𝙂𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙂𝙤𝙧𝙚 ━━ Chris Manawa

Fade into Darkness

"What're you doing up there?" Emma asks from the front lawn, hand coming up to block her eyes from the mid-day sun. Chris is sitting on the roof of the house, camcorder in his hand as he points it around it all around the gated neighbourhood. From what Emma could see he was also talking to himself, but she can only hear he incoherent mumbling.

"Documenting," Chris aims the camcorder towards Emma, then focuses it back to the destroyed houses outside the gate.

"How did you get up there?" Emma looks around, but can't see a ladder, or anything else he could have used to get up onto the roof.

"Climbed up the truck," Chris says, waving his hand behind him as he continues recording. Emma goes around the side of the house where the truck is parked just under the roof. She climbs onto the roof, struggling more then she would have liked, and joins Chris on the roof. Emma lies down next to Chris, stretching out on the warm roof as he continued documenting.

"It's safe inside the fence. Outside, everything's dead, everyone's gone. This is day nine. Nine days since the lights went out, and that fence went up." Emma starts to drift off, not really hearing Chris, just listening to the sound of his voice. No matter what Emma was doing, her attention would always be dragged away by the are infected of Chris' voice, as if her brain was hotwired to only ever hear him.

"Emma. Emma look," Chris says, shaking Emma's shoulder to get her attention. She groaned as she sat up.

"What?"

"Over there," Chris said pointing towards the houses outside of the wall. Emma followed his finger to blinking in a broken window from one of the houses outside of the gate, "I think someone's out there."

"I'll be right back," Emma quickly climbs off the roof and goes into the shed, looking for anything that could reflect light. She rummages around in several empty boxes before noticing a broken mirror out of the corner of her eye. She clears away the boxes to find several pieces of glass scattered around the area. She grabs the biggest piece she can see and brings it with her back to the roof.

Chris takes the mirror from her as she sits down, and aims it towards the house, tilting it around so the sunlight would reflect off of it. Once he has a good angle, he continuously shifts the mirror, flashing the light as he watches the window intently, "Do it. Come on, just do it." After a couple seconds, the light shines from the outside house, mimicking the patter that Chris made.

"What do you two think you're doing? Get down here." Emma and Chris turn around to see Travis standing on the truck, his head bearly coming up over the roof.

"Travis, you have to see this," Emma says, beckoning him over.

"I want you guys to go help Madison, Okay?"

"Just look at this," Chris says as he crawls over to his dad to show him the video. Emma comes up next to him to watch it again, wanting to see how the flashing light came out on video.

"I don't have time for-"

"It's just five seconds," Chris crouches down next to Travis to show him the video, playing it so that Travis doesn't have a chance to say no again, "There, you see that?"

"See what? What am I looking at?"

"It's like a light or something in one of the houses," Emma says, pointing towards the house that had the light. Travis turned to where she pointed, but Emma could tell he was only doing it to humour her, barely even looking for a second before turning back to his son, "but they say there's nobody alive out there."

"Okay, come inside," Travis says, closing the camcorder.

"Dad, I think there's someone out there."