The panic subsided as David got behind the wheel of his car. He started the engine, but he couldn't think of anywhere to go. Eventually he pulled out of the parking lot and drove aimlessly through town. He didn't see anyone anywhere. He stopped at a grocery store and a fast food restaurant, but found the same results as at the Target.
After an hour David was bored and decided to go home. On his way he stopped at the Target again and decided to pick up some food and drinks. It felt wrong, but once again getting caught would come as a relief. No one stopped him.
David returned home and sat at his kitchen table, eating his stolen food. He considered what the possibilities could be:
1) a catastrophic event had occurred and killed everyone else - but where were the bodies? And why hadn't he been killed?
2) aliens had abducted everyone - but why had they left David?
3) the rapture had happened and David was the only one that didn't get into heaven - but there's no way that David could be a worse person than the creepy old man neighbor or the guy across the street that wore tennis shoes with khaki pants and just had to be a child molester; or
4) that David was just dreaming and would wake up at any second.
The fourth option seemed to be the most likely explanation that he could think of, but he had never had a dream this vivid and it occurred to him that usually you wake up when you realize in a dream that you are dreaming.
He even went so far as to go back to bed in an attempt to fall asleep and wake up back in the real world. But he couldn't fall asleep. His mind was swimming with fear and confusion. Eventually he got back up and took a cold shower to clear out any remaining cobwebs. After getting himself cleaned up he decided to drive into the city to check out his office building. Even though it was Saturday, there would normally be some people working and going downtown would give him an idea of the extent of what was happening.
The commute into the city was easy since there were no other cars on the road. It occurred to him that a catastrophic event or the sudden occurrance of the rapture would probably result in abandoned or wrecked cars along the road, but curiously there weren't any. The roads were just empty.
Downtown, and his office building, were completely empty. Like the Target, there were a few cars in the parking lot that gave him hope, but upon further inspection, there were no accompanying people to the cars. He became more brazen in his law breaking: the doors to the building were electronically locked and the power was off, so his key card didn't work, so he smashed the glass doors with a large rock. Even after everything he'd seen that day, he still expected the police to show up after his vandalization, but nothing happened.
The building was spooky in its silence, but offered him no additional information. David went to his cubicle and sat at his desk. The thought suddenly occurred to him that his life had fundamentally changed and that he would never work at that desk again. The panicky feeling in his stomach returned at that thought, even though he hated his job and wanted nothing more than to quit to do something else.
He walked back to the front of the building and was wondering why the thought of never working again bothered him so much when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
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