By the time the raven came back, I had nearly bored myself to death. After sitting on the overturned bin for half an hour, I'd gone into one of the houses in order to find some sewing supplies - it wouldn't do for my pack to spill its contents while I'm running from a monster.

I eventually did find some in the attic, which smelled and looked like it hadn't seen a human enter in multiple years, returned to the street, and was in the middle of stitching a new button when I heard fluttering wings, and felt taloned feet dig into my shoulder. I couldn’t help but flinch a bit at the sudden contact, I’d not been expecting it and was focused on the task in front of me. Luckily for the raven I held my composure together and just about avoided swatting at it.

The raven cawed once, then dropped something in my lap, looking at me expectantly.

I put aside the tiny little needle and thread, and moved to pick up the object. It was a medium-small dark gray cylinder, with one end glass, and the other end apparently unscrewable. What prevented me from drawing the conclusion of "flashlight" though were some additions to the frame: an array of two lenses affixed to the glowy end, and a series of AA batteries wrapped around the handle, just below the button that would turn it on. There was a hole in the frame, through which wires connected to the batteries.

I looked at the raven questioningly, and it inclined its head. No instructions?

When I tried to look at the lenses from above, it fluttered its wings, I fumbled and dropped the device on my pack. No looking at it, alright. I pointed the ...flashlight? Laser pointer? at a nearby wall, and pressed the button on its side, then immediately closed my eyes, because there was a blinding flash of light.

When I opened them again, the wall had a big scorch mark in it.

The raven jumped off my shoulder, grabbed a piece of charcoal in its beak, and drew something around the scorch mark.

At first, I didn't know what it was, but then I realized: It was an amorphous mass, just like the shadow monster from last night. So that's how he drove it off. I tried to fire the flash-laser? flash-bulb? once again, but it only made a weak whirring noise this time. Upon closer inspection I saw that all three of the batteries taped to the outside had scorch marks on their contacts, and connected the dots. The weapon could only be fired once without "reloading", and required three batteries for it.

I studied the thing a bit more, finding tiny scratch marks on many of the components, before I noticed that it was quickly getting darker. Not wanting to spend another night out in the open, I quickly grabbed my pack and my staff, went over to the raven, who was enthralled by a stray newspaper page.

"Hey, you? You came back, so I assume that means you wanna come with me. Just ...clack your beak for yes?"

After a single clack from the raven, it jumped in the air, spread its wings, and landed on my shoulder. "Caw!" it said, possibly "yes" in ravenish. Or perhaps "Onward, steed".

***

We drove through the entire night.

I wasn't very comfortable with sleeping out in the open, or sleeping at all really, and preferred to put as much distance between us and the monster as possible. If that meant driving the entire night, so be it.

The nearly empty roads seemed to stretch on forever, Illuminated only by the high beams of the car and the pale moonlight. Either side of the road was lined by a forest of very similar looking temperate trees; although occasionally we did pass by a open field, a small hamlet or sometimes random crashed and stalled cars. In short, it was very monotonous.

So, getting bored out of my mind, the humming of the engine being one of the only sounds, I began to try and "talk" with the raven.

"So, little bird." I began. "Do you have a name?" It inclined its head, as if in thought, and then shook it, our agreed upon response for No.

"Would you mind if I gave you one, just for convenience?" This time, the answer was a single clack of its beak, its version of saying Yes.

"Alright. How about..."

And so we began a cycle of me suggesting names and the bird rejecting them. I eventually asked it what gender it was, just to narrow down the options, it looked at me with an incredulous look, and began opening my pack. Not wanting a repeat of the previous night's evisceration, I leaned over in a way that would not be endorsed by any driving school anywhere, and undid the buttons myself. The raven pulled out one of my dad's books, "Flora and Fauna of the Wild", began flipping through it.

Eventually, it had the page for corvids open, and stabbed its beak into one of the images. Alright, got that cleared up.

Meanwhile, the landscape was passing by outside. I drove slower, on account of the night and other, lightless cars, so we didn't make as much distance as I thought we would during the night. Still, we passed a few different towns, and had it been day, I'd have noticed the vegetation losing some of its yellow tint in favor of a richer green, evidence of our growing proximity to fresh water.

Eventually, that is to say one and a half hours later, I was grasping at straws.

"Shadow" shake

"Err..Dark...feather?" slower shake

"Fuck, I can't think of anything else. I've never had to name a raven." clack

"Wait, why...are you serious." clack clack clack

"No. I didn't go through an hour of suggesting names, only for you to take on the most obvious and unimaginative one of them all."

shake

I sighed deeply, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles became white.

"Fine. Raven it is then. But don't you dare ask me for another." clack

Several hours were spent in silence after that.

When the sun finally climbed over the horizon, we were still driving. Raven (ugh) had nestled herself into my pack, presumably to sleep among my bedroll, and I was more yawn than human. I'd wanted to make camp in a town, but I didn't believe I could stay awake for even a second longer, so I decided to stop our voyage for now, and get my sleep as well.

I pulled into an alcove at the side of the highway, it was a small ordeal; made from gravel that had grass and other weeds growing through it in various spots. Your typical under maintained layby, although thinking about it I guess no one will ever be maintaining it again at this rate.

Letting out a yawn, I pulled the key from the ignition, yawned again, and finally threw open the door.

When I flopped onto my feet beside the car, I did a big stretch, feeling several joints pop. I quickly closed the driver's door, went around and opened the passenger's door right behind it.

When I got in, I still had the presence of mind to close the door behind me and open the front windows, before hitting the backseat and instantly falling asleep.

***

I eventually awoke to the late afternoon sun glinting in my eyes, something I'd not considered when falling asleep like a piece of lead that morning.

Getting out of the car, I was reminded for the second time in a week that sleeping on the backseat of a car wasn't the best thing to do, and as I did my second stretch of the day, it felt as if I entire spine snapped back into place at once, causing a small wince.

The alcove I'd parked the car in was small, barely large enough for two of our current vehicle to fit, if there were more than one. Surrounding it, there was mostly grassland, with some forests in the distance, and gently rolling hills starting further west.

There weren't any clouds in the sky, and as such, the sun could illuminate everything in a warm light that promised heat and the quick evaporation of water in the future. Were it not still early spring, we'd probably both be dead from heat stroke. I suddenly remembered that I didn't pack any kind of sunblocker.

Just as I was in the middle of chastising myself for something that's always been drilled into me, I heard a noise. A very large and ominous noise.

It sounded like a mixture of a thundercrack, a rock breaking, and glass shattering, and it was as much a noise as it was a vibration of the ground, which did a tiny shudder as the sound washed over me.

Afterward, it was gone once more. Bewildered, I began to take a look around, see what might have caused it, but saw nothing. That's when Raven returned, seeming as bewildered as I, and landed on the roof of our car.

"Do you know what the hell that just was?"

She gave me a blank look followed by a head shake, which I sort of expected. Still, what a strange thing to happen. I'd learned to trust strange feelings, and this sudden occurence of a sound I'd never heard about, paired with the appearance of shadow demons? That was worth noting.

I eventually gave up observing the surrounding countryside for any changes, and ate some more of the canned pasta we'd liberated from the last town. All the while I continued to ask Raven questions, mostly about her origin and the strange supersized laser pointer that was now resting in the inner pocket of my jacket, and was met with medium amounts of success.

Turns out that she could remember some things, like how to fly and walk, and apparently how to "speak" raven-ish and crow-ish, though it didn't really transliterate that directly. Those were mostly a shared set of body language, commonly agreed upon calls, and things made up in the moment as two corvids met.

Her detailed memory and apparent sapience began, surprise surprise, on the same day as the humans vanished. She'd found the souped up laser gun afterward in some nutjob's garage, judged it important, and had flown around until noticing me walking into the town I'd been attacked in. After seeing the shadow demon come for me, she flew back to said garage, got the laser, and drove it away with it.

However, she didn't believe it was actually dead, only wounded.

On that somber note, we got into the car once more and I pulled away from the little repair-alcove.

***

Some twenty minutes later, I had to stop once again. Not because of me, but because of the road itself.

I'd found the source of the noise.

The road ahead of us, if it could even be called a road anymore, was torn asunder by a single crack driving right underneath it, and continuing on for at least fifty meters in either direction.

I approached it, the laser pointer, which I'd reloaded during Raven`s and my conversation, drawn in case of the crack in the earth being a literal hell portal, and peered inside. The crack was as deep as it was long, and completely dark. It was also wide, almost fifteen meters at its center. A conundrum, one more for the 'list of questions that is getting way too long'.

As I stood there, trying to find the bottom using my phone torch, I began to feel a slight fear. A very familiar kind of creeping dread, actually. I began to feel the exact kind of fear I'd felt while stumbling into that town at dusk. I shook myself and quickly stepped back from the edge, not very sharp on dying four days after surviving the apocalypse.

I eventually got back into the car, and steered clear of the crack in the Earth - I drove onto the field next to the road, staying well away from the edge, and eventually found the end of the rift in the earth on its right-hand side. Pulling a sharp turn around it, the car didn't fall in, so I counted that as a win.

When we got onto the highway once more, I set a pace that was a little quicker than before, the ever so slight fear still present in my mind spurring me on.

***

We spent the remaining evening and the following night driving. I wanted to get as far away from the demon and the hole as possible. I heard many more cracks forming over the course of the night, or at least, that's what I assumed the noise to be, and so I drove and drove, until finally, finally, I saw the great blue surface of Lake Ontario.

About ten minutes later, we pulled into a tiny town named "Sodus Point", and I drove us all the way to the edge of the water.

It was beautiful. From the west, the sun was currently rising into a cloudless sky, and glistening on the little waves present on the lake, which looked and felt a lot more like the Atlantic I was used to seeing on the way to university than a lake. Ouch. That one hurt, a lot.

I couldn't see any land on the other side, and although it looked and felt like the sea, it was in fact not. It was one of the greatest water reserves this side of the US, which proved perfect for me. This little town apparently hadn't been hit with the burnout as hard, possibly because of the humidity provided by the lake, and I only saw a single scorched house on my initial stroll through the town after parking the car by the municipal office.

Me and Raven spent the rest of the day raiding any and all conserved foodstuffs we could find, and carted them all to one of the beach houses I'd designated as "Fort Lakeview" - our home for the foreseeable future. I mainly just grabbed all the edible stuff that wouldn't go bad within a few months and put it into a wheelbarrow I'd found inside some shack, and then into the car's trunk, after which I'd drive it to Fort Lakeview to store in the cellar, which was the coldest place in the house.

That evening, after eating a real meal made from real food, and looking at the barred windows of the ground floor, I thought about what we should be doing next.

My short-term goals were fulfilled - we had food, shelter, and unlimited water, provided I could get a spare generator from somewhere in town to power most of the utensils in the Fort, and figure out how to connect it and turn it on. Now, it was time to tackle the long-term goal, and to get some answers.

And I could think of only one thing that might have something to do with every single one of my species vanishing.

No way around it - we were gonna have to catch a demon.