78. (Days and Hours and Nothing.)

September. It was unseasonably hot, and the air was thick with insects as we waded through the tall grass to our secret spot, our clubhouse without a house. We babbled on about everything and nothing and everything again. Girls. Sports. It's sorta all blurry now. I remember dropping into the couch, casually, and Sam throwing himself into the broken recliner.

Some time passed. I don't know how long. And then there was a light, just floating in the air in front of Sam, and immediately after that the light was gone, replaced with...

With what, I don't know. A floating shadow? An emptiness? It defies me to this day how to accurately describe it. Sam looked at it cross-eyed, and reached out and touched it. "It's cold," he said--and then his hand was gone. There was no blood, there was just screaming, screaming from all of us. He tried to pull away but it was like something was holding him in place--no, pulling him in. Soon his arm up to the elbow was gone, vanishing into that floating shadow, that... void. I'll never forget the look on his face, such pure, uninhibited fear, panic, pain.

I grabbed his other arm and pulled--we all pulled, but it was like he was set in stone. It had pulled him in up to his shoulder, and was pressing up against his chest. I could hear his ribs breaking, shattering, crumbling inside. Sam let out a wail of agony--and he died. We fell away, screaming, and his body vanished completely, sucked into that glimmer of nothingness.

Only it wasn't a glimmer anymore. As it had pulled him in it had grown: the size of a baseball by the time it reached his elbow, as big as a pumpkin when it killed him. It wasn't growing anymore, just... floating there.

I blacked out after that.

When I woke up I was on a stretcher in an ambulance. Our secret hiding place was gone--someone had erected a huge white tent over it. Several large men with rifles and gas-masks stood around it in a circle. Men and women in lab coats bustled around. I didn't know what was going on. As I lay there staring at the white fabric, a gust of wind blew one of the tent flaps open and I caught a glimpse inside--the nothingness was the size of a large horse.

Suddenly there was a scuffle--someone was shouting something, some kind of horrible howl was coming from inside the tent--and then the scientist types came running out, and a moment later the tent itself vanished, replaced by... nothing, even larger.

The more it took in, the more it grew. I imagine some poor schmuck tripped and brushed against it and got sucked in.

It's still growing now. We're driving South, towards Mexico. Oklahoma is gone--totally gone. It just keeps getting bigger--we can't run forever. We're not the only ones. Everyone is running--North or South or East or West, everyone running out. It's only a matter of time before there's nowhere to run to.