Jason had stopped counting the days since he started waiting.
He knew, in the vague, exhausted way a person keeps track of time when nothing about their situation has changed in any of them, that it had been over two weeks since his parents left for their business trip. Two weeks since the world ended while they were somewhere on the other side of the city, or maybe further, and he had no way of knowing whether they'd even made it out of whatever building or hotel or conference room they'd been in when the red sun first rose.
He sat on the floor of his own apartment now, back against the couch, a flashlight resting beside him with its batteries down to the last quarter of their charge. The power had gone out with the rest of the building twenty minutes ago, and the darkness pressing in against the windows felt heavier than it had the night before, though he couldn't have said exactly why.
