Why are you going?

Not only was this street deserted. Everything was deserted… Buildings, cars, shops… It was all empty. No food, no water… Not even sound.

Cindy came out of the store, I scolded her for doing so, but the only reaction I got was a shrug. I was happy; she seemingly regained her old personality… So we set out to see what happened. No matter where we went, all was empty. Our little neighbourhood was completely barred of life; even the obnoxious birds that nested in the trees were gone…

Given that we were in the area, we went to our house. It was the same as we left it. No sight of forced entry or ransack. Everything was in order… including our pantry and our refrigerator, which curiously, were still full of food. It struck us as odd, that no one entered our house…

It was also interesting that when checking our belongings, the clothes we took with were still in the closet. It was very creepy… Someone entered our house… and made it habitable? Even with all the destruction around?

While I was busy trying to make sense out of this, Cindy went to the living room. We had a little telly there. She turned it on, in order to see if there was any news or anything. There was static… but there was also sound… A whisper, too faint to be heard among the static…

“Come…plaza… surprise…”

Cindy stood there, confused by the message she apparently heard. But then, images appeared in the screen… There was the neighbourhoods’ small plaza, alongside a countdown to the “surprise.” She told me about it…

“Should we go?” She said, looking very confused.

I really didn’t offer any answer to that… I was also afflicted… If there was a transmission, it means that there are more people out there. And probably, they want to gather people… But why doing it in such way? Shouldn’t it be in a way to incite people to gather?

“There are five minutes left in the countdown. Do you think we should go?”

I was really going to say no… But something on the TV screen caught my attention. There was a man waving at the camera…

“Hey pal! Hope you been taking your nutrients!” Said the man, his voice being very familiar to me…

“Is that… Joey? Joey Anderson?” Cindy said.

“You should really come over, dude!  Hey, you can bring Cindy too! We are having a blast here!"