Start the Apocalypse

I looked out into the hallway beyond my apartment. People’s lives lay strewn everywhere in the hallway outside. Pictures and keepsakes, clothing and money lay mingled with spilled jugs of milk and juice, cracked eggs, and packages of meat. A pet or two idled through the refuse sniffing at the garbage for something to nibble or lap up. Wherever they were now, they had all left in such a hurry that they left a mess in their wake. I eyeballed some of the food. I bet there were some useful things discarded across the hallway.

I shut my door, locked it. Something seemed more ominous about the silence than the bedlam that had proceeded it. I made my way to the window to gaze back down on the street below. There were still small groups of people weaving in and out of the sea of abandoned cars. They seemed to be as affected as I by the way in which everything had almost suddenly become vacant. A woman gazed up at me before being ushered out of site between two buildings across the street. Did she even know those people? I watched them all vanish. Were they marching to their deaths? Hadn’t they seen the news?

It was time to get serious. The French toast was ruined. The internet had lost even the thin strings of reliability it used to dangle from. It was gone anyway and people with it. Where “gone” was remained a mystery for now. The apocalypse had just stared. Or maybe I was just late? Late for the biggest thing happening. Biggest and last. Figures. Did I just miss the big invite to the “Escape the Apocalypse” party? It didn’t seem so of course. My friends would never have been late. They kept up on these things. Of course, now we were cut off from each other.

I stood in the sanctuary of my six hundred square foot apartment for a moment and took stock of the situation. Why should I leave? Food would run out. Electricity eventually. I should salvage what was discarded in the hall. Electricity. That meant lights. That meant the fridge. That meant video games. Okay, perishables first. Discard what I couldn’t use. I played survival games. This stuff would go bad soon. Maybe I should cook it. Water. Without the boiler there would be no hot showers, and eventually no water at all. All of it would be gone. How long? How long does it take for all of this to just stop its automation? Some of it, I would probably never see again.

I wasn’t sure at first which one I would miss more. I assured myself of my sound thinking by affirming it was hot showers, but I knew I was lying to myself. I enjoyed video games. A lot. Way more than hot showers actually. Well, at least I still had books. But the leisure stuff would have to wait. Survival games taught me that potable water, food, and shelter were priorities. Well, I had shelter, that wouldn’t be a problem. I had a Brita. Would that filter apocalypse water? Food wouldn’t be a problem for a while. I had non-perishables, and could salvage from other apartments.

“What am I going to do about you two?” The two of which I referred were my cats. Two adorable little mixes with black and white tuxedo patterns that had been the joy of nearly every waking moment for going on thirteen years. They seemed completely unaware of anything called an apocalypse and simply stared up at me from their usual spots on my bed. How was I going to care for them? I had food enough for them for about a month. As fortune had it, there was a sale and I stocked up on their canned and dried foods. But what about after that? Well, if I can get to the grocery store down the street I can stock up and I saw pets roaming the halls. That meant there was pet food to salvage. Who leaves there pet in an apocalypse anyway?

Maybe the apocalypse would prove to be a false alarm. People would return to their regularly scheduled monotony in a few days and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. The internet would go back on. People would be go back home and continue being their annoying selves. I could play video games again. Maybe even get some bread and eggs and make some more French toast.

A scream outside interrupted my fiction. In the street below a young woman was darting through the labyrinth of abandoned cars trying to escape three others in hoodies that were chasing after her. She moved faster, but the three of them fanned out like pack wolves and corralled her. One grabbed at her, but she darted in the opposite direction. A second blocked her escape and she vaulted over the hood of a car. She had gained some free space and darted toward the nearest building. My building.

My cats had joined me at the window and in the seconds before I hobbled for the door I looked at each of them. They had wide, expectant eyes. They looked from the street, to me, to the street and back again. “I know!” I screamed to them as I shuffled from my apartment and stumbled frantically through the refuse in the hallway to get to the door at the bottom of the stairs. I moved slowly. I cursed at my legs as I urged them on.

The door would be locked. It was always locked. It stopped just anyone from entering. She would have trapped herself in a locked entrance. There would have been no escape. She would be an easy target then. I heard the pounding on the door and her screams for someone, anyone, to be her good fortune. It would have been a while since I was anyone’s good fortune. I hadn’t always been a cripple. Now, there was no end to sympathy. It was kindness, but I managed to twist it to pity. I hated pity.

“Come on!” I called her in as I flung the door open. She had frozen for a moment. I knew she was trying, in a span of too short a time, to decide if she were making a worse decision of her life. Her pursuers had slowed, but only slightly. They knew, or had thought, they had her, and when they saw me standing in the door they too were assessing the situation. When they realized I was one man, with no weapons and a bad leg, they stopped hesitating.

I grabbed her and pulled her in. It wouldn’t have been politically correct. An hour earlier I would have been a chauvinist pig who was treating this woman like a weakling and not respecting her. Pitying her. She could have hashtag me tooed me and said how I had abused her by grabbed her and dragging into the complex and threw her toward the stairwell where she tripped and fell. I was angry that this even occurred to me, but fortunately I had no time.

I threw my weight into the door just as the three hoodies reached it. The door was heavy and even though parts of me didn’t work like they used to I still had strength. There were three of them though. Through the window in the door I could barely make out faces with the hoods obscuring their appearance. They heaved against the door. It felt good to use my body like a doorstop. Sure, I had built up my strength since I got sick, but I used to be way more physical. It might be adrenaline, or some other chemical in my body, that was helping. It wasn’t enough against three men.

“What the fuck!?” I asked or exclaimed. To the girl, to the hoodies outside. It didn’t matter. They were going to break in. I could have left the door shut. Let them grab her and leave. But, I wanted to be the hero. I wanted to do something relevant. Was this relevant? Dying in the hallway of my apartment at the beginning of an apocalypse? Was this what heroes did?

One of them had reached in and was grabbing at me. The girl joined me at the door and thrust herself against it as well. The door heaved back and crushed the man’s arm. He cried out and withdrew his appendage. The door slammed shut and locked. It was heavy. Metal I think. The glass was thick too. Probably reinforced. They pounded on it. Tried to force it. Screamed at it. It didn’t seem to care. We were safe for now.