The End of the World as We Knew It

by Nick Cole

  “I hear you like to go walkabout. That’s how they say it down in Australia. Walkabout.”

  “No. I don’t think I do.”

  “Hmm. My sources, intel we in the Army call it, tell me you departed the train and walked, unaccompanied and unarmed, through the town of Bradley. Is that not correct?”

  “I did,” I said, confused. “But, I asked for permission from some sergeant. He told me it was my choice. He didn’t recommend it, but he said I could do what I wanted.”

  “He was right, in that it was not advisable, and also in that he could not stop you.”

  “Have I committed some infraction?”

  “No, not at all. Quite the contrary, you’ve recommended yourself for the little adventure our dashing Major Firestein has planned for New Orleans.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes. You have indeed. Major Firestein, please explain to Mr. Hamilton how you intend to get yourself and Specialist McKnight killed along with this civilian.”

  Major Firestein stepped forward and shook my hand. It was both warm and confident.

  For a moment he stared at me. Then he took out a cigarette case and a lighter, offered me one, and lit our cigarettes. General Pettigrew coughed and sat down, pouring himself a glass of cold water and mopping the sweat from beneath his jutting chin.

  “How did you survive?” asked Major Firestein.

  I don’t know who will read this journal someday. I don’t know if they will understand the nature of the times we found ourselves in during the Plague. They’ll probably refer to it as the Catastrophe or the Dead Plague or something along those lines. And while they might understand the facts better than I ever will, especially with the hindsight of history to assist them, there will be some things they will never understand. The question of how one survived is simply not asked. It is not polite. How one survived is best not discussed. There’s a sense of shame about surviving. This question is just never asked. It hadn’t been asked of me in the two weeks I’d spent in the digger camp and it hadn’t been asked on the train. I never thought, in fact it never occurred to me, that anyone would ever ask me how I’d survived.

  Why?

  Because I don’t know the answer of how I survived. I just did, despite myself.

  I didn’t say anything.

  I wasn’t trying to be tough or sullen or wounded. I sincerely wanted to help Major Firestein. But until that moment, I’d never expected anyone to ask me that question.

  As I write this, I wonder why we’re all not asking that question day and night. Until that moment, I didn’t have an answer. I had never formulated a response.

  Then I said, “I just did.”

  Major Firestein thought about that for a moment as he drew on his cigarette and exhaled through his nose. Then he seemed to nod to himself.

  “Tonight,” he began, “as we cross into the shipyards, we’ll be refueled by a Navy destroyer carrying diesel. The destroyer’s crew is at half compliment and can’t hold the docks effectively. When this expedition was planned, we were told the Navy, in force, would secure the shipping area so we could refuel. The weather outside is turning bad. At sea, they’re riding out a Category Three hurricane. The destroyer will barely manage to get in ahead of the storm along the coast. Once they refuel us, their future is uncertain.”

  He lit another cigarette and stared down at a map on the General’s desk for a moment. New Orleans lay rendered in street level detail.

  “Tonight as the train takes on diesel, I and Specialist McKnight are going to secure a vehicle and drive into New Orleans in an attempt to draw the infected away from the refueling rendezvous. Specialist McKnight will drive. I hope to get a Humvee operational at an abandoned National Guard command post that was reported to have been set up southeast of the city. If there is a mounted gun, I’ll operate that. I need one more person to operate a portable sound system to draw their attention. I was hoping that might be you.”

  I looked at the map Major Firestein was resting his finger on. It meant nothing to me. If it had been the Journal, I could have made sense of it.

  I thought about my four shames. I thought about running toward the stairwell door and the things that would happen in the days to follow as we climbed the Tower. I thought about those things even when I didn’t want to think about those things, and I was hoping, dreaming, that someday I might stop thinking about those things. Thinking about shame. Someday, maybe I will have other things to think about.

  I thought about Alex and the kind of man she thought I was.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Whatever you need.”

  Which was my way of saying, yes, I will go with you on your crazy mission tonight.

  The wind and the rain are lashing the side of the train in thick sheets. At times it feels as if we might even be pushed off the tracks.

  It’s almost dark.

  We’re almost there.

  November 8th

  Back on board the train. Or, what’s left of it.

  I just got my stuff from my bunk, aft of the laundry car. Now I have a bunk located in the command section. Apparently I’m Major General Pettigrew’s new personal valet. Which is not good. Pettigrew isn’t all there. Which is not saying much these days. Most people, after what they’ve lived through, are not all there. But Pettigrew has a little less than many, many others.

  I think Major Firestein is dead. Probably Specialist McKnight also. He was bleeding pretty badly the last time I saw him. Once the dead got inside the window of the Humvee, they were all over McKnight. And of course they went for the last train car, the caboose we call it, once we got back to the train. Though it’s not really a caboose in the old-fashioned sense. It’s just the heavily-armored rear of the train. Or, it was the heavily-armored rear of the train.

  Firestein and McKnight were in the caboose.

  So they’re probably dead.

  Whoever you are that’s reading this, I’ll bet you’re totally confused, so I’ll back up a bit and try to put it all down on paper.

  Here goes.

  We were approaching New Orleans last night. We, Major Firestein, Specialist McKnight, and myself, were up front in the engine, watching ahead for a crossing where a drone flyover had spotted an overrun command post set up east of the city in the first days of the pandemic. The drone had spotted some parked Humvees and McKnight was supposedly a genius at getting vehicles operational.

  The rain had let up.

  Someone said we were in the eye of the hurricane now.

  They also said it was just a Cat Two, but for a while, it seemed as though the train might drive off the tracks at any moment. Then it got quiet and still. Even the swamp grass out on the bayous we passed over stood straight up in the darkness. The bayous looked like silver roads in the cloudy moonlight.

  We passed a shot-up sign indicating Miller’s Bayou, and Major Firestein said we were getting close. The train began to slow out over a long expanse of bridge. Ahead, we could see New Orleans in shadowy silhouette. It looked like the mangled gray fingers of the recently dead erupting through the carpeted floors back in the Tower, after the power had gone out.

  On the other side of the bridge, the train stopped and we ran to the Humvees parked there three months ago on a hot summer day as the world ended.

  Major General Pettigrew was already barking over the walkie-talkies at Firestein before we’d even reached the vehicles. McKnight soon had the hood up and some equipment out. Within a minute, the engine of one Humvee fired, spewing black smoke across the chalky road.

  I was carrying the sound system. A boom box.

  “Gun’s empty, check the others for belts,” Firestein ordered McKnight. I could smell the lubricant he was coating the gun with as I sat in the passenger seat and waited. I turned on the power to the boom box, awaiting the order to press play. Which apparently was my sole function in this little adventure. Suffice it to say, I felt useless.

  McKnight loaded ammo containers into the back of the Humvee as Firestein attach
ed a belt of ammunition out of one and fed it up into the big gun atop the vehicle.

  “Okay thumbs up, let’s move. Follow the road,” ordered Firestein.

  The train crawled forward on cue, without hesitation.

  “Put your NVGs on, Specialist McKnight,” Major Firestein ordered, as he strapped the goggles around his own head. Then he muttered, “check,” and scanned the horizon, pulling a knob back on the gun. I heard a loud click as the belt-fed ammo jerked upward slightly.

  The inside of the Humvee smelled dusty.

  “If it’s all the same, sir,” said McKnight, “I drive better without those things. Light’s real good right now anyway.”

  “Whatever works best for you, specialist,” mumbled Firestein.

  Now we were following the road, keeping pace with the train as it struggled back to speed.

  “You want me to push play?” I asked Major Firestein.

  “I’ll tell you when, Jason. Relax and try to pretend we’re just going for a drive tonight.”

  Knowing there would be a “push play, Jason” coming shortly, felt like the anticipation one experiences when the doctor says “this is going to pinch.” That “push play” was probably going to be something very real. Something I hadn’t seen since the Tower.

  Something I’d hoped never to experience again.

  We were entering the outskirts of New Orleans now. Empty gape-toothed buildings gazed in stunned silence at the gray lifeless urban-sprawl as we peeled away from the train, heading toward the levee.

  The plan was for the train to take on fuel from a Navy destroyer that had come down a large canal. We would prowl the streets, then link up with the train at the rail yard in the city. If the rail yard was under attack, we’d meet the train on the far side of the city.

  The first contact came within moments.

  We turned down a main thoroughfare of tightly packed two-story buildings, balconies and black wrought iron, and about four of the infected were meandering across an intersection halfway down the street. When they heard our engine they stopped, almost swooning it seemed, and then began that lurching walk-run toward us.

  Major Firestein yelled, “Contact, twelve o’clock,” and opened up with a burst from the gun that cut all four to shreds once he had their range.

  “Advance at half speed, Specialist,” ordered Firestein. “Let’s see if we can draw more of them out into the open.”

  Halfway down the block, we came to an overturned car where one of them was trapped inside and snarling ferociously at us.

  When Firestein didn’t shoot it, McKnight asked, “Aint’cha gonna do him, sir?”

  Firestein said nothing and McKnight kept driving.

  “Contact nine o’clock, Major,” called out McKnight.

  “Watch our front, Specialist. Engaging.”

  I didn’t see how many, but I heard them snarling above the repeating thud of the big gun.

  “Clear left,” said Firestein.

  It was at that point the rain started to patter against the windshield.

  “At the next intersection, head toward the levee,” ordered Major Firestein.

  “Roger that, sir,” said McKnight.

  By the time we reached the intersection, the rain had increased. It was now coming down in brief spasms across the road.

  “Sir, it’s getting bad. I need to stop and get my night visions on.”

  “Roger, Specialist. Stop in the center of the intersection and be quick about it.”

  We stopped as McKnight fumbled down on the floor for his night vision goggles.

  “You want a pair? Brought two jes’ in case.”

  He handed one pair to me and I began to put them on.

  I told him I couldn’t see anything. He told me to hold on.

  That’s when the shooting started. Right before, Major Firestein in that matter-of-fact, calm, cool, and very collected voice said, “Multiple contacts. Get us up the street to the canal.”

  Blind, I felt the vehicle lurch forward and accelerate.

  Firestein was firing in short, loud, hectic bursts.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Turn your damn goggles on!” yelled McKnight.

  I felt the face and sides of the goggles until I encountered a knob and turned it. The world burst into bright green and fuzzy white.

  “We’ve got ‘em in front of us, sir!” screamed McKnight. “They’re cuttin’ us off. The damn things are trying to trap us.”

  “Just go through ‘em and head north along Canal Street. Specialist, stay calm.”

  What I saw...

  What I saw...

  If you lived through it, then you know exactly what I saw.

  I saw people. People who were once people. Post-human people.

  Dead people moving.

  Going down beneath the front of the vehicle as McKnight drove right through a crowd of them.

  Hot brass shells cascaded down onto my shoulders, burning me.

  But I didn’t care.

  I saw a woman, gaunt-faced and hollow-eyed, come careening off the sidewalk as she stretched out one blackened claw toward us.

  Their eyes, when you look at them with the night vision goggles, don’t reflect light. They look like two black pieces of coal.

  “Canal Street is clear, sir. Left or right?”

  “Left,” answered Major Firestein between thuds of machinegun fire.

  At Canal Street I saw two things. Water sloshing over the top of the levee as wind and rain came down onto the shining pavement, and those things pouring out from every door along the street. Hundreds of them came lurching out onto the sidewalk, groaning as they fell toward us.

  McKnight swore.

  “Move!” shouted Major Firestein, as he swiveled the gun forward and began to rake the passing crowd with machinegun fire.

  A vehicle-mounted machinegun does terrible things to the post-human body on a rainy night.

  Boarded up shop windows and building facades splintered to pieces as once-vital people were flung back in sprays of fuzzy white and dark green gore against the sides of bone-white walls and night-greenish buildings.

  McKnight raced forward, trying to beat the cresting wave as they lumbered out into the street ahead. There was a thin gap of open space closing fast against the wall of the levee.

  The gun made a loud clunk and went silent.

  The dead crowded into the street ahead, as McKnight gunned it into a thicket of arms and horror-ravaged faces, groaning and gnashing their teeth. Hate seemed to transmit itself through their rictus-clenched smiles.

  The vehicle began to skid sideways on bodies.

  “Hang on to it Specialist, and get us somewhere I can reload.”

  McKnight said nothing and seemed to be mumbling to himself, talking his way through yet one more horror.

  When is a horror one horror too many?

  When have you had enough?

  There are only so many floors to the Tower and even Stephen King’s Roland must reach the top.

  “Jason.” Firestein was bending down, hanging onto the hatch with one hand, touching my shoulder with the other.

  “Still with us?” he asked gently. As if I was being inconvenienced by all this heroic military effort on behalf of myself and humanity. As if this might be something other than one of the top three horrible moments I have ever witnessed. Still with us?

  Where else could I go?

  I would go there if I could.

  I would go there and I would hope it would be a place where Alex was. That if I could just have Alex on the other side of this, I could survive.

  I loved her. I thought I loved her enough to marry her. To spend the rest of my life with her. To give up the single life and start a family with her.

  I thought I loved her enough to do that.

  Now I realize I love her more than I ever possibly could have imagined in the world that existed before all this.

  If, on the other side of all this, I could hold her...
r />   “Still with us?”

  For a moment, I wasn’t. I was in a future. A future that was perfect for just a moment. A future that wasn’t here. Now.

  “Still with us?”

  I nodded as we shot out onto a clear street.

  “Going left sir, back into the city.”

  “Roger that, Specialist.”

  Firestein was feeding more ammo into the gun.

  “How much longer till they’re ready to go, sir?”

  There was a pause.

  “Another thirty minutes.”

  “I don’t want to be a hero, sir,” said McKnight. “But we can’t drag that crowd back to the train. Believe me, Major, I do not want to be a hero when I say that.”

  “Message received, Specialist. Hook right... up there, and let’s head north slowly. That main group needs to get away from the rail yard. That’s south of our position now. Head back up to Canal and we’ll see if we can get them to chase.”

  On Canal Street, in the darkness, the mob surged forward as water spilled over the levee, knocking some of them down in great sloppy washes. The wind sliced off the lake, driving spray into the crowd.

  “Push play now, Jason.”

  I did.

  Major Firestein fired three short bursts into the crowd and they lurched forward toward us.

  “Head up Canal slowly,” ordered Major Firestein.

  For the next thirty minutes, we played heavy metal music and lured the growing crowd farther up Canal Street, heading into the suburbs north of the city.

  It was later, when we noticed the side streets clogged with streaming waves of walking corpses, that we knew we weren’t going to make the rendezvous.

  “Major, how we gonna get back?” asked McKnight above the music and the engine.

  “We’ll link up with a state route and try to follow the train out of the city. Once we get to a clear area, the train will pick us up.”

  And that’s what happened. It took six hours, but sometime around three in the morning, we found ourselves ahead of the train, sitting in the quiet of a lifeless small town by the side of the tracks. Waiting. We turned off the engine and Major Firestein handed out cigarettes. We watched the darkness and waited.