door, labeled “ROOFTOP.” I used the butt end of the axe and smashed the doorknob off, then kicked the door open.
Sunshine and black light flowed inside the stairwell. Why it didn’t kill me, I don’t know. I stepped into the black light and looked up from the roof of the building. Thirty feet above the building the black orb glowed, a beacon of death. It was the manifestation of the wizard’s magick, the source of the black light and death that had claimed the world… that had taken Tina from me.
I read from the diary again: “The spell I created to destroy my enemies has become more powerful than I could have guessed. More force has filled the spell than is necessary, and there is such a large amount of energy collected that I’m afraid a lot of innocent people will die. The black orb above my hotel keeps growing in power, and I cannot stop it. Something is wrong and I don’t know what to do.”
“Ever think about turning off your computer, idiot?” I said. I threw his diary upwards, into the black orb, and it disappeared without a sound or trace. “Why are the geniuses of this world sometimes so incredibly stupid?”
I went back to the wizard’s apartment. After rummaging around a bit, I found a gasoline can in a storage closet next to a floor scrubber. I unplugged the wizard’s computer and poured the fuel on the altar. I tossed a match upon the shrine and it swooshed with flame. The ceiling blackened and I left the building.
I drove out of the city the way I’d come. I didn’t need to keep looking anymore. I had my answers. I parked at a sign that read, “Arlington City Limits.” I sat with the car heater on, hoping it would help remove the chill upon my soul, and I watched the black light over the distant hotel building. It faded slowly and the orb disappeared as black smoke rose high above the dead city.
A year later I still hadn’t found anybody. Alive, that is. Some cities still had electricity, almost as if magic kept a few of the cities supplied with power. I filled up my SUV with gas from the stations in cities that still hadn’t lost power. All the electricity was free, while it lasted. I broke into radio stations and I played whatever music I wished. I ate whatever I wanted from the grocery stores. I just walked out with it. Sometimes I used microwaves to defrost frozen items, but I worried about that. How long can frozen meat be good?
It was almost as if the Reapers allowed me to live for one reason and one reason only: to stop the continuous spell in Arlington. I mean, I thought about it a lot. It consumed me, kept me up at night. I couldn’t figure out why I was left alive.
The answer came to me a few days later.
I imagined what it might be like to be a Reaper. I thought about what it must have been like, constantly taking people’s lives. There had to be rules to follow—every job has rules. Then I thought about what got all the Reapers going in the first place: the wizard’s spell. I thought about the Reapers killing every single man, woman and child on the planet.
What would they do next, after everyone was dead?
I thought they might like to take a vacation or something. Even demons had to get tired of killing, didn’t they? But the Reapers had left one human alive: me. And they had made sure their little beacon had shown me the way.
Why?
A few days later, while visiting my mom’s house, the phone rang. My heart thudded in my chest, and when I answered I heard an electronic voice begin speaking. “Are you in debt? Millions of people are over-extended in their credit, but Bank of America can help you get out of debt without going bankrupt.” I slammed the phone down. I guess I still hated telemarketers even after all those years.
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