Fear: The Quiet Apocalypse

by T M Edwards

  I didn’t have enough in my bank account to buy a ticket. I had little choice but to stay and hope all the panic was over soon.

  Even as my heart raced its staccato in my chest and my breath came quick and shallow, I forced myself to think about this the way I thought about every other panic-attack-inducing event. What were the facts? What was true? What was a lie created by my mind?

  1. There is no proof that the radiation is actually harmful. Nobody who has been unable to evacuate ahead of it has been killed, or even shown any side effects besides intense levels of panic and fear.

  2. The object hasn’t actually done anything. It hasn’t moved, it hasn’t opened to reveal a swarm of alien soldiers.

  3. The only people who have actually been hurt have been those whose stores or homes have been looted. And all of those were within a few dozen miles of the object itself.

  4. Just because waves of evacuating humanity are moving in the general direction of my city, doesn’t mean they are going to get anywhere near my house, let alone enter it.

  5. For now, I am safe.

  I took a deep breath, and tried to force my racing heart to calm down. I tossed my phone toward the foot of the bed, and pushed myself to my feet. Might as well go to work.

  Day 7. September 23rd

  The local news station was playing a live feed of updates on the object, including a map of how far the radiation had spread. That red circle reached 20 miles past my city by now. The president and most of our country’s leaders were on planes to other countries. There were riots in the Capitol over the fact that the “important” people got to leave, while the rest of us were just left behind.

  As much as I wanted to condemn the rioters, because violence should never be the answer, I couldn’t say I disagreed with them. But then again, didn’t the world always function this way? The rich and powerful, those with resources, they were the ones who were comfortable while everyone else suffered.

  I woke my computer that morning to an email in my inbox from my employer.

  Notice to all employees:

  All projects suspended until further notice. Please turn in your latest timecards and you will be issued checks to compensate you for all work completed up to today, 9/23. Work will resume once the current country-wide crisis has ended.

  God help us all.

  I snorted aloud in disbelief at the email. And I thought I was dramatic. What did God have to do with something falling from outer space and scaring the crap out of the population of America? And why cancel work when we were remote employees who never even had to show up at the office?

  Around noon, I decided to venture outside to check the mail. As I unlocked the front door and stepped out onto the porch, fingers of ice clenched around my heart.

  The street was completely empty. Mrs. Hudson’s hat and clippers lay on top of the hedge as if she’d been trimming it and just melted away into thin air. The vehicles that normally lined the streets and filled the driveways...they were gone. Only one was left, a beat-up Toyota that probably didn’t even run. Garage doors were left open, as if people hadn’t even stopped to close them. Yards were littered with clothing and personal belongings in trails that led to the driveways, like people had carried their things out by the armful, but were too frightened to stop and pick up what they dropped.

  I hurried to the mailbox, found it empty, and nearly ran back inside. Shaking and panting, I closed the door and locked it, before collapsing back against it and sinking down to the floor. With trembling fingers, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and swiped the screen.

  Kayla?

  No answer.

  I scratched at my scalp in frustration. Kayla was ALWAYS online. She was my extroverted friend who thought adrenaline was a pleasant high, and horror movies were good girls’-night material. She and her phone were attached at the hip.

  I scrolled through my messages. Where I was normally greeted by all the green dots showing that my friends were online, all I saw was a line of profile pictures.

  I shoved myself up from the floor and scrubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, pushing back the tears that were a combination of anger and anxiety. What was wrong with this town? Why was everybody acting this way over a seemingly inert object that was hundreds of miles away?

  Unable to settle to any specific activity, I paced restlessly up and down the front hallway. My phone was in my hand, but it was silent. No social media alerts. No messages. No emails. Even for me, the introvert with social anxiety who barely left the house, this was unheard of.

  My heart fluttered wildly in my chest, and I was starting to feel short of breath. But I couldn’t stop pacing. The irrational fear had set its claws into me, and I just had to ride out the storm. I just had to keep repeating what I knew to be true, and trying to convince my brain to stop obsessing over things that hadn’t even happened.

  My phone buzzed frantically in my hand, and I swiped the screen to see the icon of an emergency alert filling the screen. I tapped “Ok” to view the message.

  ALERT

  ALERT

  ALERT

  ALL DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS GROUNDED

  ALL INTERSTATES AND HIGHWAYS DEEMED IMPASSABLE

  ALL GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS CLOSED

  PLEASE REMAIN HOME WHENEVER POSSIBLE

  DO NOT CALL 911 EXCEPT IN CASE OF TRUE EMERGENCY

  PLEASE LIMIT ALL UNNECESSARY PHONE CALLS

  PLEASE CONSERVE ELECTRICITY AND WATER USAGE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

  PLEASE LOCK ALL DOORS AND WINDOWS

  LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT BY LAW ENFORCEMENT

  CURFEW IN EFFECT AS OF 9/23, STARTING AT 7PM EVERY EVENING, PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS FROM 7PM TO 7AM EVERY NIGHT.

  Day 8. September 24th.

  It all seemed surreal. Except for the alert that showed up on my phone exactly every 6 hours, I hadn’t been able to reach anyone nor seen any sign of life in my neighborhood for nearly two days.

  I could no longer find any live feeds detailing the situation. All of the local and national news stations had gone eerily quiet. None of them had articles more recent than yesterday morning.

  I had passed beyond anxiety and into a state of complete numbness, my anxiety’s customary reaction to overwhelming stress. My brain wouldn’t process all of this. It refused to accept this as being real. Isolated from my online friends, I sat in my front window for hours at a time, my eyes scanning the neighborhood for any signs of life. I saw nothing, not even the random feral cat or wild bird.

  Eventually my growling stomach broke through my emotional apathy, and I decided it was a good day for a hot lunch. I walked to the fridge, my socks slippery on the hardwood floors, and pulled it open.

  I had two avocados ripening on the counter, and a big tomato in the fridge...oh, and a big bag of tortilla chips. The avocados wouldn’t last much longer, so it looked like some fresh guacamole was in order. It wasn’t hot, but it was better than cereal.

  I pulled out a cutting board and sliced the tomato, throwing it into a bowl. Then I picked up one of the avocados and slid my knife around it and twisted it to open.

  In my distracted state, I made the stupid decision to try and stab the avocado seed with my knife instead of using the flat of the knife to grab and twist it out. Predictably, the knife tip slipped on the seed, and continued through the avocado to plunge into the palm of my hand.

  I gasped and cried out, and dropped the avocado, with the now-bloody knife sticking through it, onto the counter. Clutching my hand at the wrist, I stumbled to the sink and ran cold water over my hand, fighting the spots that sparkled in my eyes at the sight of all the blood.

  I grabbed the towel that hung over the oven handle, wadded it up and pressed it to the wound. My head was definitely swimming now, and I walked the few steps to collapse into a chair. With the towel still pressed tightly against my throbbing hand, I put my elbow on the table and pressed my forehead against my arm, waiting for the faintness to pass.

  Idiot, I th
ought. Stupid. How could you be so stupid?

  I walked shakily to a drawer on the other side of the kitchen and felt around at the back of it, looking for the first aid kit. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the towel away and tried to keep from freaking out as I surveyed the damage.

  Dang it. The cut was so deep I could see a hint of white at the bottom, and over an inch long. It desperately needed stitches, and all I had was an assortment of multicolored bandages, and some gauze pads and tape.

  After thinking for a moment, I rigged a few pieces of tape in such a way that they pressed the cut together.

  For a few moments I just sat in my chair at the table, staring off into space, unable to form a coherent thought. My hand throbbed badly, and all my thoughts were skittering around in my head while I tried in vain to catch one of them and pin it down. I couldn’t get the image out of my head of a million little germs running around, gleefully laughing and rubbing their palms together at the sight of the wound.

  I needed to be seen by a doctor. If it was any other day, I would have forced myself to go to the ER, airborne viruses be damned. But the words of the alert kept running through my mind. Did this qualify as a real emergency? My hand had mostly stopped bleeding, and it hurt like the dickens, but people used to have stuff like this happen before hospitals in every town were a thing, and they survived, right?

  Only half realizing what I was doing, I resorted to one of my frequent calming methods: the internet. I often researched things that were bothering me, because facts generally helped me calm down. Unless they reinforced my fears, that is.

  I tapped on the browser, and set the phone down to let it load and check on my hand. At least the cut had stopped bleeding, although it was already starting to bruise.

  When I picked up my phone, it showed an error message that said there was no connection. I checked that the wi-fi was on, and tried again. Nothing. Then I switched on my data connection. Still nothing.

  After nearly half an hour, during which ice-cold fear settled heavier and heavier into the pit of my stomach, I was forced to accept that I just wasn’t going to be able to access the internet. I was back to fighting a full-blown panic attack at the thought that I was completely cut off from the world.

  On a half-crazed impulse, I jumped up from my chair and nearly ran down the hallway to the front door, grabbing my keys and wallet as I passed. I unlocked and yanked the front door open without hesitation, and without even bothering to lock it behind me, I strode rapidly along the sidewalk toward my car.

  I slid into my car and turned the key in the ignition, and backed out of the driveway. My foot pushed the accelerator down so fast that the tires squealed. I sped through the deserted neighborhood. It looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, but if this was the apocalypse, it was the quietest one I could have ever imagined. There were no zombies, there was no virus, just people that had fled in terror of some radiation that didn’t even seem to be hurting them. Did that make me the hero of this post-apocalypse story? If so, that movie was going to end very badly when my lack of survival skills got me killed.

  I ignored the stop signs and traffic lights because there was no one else on the road. I saw a couple of people, but they looked up at me like startled rabbits, then darted back inside their houses. The few houses that still had cars in the driveways had curtains tightly shut against the sun.

  Where was I even going? I had crossed into the city, but it was barely any more occupied than the suburbs. I saw maybe a half-dozen cars on the road. Nobody walked the sidewalks, or waited at the crossings. Shop doors were shut, and the stores inside were dark.

  Eventually I found myself in the parking lot of the grocery store. Deciding I might as well pick up some medical supplies, I pulled into a parking space and turned the car off. I could have parked in front of the door, for all anyone would have noticed. There were only two vehicles in the entire supermarket parking lot.

  Stuffing my keys into my pocket, and feeling somehow naked without my phone, I walked into the store. The automatic doors stood open, and the air-curtain was turned off. As my eyes adjusted to the indoors, I realized that nearly half of the lights were off. The store was completely deserted, except for a cashier that I instantly recognized as the girl with the bubblegum from last time. She was staring off into space, and didn’t acknowledge me as I walked in.

  The store was utterly transformed from five days ago. Shelves were half-empty, and the meat fridges stood empty and dark. I wandered the aisles with my cart in a sort of trance, tossing random things into it as I passed. I didn’t have a job until this nightmare was over, so I might as well stock up on some cheap food.

  In the pharmacy section, the metal grate was pulled down over the windows, even though it was the middle of a weekday. I threw a bunch of various bandages into my cart, along with antiseptics and antibiotic ointment. Some pain meds tumbled in next. Heck, wouldn’t hurt to have some extra vitamins on hand in case food got scarce.

  Finally, I pushed the cart, which was now full to the brim, back up to the front of the store where the lone cash register stood open. As I began to load the belt, the cashier seemed to suddenly realize I was there. She nodded at me nervously, and began to scan my items. As I watched her silently pass my purchases over the scanner, I could see that her hands were shaking. She didn’t speak a single word, and I re-loaded the cart with the bagged items when the carousel became filled.

  When everything was bagged, I swiped my card without even looking at the total. Still utterly silent, the girl handed me my receipt. As I pushed the heavy cart toward the exit, the cashier behind me burst into tears, and brushed past me, then set off across the parking lot at a full-out run. I watched her in shock until she passed between two buildings on the other side of the road and disappeared, leaving the store deserted.

  Day 10. September 26th

  I was beginning to realize that there’s a reason prison inmates are punished by being put into solitary confinement. Isolation is a very effective form of torture.

  I didn’t even remember the last time I talked to anyone. I thought I was isolated before, but I could still pick up my phone and search for information, or contact someone, with almost instant gratification. If I had a rare day when I felt like being social, I could step outside and go chat with Mrs. Hudson, or the Andersons, the family with two little kids across the street. I could go to the grocery store and be surrounded by people and noise, or go to the mall or the movie theater.

  They say you don’t truly appreciate what you have until it’s gone. Whoever “they” were, they were right. I thought people were an inconvenience and a bother, intruding on my alone time, making noise when I would rather have silence, a chaotic and ubiquitous presence just outside my front door.

  But now that it was all gone, I found myself longing desperately for human interaction. I felt like I might even voluntarily go on one of Kayla’s “girl’s bar night” ordeals. But I hadn’t heard from Kayla, or anyone, in what felt like half a lifetime.

  A surprise thunderstorm hit my house with a huge thunder crash sometime around noon. I was just testing to see if my spaghetti was done when there was a flash of light outside the windows that I could see even in the daylight, followed closely by a rumble that made the entire house quake. I pushed aside the curtain over the sink to see angry green clouds and sheeting rain pelting the grass and bushes.

  Right when I dropped the curtain and turned back to the stove, the susurration of rain on the roof changed to a loud thudding sound, and I jerked the fabric open again to see that the rain was now interspersed with hail. As I watched with fear growing in my stomach and the spaghetti boiling loudly on the stove, the hailstones grew in frequency and size, until I was watching my neighborhood as it was battered by balls of ice, many of them the size of baseballs.

  I watched in horror as the Toyota across the street quickly became dented, and flinched when an especially large stone created a spiderweb of cracks across the windshield.


  At the exact same moment, another crash of thunder shook my house, and there was a deafening crash as a hailstone the size of a grapefruit came hurtling through the window, narrowly missing me and showering me in painful shards of glass. I stumbled backward just as another lightning flash blared outside.

  The thunder that came next shook my house with a violence that spurred me to cry out and scramble beneath the kitchen table, my eyes clenched tightly closed as I hugged my knees and threw out a prayer to any deity that might possibly be watching over my planet.

  It wasn’t until several minutes later, when the thunder had dissipated and the thuds of hailstones had receded into the sigh of heavy rain, that I dared to open my eyes again.

  That was when I realized that the power had gone out.