The End of the World as We Knew It

by Nick Cole

  They played sad songs that were familiar, and yet I could not remember their names.

  Except for Waltzing Matilda.

  I knew that one.

  An old man began to sing. He’d been there all along with his head down on the bar. Then he sat up from his place and walked over to the players, and began to sing.

  It was sad and beautiful all at once.

  I’d never heard music like that before. Simple music. A violin, a harmonica, and a not perfect voice. It was a far cry from the clubs and commercial jingles that had once filled my daily music allotments.

  I thought about Alex.

  There was a chance she could be here. Maybe even someone here, if she’d survived, knew her. Knew of her.

  Or maybe she’d gone to New York to find me. As soon as it all began. She had gone to find me like I should have gone to find her. I should’ve made it out of the office that day and started driving. Driving to find the woman I would marry.

  The woman I loved.

  Love.

  That should be one of my four shames.

  But it isn’t.

  I left the bar with my bottle. The night sky was overcast, and orange lights from the fort’s perimeter gave the fog a warm glow. Mist obscured the far end of the street.

  A dog barked.

  I returned to Chief and rolled out my sleeping bag. Chris had left a little pile of sticks he said we’d keep for our night’s fire. I started the fire like he’d taught me the night before.

  And now I will write about Carmichael.

  Which is the third of my shames.

  After Derek is gone, there is just Carmichael and Kathy and me. We are on thirty-nine, I think. It took forever to get through the last ceiling and when we get to this floor, we find it is a modeling agency. We come up through the floor in a main corridor. Everything is quiet. We listen.

  Nothing.

  And so we’re up.

  We smell. It’s been almost two weeks in the same clothes. The only water we can find is bottled, as the sinks and toilets have long since ceased providing any. But there is abundance here in the modeling agency. Big flats of bottled water lie waiting and stacked in a break room. We’ve been living off snacks. Granola bars, power bars, trail mix. How much longer until we’re rescued?

  The floor is devoted almost solely to the modeling agency. Large pictures of vacant-eyed models adorn the wide, white curving hallways that were yesterday’s future.

  What has become of all these waiflings?

  I doubt they had the calories to spare to run from, fight against, and barricade out, the living dead.

  There’s camera equipment and bottled water. There is even a lot of cocaine. But there is no food. Not even in the kitchen. There’s vodka. There’s Champagne.

  But there is no food.

  Outside, present mid-plague New York is the morning after the worst party of all time. I see a building fully engulfed in flames a few blocks away. Down below, the streets are deserted and covered in dust and ash. Abandoned cars jam intersections. The building that we used to wave to the other survivors in, the other us, looks neglected. Sometimes I see a shadow move behind a dusty window over there.

  But nothing definite.

  Kathy Henderson-Kiel is haranguing Carmichael about food. Carmichael, bat in hand, is clearing every office. His shirt is spattered in dried blood from the countless people he has beaten back to real death. I mean, the infected he has beaten to death again. Is that right?

  Today, I hope he doesn’t find any.

  I need a break from that whole scene.

  If you look closely at the bat, you’ll see he’s carved tick marks.

  “Home run!” he whispers, imitating the roar of a crowd every time it’s over. “Home run!” His eyes, brown, molasses brown, are vacant.

  If you really let go of reality, if you really allow yourself to analyze the situation, you almost believe that he thinks it is a “Home run!” every time he finds one of them on a new floor. Yes, he’s doing all the work. He’s clearing all the rooms, while you rifle the few desks you find on this level, and part of you hopes for a gun as much as a Snickers bar, and you don’t even let yourself think that what you’d really like to find is a nice roast turkey with all the trimmings. No, today you’d just settle for that Snickers bar. Or that gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar. Anything, because frankly you are starving.

  To death.

  Yes, he, Carmichael your best friend, is doing all the work as Kathy Henderson-Kiel shadows him, and you know some nights they sneak away and you can hear them together and yes, you’re even jealous because you can’t think for a second, looking out at what has become of New York and what must surely be the rest of the world, that there is an Alex left somewhere in this kind of world. Yes, you’re thinking, he’s doing all the work.

  But...

  If you have to hear him whisper “Home run!” as he imitates a screaming stadium roar, one more time, you’ll lose it. You pray he doesn’t find one on this floor. Just this floor. Just this once. Don’t let him find one because you know that’s what he loves now.

  Finding one.

  Finding one of them.

  And he doesn’t.

  And for a moment, you’re relieved. It’s a break.

  You deserve a break today.

  And when everyone gathers in the main office and Kathy Henderson-Kiel picks up an absurdly groovy desk phone and tries to get a dial tone for the umpteenth time, you close your eyes and grit your teeth because that’s almost as bad as “Home run!”

  There’s coke.

  Cocaine.

  Whatever that’s for, you say as you lay out the other prizes. Snacks, peanuts, and candy you don’t find. Instead there’s coke, vodka, and water.

  And for some reason, your stomach is churning because there is something in that little conversation of items that screams, “Bad idea!”

  Later, when things are supposed to be mellow, they’re not. They’re tense. Things are tense, so Carmichael does more coke.

  There’s enough coke to do more coke.

  In fact, there’s enough coke to do a lot of coke.

  In fact, there’s enough to do too much coke.

  How do you know when one of your merry band of survivors has done too much?

  “Hey bro. B-R-O,” says Carmichael. “I need a little workout. Whadd’ya say we open the stairwell door and I get in a few practice swings?”

  He tightens and loosens his grip on the bat. His knuckles are white. His face is red. His eyes are deep pools.

  Bad idea.

  “No really, it’s good, buddy,” he assures me. “Just need to work off some of this coke. Plus, maybe I could clear them out. Maybe we could make it down to the street. Just watch my back and keep the door open. Just a few swings. Gotta keep in shape for the big game, y’know.” And then he looks at the ceiling. As though we must go up there. As though the big game still lies ahead.

  We only go up to a new floor when the banging on the stairwell doors gets to the point that it sounds like they’re, the dead, the walking corpses, the infected, are going to get through fairly soon. Then up we go. It usually takes about a day and a half for that to happen. Then up we go.

  Right now it’s silent.

  One of them, at that very moment, has the bad timing to slap the stairwell door at the end of the hall.

  “Come on, baby,” says Kathy Henderson-Kiel like some common street whore trying to talk her pimp down off an old-school beat-down. “I’ll take care of you.” This is a woman who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard. This is a woman who cleared seven figures a year in trades. And now...

  “No!” shouts Carmichael. “I need to take a few swings. Just that guy. Just that guy there and I’ll be fine.”

  You realize, at this very moment, that your best friend is a psychotic killer. Less Roland, more Blaine the Mono.

  You also realize the word “friend” might not mean so much, what with al
l the coke lying around.

  And the vodka.

  And the end of the world outside the windows.

  You try to stop him. She tries to stop him. But in the end, you’re pushing open the fire door for him. A startled and very sick corpse on the other side of the door stumbles backward.

  Surprised almost.

  Carmichael is suddenly on him, swinging and grunting.

  “Home run!”

  And then...

  “Follow me!”

  But you don’t.

  And he disappears down the dark stairwell.

  The emergency lights are still on. Everything is bathed in a red, bloody wash.

  You hear Carmichael below in the darkness, grunting as he swings.

  There are pulpy sounds.

  There is groaning.

  There is the sound they make. That shuffle moan.

  You don’t hear “Home run!”

  But you know he’s saying it. Each time.

  “Follow me guys! I’m goin’ all the way,” he shouts, his voice echoing up the stairwell.

  “Home run!”

  And then he’s in over his head.

  He’s grunting hard, almost breathlessly.

  There’s the sound of splintering wood. The sound a bat makes when it shatters. It’s almost an understated “crack”, sharp and quick, but it speaks volumes for what you can’t see down below.

  There’s not so much swinging and connecting now, down there in the red dark.

  “Help!” he says as a matter of fact.

  Surprised almost.

  And Kathy Henderson-Kiel is screaming his name from the landing in the stairwell.

  Carmichael is also screaming when you close the fire door behind yourself and Kathy Henderson-Kiel.

  Home run!

  Shame.

  Feeling, as you lay down that night on couches no sane person would ever buy, and over which models once draped or threw themselves across as they sold blouses, watches, and success, along with the illusion of power and the lie of acquisition equaling some nebulous happiness, feeling relieved that you’ll never, ever, have to hear “Home run!” again.

  That is my third shame.

  November 30th

  When I woke I could hear the sound of rain, gentle drops, falling intermittently on canvas. In the night, Chris had returned and stretched a tarp between the trees above. There was a smoky fire curling up into the cold morning air.

  There was coffee.

  Chris sat watching the fire. He was older than I’d thought. He’d seemed about thirty-five. Dark haired, chiseled jaw, the bombardier blue eyes of Stephen King’s gunslinger. Now, in the cold light of morning, he seemed older. Or tired.

  He seemed Roland.

  I sat up and he handed me a tin cup of coffee from off the fire. The handle was a little hot but the coffee was good.

  “I’ll head east today into Santa Ana,” he said. “After that job, I should have enough to get the cattle and start a herd. If I can find them, I’ll pasture them in the next few weeks on the hills south of Newport Beach, east of Irvine. There’s a road, it’s called Jeffrey. Where the 405 intersects with Jeffrey, you’ll see some low rolling hills. I’ll be up in there. It shouldn’t be too hard to find me up if you decide you want to go partners on the herd. That is, after you find who it is you’re looking for, Jase. Or, if you don’t find her.”

  I drank the coffee. We listened to the fire pop and crackle. The rain was beginning to slacken.

  “How much does my share of the head bounty buy me in the herd?” I asked.

  You can end the world of the investment banker, but you can’t take the investment banker out of the end of the world.

  He thought for a long moment.

  “Fifty percent.”

  I suspected Chris of being generous.

  “Alright then, we’re partners. I’ve got to try and find my fiancée. If I do, or if I don’t, I’ll meet you up in the hills.”

  “Do you know where to look for her?”

  “There’s a hotel in Newport Beach near an outdoor mall. A place called Fashion Island. That was where she was, the last time I talked to her.”

  He reached down, picked up a folded map, and handed it to me.

  “I marked up this map for you. Shows you where we’ve been and where you can meet me. I’m also giving you this.”

  He handed me a small olive-green object attached to the end of a braided loop of cord.

  “It’s a military compass. It’ll tell you what direction you’re headed. Do you know how to use a compass?”

  I didn’t.

  “I’ll show you before I leave. Keep it around your neck. I made the loop out of parachute cord I got off some National Guardsmen for a bag of heads. It’s soft so it won’t rub your neck, but it also won’t rip or break. Plus, like I said, I braided it, so it should hold up. Keep it around your neck when you travel. It’s easier to keep checking your bearing that way. Also, compasses have a way of getting lost, ironically.”

  I held it in my hand. It was cold and compact. It felt comforting to have it. To have something that might tell me where I was, or where I might be going. Something that might lead me through the end of the world to Alex.

  Chris rode away on Chief. I watched him disappear out the front gates of the stockade and into the gray mist of the soft drizzle that had settled over Beach Boulevard. He was a man on a horse riding through empty city streets in the rain.

  “I hope that compass helps you find who you’re looking for.” That was the last thing he said to me. Now he was gone.

  I felt alone again. Alone like I’d felt after all my friends, my fellow survivors, were gone and it was just me in the Tower. Alone all those weeks in the digging camps after... even though I was surrounded by others, who like me, had simply survived.

  Now I’d become addicted to the company of others. Kyle and then Chris. If I could find Alex, I knew I would never leave her. Maybe we could raise cattle with Chris.

  Those thoughts faded, and I felt the fear rise in me of walking out the back gate of the Stockade as I knew I must do in a few minutes.

  Chris had shown me how to read the compass, how to get my bearings, how to shoot an azimuth. We’d used the map and plotted a course down into Newport Beach. Just five miles away.

  “You ain’t leaving with him?” asked Jackson the Stockade foreman.

  I told him my plan.

  “Ah, I wish you’da got here a day earlier. Reconstruction Team is operating out of there. Right on that site actually. Something big went down there on Day One of the outbreak and they’re trying to find out what really happened and all.”

  I asked him if he had any idea what “really big” meant.

  “No idea. The team leader said it was a top priority once the area had been cleared. Which really hasn’t been a problem because of the Lady and her whole plan.”

  I asked him what he meant by that.

  “Well, her crew came up outta that area. That’s where the whole plan started. I was up in LA when they arrived, her and her crew. Said she had a plan to draw all the dead into a kill zone. They made a wide sweep down through Riverside, then up along the 55 right into Newport. Then they broke into teams, one took the coast road and the other the 405. Drew all of ‘em up along the 710 and then right down the 101 into downtown. The rest is history.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “After the battle... don’t know,” said the Stockade foreman. “I was busy getting a team together to come down here and set up this base. There was a rumor that a bunch of the dead were coming down outta the central valley, that’s up north, above Los Angeles. So, the plan was for her and her crew to go up to the Grapevine and set up a new kill zone. Sounds like something she would’ve done from what I knew about her.”

  “She had a crew?”

  “Yeah, but it was mainly her and some big African American dude. Bunch of other survivors they’d picked up also. Her own little army. How come you don’t know t
his? Where’ve you been?”

  “I was in New York.”

  “How’d you get out here?”

  I told him. He wanted to know what New Orleans and Atlanta were like. Had they put together some kind of safe zone like Los Angeles?

  I told him the truth.

  He was quiet as he looked at the walls of the Stockade.

  “Did you ever meet the Lady?” I asked.

  “Honestly, I never met any of them, even her. Just heard the legend. All I know is she came from down here near the beach. Her and her crew were all driving off-road vehicles with guns and loudspeakers. They’d been driving around shooting up bands of infected and then retreating. That, and she looked like a rock star.”

  “Which one?” I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to bias his account. If he said Pat Benatar or Carly Simon or even Shakira, then I could let it go.

  “Blondie or someone. You know, that one that did She’s Got the Look!”

  That was Roxette.

  He had it wrong.

  But it was close enough.

  Roxette, Blondie, Alex. Each could be taken for the other in a secondhand end of the world survivor account.

  I was running for my rucksack. I felt my compass swinging across my chest, banging at my heart.

  I could find her.

  Maybe.

  I wasn’t afraid now. I wasn’t afraid to walk out the back gate anymore. There was a chance I could find Alex. There was a chance she might still be alive. I would go to the hotel just five miles to the south. I had to eliminate that first, then I could go north and look for this Lady.

  For Alex.

  Beyond the back gate of the Stockade, I found myself walking along quiet streets that were once wide thoroughfares through busy commercial districts.

  I headed west first, consulting my map, then moving forward.

  Jackson had left me with a stern warning. Maybe I’d frightened him with what I told him of the east. His eyes had taken on a new look of fear and concern as he stared up at the walls of the Stockade, as if the walls weren’t, or wouldn’t ever be, high enough.

  “Don’t let your guard down out there. It still ain’t completely safe,” he called out as I headed through the back gate. “There’re a few salvagers we ain’t heard from in a week. So...”