Ten years had passed since the dead rose and Belle was a young woman working in a shop inside of what had been heralded as the safest building in what was left of America. There was a waitlist for the building and the price to enter was not cheap. Only people that had been able to create something in this new economy for themselves ever had the money to be able to live in the upper part of the tall building. The others lived on the lower floors, barely scraping by and keeping ravenous dead at bay. From floor twenty to thirty-five, those that had little to know money scraped out their lives. From thirty-six to one hundred four, the well off members of the community laid their heads. Belle was fortunate. She was able to sleep in the back of her tiny shop that used to be the corner office of some high powered executive back when New York City was still New York City and this building had still been One World Trade Center. It retained the name after the end of the world, but it was now a home for those that remained in New York, much like all of the buildings that were able to leave several floors empty on the ground level. Central Park Tower, what used to be the Sears Tower, Steinway, the Empire State Building, Three World Trade, and the Chrysler were now serving a new purpose. There were probably buildings like this all over the former United States, keeping the people safe on the upper floors.

Belle locked the door to her shop and pulled the shades on the windows that looked out onto the floor that used to be cubicles, but now those cubicles to sell the goods that were scavenged at great risk. She sat on top of the huge, heavy, wood desk that served as her counter and looked out over the city as the sun was going down. The sixty-eighth floor offered a stunning view of the city. In this case, however, the destruction Belle saw was stunning. Every night she looked out over what used to be New York City with its collapsed bridges and tunnels, streets jammed with rusted out cars, piles of bones littering the sidewalk, and she thought about what had brought her into the city the day everything fell to pieces.

Belle had been fifteen and skipping school to go into the city with her friends. Their parents knew and they had always made an exception for the occasional “mental health day” and Belle was looking forward to shopping and a nice lunch to get out of the rich suburb she lived in and the private school she spent her days in. The girls had been sitting outside, giggling over a picture that had been sent to one of them over Snap when Belle heard the scream. It was the most horrible thing she had ever heard up to that point. Belle stood up and stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to look down the street. She saw people running around down the street, which made Belle feel a bit uneasy. 

As the people continued up the street, Belle began to try and get her friends to start running. There was something going on that made Belle very uncomfortable. Her friends were slowly gathering up their bags when something flew into them, tackling the two girls into the table and to the ground. There was screaming, hissing, moaning and a flurry of limbs. Belle ran. Looking back on it she felt a twinge of shame for running away from her friends, but looking back with the knowledge that she has now, she knew that there was nothing that she could do for them.

Belle had gone back there once after the city was somewhat safe. The restaurant was there. Most of the tables outside had been flipped over and the umbrellas were ragged. She remembered the place where they had been sitting. Some of their bags from shopping had been sitting there. She sat down in a rusting chair and began to cry. She didn’t know if the bones sitting next to her belonged to her friends or not. She didn’t know if they had gotten infected, died, or gotten away and she probably never would.

Belle watched the last of the light fade away and the candles and lanterns light in a few of the windows in the taller buildings and the immeasurable stars light the night sky over the nothing that remained.