QR Dead

The village feels dead. No one is around — only the crows, who keep startling him, and a pitiful howl that rises every time he passes the shack. It seems like only his grandfather and he are left. Grandfather has been ill for days, coughing, struggling to breathe, barely leaving bed. Today, in a voice barely above a whisper, grandfather asked him to find herbs for a restorative infusion. He went outside to look. What he found was thick fog and streets with no living people in them — streets that looked as though no one had lived there for a very long time. Back inside, the silence pressed down harder than the fog. He tried to pray, the way his mother taught him. The words would not form. Instead, a whisper entered his mind: the prayers were meaningless now. What happened here? He cannot remember.