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//Author’s Notes: Written in 2018.
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It had been a long day, and I went to bed early. Three servers had gone down, I only got two back up before I had to clock out, and the other tech was on vacation, so I knew I’d be in early the next morning to finish the last server. Well, thought I knew.

Being hourly and having the leeway of setting my own schedule didn’t mean I wasn’t on call, so my phone stayed on through the night. I made sure to set specific notification patterns so that I could quickly know if I needed to actually read something from work versus Steve sending a drunk text after the pub closed for the night.

Like clockwork, right around two, I heard the familiar single “bzz” of a text. A few more followed. Steve must’ve been drinking alone and wanted company for whatever morning heartburn inducing greasy meal he was seeking. He wasn’t usually this persistent, but, easy enough to ignore. I was surprised I even woke up at all. I started to nod off when the next one came in.

“Bzz, bzz”. An email. Then another. Then “bzzzt, bzzzt”, a direct message to my all but abandoned social media account. Odd. Maybe something in the news? Didn’t need to wake myself back up just to be frustrated at the direction the world was moving in. Trying not to think of the myriad of possibilities, I laid back down. No automated calls from the data center meant no need to get out of bed or even look at my phone.

That’s when I heard a pattern I hadn’t set. “Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt.” Three long vibrations with a longer than average pause between them. It then repeated. And repeated. It wasn’t stopping, and I finally reached the perfect mix of annoyed and curious to blink my eyes open and reach blindly to the nightstand.

It hadn’t just been Steve messaging me. Steve. Melinda. Barry. And my mother sent me the MyFace message? But on top of all of that was a series of red-marked Emergency Alerts.

“ALERT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES LOOK UP AT THE NIGHT SKY. DO **NOT** LOOK AT THE MOON.” Immediately, I was curious, and felt a distinct drive to do exactly the opposite of those instructions. But I was still in bed, blackout curtains drawn shut, and the prospect of seeing a falling satellite didn’t quite outweigh my desire to go back to sleep. The message continued. “YOU WILL BE NOTIFIED WHEN IT IS SAFE. DO NOT LOOK AT THE NIGHT SKY. DO **NOT** LOOK AT THE MOON.”

Clearly, someone at some federal agency was having a laugh. I imagined my friends were commenting on that before I got the alert, which would explain the sudden rapidity of messages. I’d read the rest of the alerts after seeing what they had to say.

Steve was first. “yo look up at the moon its gorgous 2nite”. Hmm. Melinda: “Hey! Have you looked at the moon tonight? It’s beautiful! Go see!”

Was everyone having a weird laugh at my expense? Maybe the emergency alert was spoofed, a prank from my friends. Barry: “I know it’s been a while since we talked but have you seen the moon this evening? It’s life changing. Seriously. Go look.”

I had to fight the unease swelling up in my chest… this was… odd, for a prank. I mean, c’mon. Then I remembered my mom’s MyFace message. She didn’t stay up late. And if she couldn’t sleep, she wouldn’t send me a random message. She’d go have a nightcap on the back porch. The unease grew. It felt like I was struggling to breathe.

“Hey sweetie. Look up at the moon! It’s so beautiful. So bright and lovely.”

She was supposedly composing another message, but I didn’t wait another second before reading the rest of the emergency alerts, hoping for a “Haha we got you    ~Steve” in the last one.

The next two alerts were the same as the first one. Not a drill, don’t look, we’ll notify you, don’t look. Consistent, at least. Then, the third.

“It is safe. Please look at the moon. It’s beautiful tonight.”

“Bzzzt, bzzzt.” My mother. “Honey, why haven’t you looked at the moon? It’s so pretty. You don’t wanna miss out!”

“Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt.” Emergency alert. “It is safe. Please look at the moon. It’s beautiful tonight.” I turned off my phone, another text from Steve coming in right before the shutdown splash screen loaded. I didn’t need to read it to get the gist of its contents.

I got out of bed, threw on some PJs and walked to the bathroom. It was on the opposite exterior wall of the apartment, so the rectangular privacy window wouldn’t be exposing me to whatever was happening in the sky.

As I relieved myself and tried to gather my thoughts, I began wondering — am I sleep walking? Is this some very bizarre nightmare born out of work stress and a late night kebab? I mean, why would —

“Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt.” The emergency response system kicked my phone back on. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help myself. “Look at the moon. Look at the moon. Look at the moon. Look at the moon,” it repeated. The entire message was just that. As was every alert that followed. As my phone sync’d back to the SMS and MyFace servers, it began to flood with the exact same thing from everyone else I knew. Begging, pleading, insisting that I look in the night sky.

My unease had evolved into anxiety and was now mutating into absolute panic. I threw my phone, hard, down the hallway and against the wall — it shattered as another “bzzzt” came through, and I took a moment to try to get my breathing under control. It was in the stillness of that moment that I first heard the outside world.

It was quiet outside, except for what sounded like murmuring voices. I didn’t hear the normal cars and trucks of the nearby highway; no taxis taking lonely souls like Steve home for the night. Just… voices. Distant, quiet, but… voices. And enough to make it sound like there were more people out in the night than made any kind of sense.

I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t know how the afflicted people were behaving other than insisting that I become one of them, so I didn’t want to turn on the lights in my apartment and signal to them that I was around. I carefully navigated around the moonlight streaming from the window in my office and positioned myself on the outer side of the left jamb. Here I could more easily discern what was happening outside of my building… and it was unnerving.

Laughter. Lots of laughter. Voices elated and fast, people chattering like there was a block party. But… even stranger was that none of them seemed to be speaking… well, any language. It was complete gibberish. I didn’t even dare to open the blinds, so great was my fear of being influenced by this lunar anomaly or being seen by the Afflicted.

A sudden silence sent a cold slice down my spine; did they know I was listening? Then, clarity — there was someone down there, someone not Afflicted, someone they noticed. Then, their voices changed! “Mira la luna. Es hermoso esta noche.” It was a chorus of Spanish. “Mira la luna. Mira la luna.” Then, a sole voice replying: “Jodete, no!” then “Vete!”, then, panicked: “Quitame las manos de encima!”

The chorus grew quiet — they stopped yelling, softly speaking “Mira la luna”, then just whispering. The Spanish speaker was screaming at this point, and then… nothing. Their protest ceased. Seconds later, all of the voices outside cheered. They switched back to their speech of tongues, no longer speaking Spanish, nor English, nor anything discernible to my ears.

I wanted to look. Wanted to see what they’d done — did she escape? Did they kill her? Worse? I wished I’d paid more attention in my Spanish classes in college, but I had only been concerned about learning enough to enjoy a weekend in Cancun. But now… now I wanted to know what she’d been screaming, and much as I wanted to know what occurred, I was terrified to look outside.

I stepped back into the hallway and tried to take stock of my situation. My apartment didn’t have much in the way of food, thanks to my living in an urban food desert and being the lazy sort who didn’t wanna get anything in my fridge that wasn’t microwavable or alcohol. I didn’t have much in the way of security for my building or my place — there was no door security (who, if they did exist, could also be Afflicted), no intercoms or locks on the building. My personal abode had a deadbolt and a chain on the door, but … well, realistically, the frame was older than I was, and one person with a strong shoulder could likely break in. This had been a fear of mine for the three years I lived there in case someone randomly wanted to make their way inside, and now I was in total terror that the crowd outside could try to make their way in here.

I didn’t have anything in the way of weapons, realistically. I didn’t even have a proper knife block, just some butter knives stolen from the local Waffle Palace and one semi-sharp knife from a Saucebrush Steakhouse in my old college town. Stolen cutlery did not a viable defense make. No gun, no dog, not even an angry cat. I was on the fourth floor of my building, with a rusty fire escape that would likely collapse under the weight of a feather, let alone a human being, so I was effectively trapped in here.

But… I didn’t know that I was in danger. I could keep away from the windows. Keep the lights off. Wait till the morning, till the sunlight, and maybe… maybe I’d be okay.

Then, a clang. Another. A clatter outside of metal hitting metal, some creaking of a hinge that needed WD-40… the fire escape. They… they were going to try to come up the fire escape. And if that was the case… maybe they were already in the building.

Thankfully, I was right about the state of the fire escape — within seconds of hearing someone climbing up the ladder at the bottom, there was a wrenching noise of the entire structure breaking down. Rusted bolts separated from the outside wall, and the aging platforms fell one on top of the other, surely crushing whoever was making their way up. There was a moment of quiet after it fell apart, before the night air filled with giggling which shifted rapidly to cackling laughter. Chatters in tongues distracted me briefly from the potential incursion through the front door of the building.

My mind shifted back from morbid curiosity and observation to survival. If they were trying to climb the fire escape and amused at their failure, they would be coming inside, and if they showed the least bit of determination, they’d make it into my apartment. My lack of faith in the fire escape now proven, there was no way I could escape but through the front door. Hiding in the apartment was going to lead to my death, with the lack of weaponry and good hiding spaces. Plus… I had no idea what these people were capable of. Did they have super strength? Could they smell my fear?

I needed to find a weapon, and I needed to get somewhere safer. I racked my brain thinking of options inside the building. It wasn’t quite the most rundown tenement in the city, but it was a contender. The basement laundry room was my first thought, but considering the number of times I woke up a sleeping vagrant when I went to wash my clothes, there was no real security there.

So, if I had to leave the building, I was running the risk of exposing myself to the literal lunacy of the night sky. I needed to decide where to go, and I needed to decide quickly. There was some kind of noise coming from the first floor, too distant for me to make out just quite what it was, but close enough that I had to pick a place and find something to help me defend my travels. The issue was that I had no idea where I could hole up until morning… nowhere close by, at least.

Actually… work. More distance than I wanted to cover, but the closest place I could think of that I would trust to preserve my life until the sun rose. The server room was incredibly secure, I had freight elevator access to the 9th floor via keycard, there were no windows from the moment I came in through the backdoor, and if — — more noise downstairs. Time to go. Time to find something to get me safely to work, pray that I could avoid seeing the moon on my way to the office, and head out.

I went back to the bathroom. I had a metal pole to hold my shower curtain up, and that would have to do for a makeshift method of keeping the Afflicted away from me. I pulled it down, made a mental note that I needed to clean my shower if I survived the night, and walked as quietly as I could to the front door.

Pressing my ear to the wood, I heard stifled chuckles, though it didn’t sound like they were on the fourth floor yet. I cursed my landlord for ignoring my requests to have a security peephole installed, and cursed myself for being unwilling to just do it without his consent.

Pulling the chain was nearly silent, though the deadbolt made a ‘click’ that I thought could well mean my doom. I waited, listening, and heard no change in the voices below. There was the sound of doorknobs jiggling, the Afflicted trying to make their way into my neighbors’ homes. Maybe they’d be distracted and not notice me?

I made my way into the hallway. I shut the door silently behind myself, though I didn’t lock it — I hadn’t even brought my house keys, just my office fob, for fear of a pocket jingle betraying my attempt at stealth. I remembered a movie that said the outside edge of stairs tended to be quietest, so I steadied the curtain rod in one hand while using the other to guide myself slowly down the steps. I made it to the first landing, then started down the second flight that would take me to the third floor. As I drew closer, I could hear the Afflicted on the second floor. They’d given up on the doorknobs and were likely going to be moving up any moment. I didn’t know how I’d sneak past them.

Not that I had the option: when I hit the third step of the second set of stairs, the wood made a high pitched squeak — one I’d heard a hundred times before and one I’d forgotten a hundred and one times. I always meant to skip that stair, and now, when it was a matter of life or death, I’d forgotten again.

The chattering stopped. All noise ceased. The world seemed to crawl as I tried to hold my breath and hope the group below me thought the noise came from elsewhere. No such luck. In a second that felt like ten minutes, they all started sprinting up the stairs.

I’d no idea how the Afflicted would respond to me, but it seemed, based on my mother’s messages from hundreds of miles away, and the unfortunate Spanish speaking woman outside, that they could recognize those who hadn’t looked up. I didn’t know what happened to that woman, but I assumed from her screams that it wasn’t pleasant.

I got to the third floor landing just as the Afflicted made it up the stairs. I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to see my own death. I started swinging the rod wildly, relying on fear, instinct, and memory to get me through. I felt a solid connect that resulted in a spat of giggles, and it dawned on me that they weren’t gibbering nonsense anymore — they were speaking English. They were speaking to me.

“Look at the moon! LOOK AT THE MOON! It’s SO beautiful tonight.”

Something primal in me kicked in, something that I’d never felt in a half dozen fist fights in school, some innate survival instinct that pumped my heart and my legs harder than ever before. I shouted some four letter words to the maniacs around me and kept fleeing. I felt hands all over me — on my shoulders, my chest, someone’s wet fingers grabbing at my face, nearly reaching my eyes, as I kept trying to twist and push and move.

I didn’t look until I nearly fell down the next flight of stairs. I stumbled, almost smacking into the wall, then opened my eyes, made the turn, and jumped down the next flight. I managed to keep my momentum as I moved from the second floor to the first. All of the Afflicted were above me, and I had a clear line down the stairs and out the door.

I reached up and touched my face, trying to wipe off whatever spit or mud they smeared on me as  I ran outside — right before I shouldered the door, I saw that it was blood. Their hand that nearly dug into my eye socket was covered in blood — and it was fresh. I didn’t know if it was from the lady outside, but I knew I didn’t have time to reflect on it, nor did I want to risk looking around for her as I made it out on the street. The crowd running downstairs after me wasn’t the only group of Afflicted out here, and I had to book it to the office without looking up.

More terrifying was that I didn’t know the what and how of the conversion process. Would a reflection of the moonlight cause me to lose my mind? What about the blood on my face? If that got in a cut, could that turn me into one of them? Would that transition happen instantaneously? I couldn’t stop wondering what happened to them. For that matter… what were they?

“Nearby” was the answer to that — glossolalia echoed down the street, while the Afflicted behind me were still calling out to me in English, demanding that I join them in their madness. The tonguespeakers seemed to be getting closer, perhaps hearing the call of their brethren departing my building.

Keeping my head down, I turned in the opposite direction from the sound, not the shortest distance to my office but less likely to get me killed, and kept moving. The ground was a blur as I sprinted, and I saw smatters of blood here and there, though there were no corpses that I could see. The utterances behind me grew quieter, and I didn’t hear them trying to keep pace with me. I turned down one street, then another, hating myself for never keeping up with cardio. My chest was already burning, my lungs were struggling to pull in more air, and my heart was pounding.

I was two blocks away from my complex, about a dozen or so blocks from the office. The nonsense speech was far, and seemed to be getting further; while I was thankful they weren’t still hunting me, I felt sorry for whoever they’d fixated on now. I took a moment to catch my breath. I leaned against a wall, and taken by the brightness in the absence of a street lamp, I nearly looked up into the sky to see the moon. I jerked my head down so quickly I felt a pop (should find another yoga class) and started panicking again.

Was I looking up because I’d been infected? Was this an infection? Was my exposure to the sky already converting me? What was —

Voices. I heard voices from the next street over. They were whispering, speaking English, not giggling. I cautiously peeked around the corner. There were four people standing in an alleyway diagonally from me, stacked two and two on either side, scanning the street I was about to step across and keeping an eye on their rear flank.

The lady closest to me carried a pistol in her hands, muzzle down and forward but ready to bring up in an instant — which she did when the boy behind her tapped her shoulder and pointed at me. I put my arms up, hoping they’d recognize I wasn’t one of the maniacs. The woman watching the rear flank waved me over, and I spotted a shotgun in her other hand.

I glanced both ways down the street to make sure I wasn’t being used as bait. Seeing none of the Afflicted, I sprinted to the alleyway. I was about to open my mouth and express my thanks when the pistolier raised a finger to her lips and shook her head. I listened: were we in danger? Hearing nothing, I chalked it up to an abundance of caution. I nodded and smiled to convey my gratitude. All I got from her in return was a grunt, so I made my way over to the (hopefully) more polite shotgunner.

She made eye contact, then motioned to the other lady with a head nod and gave a stern face and stiff shoulders. Without a word, she told me who was in charge and exactly how much of any deviation from her plan she’d tolerate. I always kept a pen and notepad in my pants pocket — a bit too always, as my ruined laundry could attest — and tonight was no different. I had a small top spiral Nead notebook like TV detectives carried, with a mini gel pen stuck through the top, still in my pocket from yesterday.

I flipped past a bunch of notes on subnet masks and GPOs I needed to rebuild until I got to a blank page. The sound of paper rotating on wire was eerily loud and drew everyone’s eyes, though only Pistol McPouty gave me a scowl for generating more decibels than a church mouse. I wrote my name, followed by “Plan?”, and handed it to McPouty, who was kind enough to write that her name was Amy. Below that she penned “Survive. Need guns. You have?”

She turned the Nead for me to see and answer. I held up the shower rod and mouthed no; as I reached for the pen, she turned the notebook back and wrote more. “Police station. ~5 blocks. You guard back.” She flipped it towards me long enough to read, then pocketed it. No pause for me to even confirm I’d follow. At first she’d just put me slightly off kilter, but now I was annoyed. I tapped her shoulder and she wave me off with her pistol, not even stopping to acknowledge me. Without turning to the rest of the group, she scanned the street and waved them over to where I’d just came from.

I stared, slack-jawed. I tapped Shotgun’s shoulder, she turned and just waved me forward. I don’t know if these people knew Amy before tonight, but she’d clearly established herself. I pushed past the others and tapped Amy’s shoulder again. She held up her left fist and everyone stopped. She made a dramatic show of slowly turning on her heel to face me. I felt the anger burning behind her eyes as she tried to stare me down while pulling the notepad out.

As soon as she had it in her hand in front of me, I snatched it back. It was mine, after all. Amy apparently disagreed.

“What in the –” she started. Loudly. Catching herself: “What do you think you’re doing?” She wasn’t whispering so much as hissing.

I was concerned about her volume, but not so much as to give up the chance for cheap, petty, social revenge. I gave my own dramatically slow performance of putting my notepad back in my pocket while keeping eye contact. I knew my shower rod wouldn’t stop a bullet, but I gripped it a little tighter all the same.

“Okay, cool, we’re talking now? That’s good, beca–”

Amy didn’t care for my snark. “You have the notepad,” she rolled here eyes, sarcastically craning her neck like she was trying to come up with a solution for Fermat’s Theorem. “You could… could…” she trailed off. Had she seen one of the Afflicted?

No. I realized it just in time to jump back. She’d been so cross with me and determined to emote her discontent that she’d failed to maintain sight discipline. “You… could look at the moon!” She dropped her pistol and reached for me, but my shower rod connected with the side of her face before her hands got close. She started screaming at us about how beautiful it was while spitting out the tooth I’d knocked loose.

One of her comrades stepped forward to try to restrain her, and she immediately turned her attention to him. He tried to grab her hands, but she threw her body weight into him, knocking him to the ground. She had the same terrifying laugh as the others when she started to claw at his face. I backed away, not wanting to watch her destroy his ocular cavities, when I realized she was doing nothing so clumsy.

She was forcing his eyelids open.

His grimace and struggling arms relaxed into a grin and a limp body. When he stopped trying to fight Amy, she let him go. He pushed himself up, giggling. “It’s so… beautiful.” He turned to face his horrified friends. “It’s. So. BEAUTIF–”

A crack of thunder silenced him. Amy shrieked, though it quickly shifted to a wet, gurgling laugh. The shotgun blast had instantly killed the newest convert, but Amy seemed unphased by the buckshot that had passed through him and into her face and upper torso. She was cackling as her former friend racked another shell, and only went silent when another pull of the trigger ripped through her.

I threw up. I wasn’t the only one. Whether it was the nerves of what just happened, or the sight and smell of death at point blank range, I couldn’t say. After wiping my mouth, I hoarsely advised the group of what I was trying to warn Amy about.

“That,” I said, pointing, “is a bad direction. I understand you all are looking for guns, but if we go a few blocks that way, you won’t make it. There’s too many of them. That’s why I came this way. I’m headed to my office. It should be –”

A quiet murmuring was growing louder. The shotgun blasts and screaming had drawn attention. I held out a shred of hope that it could be other survivors, but it was too hard to determine what they were saying. I didn’t want to take any chances. I patted my back pockets — I had my notepad again, and my key fob was where it belonged. Casting a look over my shoulder to confirm no immediate threat, I set back out in the direction I’d originally been heading.

I took a few steps before I noticed the others weren’t following. I turned around and saw them just exchanging glances, and not moving. They were in shock. I couldn’t blame them, but if I didn’t keep myself moving, I’d probably likewise succumb to the horror of the night and just snap.

I paused a moment longer, and the young woman with the shotgun turned to face me. She regarded me, though it seemed like she was starting past me into nothingness. She shook herself free of her stupor as the mumbling din grew closer. The approaching horde was speaking in tongues: more of the Afflicted. She blinked a few times as she came back to reality. She took the pistol from the bloody mess on the ground and handed it to me.

I wiped it off, and looked to her friends for objections. Their eyes were cast down, unfocused, not even aware of the coming tide of violence.

“Take it. It’ll do more than a curtain rod. Save one for yourself.”

I hated that what she said seemed wise, but I quickly familiarized myself best I could with the weapon as I walked away. I heard her rack another round as I turned the corner.

A few more blocks. That’s what I kept repeating to myself mentally, urging myself to keep going for the hope of security. Sanity. Yet I also knew that those few blocks would take me through the middle of downtown, and I would probably run into more people, if they could even still be called that.

The first block was… well, not fine — there were signs of violent struggles, two bodies I could see… but no Afflicted. Nor were there any survivors. Just eerily quiet streets bathed in neon bar signs, blood, and lethal moonlight. I’d been to many of these establishments after late nights stuck in the data center, and the familiarity should have been a comfort. Yet it only served to drive home how alien the entire experience was to me.

The next two blocks contained a smattering of Afflicted, but they were spread out enough that I could sneak by without provoking them. I was happy to learn they couldn’t actually smell my fear. There were a few close calls; given their ability to determine not just a person’s status regarding the sight of the moon, but their native tongue as well, I didn’t know if they had some kind of near range telepathy that could find me crouched behind a trash can. Then again, my own mother knew, and she was on the other side of the continent.

Those thoughts vanished from my mind as I approached my office. At first the towering glass and steel edifice inspired some hope. I was nearly there. As I drew closer, my optimism flagged and faded. The financial offices below mine, nest of the building’s other night owls, had shattered howling holes gaping where windows once reflected rays of morning sun. By the time I was but one street away, I was fighting my bladder and my nerves — a small swarm of tongue speakers was gathered outside, scanning for new victims when they weren’t staring at the sky.

Two police cruisers sat empty, their strobes illuminating the scene. I saw one officer in the crowd, as well as a few people I recognized from my building whose names I’d never learned, and now, never would. There were a few bodies on the ground, three that looked like they’d arrived through the broken windows above. I fought another wave of nausea and tried to focus on finding the best entrance into the building.

The main entrance was a definite no. The lobby had several Afflicted inside, and they seemed to be actively searching. I saw something I hadn’t considered possible: one of them hit the call button on an elevator, and others started to queue behind her. I’d mistaken their intellect for something entirely animalistic or primal… then I thought of my mother again. She was in her seventies and had trouble with her phone on a good day, yet managed to reach out through a social media app to try to tempt me into self-destruction.

And! The SMS emergency broadcast. The transition from warning to lunatic propaganda would have required technical know-how and access or authorization codes; even after the initial message, there would have been some form of authentication before the second group went out. The Afflicted appeared to have a much greater intelligence than I initially thought. That just meant I had to be more cautious.

Since I couldn’t see the back of the building, I didn’t want to risk it. I also didn’t know if my key fob would grant access there like it would for the front and side entrances. I checked again for the fob and notepad. Satisfied, I picked up the pistol in case someone (something?) noticed me.

Never having owned or even used a gun, I wanted to be sure I could fire it if needed. I looked for and found the safety, then switched it off. There was a button that ejected the magazine, so I took the opportunity to count how many shots I had. Seven. Six, if I saved one for myself. After I put the magazine back in, I did that thing you always see the cool people in movies do to let the audience know they mean business. Well, I tried. It was much more difficult than I expected, but after a minor struggle, I pulled the slide back to chamber a round.

Only problem? There was already one in there.

Which then ejected.

And bounced, loudly, against a mostly empty metal dumpster.

By the time my brain registered the idiot move I’d just pulled, the air was filled with laughter and the rush of dozens of feet on pavement. I went back down the way I came, hoping I’d lose some of my pursuers by looping around. I darted around the back of the local pizza place with the two year old “Grand Opening!” banner and down another alleyway towards my office. I was a good bit further from the front entrance, but I had a clear path to the side door.

I moved as fast as my legs could take me, with no regard for the burning in my lungs or the worsening stitch in my side. They wouldn’t matter if I got caught before I got inside. I cleared the street before the mob had adjusted to my new trajectory. There were only two of them at the side door, and they were more intent on trying to get inside than intercepting my approach.

Once I hit the steps, that changed. I wanted to close my eyes. I didn’t want to see what I had to do.

One. Two.

The second shot was in the forehead closest to the door, and she dropped.

Three. Four. Five.

The other one fell, still hooting at a joke no one told. I stepped over him, and he slowed down the others behind me just enough for me to slam my fob at the reader. I yanked the door open, slipped in, and grabbed it to pull closed behind me.

It was nearly shut when an arm came through, clawing at me. I slammed the door as hard as I could, but to no avail. The owner of the arm kept laughing, insisting that I look to the beautiful insanity in the sky. I replied with panicked pulls of the trigger. The arm withdrew from some intact animal instinct, and the door locked. I looked down at the pistol, now completely spent, and dropped it. I’d made it.

Walking to the elevator, I felt sick again. I saw the flash of the gun and heard the crack of each shot I’d fired each time I blinked. Shots fired into people that, just hours ago, were simply that: people. Muscle memory had me on my way to the ninth floor as I fell deeper into my own mind.

What if those I’d killed could have been cured? What if their madness would have passed with the night’s end? Did I take away someone’s mother? Someone’s little brother? I started to sob, then hyperventilate. When the elevator reached my floor and stopped, I threw up again at the final lurch.

I stepped out, scanning around for anyone. As expected, I could only hear the faint hum of fans from the adjacent data center. I grabbed a paper cup next to the water cooler and rinsed my mouth, then made a poor attempt at washing my hands. Then I swapped to a fresh cup and filled and drank it twice.

My breathing was still labored, but I could think straight again. Far down the hallway and to the left were the offices and conference rooms. Those had windows and could certainly pose an accidental danger. The data center was to my right and past a supply closet, and my fob got me immediately inside.

I forget how loud this room actually is, because I’m usually listening to music in noise canceling headphones whenever I work in here. With no phone, I’m stuck with the white noise, but it’s keeping me awake and alert enough to write all this out.

Actually, now that I’ve spent hours and my hand and butt are equally sore from jotting this down, I wonder what time it is? Oh. It’s nearly six! That means the sun will be rising soon. I’m not usually a sap for daily solar displays, but today warrants an exception.

Sitting in the conference room now. Moon far gone from the sky, which is just starting to shift colors. There’s an older hippie sysadmin that swears this experience is spiritual, and I think he volunteers sometimes for overnights just to watch it. Today I finally agree with him.

After this I’m going to check the news and see if things have calmed down. I made it to safety, so there’s got to be enough Important Decision People left that things are under control, or will be soon.

Sun’s finally here. I can just see a sliver of it on the horizon. I know you’re not supposed to stare at it, but…

It’s so beautiful.

It’s so BEAUTIFUL.

ITSSOBEAUTIFULITSOBEAUTIFULISSOBEAUTIFL

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//Author’s Notes: I have to credit a writing prompt that got this started for me, a late night imgur post:

It’s 3am. An official phone alert wakes you up. It says “Do not look at the moon.” You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending “It’s a beautiful night tonight. Look outside.”

I obviously took some liberties with that prompt, but, credit where credit is due for the base idea. I liked it, but thought something a little more personal could be creepier.
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