It was the end of the world. Most of Earth seemed deserted; maybe everyone else was dead, but I didn’t see many other people at all. I remember cars parked in — or wrecks littering? — a football stadium. The silence was sporadically pierced by looters, either alone or in small groups. Scott was with me and I was furious that this was all that was left of humanity. One man tried to break the window of an electronics store. He was going to steal a television even though there hadn’t been signal in months. I tried to get in front of him, to clothesline him as he ran up, but I was weak, powerless. I couldn’t lift my arms, I couldn’t open my eyes fully.
The scene changed. I was lying diagonal on the floor of some white box apartment. There was the lip of an extended windowsill, coming out of the wall, more than a few feet wide. Reclining on this lip was a girl who looked like Linda Blair from The Exorcist, in the same white nightdress. She hissed at me. I blinked to look away.
The scene didn’t change. I was still lying on that carpeted floor. In the far corner I saw light dancing — a TV on, perhaps a small fire in the room. The girl’s head had changed. Now she was this shrieking, white-haired thing with pinhole eyes and the wrinkles and complexion of a bleached, dried apple doll. She stared and stared, screaming without sound. I forced myself awake.
