Derrick awoke slowly one morning feeling like his head had been crushed with a giant hammer. He had nowhere important to be for the rest of the day (and nobody of great importance to meet) so he simply laid in bed and enjoyed the peaceful silence of the morning. As he blinked he spotted a cockroach wriggling its' way along the ceiling from one wall to the other. The scaly bastard, he thought. When it reached the far wall he stumbled out of bed, snatched up a leather boot, and crushed the fragile insect with a deadening THUD. Then he picked up the flattened creature by one it's wiry legs and tossed it into a trash can.

"Damn bugs," he thought to himself. "Where there's one there's many. There's probably a whole colony the bastards lodged somewhere in this apartment...planning some sort of elaborate invasion."

He remembered reading somewhere that cockroaches, as a species, were virtually indestructable. Not even a nuclear fallout could wipe them from the face of the earth. He balked at the thought of an insect outliving humanity and all of it's accomplishments - the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, indoor plumbing - then he scratched his foul smelling armpit and made his way down the stairs and out of his apartment.

The hammer pounded Derrick's head once again as he stepped through the revolving door of the lobby and out into the sunlit world. There were no cars on the street and, from what Derrick could see, no people either. This struck him as unusual but not impossible. The town he lived in was relatively small and folks usual didn't wake up until early afternoon on the weekends. He kept his eyes on the pavement to avoid the harsh bite of the sun and swiftly made his way to the coffee shop next door.

When he got there the door was locked. He banged on the glass several times then peered inside. Nobody. The lights were off and the chairs were turned upside down on top of the tables. He reached into his pocket to check the time on his cell phone but the battery was dead. It couldn't be that early, he thought, the sun was already directly overhead. He wiped a layer of sweat from his brow and walked swiftly to a Starbucks a little further down the block. He peered in and saw chairs turned upside down on top of tables.