by Jack Wallen
Beast bleated at me again.
The overhead light of the bathroom was drowned out by the bright morning sun. I pulled myself to my feet, swaying as I got my bearings. My mouth tasted like I’d chugged sewer sodas, and my hands shook. A glance in the mirror showed that I looked as bad as I felt. Half of my ponytail had fallen out of place, leaving the rest to lie limp on my shoulder. My eyes were puffy and red. I grabbed the toothbrush and dealt with the swamp mouth the only way I knew how—lots and lots of toothpaste.
I stripped my clothes off, dumping them in the hamper by the toilet. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered as I walked to the bedroom. Beast followed, chirping his disapproval at my sense of priorities. Ignoring him, I grabbed my fluffy white housecoat and wrapped it around myself. I knotted it tight around my waist, and I shoved my feet into warm wool slippers.
It was morning, I was still alive. I needed to talk to Trey.
Shit.
My phone!
Dude, where’s my phone?
I shuffled into the living room. My eyes scanned my desk, then the bookshelf that often came to hold my essentials—glasses, keys, phone. Trey hated that particular habit, but I held firm to my belief in the power of organized chaos.
Where else had I been?
The TV was still on, multicolored bars burning into the screen of my faithful old tube TV. There it was—on the coffee table.
I picked it up. Every muscle in my body relaxed at once. I clutched it to my chest before turning it on.
Nothing happened.
Out of battery. Just my fucking luck.
Yes, even at the end of civilization, battery was everything.
I shot over my desk, plugging my phone in to charge with the grace and alacrity of an Olympic gymnast. The charging LED turned red. I set the phone down on the desk.
Beast meowed again, hopping onto the desk.
“Okay, okay you shitlord,” I said, moving to the kitchen. Even at the end of the world, cats need to be fed.
I navigated the space between my desk and the kitchen, managing to not trip over the cat or stub my toe.
Maybe he’d be delicious, I thought as I poured the kibble into his bowl.
Fuck.
What is wrong with me?
Day one of isolation and I was already psychotic. Great. When is Trey getting home, again?
I walked to the door and grabbed my backpack. I tossed my ill-gotten goods into the pantry, my eyes avoiding Beast. I pulled out the fresh bag of kibble, stowing it on the top shelf where he couldn’t climb. I glanced at the wall clock. It was almost noon.
I hadn’t spoken to Trey in over twelve hours.
Shit.
He’d be worried sick about me. That poor man would worry himself to death if I let him. I rushed to my desk, and pressed the power button on my phone. My faithful Android companion blinked to life, ushering in a new era of my life known as the longest loading screen ever. I set the phone down, leaving it plugged in.
My eyes scanned the street below. A layer of grey snow coated the cars, trees, and low rooftops. The world had become a monochromatic mixture of greys. The fall leaves were muted, bright leaves deadened. A few people milled about, their gait aimless and hair coated in grey dust. Why haven’t they frozen to death? I thought. Some of them weren’t dressed for November in Canada—a time where rain and snow were equally probable, and equally unpleasant.
My eyes scanned for the nightmare scenes that I’d seen on Twitter. A scream shook me from my search. It was unlike anything I’d heard before—it could be considered human if and only if you removed everything good in us. What would be left was worse than a beast—something capable of the worst cruelty and genocide. That dark place inside us.
It screamed again.
Without thinking, I reached out and shut the blinds. Darkness cut out the sunlight, leaving me in the twilight of my apartment.
I didn’t know what that thing was, and I wanted the feeling to be mutual.
I checked my phone. My stomach churned, threatening to empty itself all over again. I’d missed many calls from Trey, and his last text was desperate.
I picked up my phone and hit dial.
I held my breath. He had to be out there. The world was dark enough—he was the sun. The star that could bring back the light.
My only hope.
fifteen | Trey
In some miraculous twist of synchronicity, just as the song ended, my phone rang. Erica’s sweet face greeted me on the display of my phone. I nervously tapped Accept and pulled the phone to my ear.
“Erica?” I answered. She had to hear the trepidation in my voice, the fear that it wouldn’t be her on the other end, but some harbinger of a darker doom that would snap what remained of my threadbare sanity.
“It’s me,” she replied softly.
My breath was stolen in a ragged gasp. My heart and brain fell into a war with one another until I had no idea if tears or laughter were appropriate. Instead of making a choice, both came out to play. “Are you okay?”
Erica wept. My imagination filled with the vision of her angelic face. Her gentle eyes, glistening until she blinked the salty water onto cheeks always threatening to smile.
No one on the planet had a sweeter “cry face” than she.
“I’m scared, Trey.”
A lump bounced from the pit of my gut to land in my throat. When I spoke, every syllable was a challenge. “I’m here, Pi.”
“No, you’re not. You’re there, a thousand miles away ─ where I can’t protect you from the world. I walked out into a shitstorm of chaos and all I could think about was how I couldn’t possibly be your xt+1. You’re alone. My fucking baby is alone and I feel like a goddamn black hole is forming in my chest.”
I caught the reference. Erica always said we were opposite sides of the Chaos Theory formula, always balancing one another out to create a perfect symmetry and harmony. She spoke to me in equations the same way I spoke to her in poetry.
Symmetry.
Love.
Erica pulled me from my train of thought. “I’m so scared, Trey. I don’t know what to do.”
All of a sudden, the script flipped. By some turn of nature, Erica was always the protector in the relationship. She claimed my artistic soul was too delicate for our world ─ that I came from some other planet or dimension and it was her job to keep safe the most valuable force to ever exist. I always took that as her way of saying “I love you in ways you cannot possibly fathom.” Her vocalized fear meant but one thing … for the first time since I’d known my everything, she was truly afraid.
It was my turn to protect.
“My love, I promise you I will make it to your side. Until then, I am just a phone call away. You’re the most brilliant mind I know. Rational thought and logic is your best friend.” I took in a breath and called upon every cell in my brain to bring up the one and only quote that would get my fiancé through this mess. “Erica … Irrational fear is a construct of an undisciplined intellect.”
Her weeping fell to sobs and then to silence. She sighed and spoke. “You remembered the quote.”
“How could I not? You’re my very own Spock.”
“That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, Trey.”
Women. Sometimes they are an enigma never to be solved.
“Erica, I need you to do me a favor, okay? You’re going to have to pull all sorts of ninja-fu for this one. Are you up for it?”
She laughed lightly. The sound was like every piece of beautiful music ever written, played at once.
God I loved this woman.
“Yes, baby. For you, I would ninja the whole fucking world.”
She would.
She could.
“I need you to somehow lock onto my location so I know where in the fuck I am. Okay? And then, I need you to find out what the hell is happening. This shit I’ve seen …”
“I know, Trey. I’ve seen it too.”
“What do you mean?”
I asked. Fear punched the gas of my pulse.
“I mean, something serious has happened. There’s a strange gray snow covering the city …”
My stomach knotted as I looked up to see the same gray stuff drifting down from the sky. “Erica …”
“Yes?”
“It’s falling here as well.”
“Wait, that’s not … you’re far too south for snow this time of year.”
“It’s not snow,” was all I had to say.
Silence greeted me. I could only imagine she was running some calculation through her mind, something so over my head it may as well be a language from an alien planet.
“Fuck,” Erica whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“This could be really bad, Trey. You need to get your ass home now. Please?”
I could hear the hysteria rising in her voice.
“Sweet heart, calm down. I am almost off the trail. As soon as I am, I will find a car and drive as fast as I can to your waiting arms.”
She was crying. The sound of her weeping punched me in the heart. “Promise?”
I had to fight back my own sobs to give her the strength she needed. “Baby, I promise. Look, I’ll text you as much as I can so you know I’m okay. Keep your phone by your side and charged. As soon as I am in a car and on my way, I’ll call. Okay?”
Her sobs faded into sniffles. “I promise,” was all she said.
“Okay then, cuddle up with the kitty and listen to our song for a while. Baby …” I paused briefly. “I’m coming home.”
“3.14159?” she asked gently.
“3.14159,” I replied and disconnected the call.
The world shrank to an infinitesimal size right before it expanded into a universe of scope and scale.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
No matter where I was on the planet, it always felt as if Erica was right next to me. Now? With the ash falling from the sky and the dead rising from the grave, my heart was a vast expanse of chaos. Not feeling Erica in the very center of my core left me hollow, empty.
The feelz! Not the feelz, as Erica would say.
And with a single thought, she was back ─ front and center. The re-centering urged me on. I sprinted. The weight of my pack threatened to take me down.
“Not now, mother fucker. Not now.”
The trees raced by me in a blur. The falling ash grew thick until I ran, headlong, into a wall of gray. From random locations, moans greeted my ears. Littered within the cacophony, the sound of soul-wrenching screams pierced the veil.
The screams couldn’t possibly be human. Another raging roar actually vibrated my teeth. I pushed the pace faster until my lungs threatened to collapse.
Tree limbs smacked me in the face. My eyes blinked out a never-ending fall of ash. The snow was so thick; I didn’t realize I’d exited the trail until I felt the pavement pound back on my feet.
I stopped and glanced around. There were no markers indicating my location.
“Fuck!” I shouted.
I was lost.
The moans and screams fell into a muffled silence. The ash storm muted the moonlight. I had no choice but to follow the road at my feet. It had to lead me somewhere. I pulled out my phone and tapped a text to Erica.
Out of the woods. Find me so I can find you.
sixteen | Erica
I stared at the screen of my phone, Trey’s exaggerated death scowl still displayed. His glow lit up the room, the luminous surface was only a reflection of his brilliance. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand before setting the phone down. The screen winked off, thrusting Trey back into the darkness.
I rolled back in my chair, slivers of sunlight cutting through the cracks between curtains. The moments after a phone call during Trey’s long absences were bittersweet—bliss from hearing his voice, only to have them stolen away an instant later.
I swallowed.
Those things would take him if I didn’t help him.
First things first. I was a scientist. I needed to go back to first principles. I couldn’t operate from a world of dreams and hopes..
I turned on my faithful old friend—my desktop computer. I had a feeling that it and I would become very close these next few days. At least, until Trey comes home.
As the dinosaur booted up, I grabbed my phone. I smiled at Trey’s picture on the screen. I flipped to my text app.
Hey babe, I’m looking up directions for you, I tapped.
I set the phone down, and fired up my browser. We had our phones tracked by GPS in case they were ever lost or stolen. I didn’t like the idea of being followed by technology, but I liked the idea of losing my phone even less. Some of my friends went through a few phones a year. I didn’t know how they could afford to keep replacing them.
I clicked on Trey’s phone. It put him near some roads. But, do all roads lead to a highway? Do all highways lead to Montreal? That was the question.
In this case, it did. I texted Trey the coordinates, as well as the best directions I could manage. There was only so much I could do from a three-year old satellite image taken in the full bloom of summer. I sent the message off, and put my phone down. The battery still hadn’t charged, and I needed to do another supply run.
I shuddered at the thought of going back out there. The man—thing—I killed would still be there. Rotting on the floor of the shopping mall. That was the best allegory to this situation I’d seen yet. Death in the midst of plenty. The end of everything. But how had this happened?
My trusty sidekick, Google, should be able to answer that question. I stroked my chin as I thought of what to search for.
Zombie invasion?
End of the world?
Undead cannibal rampage in Montreal?
I decided to go with plan B—Facebook. My feed had been largely unchanged from the night before. I had a single tag—I’d been mentioned by Trey on something called Zombie Radio.
If the world has gone to shit, I might as well rock out, right?
I posted a quick status: Still alive, who else is out there? Stay out of the snow!
Stay out of the snow. A quintessential part of every Canadian childhood, crumbled to dust and blown away. Snowflakes melting on hot tongues. Maple syrup on snow. Snowball fights. Whatever this calamity was, had it stripped away part of what it means to be human? Forget petty differences like Canadian and American. Humanity went deeper than that—shared experiences, games, and the connectedness of our existence.
Those things had been taken away. Like a social media feed that had gone from hundreds of active friends to five. My cheeks went hot. I shook.
Almost everyone I had ever known or ever loved was probably dead, or a zombie. That’s right, I said the z-word. Zombie. Anyone I ever would have known or loved was ripped away from me. I needed Trey back. He was my link to the past and future. My world-line in a sea of grim possibilities.
I grabbed my phone, and tapped out some texts to my family and closest friends. I held my breath every time I hit send. My heart hammered in my chest.
What was I afraid of, zombie selfies? Brains becoming the new cat pictures?
I drummed my fingers against the desk. Beast stirred on the couch, half-growling as he shifted positions. It was so quiet.
It was time to listen to Zombie Radio. I needed a win against the silence, this emptiness that threatened to devour the spirit of every last surviving human.
I pressed play, and I was greeted by a melodic, yet purring voice that gave definite hints of Captain Kirk. I didn’t think actual humans, other than Carl Sagan, spoke like that. I sat back in my chair with a death grip on my phone. I stared at the LED indicator, and I listened to the DJ begin his latest broadcast.
You’re listening to WZMB, Zombie Radio. Your personal soundtrack to the end of the world…
seventeen | Trey
The location appeared on my screen. Erica had sent me old screenshots of Google Maps. I knew where I was, knew the route to get home. What I didn’t know
was how to get there ─ back into the arms of my universe, my Pi.
The thought made me laugh. The innuendo never passed me by. Erica, on the other hand, never caught the secondary connotations ─ permutations, as it were ─ of the word. I never let slip the entendre, but chose to enjoy the secret on my own.
Still, she was my Pi, in every meaning and every spelling. For a brief second, every molecule in my body gave into the thought of making love to her. It seemed like forever since I stared down into her glorious eyes and felt her heat rise to warm my flesh. I would give anything to feel the pressure of her inner thighs against my waist.
Anything.
Back to the moment at hand.
The road was empty. There was a secreted poetry in that … probably a song in the waiting as well.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “If I don’t come out of this nightmare with a year’s worth of material, I am one lame ass artist.”
As soon as the idea tripped into my consciousness, I realized it was probably more important to focus on surviving.
But then, what good was survival if art didn’t come along for the ride.
I wanted to shout to the stars and bring down the heavens. This isn’t what I’d signed up for. My life, at this time and place, was supposed to be about decompression and letting loose the stress and pace of touring. Instead, life had forced me to deepthroat its deadly member and threatened to blow its load through the back of my skull.
“Fuck,” I screamed at the top of my lungs. My vocal chords rattled, hardly repaired from a year’s worth of screaming and singing in my upper register to millions of the world’s most amazing fans.
As my roar fell to silence, the error of my ways smacked me upside the face, when a chorus of moans spilled from the woods.
I ran. My legs pumped hard and fast. My heart made a mosh pit of my chest. The bitter cold wind nipped at the flesh of my cheeks and lips.
Tears ran in rivers down my cheeks. This could be it ─ my time to “polish the eyes of the damned”.
