"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."

- Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Hollow Men

05:31 p.m

10 days earlier

Gordon Barber was a black man that drove an SUV. The vehicle was black and slick, a large 8-seater for a small family. He once said it was for work, that having a large, shiny, black car was empowering and subconsciously draws in respect. Tim always felt that the man's constantly styled ghastly white hair and sharp maroon eyes were terrifying enough as they were to command the respect of any and all demonic legions. His crisp white shirt and steam ironed pants were the splitting image of the modern businessman version of a devil's advocate. For a long time, before knowing the kind soul underneath the otherwise straight-laced exterior, Tim had doubted the man's integrity.

“So,” Gordon said to Tim as he drove pass a red light. The road was as empty as the previous days, if not, even more so. With little to no pedestrians and vehicles on the road, the way out of the city to the suburbs was as close to a ghost town as it could have gotten. There was nothing on the radio but static, so they turned it off. “Are you okay boy?”

It had been awhile since Tim saw his best friends' father and had almost forgotten the latter's habit, similar to his son, of calling him by a child's title. “I'm okay Mister Barber,” he replied from the passenger seat. “Just a little shook up.”

Gordon glanced over at the teen with a look of worry in his eyes. “Are you sure? After what happened to your father?”

The image of Joshua's body, unmoving, slumbering peacefully for eternity on his bed, a gash of blood in his shoulder, flashed through Tim's mind. He closed his eyes to let the vision pass. “Yeah,” Tim finally replied, reopening his eyes. “I guess things just haven't sunk in yet. With all the police interrogations and stuff, I'm still feeling a little on guard.”

“This really is too much,” Gordon hissed angrily. “Those detectives, arresting you like that! Don't you worry boy, if anything happens, we'll get you a lawyer and everything!”

“You don't have to do that Mr. Barber,” Tim said. “I'm sure the state will provide a lawyer for me.”

“Nonsense!” the man waved off the notion with one hand, keeping the other on the steering wheel. He spoke with a stern, energetic, but caring voice. “You're like family to Clay. A brother to my son is family to me. And don't worry about your father. Once they release the body, we'll pay for whatever funeral you want for him.”

No matter how strong a person is, they would tear up at such an offer, Tim included. He drew a deep breath that rustled through his nose, clearing his watering eyes. “Thanks Mister Barber.”

The car turned down the streets that would lead to the exit out of the city. A peaceful but eerie silence fell over the vehicle as they passed through the once bustling market districts. Only half a dozen of the popular roadside stores were still opened for business, and a countable amount of customers dragged their feet through the streets.

Gordon, unable to bear the quiet any longer, broke it with, “It's like the end of the world here. And there's no news about anything either.”

“What do you mean 'no news'?” Tim asked, his curiosity captured immediately.

They sped out of the market districts at the first available exit. “The newspapers didn't arrive this morning, and none of the news sites online were updated either.”

“What about blogs? Alternate news sites?”

“Most of them got shut down. It was kind of expected really. I was the only person at work yesterday. Even my boss was getting ready to leave and never come back,” Gordon explained, staring intently at the road, as if in some kind of trance. “Can you imagine that, boy? All the knowledge and media we've mastered and garnered of the centuries, gone overnight.”

“I wonder what happened?” Tim mused to himself. “Maybe they'll be back up tomorrow?”

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“Don't count on it boy,” Gordon replied. “Best we can hope for is things won't get violent at this rate. This Sin thing is really taking an ugly turn.”

He remembered the female detective, Julliane Smith, and how her partner, Oliver Hardy told him she thought Sin was just a case of mass hysteria. “Do you believe Sin is real?” Tim asked the older man.

“You'd have to be borderline retarded to think it's fake by this point,” Gordon replied almost instantly. “Look around us. The only people out looks like they've had the life sucked out of them. I'm just glad it hasn't happened to us,” the older man finished, unaware that both his children and Tim himself had Sin.

Tim was glad to be away from the topic of his deceased father. He needed to focus on the problem at hand and dwelling on it would solve nothing at the point. Another question came to Tim's mind as they turned the last corner that would lead them to the road out of the city. “What would make someone believe all this is fake?”

“Most people can't handle changes, especially bad ones,” Gordon started off again without hesitation, as if the man had been waiting for questions like those. “When things go haywire, we rely on what we know, things that work and are effective. Be it religion or science or a lifestyle. We lean back and find our pillar of confidence, even if doing so might doom us all.”

“Are we doomed?” Tim asked.

“Well boy, truth be told, I think we were doomed to die the moment the A-bomb dropped.”

XXX

06:21 p.m

10 days earlier

Their SUV pulled up the driveway of the beach-side house. Almost as soon as the tires screeched up the pavement, the front door of the house opened, with Clay and Stella, followed by their mother, Matilda Barber with her white cotton candy hair; came trampling across the lawn and towards the vehicle. Gordon turned off of the engine, marking the safe time for Tim to open the door, which he did so and jumped out of the car to a tight hug from Stella.

Stella was the first to speak. “Sorry about your father Tim,” before letting him off from her embrace.

Gordon circled the car and placed a reassuring hand on Tim's right shoulder. “You can stay with us as long as you like,” before heading to his wife and into the house.

From his left, Clay placed another strong grip on his shoulder, and once the door to the house closed behind his parents, he said, “We're not staying here tonight by the way.”

Tim looked quizzically at him. “What do you mean?”

Stella explained, “We have Vashmir Common's address. We think he might have kept a journal that could help us.”

“And where is it?”

“About half a day drive up north,” Stella replied.

“And how are we going to get there?” Tim asked again.

Clay replied, “We'll take my dad's car.”

“We're gonna steal your dad's car?”

“We're borrowing, kid,” Clay folded his arms, acting offended. “There's a difference.”

Tim was surprised at the suggestion. He had known the Barber siblings ever since they were in preschool. Though the brother-sister pair had a penchant for getting into trouble, they had never done anything illegal in the proximity of their parents.

Tim sighed and said, “I don't think this is the reason why your father thought you how to drive though.”

Stella brought up the point, “Well you can drive, right?” she asked Tim.

“Yeah...but I don't have a license yet.”

Clay added on, “Neither do I,” he toned it matter-of-factly. “What's your point?”

“Okay, I just got out of jail,” Tim gestured with his hands the shape of a square to represent his cell. He then moved them to the side as a symbol of him moving out of it. “I don't reeeaa-lly want to go back in. The detective there's kind of a bitch.”

“Look around you kid,” Clay replied, waving to the empty streets behind him. “There aren't exactly anyone left on the road to catch us. We're going. If you don't want to come with us, fine. But me and Stella are still going.”

Tim sighed and concluded, “You're that serious about this?”

His best friend looked grimly back, “We're kind of running out of time, if you haven't noticed.”

“Alright, fine. I'll go with you,” Finally relenting, Tim looked across the sibling to their house on the beach and thought of Matilda and Gordon Barber, the two adults who decided to take him in without questions and how he was about to betray their trust. “But promise me that once we get back, you guys tell your parents everything.”

Clay, slightly taken aback by his behaviour asked, “When did you become such a stickler?”

Without hesitating, Tim replied, “Since my father died.”

Stella started to tear up once he mentioned his father. “Tim...”

The recently orphaned teen continued, “If anything happens to us, they deserve to know. If these really are going to be the last few days to the end of the world, we'll face it together. All of us. With no regrets and no questions between us left unanswered.”

Clay's head bobbed back and forth in an unconscious nod. “Okay kid, we'll tell them. It's a promise,” he placed both hands on Tim's shoulder and looked his friend dead in the eyes. “We leave at midnight.”