The End of the World as We Knew It

by Nick Cole

  “Weird day,” said Carmichael. Carmichael is the only person on the floor I might call a friend.

  Reading that last sentence back to myself, I realize I wrote it in the present tense. That floor, the last time I saw it, was crawling with mayhem, and as for Carmichael, he got dog-piled in the stairwell outside forty-two.

  There is nothing present tense about that.

  “Two guys started fighting on my train. I mean blood and everything. I got off a stop early and walked in,” said Carmichael. “The heat’s making people crazy.” He loosened his tie. It was the dead of August. The air was drinkable. It had been blazing hot by six that morning.

  “O’Neil got bitten,” said the floor manager. His name was Paul Keller. He lived out on Long Island. I can’t remember his wife’s name.

  Those last couple sentences are in perfect tense, in light of past events.

  “Bitten?” asked Carmichael.

  “Yeah, some crazy cab driver. It’s like a full moon out or something,” Paul said in his thick Long Island accent.

  “Serves him right, the thief!” Kathy Henderson-Keil came through wearing that black dress and silk stockings I would see the remnants of later, underneath the collapsed overpass. Everyone, to her, was a thief.

  I am the thief of her last moments.

  Both of them.

  The copy room and under the overpass.

  That day, the first day of the outbreak, her hair is red, arterial bleeding red. It isn’t dusty yet. She’s a few years older than me. Pretty. Working class. Started out as an actress or a model. Got tired of being poor and got her Series Seven. She and O’Neil hated each other’s guts. They were the top sellers in the office. Besides me.

  That used to mean something back when there was money.

  “Hey, CNN is reporting the President has declared martial law!” someone yelled across the office. I remember us standing there, looking at each other.

  Whoever you are, think about that sentence.

  “Hey, CNN is reporting the President has declared martial law!”

  Try to remember what it was like before all this happened. Imagine yourself at home, with friends and family, at school, I don’t know where. Then say those words.

  What could the President have possibly declared martial law over?

  That’s what I was thinking.

  I’m not kidding.

  In the few hours that remained of what was left of civil order, I have to hand it to the government. They did a bang up job. They immediately freaked out and battened down the hatches. They told us what was up, a bit late, but at least they finally told us. It was what they told us next that got our attention. When they told us that what was happening was the most real thing that would ever happen to us, despite our ready willingness to disbelieve the incredulity of living corpses, that got our attention.

  The President authorized everyone to do whatever it took to save themselves.

  We were not to remain calm.

  We were not to wait for law enforcement or local authorities to rescue us.

  We were not to remain on this station or by any radio and await further instructions. The President expected telecommunications to be down shortly due to military operations being conducted at that very moment. Someone in the back of the crowd watching the TV yelled, “they’re gonna use nukes!”

  The President told us to do whatever it took to survive, just as he and the First Lady were now being locked in a sealed bunker beneath the White House. He wanted us to do the same, however we might be able to.

  You can imagine the general humor at that one.

  I thought of an English currency trader I often did business with. He always used the expression “gallows humor”, when interpreting his quips over deals gone bad.

  Now get this. This was the kicker. It was one of the last things the President told us. I swear he was crying. But he held it together and said it anyway.

  “I will not authorize the use of Nuclear Weapons on domestic soil. God Bless America.”

  At least we didn’t have to worry about being nuked. Which meant, at some point they’d actually discussed the option when we were unaware of even the possibility of being nuked. I wonder how close Manhattan had actually come to getting vaporized while I’d shaved that morning, or talked on my Bluetooth on the way to work, or was standing there, watching CNN.

  In the future, someone will tell me to think of all the things I have to be grateful for, and I will have to add that one.

  Not getting nuked when I wasn’t even aware it was a possibility.

  And then there was the “domestic soil” fine print you don’t even want to get into.

  I don’t know our new President. He certainly wasn’t the Vice. Whatever happened down in that bunker below the White House, I’m sure the President was a standup guy to the end. A straight shooter.

  For whatever that’s worth these days.

  October 28th

  It’s midnight. Just after. It’s been a long day. We’re passing through a city. Or, what was once a city. Whole blocks are flattened by fire. You can see the barricades someone tried to put up as everything went to hell. You can smell corpses burning somewhere.

  I didn’t get to look too long though, thanks to Hanson, the laundry supervisor. Mr. Hanson made us get in and start a series of classes and lectures on how to do laundry the military way and what would be expected of us from now on.

  The whole military thing. I thought it would annoy me more than it does. But to be honest, it doesn’t.

  I even drew the first shift after classes. We started our laundry run at seven this evening, and I ran the steam press, doing sheets until a few minutes ago. Once I learned all the new folds, it became very relaxing. I love the steam. It feels like I’m sweating out all the poison of the past few months. Plus, I had a glass of ice-cold water to drink. As much as I wanted. Hanson, Mr. Hanson, makes sure we get all the cold water we want. It’s very hot in there.

  When my shift ended, I stood out in the breezeway. There was a sentry out there. We smoked. He told me we were passing through Western Pennsylvania.

  We passed through towns where no one moved. All the windows and doors were like more empty eye sockets. Gouged and sightless.

  I didn’t think much all those weeks in the Tower.

  It’s now that I’m writing about the Tower, that those long and very hot days within it come back to me and I can smell the carpeted floors and feel the silence of the place.

  My Dark Tower.

  Sounds sinister once I’ve written it and see it on the page in front of me.

  Let me explain.

  After everyone died...

  I wanted to use another word for “died”. Maybe, after everyone was “murdered”. But that doesn’t seem right either. The sick didn’t know what they were doing. They’re little more than animals now.

  After everyone died in my little Ka-Tet, as Stephen King would’ve termed it, there was just me.

  Alone in the building.

  Every time I cracked a new floor, I was hoping I’d find another survivor.

  I never did.

  In a sixty-five story building, I never found another survivor besides my fellow co-workers who started out, and didn’t finish, with me. Eighty people per floor. Five-thousand two-hundred people per building.

  Someone once told me there are over six hundred skyscrapers in New York City.

  I used to love numbers.

  Roughly three million people in skyscrapers that morning.

  One survivor per building is optimistic, considering my trek through the Manhattan wasteland when I went to see what remained of my building. But let’s be generous and use me as an example.

  One survivor per building.

  Six hundred survivors.

  Three million, one-hundred and twenty thousand living corpses.

  I used to love numbers and all the wealth they could be used to represent.

  Now, they make me sick.

  Aft
er everyone was dead, I spent my days alone in the Tower, rummaging through desks and lunchrooms for enough supplies to keep going. To stay ahead of the tsunami of walking corpses pushing their way up through the stairwells after me. I found things. Even if I couldn’t eat them, sometimes, they proved useful.

  I found a device full of audio books.

  Alone for the last two weeks, I listened to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series as I climbed my own Dark Tower, knowing I was running out of floors.

  Alone after...

  Everyone died.

  October 29th

  My smoke buddy on the train who guards the breezeway between cars, Kyle, said you can still see them, the corpses, out in the fields. Lone figures stumbling in the moonlight, the passing train almost startling them from their never-ending thoughtlessness. They watch us pass and then begin to lumber and lurch after the train. After us.

  Do they stop?

  Do they find something new to stalk?

  Do they eventually lose interest, or will they follow us all the way to California?

  When we arrive, will there be a giant train of them following the rails right into downtown Los Angeles?

  Another Holland Tunnel.

  Holland Tunnel was bad. I watched a lot of corpses get burned there. So many that I thought I’d seen all the corpses the world had to offer.

  I have learned that the world is bigger than you think it is.

  I learned that little gem of knowledge while digging out corpses from under the rubble. Or, I should say, I learned that when I lost count of all the corpses I had dug out from under the rubble. It was losing count of the numbers that changed me.

  But if you thought about all the people, at the biggest gathering you’ve ever seen, say the Super Bowl, it’s just a fraction of how many people there actually are.

  Just the tiniest fraction of the United States.

  Which is just a fraction of the world.

  Have we even made a dent with all our corpse burning?

  Or is there some giant train of sickened dead dragging themselves and all the dead in the world, toward us? This night journey on a train could be just another part of a nightmare that keeps going no matter how many times you wake up and go back to sleep.

  So my thinking needs to change.

  People killed themselves in the digger camps.

  It’s a possibility.

  The day you get rescued, you’re happy.

  You made it.

  But when you get to thinking, well, you realize you don’t have so much to be happy about.

  Most likely everyone you know is gone now.

  Your family. Brother, sisters, Mom and Dad. Everyone you grew up with. Your first girlfriend. Your baseball team. The guy at the car wash you never said a word to. Your house, or condo in my case, burned to the ground. So all your stuff, is also gone. That career you studied for, worked through internships for, spent every vacation and many late nights worrying about.

  Gone.

  Stocks and bonds aren’t as important as they used to be.

  So that’s gone.

  But you’re alive.

  Then there are the things you don’t think about.

  I got a taste of that outside the Holland Tunnel the other day.

  Let’s be honest, Kathy Henderson-Keil was just a co-worker. But somewhere, to someone, she was Kathy. Just Kathy. And whoever it is, they are desperate for news of her. Desperate to find her.

  Well, we found her.

  What if it was your big sister? Your Mom? Your Dad?

  Riding the bicycle.

  These are the things you don’t think about.

  And then there is Alex.

  Does she also fall under “things you don’t think about”?

  October 30th

  The train stopped tonight.

  I got off to walk around.

  I’m glad to be back onboard now. I’m back inside the sleeper car, writing in my bunk. I have to get up early. I traded shifts so I could get off and walk around the town we stopped in while our train refueled.

  I thought everybody would want to get off. That it would be impossible to trade my shift.

  But no one wanted to get off the train.

  I thought they were all crazy.

  I was waiting in the breezeway with Kyle as the train slowed to a stop. He asked me to find him some smokes in town, if it was possible. He said it wasn’t scavenging, according to the rules. Scavenging only applied to personal effects. Not commercial goods as per the latest directive.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” I asked. “You’re the guy with the gun.”

  He shook his head.

  “Can’t.”

  I didn’t understand at the time, but I think I do now.

  After seeing the town, I think he meant to say “won’t” instead of “can’t”.

  The train came into the town fast, crossing over a high trestle bridge at the last minute. We passed barbed wire fences and barricaded buildings at the outer perimeter, as spotlights shot down into the murky darkness of the surrounding forest. I figured we’d be slowing down, but we came in fast, and when the station appeared down the curving line of tracks, brakes screeched and we ground to a halt just inside the station.

  Every survivor figured out long ago that corpses are attracted to noise. Most people tend to be pretty quiet now. Back when we were digging outside the tunnel, if some large steel beam had to be moved aside, and when we did, it clanged onto the street as we dropped it, everyone stopped, looking around.

  Guilty.

  Waiting for them.

  But not tonight.

  It was cold out and I could see my breath.

  I stepped off the train and a sergeant asked me if I was really going to get off.

  I said, “Yeah, I am.”

  I could see he wanted to be glib and say something like, “Well, it’s your funeral.” But he didn’t.

  He just said, “We’re leaving in forty-five minutes.” Then, “I hope you’re back on board by then.” I could tell he meant it.

  There are too few of us left now.

  We all need each other if we are going to make it.

  The machinegun fire started up shortly after I left the train. It was steady and continuous, coming from the tracks back near the spotlights, echoing out into the dark forest beyond. I started back to the train until I encountered a burly soldier carrying a case that had “grenades” stenciled on its side.

  “Is this area safe?”

  He stopped.

  “Relatively,” he said.

  “Then what about all that gunfire?” I asked.

  “The Zekes have been trailing your train for miles. This area was overrun back during the Outbreak and it hasn’t been fully reclaimed. In fact, not at all, really. But don’t worry about the gunfire, that was part of our plan. We came in last night by parachute and set up defenses. We’ll hold the perimeter until you guys are back under way, then we bug out.” With a jerk of his head, he indicated a dimly-lit football field at the local high school up the street. I could see quiet helicopters crouched and waiting as smaller dark shadows moved around them and red lights bobbed up and down.

  The gunfire grew louder.

  “I’d better get these up to the line, sorry... got to boogie.”

  Then he was off. Leaving, he called over his shoulder, “Don’t miss your train.” Then he laughed.

  I was alone at the intersection of Main Street and End of the World, Any-Town, U.S.A.

  It looked normal. That is, if you didn’t look too close.

  Looking close you saw the boards tacked up across the windows from the inside.

  The bullet holes.

  The dark stains.

  The splintered boards that had snapped inward.

  The open doorways.

  The waiting dark.

  I felt a brief moment of electricity course up my spine, grabbing at the back of my neck. Standing in the middle of the street, in the middle of the night, th
e cold turned my breath to steam. I felt like a kid out late, alone for the first time.

  I walked down the street, hearing each of my footfalls above the distant echoing gunfire that sounded like some faraway shooting gallery on the other side of a distant canyon rim. A cold breeze crossed the road and felt good on skin that had been too long inside the train and the Tower. I followed the breeze coming from down a deserted street. At the next intersection there were burn marks on the sidewalk.

  Something had...

  Broken boards blossomed inward across the shattered windows of a nearby grocery store. A few of the boards had turned to splinters, and inside the dark store, survival had taken on a new meaning.

  Those people had not made it.

  The residential section of town continued on the far side of the street. Barbed wire lay across the next intersection.

  I kept on toward the wicked razor wire, strung in circular tangles across the middle of the street.

  Was I going to keep going passed the wire and into the fields and the dark night beyond?

  As I lay here in my bunk, I wonder now, what was I doing out there?

  I didn’t have a plan.

  There was a part of me that might have been willing to stay there long after the train heaved itself off into the night and the helicopters climbed into the low-hanging clouds. How quiet it would have been at that moment. Quiet, until I heard them, the corpses, out on the perimeter and coming through the wire.

  Groaning.

  Shuffling forward.

  Breaking the blissful night-quiet as they crushed anything in their path and poured over the defenseless defenses.

  There was a large house on the corner of that street. It was the kind of house an oatmeal commercial would have been, should have been, shot in. Big and white, gabled roof. Wide porch. Maybe a lemonade commercial.

  Boards still covered the broken glass windows and doors on the first floor.

  On the side of the wall nearest the intersection, someone had written in large orange spray-painted letters across the white slats.

  “TOM HODGES- WE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL. PLEASE FOLLOW.”

  These people, this town, they had made their last stands. They’d had their objectives just like we’d had in the Tower. Our “get up to the next floor” was their get to the hospital. Just as each floor had successively fallen to a sea of maddened corpses, as we survivors crawled through the communication bundles up into the ceilings, up onto the next floor, so these people had retreated outward.