Seven

David had heard the voices on a couple of occasions in the first few days.  He had tried chasing them down again and tried yelling for them to hear him, but it had never worked.  Then one day he heard them while he was searching a drug store for some first aid supplies.  He had stopped in an aisle in front of the condoms, thinking about how he would never have a need for them again and wondering if it made him less of a man that he didn't really miss sex.  He had distractedly pulled a condom out of its package and was looking at it, thinking how primitive the concept of condoms really were, when he heard the voices again.

He immediately jerked his head around, looking for the people talking.  But he didn't call out or run looking for anyone.  Instead, he thought "I've got too much other shit to do, I don't have time for wild goose chases," and he dropped the condom and went about looking for the supplies he wanted.  The voices faded and he hadn't heard them since then.



Then, about three months later, David heard them again, but this time in his house.  He had all but forgotten that he had ever heard voices by that time.  The strangeness of the first few days seemed like a dream that faded with each passing day.  He never thought about what had happened to him anymore and he struggled to remember the details of his former life. 

His time was consumed with scavenging for supplies and living a life of leisure in his house/fortress.  He had come to love the life he was leading and the comfortable surroundings he had made for himself.  When he looked at himself in the mirror he liked what he saw now.  The physical labor he'd put in to set up his fortress had toned his formerly flabby physique and somehow his face seemed younger.

So when he heard voices again after so long and this time inside his fortress, David felt threatened.  He immediately grabbed his shotgun.  As usual, he couldn't really tell where the voices were coming from, so he went upstairs and searched each room.  He started at the far end of the hall, with the guest bedrooms.  He didn't use those rooms for anything and hadn't been back there for days.

David crouched slightly and held the shotgun in front of him as he slipped around the corner and into the first room.  He checked behind the door and then swept the room from his left to his right, imitating what he'd seen in movies.  Just as David was lifting the bed skirt with the barrel of his shotgun to look under the bed, he distinctly heard a voice ask "He won't feel it?"

The words shook him.  He had never been able to understand anything that the voices said before and now they were clearly talking about him.  Or so he assumed. 

David rushed from the room and abandoned caution as he burst into the second guest room.  He quickly surveyed the empty room and ran to the master bedroom.  His heart was pounding as he turned the corner and went through the doorway.  He saw movement to his right and jerked the gun in that direction and fired.  The sound of the gun roared through the relative silence, but David didn't even notice the resulting ringing in his ears. 

He quickly ducked behind the bed and, barrel of his shotgun first, peeked around the corner of the bed towards where he had fired the gun.  The metallic taste of adrenaline was in his mouth as he saw that the corner of the room was empty.  His shotgun blast had left a hole in the wall and the remains of a framed picture littered the floor. 

Suddenly David felt foolish.  He had seen his own reflection in the glass of the picture.  He walked into the bathroom much more cautiously.  He caught his reflection in the mirror and almost fired again.  He barely recognized himself - the strain and adrenaline had pulled his face taut.  He looked terrified and old.

Not finding anything in the bathroom or the closet, David started to make his way back downstairs.  He again heard the voices - just murmurs this time, nothing distinct.  He crouched down again and crept through the living room with the his shotgun at the ready. 

David's house had an open floor plan, with the kitchen and the living room not being separated by any walls.  The ground floor was set up in the shape of an 'L' with the kitchen forming the shorter leg at a right angle to the living room.  David crept along the wall to the inside of the right angle.  The murmuring seemed to get increasingly louder as he got closer to the kitchen.  A drop of sweat ran down his face and tickled his nose.  David absent-mindedly wiped it away as he prepared to turn the corner.

He was confused.  The voices continued to get louder, but he couldn't understand the words.  He could feel the blood pumping in his ears and his hands were shaking.  The sound seemed like a malevolent roar - a million voices all talking at once.  David swallowed hard and jumped around the corner.

At first he saw nothing, then there was a flash of blinding white light and David was knocked backwards by an intense pain shooting through his limbs.