The End Read Online Free Page B

code into his own programs from time to time.  In a way it was like a signature.  Or was someone alive and well in Philadelphia just as alone as he was? "Damn it, man, put your phone number or something up!" but they did not... would not.  The Leo is a tosser message stayed put and nothing else changed for a full ten minutes. 
    Evan eventually stood up, put his bags into the Highlander and drove away from his house.  The house he'd worked so hard throughout his twenties to earn.  Thinking that such things mattered but knowing that they really didn't, especially now.  Before heading out of town he checked Facebook and CNN again on his phone but again nothing had changed.  He set his GPS for Philadelphia, Citizens Bank Park specifically, and ticked off the options to avoid highways and tolls knowing there was bound to be barricades of crashed vehicles all along the highways across the country.  Luckily the blackout happened mid-afternoon on a business day.  There'd be traffic but not all that much... at least on the east coast.  He stopped at the edge of his neighborhood.  The GPS announced a left turn and he listened, uncertain whether heading to the city was the right decision or not, but happy just the same to have a heading... and a working GPS.

2
     
    “ I walked the avenue till my legs felt like stone,
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone,
At night I could hear the blood in my veins,
Black and whispering as the rain,
On the streets of Philadelphia.”
    - Bruce Springsteen
     
     
     
    Roy “Doc” Holladay wiped the sweat from his brow then replaced his cap.  He was making his fifteenth start of the year.  He’d struck out four and walked two in fifty pitches so far in the season.  He wound up, ready to strike.   Marlins, Giancarlo Stanton, was at bat.  Giancarlo had snuck a grand slam past Holladay just last year on this very field and by the look on his face he wasn’t about to let it happen again.  The sun was glaring down on them at Citizens Bank Park in South Philly as he released the baseball.  Leo watched from the stands as Giancarlo swung.  CRACK.  All eyes were on the ball as it flew high into the air as if it had wings.
    “LEO!  Get your ass back down here!” Mike Rose bellowed, “The workstation at stand 3 is on the fritz again.  Check it out.”   Leo didn’t see where the ball landed distracted as he was by the radio on his belt.
    “On my way,” Leo said to nobody.   He quickly made his way down the stair case.  “Probably unplugged the stupid cable again like she always does,” Leo mumbled .  He did notice that there was no cheering which probably meant Giancarlo’s fly ball was a homer anyway.  He'd taken the job at the stadium the previous summer as tech support for the concession stands.  He figured worst case he'd get to go to all of the games for free but he barely saw an inning in a season because the equipment sucked and the company was too cheap to replace any of it. As he came around the corner he no longer saw the wide open breezeway of the stadium, sky, sunlight, or anything at all.  Instead in its place was black.  Eigengrau.  Darkness. 
    Leo stopped dead in his tracks thinking that somehow he had been struck blind.  He tripped over something and went spr awling to his hands and knees.  All around him was a cacophony of noise.  Not ballgame noise.  Sure he could still hear the sound of the pipe organ charge blaring from the jumbo-tron but there was no cheering.  Only thuds and crashing.  When he looked up he could see again but just barely.  Then, slowly, the darkness dissipated like smoke.  Clarity, light, and color returned to the world.  For a moment Leo was so thankful that he was not in fact blind at the ripe old age of 21 that he didn’t realize that he was now alone.
    He picked up his radio, "Mike, come in."  No answer. "What the fuck are you doing on the ground?" he said to the Goofball, the Phillies mascot that