This Is the End

by Eric Pollarine

  “Hey,” I say back to him as I make a straight line for the kitchen. Kel is finishing up breakfast and I pour myself a nice huge cup of coffee.

  “Hey,” says Kel as I move to go back out towards my desk. I stop and look back and she smiles at me.

  “Hey,” I say back to her as well, and then she moves towards me.

  “Jeff, I meant it last night when I said I was sorry. I just want you to know that.”

  “I know,” I say and try to look at her through one half-opened, bloodshot eye.

  “It’s just that…” she starts and I take a long drink from my cup.

  “I know, Kel, it’s fine,” I say back.

  “Listen,” she says and then pauses for a few seconds. “I modded your app right after it came out, and it really was a brilliant piece of code. It wasn’t all McMillan and the rest; you built something one of a kind.”

  “Thanks,” I say back to her and move to my desk, wave my hand in front of the screens and smile as they come to life.

  I double tap the one that has the video from McMillan still paused and it minimizes down to the task bar. I scan the one that’s monitoring the wall of bodies still trying to get at the insides of the building. The sunlight doesn’t help the situation much; I can see their faces even more clearly than before.

  Mouths hang slack and wide, blackened teeth and tongues loll about inside. Many of them raise their stumps up and continue to beat on the brick; ragged, rotten shreds of meat hang down and taper off in paper-thin shreds at the ends of their arms.

  I don’t want to admit it, but it’s actually becoming easier to look at them, to scan the faces and empty eye sockets, the sickly sheen on their skin. It’s all becoming more and more tolerable.

  I open up the main controls for the building and then put it into hibernation. Other than getting food and supplies ready, we’re pretty much done. Kel brings out three plates of food and we all sit down to eat. The meal tastes better than the others did, and I don’t know if it’s the sunlight or the finality of the plan to escape or what, but the morning seems to be nearly perfect.

  I look around. Kel and Scott are laughing at something he’s said; they’re sitting close enough on the couch that, if you didn’t know it was the end of the world, they would be two people who didn’t know they loved each other.

  I look over to window and the rays of light from the brilliant sun are defined by the clouds of cigarette smoke.

  “Hey,” I say and they both look up. “Does it feel…different to you?”

  Scott shrugs his shoulders and fires back, “Calm before the storm—enjoy it.”

  Kel nods and then adds, “When it’s the night before you drop into a hot zone, same thing happens. Tonight you’ll have a ton of nerves if you don’t just forget about it. Then tomorrow…well, it’ll be pretty crazy.”

  I sit back in the chair and try to enjoy the rest of the morning.

  * * *

  Halfway through the afternoon we begin to get ready for tomorrow. Scott and I take a couple of pillowcases and several smaller suitcases that I found in my closet up in the loft and make our way down to the cafeteria. I had Kel cut power from the rest of the servers and non-essential systems and route it to the elevator.

  After we make our way down to the cafeteria, we make sure to load up with everything from the pantry. The only things we leave are a couple of cans of franks and beans that said they went bad three years ago; if it had been just a year, we would have considered taking them.

  Once we were done there we turned our attention to the beer cooler. After we were totally done we decided to take one trip to minimize the chance of making a ton of noise that would alert the mass outside.

  The pillowcases are heavy and Scott has to take the majority of the load. As we walk back through the empty silence of the cafeteria, a shiver runs up my spine. When the world wasn’t over—when it was just show up to work everyday and wait to find out what’s playing on the television—this place was the hub of activity. A highly polished, multi-function workspace, now it’s a tomb, a frozen memory of normalcy. Scott makes it to the elevator first and then realizes that I’ve stopped moving.

  “Dude, what? Did you hear something?” he says putting down the two sacks full of canned food.

  “No, no, I was just thinking about before,” I say back.

  “It’s archeology,” he says as he hits the down button and turns back around.

  I pull the suitcase behind me and roll into the elevator. As the doors begin to close I nod my head. We’re all archeology now.

  * * *

  The elevator opens directly across from the stairs so we’ll have to be extra quiet when we exit. In the elevator Scott and I talk about video games and beers that we liked. He tells me about being from Akron and then moving down to Tennessee when he had initially signed up for the Army. He tells me about his time in Afghanistan and how, if you could get past the shelling, suicide bombers, snipers and the limbless women and children, it was actually a very scenic place. We swapped stories about quitting shitty jobs and first cars.

  The elevator stopped and a big digital G popped on the screen above the door. I broke into the panel and cut the wires for the speaker so that the computer lady didn’t blow our cover, but I knew somewhere there was a command being executed for the voice to say, “Garage floor. Thank you.”

  The elevator doors slide open and instantly the smell makes us both gag. The garage door had become dangerously unstable and through the gap under the door we could see what looked like a dense forest of calves and feet in the midday sun. The noise from outside was enough to mask any small amount of noise that we could have made. After getting the hatchback open and shoving everything in, I get into the driver’s seat and, careful not to actually start the car, turn on the systems. Scott stands outside in the parking garage and smokes a cigarette.

  I make sure that we have a connection to my office servers and start tapping in commands to link the two. Kel pings in on the messaging system and does what she can on her end. In a matter of minutes we are up and running and ready to go; a little part of me really wants to leave now. The other part of me, the rational and sane part, wants to go upstairs, sit down and drink myself into a coma until the last sparks of power fizzle into nothingness. I push the pity into my guts and light up a cigarette. I message Kel that we’re done and then turn the car off and get out.

  “Jesus, man, listen to those fuckers out there,” says Scott.

  I stop and listen to the sounds of tiny thunderclaps rolling across the door and little bombs being dropped on the bricks outside. The longer I stare at the door, the more convinced I become that it’s going to give way at any second. I close my eyes and breathe, the noise seems to intensify. I could stand here and be sucked into the off-timing and thrum. I can feel the small vibrations move through the concrete and travel up my legs, into my chest. Each beat says Death, death, death.

  “Shit,” says Scott and I open my eyes, shake my head.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I forgot a pillowcase by the elevator,” he says and then moves back towards the nearly overflowing sack that’s sitting outside the doors.

  “Do you really think we need it?” I ask.

  “Might as well. We don’t know what else is out there or how long it’s going to take,” he says back.

  I open the hatchback and try to make enough room. I pull out the road kit and open it up. There are a couple of flares, three collapsible reflective triangles, a set of cheap jumper cables and a poncho. I toss everything but the flares, which I shove into my back pocket.

  We must have packed the case especially full because Scott has to drag it over to the back of the car. I grab one end and he moves around to the other and we lift in unison. We stop in unison when we hear the tear and watch in unison when the cans hit the concrete and cringe in unison as the noise of a sackful of cans makes its way above the din of banging. Both of us freeze in unison and watch a single, solitary can of green be
ans roll towards the gap in the garage door.

  I hear my voice say, “Fuck,” which, up until that point, was a near impossibility. Scott looks at me and I look at him and then we watch as the can of green beans clears the gap under the door.

  “Totally,” says Scott.

  For a few seconds we don’t know what to do, and then it hits us. The banging has stopped. The silence is nauseating and I feel a wave of bile and adrenaline flood up my body and into the back of my throat. The mass of feet and ankles and shins are still; the rolling waves of the metal door have stopped. The moaning and breathing have ceased and in the absence of the crowd, the vacuum of noise, there is only the sound of the can of green beans rolling back towards us underneath the door.

  4.

  The explosion of violence against the door rocks the two of us back on our heels. The door is shuddering in its track to the point that it nearly jumps off the frame.

  “I think our plans just got bumped up a few hours,” I say to Scott. He’s already moving back towards the elevator doors.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” he says while pushing the up button and pulling out his pistol.

  I pull out my own gun from my waistband and then shake my head; it would be pointless to use them if the door bursts. We make it into the elevator and begin moving back up to my office. I click the intercom button and start to call for Kel.

  “What the hell did you two do?” she asks from the other end. “They’re going apeshit out there,”

  “Can of green beans fell out and rolled out the door, but now’s not really the time, Kel. Get your shit; we’ve got to move,” I say back.

  There’s a long silence on the other end, but I don’t hear the click of the intercom. Scott looks at me and I shrug my shoulders. We hear movement on the other end of the speaker.

  “You two are no longer allowed to do anything without me,” she says back and then I hear the intercom shut off.

  “I really hate green beans,” says Scott.

  “Me too,” I say back as we make our way up to the office.

  * * *

  Kel is waiting in the lobby and the stench of rotting flesh is just as intolerable in here as it was in the garage. The bodies on the ground have begun to sink into themselves and already decay has started to work its way through the softer parts and bits of scarred flesh on their hands and faces.

  “Here,” she says while throwing Scott his backpack. It hits him in the chest and he lets out a gasp. After that she tosses in my two bags and she’s already got hers on her back. I try to step out of the elevator and go back into the office when she grabs me by the back of my collar and pulls me back towards the elevator.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I have to—”

  “I already packed up the smokes, coffee and two bottles of whiskey. What else do you need?”

  I look back out towards the open doors and into my office. The stark white interior gleams in the late afternoon sun. Everything I have ever been, wanted to be and accomplished is staring back at me. Inanimate objects that were my friends and confidants, consoles and screens, oak flooring and unblinking glass eyelets look back at me coldly like a spurned lover. I open my mouth to protest, to say that I’ve forgotten something, but I haven’t. This wasn’t really me to begin with.

  “Nothing,” I say as I get back into the elevator and watch as the doors close. I stare at the spot on the door where my office doors would be as we move down towards the garage again.

  “Hey,” says Kel and then snaps her fingers in front of my face. I look over to here and then back to Scott, who’s checking his ammo situation.

  “What?” I say.

  “I found this the other day,” says Kel and then hands me my tablet.

  My eyes go wide and I hold it like a newborn child. I thumb the power button and check the battery bar: fully charged. Good.

  I tap the screen and it brings up a four-way display. One is the outside and I see the results of the can rolling under the door. Now that the things know something is in the building they have intensified their assault on the walls and doors. Another section is a display of the main unit upstairs, another is tied into the car and the last is everything that we received from Port Clinton and the documents about how everything happened.

  “As you can see, I’ve patched everything into it. All we have to do is go,” she says.

  “Yeah, I see. Where did you find this?” I ask.

  “Right after Scott and I got trapped in your office, we looked through everything. I found that in a coat of yours. Looks like they didn’t think that you would ever come back from the dead,” she says.

  I smile and look down at the screen and thumb through everything again. The elevator comes to a stop and I look out as the doors are opening up. The doors are near the breaking point. Each blow to the roll steel pushes it into and out of its frame, putting us closer and closer to the ravenous mob outside. I hand the tablet back over to Kel as we move towards the car.

  “Here,” I say and then add, “My car—I’m driving. When we get in, open the doors to the building and get down in the seat.”

  She nods as we throw our gear into the backseat. Kel hands Scott her pistol and they exchange glances that say I love you.

  When we’re finally all in I start the car and say, “Okay, everyone ready?”

  “Let’s do it,” says Scott and Kel smiles while crouching down into the floor well of the passenger seat.

  “All right, open the doors.”

  Kel motions with her finger over the display and brings up the main control screen. She hesitates, takes a deep breath and then taps the button for the magnetic locks on the doors. I grip the steering wheel tightly and hold my breath.

  “I hope this works,” she says from the floor, “because if not, it’s gonna be a real short drive.”

  5.

  For the first few minutes after Kel tapped the screen, nothing happens. The doors all look the same. The waves of pounding fists on the outside of the garage doors continue. She brings up the external security camera feeds and watches as the things outside keep on as if nothing had happened. She pulls herself back up into the passenger seat and Skinny Scott sits upright in the back. We stare at the screen for a long while. The mood in the car rapidly goes from complete anxiety to utter despair. I sit back in my seat and look at the gap under the door. The thick mass of legs and ankles haven’t moved.

  “Shit,” I hear Scott say from the back as he tries to slouch backwards into the rear seat.

  Kel has brought the main controls back around with the flick of her fingers and started to double-check the command sequences for the doors.

  “I triple-checked them,” I say to her, but she doesn’t register that I’ve said anything.

  I roll my head back to look out at the door and fumble around in my suit jacket to find my cigarettes, but as I look down towards my pockets, I glance out the door and then stop.

  “Hey, look.” I point towards the gap and Scott leans forward and squints.

  “There are less of them,” I say and I can see Scott nod in agreement. Kel is still thumbing through commands, but pauses and looks up, then stops.

  From underneath the door I start to see more concrete and more daylight, and then as we are watching, we see the first set of legs move towards the right hand side of the door.

  “Hey, listen,” says Scott.

  Kel stops moving her hands and then pushes the down button for the window, only allowing a fraction of a gap between the window and frame, but it’s enough to tell us that the pounding has subsided. It’s still there, but it’s subdued.

  “Do you have the interior cameras tied into the feeds?” I ask Kel.

  She flickers her fingers across the air in front of the tablet and pulls up the outside feeds.

  “Holy shit,” she says. “It’s working.”

  She stretches the front camera feed to fullscreen and we see the deluge of bodies trying to cram themselve
s into the front doors of the building. She rewinds it back a few frames and we watch as one of the crooked men pulls at the door and in the next frame it looks like twenty more rip the door off its frame. After that it’s like a meat grinder as the bodies try and move in unison towards the opening.

  She brings up the feeds from inside the building and we watch the bodies move like a wave of destruction throughout the lobby and up the doors and through the hallways of the building’s first floor.

  “Um, I think we should go,” says Scott from the backseat.

  I look back at him, but only see the back of his head and the main door from the stairwell behind us bounce.

  Once and I look back towards the garage door.

  Twice and Kel looks back.

  Three times and then door blasts open; the monsters smash out of the doorway like a wave of vomit.

  “GO!” yells Kel.

  I grab the steering wheel and floor the pedal. Kel and Scott slam back into their seats as we race towards the crooked door.

  “SEAT BELTS, NOW,” I yell back but it’s too late; we’re already at the point of impact.

  For exactly five seconds it feels as if everything in the world is slow motion movie-still. I know it was exactly five seconds because before we hit the door I looked at the huge clock on my dashboard and it reads out hours, minutes and seconds.

  The glass spiderwebs a little. The metal from the hood meets the metal of the garage door and makes the worst nail-on-chalkboard times a million sound. The door crumples up and out towards the remnants of the crowd just outside. Smaller, saucer plate-sized pieces of metal dislodge themselves from the side wall and become death Frisbees; some even find homes inside of the unsuspecting bodies outside.

  Kel and Scott fly up and out of their seats along with some of our canned food, which for those few seconds look weightless, hovering in the air. Scott has the benefit of being in the back seat and slams his face into the back of Kel’s seat. Kel is less fortunate and faceplants on the windshield; as she falls back towards her seat she leaves a small tracer line of spittle and blood from her lips.