Every so often, he would glance at the woman in the back of the van. A beautiful red-haired girl lay slumped against one of the vehicle's walls. Though dressed modestly, her simple everyday-jeans showcased her slender figure, and her over sized hoodie failed to mask her heaving chest. At first he felt bad about what he did, but he had to knock her out.

He drove carefully through the street; one had to drive at a very precise speed to avoid attracting the attention of criminals or law enforcement. He didn't dare observe his surroundings; he kept his eyes on the road. People with wandering eyes often met a very grisly fate here. He was choosing a long, winding path; his priority was not a rapid arrival at his destination. He preferred to sacrifice speed in exchange for solitude, so he drove on roads that tended to have very little traffic; he knew that people were dangerous, and that it was better to avoid them as much as possible.

It was of critical importance that he find an isolated, secluded place, somewhere that people tended to avoid. Privacy and solitude were necessary for him to accomplish his goal. He chuckled to himself thinking of the ideas people would get seeing him right now. They would never guess him to be the good guy.

It was raining heavily, but he spotted not a single pedestrian wearing a raincoat or using an umbrella. Neither the people nor their accompanying evil seemed troubled by the downpour. Many of them seemed to be in denial, complaining about how blindingly bright and cloudless the sky was. It reminded him of a time months ago, when he'd seen a small girl -- no more than twelve years old -- stand and wait in the rain and bitter cold for several hours without displaying even the slightest bit of discomfort. He'd worried that she'd catch hypothermia, but nothing of the sort happened. She was perfectly fine. Eventually, however, bats began to encircle her. It was his first time seeing this type of Sign, so he didn't actually take it as one. When he saw what happened to her on the news, it was obviously too late.

But this time, he knew what the bats meant as they circled the redhead. He saw them several minutes before their hosts arrived on the scene. By the time the criminals had got there, he'd managed to find a tire iron. When they ambushed the woman in the alley, he made short work of most of them... but there might have been more nearby. The woman tried to run as well; a fast but light blow to the head curtailed the attempt. he had to do it - the bats were still around her! After that, he had to steal an unattended van, and in a city where the average citizen is too afraid to contact the authorities for any reason, such a task was ridiculously easy.

In the interest of maintaining their own physical safety, the helpless sheep in this city deliberately ignored crime and therefore evil. He, however, watched it, unafraid. He bore witness to the heartlessness of the criminals here. He'd watched such travesties for so long that he began to see evil itself. He could smell the sulfurous stench of sin as he drove through the city streets, and he could see the sickening spirits and shades of violence, rape, and death. He could see evil, and avoid it much more effectively than the sighted-yet-blind fools that called this city "home".

He was forced to observe evil day after day, and yet through willful ignorance, the average Joe was free to simply ignore it. So long as a person kept their head down, their eyes closed, and their mouth shut, they could remain safe and protected -- but he did not have that privilege. He had to watch the horrible things that people did to one another. He couldn't look away. The masses, the average ones, though, they could -- and he resented them for it. Furthermore, he believed that by looking the other way, these blind imbeciles condoned -- if not encouraged -- such horrors. It was that fact that had, years ago, turned his resentment into bitter hatred.

He resented the woman in the backseat of the van. He hated her. She was just another privileged, stupid fool. She knew nothing of evil. He had no sympathy for such people.

The sadists that had attacked the woman were members of an extremely ruthless street gang known for indiscriminate brutality and unprovoked attacks on women and children. By rescuing the woman -- and, more significantly, killing multiple members of this gang -- he had made her and himself targets. Had she managed to flee, the gang would have easily and quickly tracked her down, for she knew nothing of evil, and hence did not know how to hide from it.

He couldn't take her the police out of fear of what ideas they might have of him with an injured women he sort of kidnapped. He knew of a safe place where they could hide. It was an abandoned and dilapidated warehouse that he had stumbled upon eight months ago. It was a place devoid of human activity and hence of human evil. He planned to take the woman there, and keep her safe until she woke up and could tell him how to drive her home.

Taking her out of the car, he looked around to make sure they hadn't been followed. A smile briefly flashed across his face as he pictured what people would think if they saw him now, when it couldn't be more the opposite. Now looking down at her in his arms, he knew he underestimated just how attractive she was. While still unconscious being carried inside, she stirred a little relieving him that she was alright. A moan escaped her closed mouth has he set her on the floor, and her hand subconsciously grabbed his arm, sending a chill down his spine before she let go. He went around to secured the room, all the while glancing over at the girl. At first it was a look of love, but that quickly faded as the reality of the situation crept in. "She's going to freak out when she comes around. No 'thanks', just fear. She probably won't even remember exactly what happened, and blame me somehow. I had to do what I did! She's just like the rest of them, ignorant to the evil. It's not fair! She owes me for -" His train of thought is broken as bats begin to envelope the room. His instincts snap him back into that familiar, protective, state of mind. He runs to the window to see who has followed them, but how could they have? He was so careful! The empty landscape outside tells him that they weren't followed. He turns back in confusion. So it was just him and the redhead alone?

He begins to have ideas.

Awake.

He doesn't know where he is... He feels concrete, he's lying on cold concrete, the room is bright, sunny -- where is this? How did he get here? One moment, he was in his lab, the next -- is that blood? There's blood on his hand, it's dried -- he doesn't feel wounded, so where did it come from? He stands up, looks around, it's a large room, empty, sunlight shining in from the damaged -- what happened to the ceiling? This building has no ceiling! There's no one else here -- why is he in a place like this by himself? Where is this place? How long has he been here? He walks to the door, opens it, steps out--

Outside. As Dr. Peter Lewis, biologist, struggled to process the bizarre scene around him, he regained his awareness.

Dust and sand covered every surface. Abandoned skyscrapers surrounded him; translucent tarp covered massive holes and gaps once sealed by jet black glass. The ice cold wind blew restlessly, turning these buildings' faces into flowing plastic waves. Damaged, dented cars were parked all along the sidewalks; glass shards stuck out from where windows once resided. Spiderweb cracks ran across the fractured, beaten, smashed-up asphalt. Bent road signs, ripped from their posts, were scattered across the ground. And oddly, the smell of sweat permeated the winds that blew across this vista of urban decay.

Concrete blockades prevented any travel to the right, so Peter headed left, walking down the ruined city street. It wasn't before long that he saw an arrow drawn in white chalk on the ground before him; it pointed forward. He stopped for a moment and looked around, but saw no one. Lacking any reason to change his course, he continued walking in that direction. After about a minute, he saw another arrow; this one was spraypainted on a wall, in white, and it pointed into an alleyway that lay to his left. Curious, Peter walked into the alley.

The alley was a dead end. A building blocked the sun, bathing the narrow alley in perpetual shadow. A dumpster lay at the alley's end. A message had been spraypainted in black on the side of the closed dumpster, but in the shade, it blended in with the dumpster's dark, olive drab color. Peter moved closer, and from a distance of a few feet, he was finally able to read the message, which consisted of one word: "RUN."

He heard a footstep above him, and looked up. He saw a human silhouette in a window several stories above; the figure leapt through the window, smashing into the top of the dumpster and rolling down onto the broken sidewalk. Peter stepped back, narrowly avoiding the glass shards that rained down on the dumpster, and looked down at the motionless jumper.

The person -- a man -- was clearly dead. His skin was pale, so pale and unpigmented that the man's veins and arteries were clearly visible. He had not a single hair on his body, and he was unusually muscular. His clothing was shredded and torn -- the man was barely decent! Peter took a step closer, intending to inspect the body more closely. Peter wondered why the man looked so odd, and why he had jumped out of a building and to his death.

It was at that precise moment that Peter heard a loud gurgling sound coming from the man's throat. Peter flinched and stepped back, surprised that the man was still alive. The man started to right himself, but couldn't stand; the fall had shattered his legs. He had broken more than that, actually; Peter noticed that one of the man's ribs was protruding from his chest, having bent and pierced the man's heart... and despite this mortal wound, the man was still crawling closer and closer toward Peter! A crazed glare adorned the man's bloodstained face as he pulled himself toward his intended prey.

Now thoroughly filled with fear, Peter ran out into the street and turned to look back at the "man". He was crawling faster, now -- almost at walking speed! But when the "man" made it out of the alley -- out of the shade -- he stopped for a moment, shielding his blinded eyes with one arm and roaring in pain. He turned onto his side, and started pulling himself closer to Peter with the other arm, but by then Peter was several yards off, and still running away in fear.

-

Tired out from having run continuously for a full thirty minutes, Peter stopped and leaned against an abandoned car to rest. As he looked around to make sure the area was safe, a piece of paper stapled to a telephone pole caught his eye. Still tired, he staggered over to the notice, and read it. It was a torn chunk of a newspaper's front page. Someone had scribbled out most of the text, and scrawled the words "YOU SMELL THEM AND THEY SMELL YOU" onto the page. But what caught Peter's eye was the date. Peter knew for a fact that today's date was September 7th, 2011... but the newspaper's date was July 22nd, 2014.

A faint marking behind the paper caught Peter's eye. He ripped it from the telephone pole and turned it around. Written on the back was, "THEY'RE COMING FOR YOU."

Peter suddenly realized that the sun was setting, and that he had only minutes before the entire city was bathed in the shadows of a moonless Winter night. Frantically, he looked around for shelter, and he darted through the first open door he saw...