Extinction Point by Paul Antony Jones Page A

reminded her of a dog when it first entered a new home, methodically moving around the room as though it was searching for something and, not finding it, flowing back out through the doorway again, only to be replaced by more dust.
    Emily raised a hand to push an errant lock of hair from her face. Amazingly, as she moved her arm towards her forehead, the flow of red dust maneuvered around it like smoke in a wind tunnel blowing over a car, completely avoiding contact with her. She tried the same thing with her other arm and then stepped to the side. The flow shifted with her but never touched her, leaving an inch or so of space between her body and the mass of whirling particles.
    My God , it’s as if it’s intentionally avoiding me .
    The thought of the dust she had seen earlier attaching itself to the skin of the dead vagrant leapt to the forefront of her mind.
    Was it searching for the dead?
    The idea made her flinch. That just could not be. It had to be a coincidence. There had to be some other explanation. Yet, as she stood in the doorway watching the continuous stream of dust enter on her left, whirl around the room for a few seconds then exit on her right, with not even a hint of a breeze to propel it, Emily had the unsettling feeling that that was exactly what was happening.
    If—and it was a very big if—she was correct then she truly was observing something far more profound than a simple chemical spill or natural disaster. If—there was that word again—the phenomenon she was witnessing was actually real then it could only mean there was some kind of intelligence behind the event, driving the dust to seek out the dead. That meant it was synthetic. That thought was even more terrifying and yet, on some level, predictable to Emily. That humanity had screwed itself over once again, this time apparently permanently, did not surprise her. It had been on the cards for years, she supposed. And after the ineptitude she witnessed on an almost daily basis, well, it came as no great surprise that someone, somewhere, might have screwed the pooch big time.
    With a sigh of resignation, Emily dipped her head against the flow of red dust. She picked up the plastic shopping basket from the floor, stepped out onto the pavement, and began heading back in the direction of the apartment block.
     
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    The trip back was not nearly as strange as she had expected. It was however more difficult than she anticipated. The twisting eddies of dust made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her. It was like walking through one of those snow globes she'd had when she was a kid, eerie but also strangely beautiful. The dust still kept its seemingly self-imposed distance from her, whipping past in twirling ribbons of red as it scoured the streets in search of only it knew what. It was almost as if there was some kind of shield surrounding her that the dust was just unable to penetrate. The dust made a low shushing sound as it passed her, like sand dropping onto paper.
    Very fucking weird .
    While the contents of the basket were not heavy, the basket itself was another matter. The thin metal handles dug into the palm of her hand and the plastic cage of the basket kept banging against her thigh as she tried to maneuver her way through the thick swirls of dust. Half-blinded by the storm of red surrounding her, Emily did not see the raised curb of the pavement, clipping it just hard enough with her shoe to send her sprawling onto the sidewalk, spilling the basket and sending half her supplies spinning off into the darkness.
    A few frantic minutes of searching recovered everything but the can of tomato soup. No loss there . Completely disoriented during the search, she wasted another ten minutes heading in the wrong direction, ending up a block away from where she thought she was.
    Almost thirty minutes after leaving the store, a frustrated Emily finally pushed the door to the apartment open and stepped into the