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The story may contain sexual activities and situations that are to be read only by readers above the legal age of consent. All characters are above the age of 18. The story is not to be read in locations where such stories are illegal. If you are not of legal age, or live in the wrong place, please do not read.
Songs from the wood
by
Kaereni
Once upon a time Sally was an ad exec. She lived, breathed, and played the rat race every day for near ten years. Then one day, she looked around and realized everything was a lie. Her life, her work, her friends were all lies. Deciding the only way to save herself was to run away, she quit her job and moved to Canada. Not only did she move to Canada, she picked her place well. She picked up a wooded spread almost fifty miles from the nearest town. Even then the town was not much to look at. It had a branch of a bank, a general store, a barber/ beauty shop and a gas station.
Her log cabin did not have electricity, cable, phone service, or any of the modern conveniences. While she did have a solar panel on her roof, it only supplied enough power to run a trickle charge to her pickup or a shortwave radio. She lived off the land and her small truck garden. Between the garden, fishing and hunting gave her almost everything she needed. Once every three months or so, she would drive to the store and get supplies. Generally, all she would pick up was gunpowder, lead for bullets, cornflower, salt, pepper, and kerosene. Sometimes she would splurge and buy herself an ice cream bar to munch on. Then after filling up her truck she would return to her cabin once more.
While there were times that Sally was lonely, she lived a happy and more importantly peaceful life. She had been there for a few years when she first found the store empty. Going in she gathered up her supplies and loaded her truck. Then when Floyd had not returned from lunch, she sat and waited. By four o'clock without him returning or seeing any sign that he would be back, she left some money under the drawer in his cash register and a note saying she would get her change the next time around.
Over the years, Sally would find the store deserted about once every four visits. Every time she thought to ask about it, Floyd had looked at her as if she had lost her mind and change the subject. Taking the hint, she stopped bringing it up. All that changed when she found the store empty two times in a row. Not only was the store empty, the note and cash she had left in the cash register was still there from her earlier visit.
It was then that she noticed the light hazing of dust on everything. While Floyd was not a neat freak, he did dust now and then. However, now the shop looked like it had not been dusted since the last time she had come. Sally wondered what was going on. The power was on and when she opened the freezer she saw that the ice cream bars he had were still frozen. Heading outside, she looked up and down the small main street. "Where is everyone?" she asked. The cars and trucks were parked on the street, but there was no sign of people.
Walking up to the bank, Sally looked in before entering. Like Floyd's store the bank was open and yet devoid of people. "Hello," she called out. Not receiving an answer, she went back outside. She could hear birds and other nature sounds, but no man made ones. She felt a chill run down her back suddenly and it felt like the time when she had been hunting her first bear. Instead her hunting it, it had been hunting her and she had almost lost her life in the fight.
Hurrying back to the store she jumped into her truck. She was about to start it and hurry home when she realized she had better get as much as she could carry. She would settle up with Floyd next time if he was still around. It took Sally the better part of an hour to load her truck with everything she could carry.
When she arrived home the sun was setting and any other time she would have stopped and watched it. Today, though she felt a sense of urgency that she had not felt in a long time. Pulling around to the back of the house, Sally proceeded to unload everything. Once the truck was unloaded she pulled it off to the side and covered it with an old tarp, just like she always did.
Sally knew the dangers of wild beasts both two and four legged. It was for this reason that she took care in building her house. From the outside it looked like a log cabin with a small smoke house, well and an outhouse. What was not showing was a huge basement that was near three times the house. The basement had a root cellar where she would store her food goods, a general basement where she kept her supplies, gun room, and most important to her now, a panic room. From the basement you could go up to the main house via a small trap door in the living room, or she could exit via one of the tunnels she had built over the years.
Once everything was put up properly, Sally fired up the shortwave. She scanned the frequencies for the sounds of people but only heard the hiss of static. As she raised the mic to her mouth, she set it back down. Until she knew what was going on, Sally was not going to advertise her presence. Turning off the shortwave radio she instead took a piece of paper and tried to find the cause for town to be empty.
Plague: No, if people had gotten sick suddenly then the store and bank would have been closed.
War: No, same thing
Gangs: No. The store would have been cleaned out.
Government: No. Some would not have gone and there would have been signs of a quick evacuation.
After staring at the list for a while Sally decided she didn't know anymore then she had at the onset. She needed more information. That meant that tomorrow she would have to go back to town first thing in the morning and do a real search. Not just of the town proper, but the houses also. Somewhere out there had to be the answer and she was going to find it.
When the sun peaked out from behind the mountains, Sally was ready. Not only did she have her trusty .30-30, she also had a 9mm semi auto pistol in a shoulder holster, and her bear rifle a .405 Winchester. Loading the truck did not take long and by seven am she was on her way. She was about fifteen minutes out when suddenly her radio came to life. While that was surprising, the song it played was one she knew and had not heard in at least ten years. By the end of the first few words she was singing along haven forgotten why she was headed to town. When the song ended the radio suddenly went silent once more. Sally pulled off the road and sat staring at the radio as if it was about to come to life and talk to her. She looked wildly around the deserted road and wondered where she was and what was going on.
Suddenly it came back to her; she was going to solve the mystery of why everyone was missing. Feeling a cold chill Sally realized she was in something deeper then she had imagined. Had she not been closer to town then her cabin, she would have turned around and gone home. Just as it had been the day before the streets were devoid of life. Driving slowly with her window down, Sally looked left and right for any signs of people.
