Fear: The Quiet Apocalypse

by T M Edwards

  For a long time, I just sat under my dining table in the middle of my kitchen with my knees hugged to my chest, staring at the broken glass that littered the hardwood, and watching the giant hailstone as it slowly melted into a puddle.

  Long after the storm had expended the last of its energy and there was no sound outside but the occasional distant grumble, I sat, unable to do more than force myself to breathe through the lump that anxiety and fear had created in the bottom of my throat.

  Day 11. September 27th

  I’d turned my phone off last night, to save the battery. My thought was that I could turn it on once every couple of days to see if any of my contact with the world had been restored.

  Somehow, I still woke up right at 7:30, even though there was no alarm to wake me. The analog clock’s hands were exactly where they were every morning when I opened my eyes.

  I rolled over and pressed my hands into the mattress to push myself up...and gasped. My injured hand throbbed with heat and pain that was spreading up my hand and now encompassed my wrist. When I pulled back the bandage, I found it angry, red, and weeping.

  A wave of nausea passed over me, and I fought the urge to vomit. Whether the pain, the sight, or the infection, I felt sick and faint. I stumbled to the bathroom and stood over the toilet, eyes closed and breath shallow, as I waited for the feeling to either pass or end in the reappearance of whatever was in my stomach.

  Finally, it seemed like I was going to be spared this time. I straightened, and walked to the shower before realizing that I’d run out of hot water yesterday, and there was no power to make more. I wearily scrubbed my face with my uninjured hand, and sat on the edge of the tub. Only the reflection of my eyes was visible above the counter, and I stared at them in the mirror, wide and surrounded by skin that was so pale that my freckles almost looked black. In the dim light of the bathroom, I looked like a green-eyed ghost with crazy hair.

  Eventually the nausea faded away to hunger, and I put together a peanut butter sandwich as I tried to decide what my next move was. The power was gone, and it appeared there was nobody left to fix it. What about the water? Was that next?

  Once my breakfast was finished, I pulled every glass and bowl and container I owned out of my cabinets and filled them with water, then lined them up on the counters. It looked ridiculous, but at least I wouldn’t die of dehydration if my water stopped working, too. Then I washed the few dirty dishes in cold water and filled those, too, while my hand throbbed with distracting pain the entire time.

  I stood at the empty sink and looked out the broken window at the wreck of what had once been my neighborhood. The hail had severely battered the hedges, and left large pock marks in the Toyota and the mailboxes. A couple of houses even had visible holes where the hailstones had punched straight through the roof.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to focus. I was constantly wavering between extreme anxiety and blessed numbness. When I was numb, I could think more clearly. I breathed calmly and slowly, trying to force the anxiety into a box in my mind, where I could deal with it later.

  There was no question my hand was infected. It was beyond what little medical care I had available in the house. Infections were bad, and could be deadly. I knew this much, though I had no idea how long it might take. I shuddered at the thought of those germs creeping into my blood vessels and climbing up my arm, but ferociously shoved those thoughts into the box along with my anxiety. They could keep each other company. I was busy. I needed a plan.

  The hospital. People that worked in medical care were a little braver than the rest of us, weren’t they? Plus, they had generators and stuff. Maybe they still had power. Maybe they could help me. And if not...well, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  Mind made up, I grabbed my keys and wallet and unlocked the door. As I stepped over the threshold, I had a moment of realization. Somehow, it had become a hundred times easier to go outside now, with the air filled with alien radiation, than it ever was on a normal day.

  Shaking my head at my own inconsistency, I walked toward my car. I groaned when I saw the spiderweb cracks left by the storm the day before. Well, at least there weren’t many other cars on the road that I had to be able to see to avoid.

  When I turned the key in the ignition, my anxiety jumped up a notch once I saw that I only had a quarter-tank of gas left. It would get me to the hospital and back. Maybe two more trips to the grocery store. And then? What then? With no electricity and nobody working, and my bank account dwindling, It was unlikely I’d be able to replenish the fuel in my car.

  I scrubbed at my face with my good hand and threw the car into reverse. I backed out of the parking spot and drove through the deserted streets, my hand throbbing and a headache threatening to descend behind my eyes.

  If possible, the city seemed even more deserted than it had the last time I’d driven these roads. Trash scudded across the asphalt, driven by the breeze. The sun shone through thin clouds, making the wet grass glisten, and glinting off of puddles. Yards were quickly becoming overgrown. Any cars that were left were dented and damaged by the hail.

  I didn’t see a single soul as I drove. The suburbs gave way to city, the green yards to concrete and storefronts. The hospital was deep downtown, but lack of cars or working traffic lights prompted me to ignore all of the one-way signs and take the quickest route. My entire hand up past my wrist had swelled so much that it hurt to bend my fingers, and it felt like the whole thing was trapped in a vice.

  I drove straight into the ambulance bay, and didn’t even bother to bring my keys with me. After all, there was nobody to steal my car. Nobody who wasn’t so petrified of their own shadow that they’d be able to drive it.

  The automatic doors stood wide open, and the ER waiting room was utterly empty.

  “Hello?” I called as I stepped inside. The floor was littered with trash, from bits of paper and fast-food cups, to discarded hospital gowns and even an IV pole. The overhead lights flickered dimly, and half of them were completely dark. It lent an eerie and almost creepy atmosphere to the place.

  I stepped around the corner to Reception. Empty.

  For a moment I stood in front of the swinging doors that led to the patient rooms, arms crossed, feeling the tug between “this is against the rules” and “you don’t have a choice.”

  “Hello!” I called louder, but besides a faint electronic hum from deeper in the building, all was silent.

  Filled with trepidation, I pushed the swinging doors open and stepped into the dim hallway.

  The corridor was in an even worse situation of disarray. It was about halfway between “we’ve had a super busy day” and “the zombie apocalypse has begun and the undead are locked in the doctors’ lounge.” Paper and medical supplies lay where they had been dropped. Some were bloody. Bins and buckets contained substances I didn’t want to identify. Charts were piled haphazardly on counters.

  How does this even happen? It’s not even been two weeks since that thing landed! These were people trained to deal with crises, and they had crumbled just like the rest of the population.

  “Hello!” I yelled, the sound of my voice echoing back at me from the walls. “Is anybody here?”

  There was no response except for a faint whimper from further down the hall. I swallowed hard as my anxiety broke free of the box I’d shoved it into, and my heart started to pound so hard that I could feel it in my ears.

  Don’t go look. You have NO idea what it could be. Maybe this thing is turning people into actual zombies. It’s probably going to jump out and eat you.

  Deidre, I scolded myself. The only zombies around here are people so scared out of their own wits that they can barely move. This radiation hasn’t actually harmed anyone. It might be a nurse or a doctor, and you desperately need to find a nurse or a doctor.

  So, still fighting the internal war between “don’t walk down the dark hallway to check out the mysterious noise” and “I’m going to die of sepsis if I don’t fi
nd some antibiotics,” I picked up a bedpan that looked relatively clean, and holding it above my head like a club, I walked slowly down the hallway.

  I peered into each room as I passed, straining my ears to figure out where the faint whimpering was coming from. When I finally found the occupied room, my stomach clenched and I stopped in shock, but it was feelings of sadness and compassion that filled me, not fear or horror.

  Laying on the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV that had long run dry, and with electrodes on her chest that led to an inoperative monitor, there lay a woman so old and frail that I had no idea how she was still alive. It was her who was crying. The redness of her eyes and the cracked state of her lips told me how dehydrated she was. Her hand was outstretched toward the door, but she was too weak to even lift it.

  Tears flooded my eyes and I rushed forward, casting the bedpan aside. Her eyes locked with mine, pleading. Her lips trembled, but she could not force the words past them. Suppressing the painful sobs that tried to take my breath away, I grabbed her hand and held it gently in my own.

  “No, no, no. Oh...please tell me. Tell me what I can do!”

  The old lady’s chest heaved as she tried to speak, but she was too weak to form the words. Thinking that water might help, I ran into the bathroom and filled one of the little paper cups from the tap, and brought it back. I tipped a few drops at a time onto her peeling lips, and she managed to swallow about half of it before she turned her head away.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She seemed to be regaining some small portion of her strength. She smiled wanly and reached up her wrinkled hand to touch my cheek with her fingertips. Her lips parted, and she said something, but I couldn’t hear. I leaned in close, until my ear was right next to her mouth.

  “Don’t let me die alone,” she whispered.

  My breath caught in my throat, and I could barely breathe around the lump in my chest. I sat on the little rolling chair, with her hand in mine, knowing I should keep moving, but unable to leave the old woman’s side. She smiled at me again, and closed her eyes.

  For nearly an hour, I sat there. I held her hand, and watched silently as her breathing grew slower and slower, until it finally ceased. With a trembling hand, I placed my fingers on her neck to check her pulse. She was gone.

  With tears streaming down my face and sobs tearing through my body, I slipped the hospital bracelet from the old woman’s birdlike wrist. Edna, her name had been. I slipped the band into my pocket, and, without bothering to pick up the bedpan, I walked despondently out of the hospital room and back into the hallway. I resumed my search for someone, anyone who might have the medical knowledge to help me, but after seeing how that poor old woman had just been abandoned to die of dehydration, I had little hope.

  I stumbled through hallway after hallway and room after room, eyes blurred by tears and my throat aching. I passed a few more rooms where people laid on the beds, a couple of them saw me and cried out for me to help them, but I couldn’t. Even though it was tearing my heart to shreds, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t sit with each of them and wait for all of them to die. I didn’t know how to help them. So I abandoned them. I left them to die alone, as I roamed the hospital, frantically searching for something or someone that would make me better.

  Eventually, I ended up in what looked like the pharmacy. I had been up and down more flights of stairs than I could remember, and my legs and chest were sore from the unusual exertion. The metal grate was pulled down at the front, but a door to the side stood open. I entered to find it utterly unlit, and shelf upon shelf of medications loomed in the near-dark.

  I picked a shelf at random and began to examine bottles, looking for anything I recognized as an antibiotic. I stuffed a few other things that I recognized into my pockets, things that might come in useful later. Painkillers, steroids, a couple inhalers in case of respiratory infection. I found a bottle of disinfectant. Realizing I was going to need more space, I found some paper bags under the counter and lined them up to fill them.

  Amoxicillin. There. I grabbed every bottle of it, and tossed them into the bags.

  Just as I decided that I’d better leave what was left in case anyone else came along that also needed help, I heard a noise coming from a back corner.

  “Hello?” I called, and was greeted by whimpering. Cautious, but no longer feeling the terror that I might have, I walked down the row of shelves, peering down each aisle as I passed. A smell assailed my nose, like the scent of a bathroom that had gone without cleaning for too long.

  Finally, I found him. He was probably my age, maybe a little younger. He was fit and attractive-looking, or would have been before all this began. He wore a pharmacist’s white coat that was now stained and dirty. When he saw me, he cried out and tried to shove himself even farther back into the corner. He was babbling incoherently, and he was the source of the smell.

  I knelt down a few feet from him. “It’s okay,” I said in a low tone. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “No!” he cried weakly, and writhed in the corner, as if trying to shrink back into the very wall itself. “No, help! No!” He subsided into babbling, and began to bash the back of his head against the wall behind him.

  “Stop!” I cried, and tried to move forward to stop him, but his fear became even more frenzied, and I was forced to retreat. Tears streaked his face and he screamed in terror, his head repeatedly thudding against the surface behind him.

  “Okay, okay!” I begged, feeling the tears begin to flow again. “I’ll leave you alone!” I jumped up and backed away. “Please. Please stop. I’m not going to hurt you. Please, just stop!”

  But he continued his incoherent screaming, and the thuds of his skull hitting the wall reverberated through my body. I scrambled backwards until my butt hit the edge of the counter, and then ran along it toward the door, trying not to hear the repeated impacts as I grabbed my bags of medication and the disinfectant, and ran across the lobby for the front door.

  As I burst into the sunlight, I screamed. Screamed until my throat was raw, and there was no breath in my body. And when my head began to swim and my knees gave out, I collapsed to the pavement, the bags falling from my hands and their contents spilling down the slight incline to the parking lot.

  I could barely draw in a breath before the horrific sound of flesh and bone hitting brick once again flashed through my head, and another cry was wrenched from me. I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus, couldn’t do anything but channel every last bit of my fear and my loneliness and my anger and frustration and desperation into the sounds that issued from my mouth. I couldn’t even recognize the sound, raw and agonized, as my own. I was just a vessel for emotions that my soul could no longer manage to contain. My throat was a conduit for expressions of grief that my tongue could not define. There were no words to describe the aching hole that was left behind in the world after the implosion of society. I was standing on the brink of an abyss, and at the moment, I didn’t know if I was going to step forward or backward.

  It was a long time before I could regain enough of my composure to climb to my feet and go after all of the medications that were now sitting in the gutter. My throat was raw, and my chest ached as if my heart was being broken into actual pieces.

  Day 13. September 29th

  That morning, when I turned the tap to try and brush my teeth, the faucet spat a few drops of rust-colored water out at me. So. No more water.

  While tempted to just sit down on the edge of the tub and brood in my anxiety about dying of thirst, I forced myself to keep moving. I walked to the kitchen and put together a peanut butter sandwich. These things were becoming a staple of my diet, but soon it was going to be crackers and peanut butter, because I was down to the last few slices of bread.

  “Guess I’m going to have to try one last grocery trip,” I said out loud. I knew there was nobody to respond, but it helped to hear a voice, even if that v
oice was my own.

  “Bonus: It’ll probably be free, since there’s nobody left to pay. Not that I should steal food. But what am I supposed to do? Start raiding empty houses? You heard what they said about looters.” Even though there doesn’t seem to be any police officers left to shoot anybody.

  There was no point in a plate. I put my sandwich on a paper towel, and took one of the full glasses of water from the counter.

  I set the glass on the table next to my sandwich, and stared at my breakfast blearily for a moment. Wasn’t I going to do something else? Antibiotics. I pulled a big white pill from the orange container and set it on the paper towel before sitting down.

  I had seen at least every hour on my wall clock last night. Every time I tried to sleep, I was soon woken by the sound or the sight of that young pharmacist, hitting his head against the wall until it was caked with blood. Every time I tried to relax, I heard his voice in my head, screaming in abject terror.

  A suspicion was growing in my head, one I realized that I probably would have developed long ago, if I wasn’t someone who already struggled with severe anxiety, and to whom the extreme reactions toward the unknown seemed at least somewhat believable. A fear of unknown radiation or a space object shouldn’t have been enough to turn 99% of the population into babbling idiots. There was something else going on. Maybe it was the radiation itself. Maybe it was affecting people’s brains, and people who weren’t used to fighting fear like I was, didn’t know how to handle it. Maybe the people who had stayed, or the few who were still partially functioning, already knew what it felt like to fight debilitating anxiety on a daily basis, and they were less susceptible.