Whakahapa, 2

So, no-one in the office, and there should have been, and, even more disturbingly, no-one in the dining-room or kitchen either.

Amos decided to walk up into the town; maybe someone there could tell him what was going on. He walked along by the lake until he came to the bottom of the main street and he turned up that way.

For a small town, it had a big shopping area. The long street had 'shoulder to shoulder', mostly two-storied buildings all the way along both sides of it. Most, but not all, of the buildings had wide verandahs covering the tiled sidewalks and providing shade and shelter from the elements.

The shade made it dark inside the shops, there were no lights going, there was no power working there either. Everything was dark and quiet inside. They were older buildings, a lot of them were made of wood.

There were shops of all sorts, selling stuff, feeding and entertaining. There were a lot of things on sale here that he'd never seen for sale anywhere else. All part of the holiday experience he supposed.

There were a few cars, a truck and a couple of vans parked along the street. An empty bus sat in the middle of the road by an intersection. It was even quieter here than it was back at the motel, it was further away from the lake and there was still no-one around. Nobody!

By now, it should've been a busy downtown shopping street, but it was not. His footsteps sounded loud and they echoed off the shop walls. He was the only person there in the center of the town, maybe the only one in the whole country – in the entire world!

He was all alone for, maybe, the first time in his life and he didn't like it, not one little bit. Being all alone was not natural and it was not nice!

Where, oh where was everybody? It couldn't be the Rapture, could it? He hoped not and he found it hard to believe that he could be the only one left behind, the only one who was not a true believer. More and more people were opting-out and living worldly lives these days, but, it looked like he might be the only one left.

A shop caught his eye, mostly because the front window-wall was smashed by a small truck that had veered off the road, ridden over the sidewalk and crashed into it. He knew that that was what had happened because the truck was still there, protuding from the broken windows.

There was glass and rubbish scattered everywhere, but it was all still now. It was quiet and there was still no-one around. On any normal day there'd be a huge crowd of nosey-parkers by now. But, there wasn't. It was not a normal day.

He walked up for a closer look. No-one in the truck and no-one in the shop. It was a pet shop, he'd never seen a pet shop before. The signs said that they sold pets – Kittens! Puppies! Rats, mice , guinea-pigs and rabbits, turtles and fish, fancy poultry and parrots and food and accessories for them all.

But, as hard as he tried, he couldn't see any sign of life in there. Weird.

He stepped in through the broken window, squeezed around the front of the truck and on to the shop floor. The floor crunched with the broken glass underfoot, but he couldn't see any animals, birds or fish in there. There wasn't any. None.

There was just empty cages, glass tanks and pens. It was a crowded little shop with all of the cages, toys, food and things, but there was nothing alive in there. It was fairly dark inside, but his eyes soon adjusted as he looked and searched around.

The cages were all full recently, he could see, (and smell!), that. They had dirty water bowls, scattered seed husks and bits and pieces of uneaten food in them. Also, there was a lot of poos!

The fish tanks were all full of water, rocks and weeds, but they had no fish in them. Also, there were no lights going or air bubbling, obviously because the power was off. He opened a couple of cages and searched in the nest boxes inside. The mouse cages had little 'houses' with nests of paper and straw, but no mice in them.

'Oh!' A thought struck him. The pets had all gone, just like the people had, but they hadn't been Raptured. That wouldn't happen. Animals don't have souls, they die and go back to the earth – the Bible says so.

There was a weight off his mind. Whatever had happened, it was not the Rapture and he had not been left behind. Good! So – why was he the only one here?

The worlds were not supposed to end like this. There had to be some other explanation, some natural cause for it all. This was still a largely unexplored world after all. The first colonists had arrived here less than 200 years ago and, ever since, they'd concentrated their efforts here in these few islands.

In all of the rest of the world, there could be anything out there. Maybe something there was fighting back and it had taken everyone – all of the people, all of the animals, birds and fish. Everyone and everything, except Amos!

What? Not very likely, was it? In fact, he'd say that it was impossible except for one small thing – it had happened. He went to sleep in a, kind-of, normal world and woken up to this.

Yikes! (He needed some better cursing words).

He went out of the shop, the front door opened easily enough from the inside, and he continued along the street. Another problem surfaced – he was hungry! Amazingly, he still hadn't eaten all day. Something would have to be done about that.

The trigger for his hunger was the smell, the delicious smell, coming from the bakery across the street. His nose led him over and he stood outside, salivating.

There was no sign of anyone in there, of course, and the door was locked. The smells were coming from the high-up air vents. There'd be no getting in that way either.

There was a narrow alley up the side of the shop, just one of those little accessways that were never noticed, until now. Maybe, around at the back, there might be a way he could get into the shop? He went through the alley and, sure enough, the back doors were open.

It smelled like fresh baking, like the kitchen at home on baking day, but much stronger. It was probably baking day every day here, but today? Bakers start work really early, don't they? Maybe, just maybe, there might be someone in there?

“Hello? Hello, anybody here?” He looked, a bit nervously, through the open doorway.

There was no answer and no lights on there either. That was becoming normal already. He walked inside.Trays of bread, pies, savories and biscuits were on the tall cooling-racks. That was where the smells were coming from. Great stuff!

He ate a still warm cookie, a small meat pie , and then a fruit pie. A great breakfast! This beat the usual porridge and toast! He sat, eating, enjoying and thinking.

There was so much food here, and no-one but him to eat it. He couldn't possibly eat it all himself, that would take years! What was going to happen to it all if the people didn't come back? Maybe the rats would eat it?

No, that wouldn't work; if the pet shop was any indication, the rats would all be gone too. Why did the Elders ever bring them here anyway? Creepy things, they served no purpose that he could think of.

Wow. He, Amos Steadfast, might be the Senior Elder in all of the world now! He could be the boss of everything. He'd rather not. Anyway, who said the whole world was empty? Whatever it was that had happened might have affected just this one small town.

Everywhere else might be carrying on as usual not even knowing that weird stuff had happened here. It could be, couldn't it? In fact, that probably was how it was. He had to get out of here and go tell them. How was he going to do that? He had no transport; he'd arrived here on the bus.

Oh yes! He'd arrived late yesterday afternoon and there was a bus everyday of the week. All that he had to do was to hang around and see if one arrived today. That'd be easy enough.

He went through to the shop at the front of the building and got a drink, a bottle of fruit juice from the cooler cabinet. The drinks in there were still cold, but he didn't know how long they would stay like that. The ice was starting to melt already.

He worked out the cost of the food he'd taken by the price lists on the blackboard above the counter. He had to make a couple of guesses but was fairly sure that he had it right and he left the money next to the cash register with a note listing what he took.

It was not stealing, was it? He had to do something and there was no-one to help him so he'd helped himself. He couldn't open the cash register and didn't have the right change, so he filled a paper bag with cookies to make up the difference.

He went back out of the way he'd come in and carried on up the street. The main street started down by the lake and went back up to the hill behind the town, getting steeper as it went. The top of the street was quite high up, so he figured that there'd be a good view from up there. Maybe he would see some signs of life, like a fire or something.

In the window of a curio shop, one that had lots of really old stuff, there was an old clock, one of the wind-up sort. It even had 'hands'. The second hand was clicking around the face of it, so the clock was going.

The time was 11.40 then? Yes, he looked up at the sun, 11.40 would be about right. He reset his watch, and that felt good, like he was making progress. It was only a little thing, but now he knew what time it was, roughly. He kept walking, up the street.

There was an electrical goods shop. The stuff in there would be useless if the power never came back on. The doors were wide open, so he went inside. Maybe someone was in there?

There was nobody. The clocks on the wall were all stopped. He found a transistor radio and put new batteries into it. There was no noise at all as he searched the dial, not even any static. He tried a different radio and batteries with the same result, so he put the radios back on the shelf and the batteries back in their packets.

The packets were ripped open, of course, but that couldn't be helped. He couldn't afford to buy them, he didn't have enough money left.

Something else to worry about! What was he going to do for money when he ran out. He couldn't get any more from the bank, they weren't open for business. Well, he'd just have to leave IOU's for what he took and pay for it later. People would understand – they'd have to!

The hill was steeper than it looked from a distance and got steeper as the road went up it. Shops gave way to motels, boarding houses and houses – big houses, bigger than he'd seen before, and richer-looking too. This must be where the elite came to holiday, when there was an elite.

The houses all looked back to the view down the hill and they got more widely separated as he went along. He was getting breathless when he came to the top. He was young and, reasonably, fit, but he knew that he'd been climbing. His leg muscles told him so.

It was the top of the road but not the top of the hill. It wasn't even the end of the road actually, it went around a corner and disappeared into the trees, but this was as far as it got up the hill. There was a rest area above the road, so he went up and sat at the picnic table there, looking back down over the town to the big lake in the distance.

The town, laid out there before him, looked good – good, little and lifeless. Nothing was moving anywhere. Maybe it just looked lifeless because he knew that that was what it was? – empty, lifeless and dead. Totally empty!

He had a picnic, eating the rest of the food from the bakery and drank his drink. It was a great view. On a normal day he would enjoy sitting there looking over the town, but not today. Today there was nothing to watch, nothing was moving, nothing was happening.

This whole day was really odd. It was weird and it was scary. He so wished that he was not there too, but he was – all alone. What was he going to do? That is, to do now, not for the rest of his life, but right now.

He'd seen all there was to see and now he was bored, again. He went back down through the town, down to the lake and heading back to the motel where he'd slept. There was nowhere else to go, so he was going back there.

There was a wooden jetty poking out into the lake, a small wharf for boats to tie up at, though there were no boats there now. He walked out to the end of it and sat looking down into the clear(ish) water.

Long green, red and brown weeds swayed to and fro, like they were alive. Well, they most likely were alive, but plants don't usually move much. There were a lot of different plants, he never knew that there were so many different sorts of water plants.

A fish swam past. Then another and another. A whole big group of them, a school of fish, glided past, shining silver in the sunshine near the surface. He didn't know what sort of fish they were, just fish, 6 to 8 inches long. Sleek and silver. They looked like herrings. Do herrings live in lakes?

He tossed a pebble into the water to watch them scatter, which they did, really fast. They were quick. A line in the Bible, or was it Shakespeare, talked about the quick and the dead. By quick, it didn't mean fast, it meant alive – the alive and the dead. If you're slow, you die?

That was how it was in the old-fashioned English. It was almost a different language sometimes. Like, 'suffer the little children' didn't mean hurt them, (someone should tell the Elders that!). It just meant let them – 'let them come to me'. Words can change their meaning, like 'gay' used to mean happy and joyful, now it meant . . . no! He wasn't thinking about that stuff. That always started sinful thoughts and he couldn't do that.

Where were the fish? Wait a minute. Wait one big fat minute. The fish, they were alive! Alive like he was. They were the first living things he'd seen all day. He was not totally alone then. That was good. That was really good and a great relief too.

A thought had been lurking in the back of his mind, he hadn't wanted to think about it, but now he could because it was not right. He had not died and gone to Hell – he couldn't have because of the fish. Fish don't go to Hell, do they? They were here so he was not there.

That was good. That was very good.