The End of the World as We Knew It

by Nick Cole

  The noise didn’t stop.

  That was when the manager took a bunch of pills and committed suicide. A few hours later, he started walking around again and tried to kill the others survivors. Over the next three days, one by one, the others followed the manager’s lead. Except someone had found a gun and it kept making the rounds. In the end, it was just Ramos. He kept going to the roof to look for help. He started to build barricades throughout the store so he could surrender as little space as possible. He built concentric rings of shelving all the way to the stairwell that let out onto the roof. The only weapons he had were some box cutters, useless against those things, he said, a kids’ baseball bat from the toy section, and some Molotov cocktails he made from what was left of the liquor aisle. He knew it was a death sentence to use the Molotovs inside the store.

  One day, he went to the roof after he heard some explosions coming from across the valley. He couldn’t tell exactly where the explosions were coming from, but it looked to be near downtown Los Angeles, which he couldn’t see because of the hills in the way. Then he saw plumes of smoke and fighter jets racing away.

  “I said to myself, good for them,” he told me as we sat in the stairwell of The Pacific Hotel drinking warm sodas and waiting to be used on the next floor.

  “I was really happy for them over in downtown. It felt good to know somebody was finally fighting back. I’d just watched a whole bunch of people off themselves because they were hopeless, so it felt pretty good to see those explosions.”

  Then he told me about the Lady.

  “A day later, the Lady showed up with her crew. Homes, I thought I was saved.”

  Ramos heard the machinegun fire from inside the pharmacy while he was eating a bag of barbecued sunflower seeds. He ran up to the roof in time to see three vehicles, two Hummers and a monster truck blaring rock music, firing guns and throwing grenades at the infected. By the time Ramos reached the roof, the Hummers and monster truck were pulling back down the street. The infected were staggering away from the building, stumbling after the trucks.

  Ramos checked the sides of the pharmacy, lowered himself down to a dumpster, and ran for it. Twenty-four hours later, he made it to the still-burning plumes of black smoke piling up over downtown. He found the Army and the burn piles.

  As we waited in the stairwell, listening to the end of Ramos’s story, we could hear someone above us demolishing a wall with a sledgehammer.

  Then there was a single gunshot.

  “Must have found a live one,” said Ramos.

  We listened and waited for the radio to pop and the chatter of a status report.

  I asked, “Didn’t you ever feel like giving up?” I was thinking about the “live one” they’d found. I was thinking about Alex.

  “Nah, no way man,” he said quickly in his Latino vato homeboy accent. “I was free. I wasn’t gonna give that up, Homes. Not ever again.”

  When we got back to base camp that night, there were fresh strawberries. One of the cooks had been out foraging and found them growing wild.

  I have never tasted anything better in my life. Sorry churros.

  December 6th

  Karen pulled me off building crew just as we were checking in this morning.

  “Engineer cleared floor seven last night. I guess we’d better go take a look at room 709.”

  I looked at Ramos as if I had something to say. But I had no idea at that moment what I’d wanted to say. I think I just needed a friend. A human face to check in with before everything changed.

  “You can do it,” he said.

  I was grateful for that.

  My legs felt weak as we climbed the stairs. I wanted to throw up. I felt dizzy. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster that I didn’t want to be on. We approached the door to Room 709 and I could see it was open. I heard Karen’s footsteps on the carpet come to a halt behind me.

  I pushed back the splintered remains of the door.

  No Alex.

  Bottles. Lots of them.

  I found her bag.

  I felt my compass dangling from my neck as I searched her luggage for anything. I tucked the compass inside my shirt.

  Her clothing.

  Things I had bought her. Things I knew.

  I found another bag. Black canvas duffle.

  Men’s clothing.

  Men’s deodorant.

  Men’s razors and aftershave.

  Hair care products for the African American Male.

  I don’t know what to make of that.

  December 7th

  The shock is still setting in. I don’t know whether to grieve and tell myself she’s dead...

  Or keep looking for her.

  Even if she is the Lady... who was she with?

  And when I think about all that someone else and their hair care products can imply, I remember... I’m the hypocrite.

  I didn’t work today.

  I borrowed a bike and rode down MacArthur Boulevard. I was the only one on that lonely road. I exited at a wide curve and took University. For a while, the road ran alongside an estuary next to the University of California at Irvine.

  The silence gave me a case of the willies, and I wondered how many of the infected were in and amongst the mud and reeds.

  In the swamps.

  Waiting.

  Stuck. Trapped somehow.

  I heard the lone cry of a bird, and later I saw a heron standing motionless in the water.

  Would they go after herons?

  When I got close to the place Chris had marked on the map, I found myself beneath gently rolling hills that fled away to the south.

  It was cold and the wind moved the grass in great waves.

  There were no cows.

  No Chris either.

  December 8th

  I’m back with the Reconstruction Team.

  I work for the photographer now. When the crews bring in each corpse and lay it out, we photograph it. Mainly Ramos and I just unzip the bag, wait while its photographed, zip the bag back up and carry the corpses between piles. Ramos is glad we’re off building detail. The photographer is quiet. He doesn’t say much.

  The bodies.

  There are lots of them. If you allow yourself, you can tell exactly what they were thinking in that last moment before...

  They are peaceful, they are shocked, and sometimes they are angry.

  Most of them have head wounds. Which unofficially indicates they were infected.

  If Alex is here, then I’ll find her. At night I plan to go through the database of photographs from this site. If she’s here, I will find her.

  December 9th

  Going through the photographic database didn’t take long. She hasn’t been photographed yet. There’s only one more section of bodies to bring out from the mall. Then I guess there’ll be some clean-up work and we’ll be reassigned. “We”? Did I just join the Army again?

  I asked a few people if they knew the Lady. Most of the survivors don’t, but a few of them fought at the battle of City Center. Same description. They also say she had a crew. A big black guy in particular.

  December 10th

  I snuck back into the hotel last night.

  Long after lights out.

  It was foggy.

  Even warm.

  I waited until they’d shut off the generators for the night. The big sodium lights that ring the perimeter went dark, and before the guards could get their night vision goggles adjusted, I ran across the wide street and into the dense garden surrounding the hotel.

  It was dark and shadowy in the lobby. I found the stairwell and climbed to the seventh floor. Once inside the stairwell, I used my flashlight. There was dark blood on the walls. Chunks of concrete. The stairs groaned in places as I climbed higher.

  On the seventh floor, I found Alex’s room again. The room faces away from the camp so I used my flashlight to search, knowing the guards couldn’t see the light. I sat down on the carpet and looked at the room.

  I needed to
know. I needed to make up my mind about whether I was going to go on believing that somewhere out there Alex might still be alive, or resign myself to the knowledge that she was dead, and do what comes next.

  Which was either start a new life, or...

  I went through the black canvas duffle bag.

  The guy’s bag.

  There were hair care products for African Americans. There weren’t any condoms.

  I went through her things. I found her calendar. Wedding plans. Circles around important dates. On the day we were supposed to get married she’d written, “Yayyy!”

  I put one of her blouses up to my nose and inhaled.

  I couldn’t smell anything.

  I’ve smelled too much death.

  The bed was made. I mean it wasn’t perfect, but no one had slept in it.

  I found a half-full bottle of cognac amongst all the empties. It was under the bed.

  Why was there so much liquor?

  That was Alex.

  She liked to party.

  I mean, she could cross the line. But it wasn’t like she had a problem. Still, this was a lot of liquor.

  I wondered if maybe someone other than Alex had been here in this room, holding out.

  Maybe Alex had been somewhere else when it all went down.

  Whoever held up here, like we did in the Tower, this was their liquor, their black duffel bag, their African American styling gel.

  Is that a story I can live with?

  If she was having an affair, where was her ring? I spent two week’s commissions on that ring.

  Most people’s yearly salary.

  I went through her things and found a small compartment where she kept her passport and another piece of jewelry. A locket with a picture of a woman I didn’t recognize. Alex’s grandmother maybe? I knew the locket had been important to her.

  Can I believe this? Can I believe that if Alex were in the room with another man she would have put her ring in this pouch where she kept mementos from her grandmother? Can I believe that it’s not here and therefore it’s on her finger, wherever that finger is?

  I looked for her smartphone. I went to the bathroom, crossing the stiff and stale carpet on my hands and knees. I went through every hollow-sounding drawer that opened. I knew I should smell pine and wood and maybe even cedar and dust, but still, the stench of death wouldn’t let me. I searched behind the bullet-shattered TV. Behind the one remaining designer lamp. Out on the balcony. No phone.

  Bullet holes had stitched themselves forever across the walls inside the room.

  Why the shooting?

  In the Tower, a busy Manhattan office tower, it felt as though we’d been abandoned. Here, someone had made an effort to kill whoever was inside this room. Granted, the shooting, when you looked at the whole mall complex, seemed indiscriminate and excessive. But why smaller bullet holes in this room? Alex’s room.

  In the Tower, we’d just kept going up.

  I looked upward.

  Whoever survived, if Alex had survived, they would have gone up. Like we did. I might find her up there. I might find a dead cell phone there. I might find her ring there on another survivor. If she’d been killed, maybe it was something a survivor might have taken. I could check their pockets. If I find the ring, or the phone, I’ll know she made it that far.

  My heart was thumping heavily as I climbed the steps in the stairwell. The top floor was still red-tagged.

  It hadn’t been cleared yet.

  I slipped in under the tape that should have warned me off.

  The door to the suite had once been barricaded - badly - by my standards. On the other side, splintered hotel furniture lay in ruins. It was a suite. There were bullet holes everywhere. There were two bodies. One was a para-military type in blue combat fatigues with large dark stains on his chest, hanging from a rope dangling off the roof. The other was Matt. Alex’s boss.

  He was bloated and naked.

  I’d seen enough infected to know he’d been one. One, that is, before the bullet hole in his head.

  I searched the whole floor. No phone, no ring.

  This morning, just after dawn, I slipped back into the camp. A sentry stopped me. I told him I’d gone over to grab a flashlight I’d left in the hotel the day before.

  I reported for sick call and slept until noon. I grabbed lunch and sat on my bunk for the rest of the afternoon.

  Thinking.

  December 11th

  Even if she was cheating on me, I still need to find her.

  To be honest, I’ve mixed up cheating with death these past few days.

  Maybe it was easier that way.

  I’d liked the idea of Alex waiting for me to find her, to rescue her. Then I’m shattered by the fact someone else might have rescued her. Or maybe she even rescued herself.

  The fine print on my own personal “Dark Tower” quest was beginning to mess me up. But now I have a little clarity and I think I’ve come to a realization. The truth is... I don’t care if she was with someone before or after everything started. There are justifications for me accepting both scenarios. The only thing that matters is that I find her. If she’s the one the kid on the steps told me about, the Lady, then I can find her. And if I can find her, then... maybe we can build something again. Something new.

  All the corpses have been cleared and we’re pulling out for three days’ leave in LA. Then we get our new assignment. Karen came and talked to me. She knew I’d been in the building. She said she understood. She would have gone in too to find news of someone she loved. She also said I was never officially part of her crew, so it wasn’t going in any of the paperwork. If I want to join, she could find a place for me on the next assignment.

  I told her I’d let her know.

  She gave me a check drawn on the Bank of New California for my services with the Reconstruction Crew.

  Tonight I went out beyond the perimeter into the mall parking lot. It’s so quiet I can hear the surf pounding the coast down by the ocean. The sound is distant and yet intense, like a clock in the hall.

  I stood looking at the cratered parking lot. The Swiss-cheese hotel. The remains of the mall.

  If Alex was here, I didn’t find her.

  I didn’t feel, in my heart, that she was there anymore.

  For whatever that’s worth.

  December 16th

  The wind feels good.

  Every so often, up here in the Central Valley, you smell rain. Beyond that, sometimes you smell death. We’ve passed a lot of towns. From the highway, up in our convoy of buses, you see the barricades that didn’t hold, the burnt cars, sometimes even corpses still sprawled across the county roads and fields. We pass small towns where corpses lie blackened and charred in the middle of intersections. Our Reconstruction team is being sent to a gas station town called Turleyville to reconstruct a reported survivor holdout. The others call it a Last Stand. Officially, in Reconstruction paperwork, it is known as a Siege Event.

  We survivors all have our passports stamped with that one.

  I have yet to meet one person, living, that was not part of a Siege Event. A Last Stand. The world is now populated by Last Standers. We all have that in common.

  Apparently the people in Turleyville didn’t make it. So we’re being sent there to find the IDs, bury the dead, and tell their story. That’s how Karen summarized the mission.

  It’s rained most of the journey. Small, soft, wet spring rain, though spring should be some time away still.

  We want it to be spring.

  We want to start again.

  But in reality, it’s just the beginning of winter.

  After we got back to L.A. from Newport Beach, we were turned loose on the “Zona” as it’s being called. The “Zona” is the barricaded area in the southern part of downtown Los Angeles. The Market District.

  Karen caught me just as everyone fled the yard where we’d parked the buses and trucks.

  “This little rest will be good for you. But come back.
That’ll be good for you too.”

  I said I’d think about it.

  I found a small hotel and checked in for the night. I slept sideways on the bed, my feet hanging off, because I was so tired. I’d lain down for just a moment after a hot shower, and when I awoke it was late evening. Somewhere down the hall I heard someone laughing. Or crying. For most people, there is little to laugh about.

  I went out into the night and the brightly-lit streets. There was a big party going on.

  I got drunk at a taco stand and sat talking with the owner and his daughter. We talked about the Yankees. We drank. I ate tacos all night. His daughter - pretty, young, slim, Latina, worked the grill - and occasionally when a group of revelers would stop for food he would jump behind the cart and help her.

  But mostly we talked about the Yankees. He was a Dodgers fan, even back when they had been in Brooklyn, so he knew about the Yankees as every Dodgers fan must, or so he told me.

  We didn’t talk about what had happened to us.

  We didn’t tell our stories.

  We talked about the Yankees.

  We talked about Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson and Billy Martin.

  I didn’t want to talk about Derek Jeter because I knew I would think of the Derek Jeter Monday Morning Meeting Bat.

  Then I would think of the Tower.

  At dawn, it was time to close.

  Mostly drunk, I helped them clean up. With a hose, I sprayed down the walkway where they kept their cart, washing away all the spilled carne asada and tortillas and cheese the other drunken revelers had left in the wake of their carousing. Then we walked back a few streets to a small garage and I helped them load their cooking tools into it.

  “We have a place in Hilltop. Come and have a proper breakfast with us,” offered the old man.

  I tried to decline, but even the daughter clutched at my arm and dragged me along with them. I felt the extra squeeze she gave that her father did not see.