Anton

Character introduction chapter, each of my main characters are introduced in their own short chapters at the beginning of the book.

Chapter 1: Anton

Anton Richards began to laugh. It began as an imperceptible giggle, mostly only to himself, but aloud none the less. He felt different somehow this morning. The thought that he was alone never really occurred to him. He had showered, and dressed himself as usual. And he had doted upon himself with his usual breakfast of dry toast and black coffee. He had cleaned up the kitchen and had put away the previous evening’s dishes. Everything appeared to be right with the world. But there was that little nervous … was it nervousness … perhaps it was. There was that giggle again.

He walked towards the door leading to the garage stopping to gather his brief case, his car keys, and to straighten his tie in the mirror by the door. As he pulled open the door and entered the garage he snickered a bit.

“You are totally cracking up my friend”, he whispered to himself to be sure that no one could hear his momentary unsteadiness while regarding the depth of his sanity.

He opened the door to his slate gray Chrysler 300 and deposited himself in the driver’s seat. With a pilots precision he started the car, pressed the button on the garage door remote and patiently waited for the door to creep open. He would usually begin to think that maybe the motor in the Black & Decker garage door opener was getting weak, but today there was only the slight flutter of a stifled giggle in his chest.He pressed the remote button once again to close the door noting that his fireman neighbor’s jacked up SUV was still parked in his yard.

“Must not have the early shift this week”, he mused as he looked for traffic, backed out onto his street and drove away from his house. It was a quick two blocks to the stop light at Lincoln Boulevard and then a right turn towards the Santa Monica Freeway.

It was 8:30 am on a Monday and traffic was very light. As he drove the final hundred yards or so to the freeway he heard himself whine … just a little, but it was a whine.

He drove down the gentle slope of the onramp and accelerated noticing that he had a gap in the usually gridlocked Los Angeles area morning traffic. He checked his rearview mirror for cars that he might have to merge with and there were none. The freeway was completely clear. In fact the only thing moving at all was a stray sheet of newsprint lilting on the abnormally gentle summer California breeze. Shaking off the strangeness of it all Anton continued towards downtown L.A. and the high-rise where he worked as a mechanical engineer.

On any normal Monday he would be spending a considerable portion of his commute in nearly complete gridlock. On this day, this cloudless, nearly smog free day the drive took twenty minutes. During the entirety of his trip he passed not one, but exactly zero other vehicles of any kind.

He parked his car in the underground garage, as usual, failing to register the absence of other conveyances. He pressed the elevator call button and the doors opened nearly instantaneously. Anton began to shake. Not full blown seizure shakes, but that slight shakiness one gets when hunger kicks in with gusto.

“This is going to be some charmed day”, he said out loud as he checked the time on his watch and suddenly burst out in a shrill, stuttered laugh that was more like a shout than anything that might be caused by humor.

He entered the elevator car and pressed the button for the 23^rd floor. Expecting the usual half dozen or so stops along the way in the normally busy office tower Anton was nearly in tears with laughter as the elevator arrived at his destination without a single stop. It was as direct a journey as his commute had been. He wiped his eyes and tried to control what was quickly becoming hysterics as the elevator doors slid open to reveal his floor.

“Roxanne, you’re not going to believe…”, he began but was halted as though something had disconnected the vocal centers of his brain. The office was quiet. No, not just quiet but a more exact term spilled from his now visibly quivering lips. “Creepy”, he mumbled.

He staggered passed the reception desk where Roxanne usually stood her post as a security guard. As he wandered through his company’s offices he encountered no one. There was no activity and almost no sound. The fans whirred, the clocks ticked, and the bubbler even gurgled. There was also a hum. It was odd, and he couldn’t place it. Searching for the source, thinking it might have something to do with why no one was around; he finally came to it. It was the usually inaudible, nearly imperceptible sound of the fluorescent lights. Everything else was quiet, still and peaceful. Even the phones were silent.

“Okay, fun’s over!”, he shouted and after a pause long enough to take in a slow, deliberate, shuddering breath, “Olly, Olly OXENFREE!!!”

The laughter was gone now. Something was wrong with all this. Thinking as quickly as he was able and moving quicker, he made his way to the floor maintenance office down the hall. He checked the calendar posted beside the door.

“Nothing”, he mumbled to the shine on the polished marble floor.

The calendar showed no items for today; the truth was that nothing laborious had been scheduled for the entire week. He had expected, or hoped, that it was some sort of fumigation scheduled that he had not been made aware of.

Anton checked his iPhone. His calendar app showed that he had no appointments planned and it was not a holiday.

“Gnaaaah!”, he grunted and slapped his forehead.

A faded and ignored memory flooded his shock drunk mind.

“F**k! They’re on the roof!”, he stated to the empty corridor and calmly turned and walked towards the elevators once again.

A chilling thought emerged as he waited for his requested elevator car to take him to the observation deck and the roof access stairwell that waited there.

“It’s not the 21^st”, he babbled, “and it’s not sunrise.”

He entered the elevator and pressed the button as the memory completely reformed. The thought became the focus of his mind as he remembered a very excited Julie Bateman announcing that the management had finally relented and were going to allow her to conduct a service of some kind at dawn on the heliport. But that was supposed to be on the 21^st. That had been nearly a week ago. For a moment, as he waited to arrive on the observation deck, he allowed himself to wonder how that had gone.

“Maybe they’re up there today too”, he offered to the silent elevator car.

In fairly short order the car came to a stop on the ninety-fifth floor, the top most floor of the monstrosity which had been his professional home since he had graduated from college. The doors chimed their eminent opening and Anton prepared himself to chide everyone he found there. A definite dressing down was in order for these ruffians that would leave him to believe that the building was empty.

The doors whispered open.

“F**k”, he almost whispered to himself.

Anton Richards was still alone. He wandered about the observation deck doing anything but observing. Had he bothered to look out towards L.A.X. (Los Angeles International Airport) he might have noticed that this was not a singular event, and likely not a local phenomenon.

Richards walked towards a door marked:

ROOF:

Expect Strong Winds and Helicopter Rotorwash

AUTHORIZED PERSONELL ONLY!

He looked towards the place where a heliport staffer would usually be stationed; there was still no one standing post ready to intervene if someone unauthorized tried to access the roof.

"It's probably locked”, he quipped.

It was.

Defeated, for now, he walked to one of the huge windows that made up the exterior walls on this floor. He had never seen the Los Angeles sky so clear. Gone was the ever-present haze of LA basin smog. Well, nearly gone anyway. He walked the perimeter of the observation room, which was more of a corridor set along the outer walls of the top floor. As he walked he was awe struck. He could see most of the city clearly, only trees, mountains and other buildings obstructed his view. He could see the palisades, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, the Hollywood sign, Long Beach, and off in the distance … beyond the beach … he could just make out a hint of the island of Catalina.

“Wow!”, he exclaimed to the view itself, “Maybe an empty LA isn’t that tragic after all.”

It was then that he noticed it at long last. There was no movement in the city at all. There were birds and other animals, but he didn’t notice them, he never did.

He abruptly turned and marched in the direction of the guards post, determined to check the roof. Rifling through the guard’s desk he found a key marked “Emergency Access - Roof”.

“Score!”, he shouted his eerily echoing victory. He blushed to himself as he walked to the door, inserted the key, turned it, opened the door, and strode through.

As a sort of unconscious after thought he caught the door before it closed. He reentered the observation gallery and dragged the security officer’s small desk to the door and propped it open. He would never be certain why he did this, and would always suspect that he knew the door would lock if it closed. He would guess that his primitive mind didn’t want to die of exposure or leap to his death because of a stupidly locked door. Whatever the reason he emerged on the cat-walk to the helipad to find the roof devoid of life and empty except for an abandoned Bell Jetranger helicopter.

“HELLO!!!”, he bellowed realizing that, at least for now, there would be no response. Anton Richards began to laugh, knowing for certain that he was alone.