Second-Hand Flowers
an excerpt

The power in Baltimore City went out sometime in the late morning of the third day, cutting off everything that wasn't run on gas (the lights, televisions, radios, computers, and who knew what else) and essentially isolating Alex from everything that wasn't in or part of his fourth-floor apartment. Even so, he knew what was going on; it didn't take a genius to figure that out. The last television broadcast he'd heard before the stations had all issued a steady, optimistic 'We are momentarily experiencing some technical difficulties. Please stand by!' message had clued him in, and figuring it out from there wasn't exactly rocket science.

Besides, how many ways were there to take "Oh God, they've gotten in! Oh God, oh God, someone tell my --", followed by white noise and heady, sans-serif optimism?

If the television broadcast hadn't clued him in, getting anywhere near a window would have done it. Alex's apartment sported one large window (with a fire escape, as was regulation for most buildings in the city these days), and it did wonders for letting the city in: on regular days, Alex had been able to hear various sirens, car alarms, loud pedestrians, and myriads of other noises just by walking near the thing, and shutting it didn't make much difference, except for stifling the sound a little. Sometime around noon on the first day, the frequency of the sirens (police and ambulance, mostly, and Alex was starting to frighten himself by how easy it was to identify them now; he'd never had a talent for it before) had increased exponentially. Not long after that, car horns and alarms had started sounding practically non-stop, and a few hours after that the sirens, horns, and alarms had started to punctuate themselves with screams.

The screams had gotten progressively worse throughout the day, and Alex had had to cover his head with his pillow just to attempt sleep that night. Even so, it had been a restless few hours before he'd given up altogether and gone to his computer. On the second day, when the screams had blended into one another melded into some sort of Super Scream (something old-school Superman fans would have appreciated, but Alex wasn't so inclined as to share his humor with anyone just then), Alex hadn't quite been able to garner up the nerve to look off the fire escape at what sounded like a slaughterhouse down below.

And then the moaning had started.

God, when the screaming had died off at last, Alex had almost been glad for the break, but it was quickly replaced by the dull, lifeless moan he had always associated with torture victims and, well, zombie movies. The eldritch sound welled up and, after a while, seemed almost louder than the screams (which still made an appearance now and then, but not nearly as often as before) had managed to be -- could ever manage to be -- and the only way Alex had been able to drown that sound out was through his television (until the broadcast died), radio (until the power went out altogether), and mp3 player (until the battery ran low and continuously interrupted music with 'Please Check Battery!' messages). It was enough to drive a person crazy, and Alex was afraid he was lingering on the verge of doing just that.

The only thing worse than the moans was the silence. At least when the moans came Alex knew for sure that everything had gone to shit; when there was nothing on the wind but silence, he didn't know what was going on. He spent each moment alternating between hoping he'd get a permanent reprieve from the moaning and hoping it would come back, for fear that whatever it was out there would catch him off guard, sneak up on him, and… Well, Alex wasn't sure what happened after that; he just knew he didn't want it to happen to him. The little he had seen and the measures he'd heard were plenty for him, and he didn't especially want any further insight.

Nonetheless, he had the sinking feeling he would need to venture outside -- or at least onto the fire escape -- and find out the truth of things before too long. With the power off, Alex wasn't sure he wanted to risk turning on the gas stove, just in case something malfunctioned and he wound up burning down his entire apartment complex, and there were only so many foods a person could eat without heating them up beforehand. The fact that everything in the refrigerator was eventually going to spoil didn't help, either, and there were undoubtedly going to be other problems besides; it was only a matter of time before Murphy's Law decided to rear its ugly head, and Alex knew he wasn't going to be at all prepared for that once the time came.