In the beat of a heart, the world has changed. Seemingly random disappearances transport a portion of the world's population to an unknown place, and catastrophic events follow. As twenty-five-year-old James, one of those left behind, sits in a dark tavern, he drifts away, lost in his memories. His world is not his anymore. Someone, or something, has taken it away from him. As a profound, frightening solitude permeates the air, James wonders if he is a survivor-or if he has missed out and is about to face something even more terrible. After drifting aimlessly for days, James decides to return to the familiar. As he embarks on a journey across a scarred and frightened country, James encounters desperate people struggling to adapt. After he is joined by Kathryn, a mysterious and intriguing woman, James begins to doubt the wisdom of his trip. Driven by purpose, he continues, hoping to find the answers that will provide him with the happiness and security he so desperately desires. Set against a dangerous and apocalyptic backdrop of uncertainty, two strangers intertwined in adventure and companionship seek the truth amid the fear of wondering if their world will ever be the same again.

Remnants

a novel By Sam Hill

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Sam Hill
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-4984-1

Chapter One

the first few gentle piano chords of the song resonated softly from the jukebox. James closed his eyes and motionlessly traced the notes in the musky air. A scent of pinewood gently tingled his senses in a way that he could very nearly taste as he listened quietly to the music. It was usually one of his favourite songs, but on this occasion it did not evoke the sentimentality that it once had.

A change had occurred, and everyone felt it. They took it with them everywhere they went. It was a weight in the pit of their stomachs. It was in the emptiness of their homes and the eerie quiet of the morning. The still machinery; the fuzzy, blank television; the hollow, monotonous bleep of the telephone. It was in the deserted roads and in the echoing bell tower of a vacant city hall. It was in the empty park swing and the vacant stares of those left behind. But most of all, the change was felt by a ringing, pervading emptiness. It was a loneliness that encompassed every aspect of the remnant's life. The liquor had not softened the blow or numbed the pain, for James at least. Rather it had shaped it, crafted it into something more precise that pricked his emotions and opened his mind to the condition that he found himself in, that they all found themselves in.

The music told of a beauty that was out of place in the dusty old tavern. It was a haunting and lonely beauty, one felt most profoundly in the dark night and in the quiet just before dawn, one felt best in the stillness of the morning, when the crickets have fallen silent and the birds have yet to begin their morning song.

As the song quickened in its urgency, a sombre voice whispered a tale of the flight of two young lovers. As James strained to listen, the words seemed to paint a picture of a frightening intimacy and a love distant to the experience he felt at that moment. He felt a sense of desperation as the song progressed, the once profound connection he associated with the music passing him by.

But this feeling soon passed.

Sighing, James opened his eyes and rubbed them with the heels of his hands. Gently rocking back on his stool, he looked around the bar, and the blurred plethora of images settled for the briefest second into a single picture before he again drifted away into his memories, far from the tavern.

Slow dancing in the dark on the beach at Taylor's Brook. He was swaying with Danielle in the crackling firelight, feeling like the last desperate lovers beneath the stars in the planet's final moments. During those days no words were necessary; it was a feeling beyond description. It was a passion that need not be spoken.

James caught his breath, and the image in his head shifted.

This time they were in the motel together, the one just off the dirt road in Parsonage. As James sat in the filtering dust of the twilight tavern, he smiled a distant smile long departed. Long ago, she had lain there like an angel, with her head upon his chest. In the present, tears of faithlessness welled in his eyes.

James steadied himself. Like the music, these memories were a still, soft beauty that demanded solitude. And with that realisation, the dreams departed from his head as wistfully as they had floated in, and he was left with the reality of the bar.

He rubbed his eyes again, producing deep red half circles above his flushed cheeks. The initial confusion that he had felt at the events of the past few days had turned into an echoing longing. A deep desire sprung from simmering frustration as he sat there that night.

The tavern. A familiar place, in a strange time.

The tavern was a stone building which was supported by long wooden beams climbing to a triangular roof and its simple interior looked scarcely fitting for a bar. Inside it was modestly lit by a series of candles that danced quietly in the dark, perched on black circular ceramic trays. Running along both sides of the building was a series of booths that were composed of rectangular tables between long, thin wooden benches with scarlet cushions placed upon them. Splitting the dual rows of booths was a floor thinly littered with a smattering of sawdust that ran from sturdy double oak doors, directly along the centre of the tavern to the bar itself.

The bar was a small, square shack-like structure, behind which stood racks of multiple drinks – clear bottles of dark green, ruby red, and clear fluids put unevenly upon rickety-looking shelves. Underneath this variety of nectars were stacked half a dozen enormous oak barrels, carefully placed side by side, their round face pointed towards the doors.

Tonight, the bar was tended by Rachel – a slender lady, pale in complexion, with striking, thin, blood-red-coloured lips that curved slightly downwards, complementing her narrow, hunched shoulders. She stood leaning against the side of the bar, a stained tea towel in her hand, absentmindedly rubbing a scratched pewter tankard, her light brown eyes distant and seemingly unfocused upon anything nearby.

She is sad, James thought, and a pang of unhappiness for her plight pricked him. Sad, lonely too, perhaps.

He was sitting on a stool in front of the bar. Every time James moved, the uneven stool rocked back and forth and he had to steady himself on the bar causing his back to arch away from the door behind him.

The noise in the tavern was low tonight with only intermittent and barely audible murmurs produced. James turned and looked around. The same faces, worn and tired, preoccupied, worried, afraid, occupied the booths as they had done last night and the night before.

They have lost their direction, James thought, and who could blame them?

Outside the wind rose, blustering and battering against the tavern walls, whistling furiously. The hairs on James' arms prickled, and he loosened his shoulders before shuddering involuntarily. Again he looked around at his fellow patrons, most of whom, like him, had wandered sadly to the bar for the last few nights.

Why had they come here?

There were no answers, nor solace in this place. No comfort was to be found in this dark night, or in any others – of that James was sure. He turned back to the bar, musing to himself. Perhaps they came out of some sense of instinct, maybe the yearning for human touch, however sparse and cold. Maybe, like himself, they felt as if they had no other place to go. Their homes no longer offered comfort, the warmth that defined a sense of home had been cut. It had been taken, from all of them, and they were cast adrift from everywhere and everyone.

And there were still no answers. They knew what James knew: the world did not belong to them anymore. Someone, or something, had taken it from them. It was someone else's now, whoever they were. On some level, they all knew this.

A profound, frightening solitude that was empty of joy marked life in these tumultuous days.

James cupped his drink with both hands, swilling the remaining froth in the base of the glass. He closed his eyes tightly and replayed the events of three days previously once again in his head. The song drifted away amid declarations of pious, unrequited love, and so its beauty departed with it. The candles flickered and James strained to remember.

Chapter Two

there was not too much to remember in terms of clear details. That was part of the powerlessness. It had happened in a twinkling of an eye, unseen and unchecked. He had happened to be in the...