Chapter IX: Dazed and Confused

4 Oct 1010 EDT

Framingham, MA, United States

Maggie rolled out of bed, hazy, groggy and somewhat delusional. While the rest of the city was in tumult over the alien attack she had literally slept through the whole thing. After she was now six weeks out of rehab and living in a halfway house Maggie had slipped into a full on relapse last night. She had been out cold through the bombardment, the panic and subsequent flight of the local population. By the time she had awoken the whole town had gone silent. The halfway house in which she had resided was now empty. Someone had tried to wake her up during the attack but the barbiturates had induced such a comatose state that the woman who had tried to rouse her mistook her for dead before she fled for her own life. Maggie sat up on the edge of her bed and groaned, rubbing her eyes as they adjusted to the light. Her vision was blurred initially, a side effect from the drugs, but slowly came into focus and she could see that the room was deserted. Her roommates' beds were left unmade and the room was a complete disheveled mess. A fine coating of dust that had been shaken from the ceiling coated the entire room. There were tissues, towels, clothing and their personal effects strewn across the floor. The drawers had been yanked out of the dresser and makeup, grape juice and water were spilt over the countertop. The door to her room was left open and swinging ever so slightly on its loosened hinges. The smoke and dust blanketing the sky had darkened the morning light making it appear as if it was early dawn outside despite the fact Maggie had slept hours well past breakfast.

"Lucille? Amy? Are you guys here?" Maggie called out. Her voice echoed from her room into the empty hallways.

There was no response. Maggie stretched her arms above her head and yawned then rubbed her eyes. Her throat felt parched and she had the beginnings of a splitting headache. She stood up, still a bit disoriented on shaky legs and walked over to the shelf by the vanity mirror in the room. She fumbled around and picked up a half empty bottle of water on the countertop and swished it down. She had no idea whose it had been but cared not about backwash at this moment. She then stumbled over to the shared bathroom between her room and the one next door. She flipped on the light switch but nothing happened. Puzzled, she flipped it on and off again a few times and still the bulb remained dark. "Maintenance man needs to change the light bulb." she thought to herself. She reached around and found the water knobs on the sink and turned them; nothing came out of the faucet.

"No water either." Maggie whispered.

She walked back to her bed and grabbed her shoes along with a lightly worn pair of socks from a few days ago and sat down on the bed to put them on. After a few minutes of mentally fighting herself over whether to get up or flop back down on the mattress and pass out Maggie decided to head out the door into the hallway. She found the entire building empty as she staggered through the halls. Her headache was killing her, the pain and sensitivity only adding to the delirium brought on by her dehydration, fatigue and residual effects from the drugs. She grasped her head, right around where the two holes from the surgery had been drilled, and pushed as if that would make the headache stop. Of course it didn't. Every room she checked was in a similar state of disarray as her own. It appeared as if everyone in the halfway house was in such a rush to leave.

"Troy, Elsa? Anyone home?" Maggie called out before peeking into the cracked open door of another room.

"What the hell is going on here?" Maggie whispered in bewilderment to an empty house.

She went downstairs to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. The air escaping from the fridge wasn't as cool as she expected. It took her a while for it to register that the refrigerator wasn't running and what she had felt was just the residual chill that had been trapped inside a couple hours ago which hadn't had a chance to equalize with the temperature outside yet. Maggie took out a carton of milk and some eggs. The milk was still cold and smelled fine so she poured herself a glass. She turned on the stove, or at least she thought she did, and cracked three eggs onto a frying pan. The eggs just rolled around like Jell-O over the pan. Of course, power's out no juice for the electric stove thought Maggie. This headache was really jamming up her train of thought.

"Girl you are so off your game today." Maggie bemoaned herself.

She drank the milk and tossed the eggs into the trash. For breakfast she instead opted for room temperature pop-tarts. As she was eating she heard a sound like thunder coming from outside. She got up and pulled back the drapes over one of the windows assuming it was storming out. She saw an overcast sky covered with dark grey and black clouds. She hadn't thought to recognize these clouds as being smoke but rather her mind saw the mundane. Storm clouds, she assumed, storm clouds with no rain but there was thunder coming from the east which meant the bad weather had either already passed her by or was on its way. The streets seemed strangely deserted; none of the usual light foot traffic was present outside the dining room window. She didn't notice or her mind didn't register the cars parked out in the middle of the street. There was a general sense that something was amiss today but the panic alarm in Maggie's mind had not gone off yet. She finished her breakfast only to have to throw it up several minutes later. After she came out of the restroom she wandered the downstairs of the halfway house to see if anyone else was still hiding out there. She was all alone; this place had never been this empty ever since Maggie had arrived. There had to be a reason everyone left. If there was then what was the reason that she was left behind? She felt a little betrayed, it didn't stab her too deep as these people barely knew her and she couldn't really call any of them friends. She could call them associates, kindred spirits, sympathizers, fellow lost souls perhaps but they weren't real friends; their actions abandoning her here had proven that.

"So they're all gone." Maggie whispered to herself.

They must have bailed fast with good cause Maggie reasoned; perhaps she should do the same. Where would she go, she wondered. She wasn't exactly on the best terms with her family and she had no friends around here that would take her in. Everyone else at the halfway house probably didn't have much of a plan lined up when they left either. When in Rome, she thought as walked out the front door.

When she walked out onto the street only then did she grasp the gravity of the situation. Cars were dead and abandoned on the right of way. Some of the vehicles had their doors left open; a few of them had their trunks popped open as well. There were clothes and personal effects littered about on the ground. Maggie nearly tripped over a loose shoe as she lumbered in a daze amongst the shadow of what had been a vibrant town.

"Can people be any more careless?" she grumbled over the items left lying around.

The sound of thunder boomed again from the east drawing Maggie's gaze in its direction. The gray overcast skies became progressively thicker and blacker the further away they were. Now she was out in the suburbs so the downtown skyline of Boston was too far away for Maggie to see what was going on with the aliens who had now concentrated their local operations in that area. When there had been numerous flyovers while she slumbered now the grey skies above her gave her no evidence of otherworldly activity. The scent of smoke was not detectable to her nose at this range as the air currents kept the ash cloud canopy far enough above her that it was in her eyes still indistinguishable from storm clouds.

Curiously, Maggie wandered through the town streets. It was like this everywhere she went; no people, homes, cars and businesses were deserted. For what seemed like hours she wandered aimlessly about town. She passed through a residential neighborhood of modest to below average homes. Like where she had come from again it looked as if it had been abandoned in haste; cars were parked in the driveways, the doors to several homes left flung open with a trail of dropped goods leading out of them. She gasped as she saw the body of a man lying on his back in the street behind a maroon sedan. He had bruises on his face and arms and his pockets out turned. This was the first person she had seen all day and the first sight that jolted her into realizing something really bad had happened. With her curiosity tainted by a growing sense of dread Maggie wandered on into a mixed commercial and residential district. A few shop windows were smashed; there were a number of fender benders in more congested parts of the road as she got up around route 9. She noticed a slight spattering of blood on the rear window of a silver Camaro as she passed by. It was no longer a pristine ghost town any more. Maggie's fear deepened yet she was drawn on in her hungover stupor, the aches and withdrawals still dominating much of her thought process. The destruction she saw was minimal, alarming but by no means apocalyptic in proportion. It was not the aftermath of the chaos that erupted in Boston which she was blissfully unaware of. The stores which had been broken into fell mainly into two categories: grocery stores, pharmacies and those containing essential wares for survival and high end electronics and jewelry stores. The robberies of one were likely triggered by need, the other by greed. Not all of the break ins left behind evidence of their occurrence either. Several businesses that had been opened were abandoned with such haste that their doors were unlocked or even left open. The owner of a small Army/Navy store had even opened his doors intentionally to supply what survival gear he had in his wares to the people before they fled the city. Again distant thunder roared, she looked up at the darkened sky and watched the thick viscous clouds drift about. Overcome with a sense of vertigo she stumbled backwards barely catching herself before she fell.

"Let's not do that again." Maggie told herself.

In her wanderings she made her way northeast into Natick, somehow being drawn closer to the black clouds by her curiosity. As fine ash began to trickle down from the sky, which Maggie mistook for a precursor to rain, she went inside the Natick Mall to allow the storm to pass. With a potent thirst she first headed towards the food court. Along the way she noticed the display window to the Apple store had been shattered and the majority of the merchandise had been carried away. Like the town the mall showed signs of a hasty retreat though the looting and loose items strewn about were less prevalent here. The Apple store and a couple other shops with high demand products, albeit those that were essentially useless after the alien EMP weapon had struck, were the only ones hit. The mall in fact had not opened yet so only the night crew and a couple members of the opening staff were here when everything got crazy. When Maggie reached the food court she hopped behind the counter at Subway and got herself something to drink. She then proceeded to make herself a sandwich; maybe this time her breakfast would stay down.

Outside a large crowd of people passed by. Due to the food court's location near one of the mall entrances she could both see and hear them as they went by. Unbeknownst to Maggie this was the exodus led by Tom Mason to the hospital in Framingham. Seeing as she was essentially stealing from Subway, Maggie ducked down under the counter until the crowd had passed. The brief bustle of human activity only lasted a few minutes before it was gone. It had failed to resuscitate a lively spirit to the area and Maggie was left with a ghost town once again. As she got up and made sure the coast was clear she pondered whether or not she should follow after those people and find out what was going on. Her better judgement cautioned her against it, she had no idea what type of people those were and she wasn't exactly in the most presentable form herself at the moment.

She finished topping her sandwich, mixing ingredients and jumbo sizing it to such a degree that Subway would have never allowed. She christened her sandwich the double Maggie deluxe and bit down. The moment that first bite went down was when she truly realized how hungry she was. She must have had a period of prolonged fasting leading into and during the bender she was coming off of and whatever was left had all been vomited up this morning. Come to think of it her memory of the past couple days was spotty at best. The notion of aliens arriving at Earth seemed to be more of the flashback from an acid trip than actual memories to her; this was why she completely discounted anything to do with the visitors when she saw the deserted town this morning. Her memory in general wasn't faring too well this morning either. It could have been the drugs in her system or a lingering side effect from the surgeries that removed the cancer from her head all those years ago or perhaps a combination of the two. Needless to say her brain hadn't exactly been treated with the utmost kindness throughout her life and yet she still managed to come out a quick witted, bright young woman when she wasn't lit up. That was another thing she thought about; having fully rehabbed before she knew the withdrawals would only get worse and her cravings would be hard to overcome. Where would she get the goods now to feed her habit if people had just up and left? There were pharmacies around she supposed she could swipe painkillers from, maybe snag some methadone or morphine from clinics and hospitals as well. Meth wasn't her drug of choice so the idea of cooking up her own didn't even occur to her. She supposed that maybe back in Boston things were different and her old hookups might still be out working the streets. Then she remembered the skies looked worse in that direction and realized that was probably not a good idea. Maybe she could find new sources in other towns, if Boston was worse for whatever had happened then if she headed west then things would be better. She could go to Worcester and see what they had to offer there. That was exactly what she would do. Go west, young woman, go west.