Every year on April twelfth, millions of people vanished. No smoke, no sign, nothing at all. 2.5% of the entire world's population, every year without fail. There didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to who, it was random. Old, young, pretty, ugly, famous, nobodies. April fifteenth was the day with the largest suicide rate since the Vanishing had started sixteen years past. In the last five years, April twelfth had also become a huge day for abductions. The police thought that maybe it had been going on longer, but it was hard to tell. The percentage had always been exact before, but recently it had started going up noticeably. People killing off rivals, ex's, trying to hide the bodies. People abducting kids, girls, anyone. It was the day to get away with anything. Since the Vanishing began, the world had slowed down considerably.
When April arrived, people started trying anything to make sure they didn't vanish. Church, jail, wrapping themselves in tin foil, going underground, living in bunkers and caves. Nothing ever worked. Ever. There was no way to escape, no way to know who was going to be next. You just bought Vanishing insurance and hoped your family never got to collect. Some people threw huge parties, getting high, going on spending spree's thinking they will never have to pay it back. The days following the Vanishing, the return lines are worse than the days after Christmas. A few years back, stores began putting spend limits on the first weeks of April. No large purchases at all.
The Vanishing had changed the face of the world.
Lydia was sitting alone at her family farm, looking up at the sky when April twelfth rolled around. She stared up and waited. She was the only Barzelai left now and she kept expecting to be taken. Three years now and she was still here, still the last one left. She got up when the sun began lighting the horizon and sighed. She had planned on staying awake all day, she wanted to see it coming, but she was exhausted.
She walked back to the house, shivering. It was huge and empty, the quiet oppressive now. Her father would have been up by now, starting on chores. Her mother would be in the huge kitchen with her grandmother, talking as they started breakfast. Her older brother would be off to college by now, but she could remember him hurrying out the door this early, trying not to be late for practice. Her younger brothers would be fighting, arguing over something stupid and her youngest sister would be in the bathroom, hogging the mirror for her tweenage make-up. Julie had been the first. Lydia's mom had been heartbroken, inconsolable. When her grandmother and older brother had been taken the next year, Lydia's mother had become a April fifteenth statistic. That September, her father had become a drinking and driving statistic. The Vanishing took her cousins, aunts, uncles and brothers before it took her grandfather. She was all there was and the house seemed to know it would be empty soon. It stayed quiet as if it were already mourning her loss.
Lydia fell into bed after shucking her coat and shoes, not bothering with anything else. Adrenaline had kept her up for the past twenty nine hours, but she couldn't keep her eyes open another minute now that the day was here. Reports would be in all day, the news rolling with the names of celebrities and famous people as they vanished. Texts would be sent out, everyone would be checking on everyone. Lydia had turned her phone off and had told her few friends that she wouldn't be home. She was safe from busy bodies and woe to any looter who thought to check her farm. Her father and grandfather had left behind a gun collection to rival an entire backwoods militia.
To her surprise, she woke to voices. Loud, male voices. She started to sit up just as her bedroom door opened.
"Lyd! You are still here," Mason jeered.
Lydia scowled and got up, yanking the shotgun out from under her pillow. Mason was Halt's older brother. Halt had been her best friend and the boy she had been in love with since she was six. Halt had vanished last year while holding her hand. Mason had been a dick before Halt had vanished, but now he was a complete punk on top of it.
"Get out Mason," she snapped, leveling the gun at his chest.
His friends hooted with laughter as they pushed in behind him. "You going to shoot me just for checking on you?" he asked, grinning. He looked a little like Halt, but where Halt had been diminutive and sickly, Mason had gotten his father's genes. Big and burly, strong. Halt had been a premie and battled childhood cancer. He was never going to grow into one of the huge Barstow boys. Lydia liked that about him, he never made her feel tiny. The brothers had the same red hair and brown eyes, but that was where the similarities had ended.
Mason circled her now as his three friends spread out.
"What do you want, Mason?" she demanded, feeling a little afraid now.
"Like I said, I was checking on you. Halt would have wanted me to make sure you were ok."
"You aren't getting Daddy's guns, Mason. I've hidden all of them but a few."
"Not here for the guns, babe. How old are you now? I mean, Halt would have been nineteen or something, so you are at least eighteen now, right?"
Lydia froze, terrified.
"She looks old enough to at least suck a cock," Warren said, rubbing the bulge in his pants.
"Fuck off Warren, Lydia is mine. We each picked and you picked Mariah. Not my fault she Vanished," Mason snarled.
"Dude, you never gave anyone else an option, you claimed Lydia out the gate!" Mick said, rolling his eyes.
"Fuck off man, we saw Sarah, we will grab her later."
"I'm just saying, it's not like anyone else had a choice when it came to Lydia. You claimed her the second you told us about this plan of yours!"
"Because she is fucking mine!" Mason yelled, rounding on his friend.
"All of you get out!" Lydia screamed, shaking and trying to point the shotgun at all of them at once.
Mason spun back to her, slapped the barrel of the shotgun up to the ceiling, then jerked it away from her. He unloaded it in two rapid pumps, then tossed it to the floor. He moved closer to Lydia, backing her to a corner.
"Eighteen? Nineteen? How old Lydia?" he asked, his voice rough.
"Does it matter?" she screamed, her knees trying to buckle.
He shrugged. "Not really. Gonna fuck you either way, I just want to know."
"You're an asshole!" Lydia screamed as she broke down sobbing. "Halt would have been twenty one this year!"
Mason shrugged again. "He was always such a little squirt, it was hard to tell. So you are twenty?"
"She don't look twenty," Nate said dubiously.
