BARRICADES

Every silence has a survivor.

The barricades went up overnight.

It was like they sprouted from the pavement in the dark, tall, solid, and seamless. They stretched from building to building, leaving no gaps.
No way to climb the rooftops.
No crawl space left in the sewers.
No squeezing through the fences.

They had learned.

Snipers were stationed on rooftops, motionless and faceless. Twenty buildings were sealed off. Contained.

For a while, the rules were tolerable. The barricades opened for deliveries between 5 and 6 a.m. Supplies arrived on time. There was structure. Predictability. People organized themselves. Routines returned. They adapted.

Then the times shifted. Again. And again.

They adapted again.

Movement was restricted. Everything was tracked. New rules arrived as whispers and posted notes.

Who you could see.
What you could buy.
Where you could walk.
When the power returned.
When the water would run.

The neighborhood shrank.

Children began to disappear from schools.
The elderly stopped coming back from the community center.

A block went quiet.
Then another.
Then another.

Eventually, only silence remained.

And then, the barricades came down.
No announcements. No guards. No orders. Just... gone.

They moved on.

All that remained was a single boy.

He sat at the edge of the stillness.
And began to write.

Not what happened.
What it meant.