Apocalypse [Book 1]

by Matt J. Pike

  On another note, my inappropriate thoughts per minute count towards Hardo’s mum was still at near record level, despite her post-apocalyptic attire not being as revealing as earlier this summer. #imabadbadfriend

  9pm: I’m shaking, I can barely type. I am guttered. I got home and started trawling through the phone messages and found one from Dad. Couldn’t have been too long after I spoke to them for the last time either. He was in a good mood because he’d found some transport out of Tassie quicker than expected and they were leaving that night for Launceston. From there they had a chance of getting on a boat to Melbourne that night. They hoped to be back in Adelaide by Saturday night.

  That puts Mum and Dad around the heart of ground zero at the moment of the Melbourne impact. Shit, shit, shit. I’m trying to think of some logical way they would be somewhere else, somewhere safe. But nothing I can come up with makes any sense. And if their plans had changed Dad would let me know – he’s obsessive like that.

  They were there. They were in the wrong place at the absolute wrong time. They are dead. My parents. Dead.

  There are no words for this.

  I… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to say. I am just numb. Shaking, sick, alone and numb.

  ****

  Tuesday, April 16, 2014

  7pm: I don’t feel like writing today. I don’t feel like anything.

  ****

  Wednesday, April 17, 2014

  5pm: See yesterday’s post. Add a ditto.

  Oh and just to add to my perfect mood, the weather has closed in. It was windy and dusty and freaking dark all day. The sort of dark that it’s hard to tell whether it’s day or night. And it got nasty cold all of a sudden. The winter has hit. This is depressing. I’m not in a good place. I am a long, long way from a good place.

  ****

  Thursday, April 18, 2014

  11am: This is crazy. I’m paralysed with bitterness. I can’t move. I’m just eating, going to the toilet and sleeping. I’m completely detached. I’m a zombie – a human zombie.

  It’s disgusting outside. It’s been storming for three days straight. It’s dark and dusty and windy. There’s a layer of debris and ash in the yard that has caked everything. It’s already higher than the step into the house. The next time I open that door I’ll let that gunk in and if I don’t go out soon I could be sealed in. But I’m not moving today. Zombie not moving.

  The house is dark - the solar panels aren’t getting anything. Nothing. The phone is dead – all the ash in the air is screwing the signal.

  Is this what the end of the world is like? Is this what I’ve survived for?

  ****

  Friday, April 19, 2014

  4.45pm: Another day of zombiness.

  I’ve gotta stop this. I can feel it sucking me under. I’ve gotta deal with this before it gets too crazy. Before I get too crazy.

  ****

  Saturday, April 20, 2014

  9.15am: OK. Today’s gonna be tough. But I’ve gotta do it. It may sound weird but I’m giving my parents a funeral tomorrow. I’m gonna spend the rest of the day planning it – writing speeches, displaying pictures, having food, sorting out the right music. I’m going all out. I’m gonna need to get the generator sorted first.

  10.30am: The house is now electrified again – the generator was all hooked up – it just needed switching on. Too easy, really. I was the one who turned it off in the first place; I just didn’t want it running unless I was ready. The only difficult bit was dealing with the environment outside. The ash has been falling like turd-coloured snow for days. And it’s everywhere. As soon as I managed to jimmy open the sliding door a whole pile of the filth splattered down on to the cream carpet. Pretty sure that stain ain’t coming out any time soon. So I changed tactics. I decided to go out through the laundry door – that way the damage is only to the tiles. I also donned all of my footy wet weather gear and tucked everything into my welly boots. I threw on my diving goggles and wrapped a scarf around my mouth so I didn’t have to breathe too much ash in. I looked like a joke but at least it kept most of the dirt out of the house. When I got back in I threw everything in the laundry trough, rinsed it and hung it out on the shower rail to dry. So what was probably a two-minute job took the better part of an hour from start to finish! Am I gonna have to do that every time I leave the house? That’s a pain in the arse.

  1pm: This is harder than I thought. Looking though the pictures of Mum, Dad, Jase and I growing up. All those memories... each one a beautiful, utterly sad reminder it is all completely gone. Every family moment I will ever experience has already happened. Those pics used to be things we did – now they’re things we’ll never do again.

  8pm: It is done. Everything is prepared for tomorrow. I feel like I have given everything I have from the depths of me. I’ve run an emotional marathon today. Given how emotionally unprepared I am, I got the emotional stitch at the 200m mark, emotional cramp at 5km and pretty much hobbled home. I seriously have nothing more to give. Nothing. Tomorrow my parents will get a send-off that no one else will see. Will it be befitting? Probably not. Will it do them justice? Definitely not. But I’ve put everything I’ve got into it... I’m just going to have to be content with that.

  Tonight I drink! And it’s not a beer drinking night. This is raid the liquor cabinet worthy... top shelf... at the back... if the proof is over 50 then drink, type of night. I’m not sure my folks would’ve approved, but I think they would’ve understood.

  11pm: Stupid house with stupid reminders of family everywhere I look. Stupid.

  Stupid whiskey. Stupid weather. Stupid apocalypse. Stupid 2014DM3. Stupid rock. Stupid other cosmic event that probably bumped into it millions of year ago that sent the comet into a stupid collision course with the stupid vulnerable Earth that screwed up my whole damn life. Stupid comet is stupid.

  ****

  Sunday, April 21, 2014

  12.30: Well it’s done. Mum and Dad have had a send-off. My send-off. I made a speech for each of them. I talked about what they achieved in life, how they met each other and what they meant to their kids and their friends. And I talked about how they died trying to get back to protect their kids. I used the overhead projector to slideshow through images of each of them as I spoke. Then I finished each ceremony with a song. Mum got Wonderwall from Oasis – without doubt her favourite –for Dad I played Don’t Dream it’s Over by Crowded House. Dad was much harder to choose for as his taste was so much more eclectic and mood-driven. I hope I got it right. I think I did. I cried. So that’s got to be a good sign.

  As each of their songs played I put some of their favourite possessions in a box and covered it with a blanket. Shortly after I donned my outside gear, took the boxes and buried them in the ash-filled garden. I erected a cross to mark where each of their boxes lies.

  And it is done.

  ****

  Monday, April 22, 2014

  10.30am: It’s really cold today; seriously cold. It’s still pitch-black, windy and ash-laden outside too. I’m not sure what’s worse really: the darkness blocks the sun – meaning the solar panels are completely useless, and the wind fills the air with that putrid-smelling ash, which gets everywhere. Disgusting. I can smell it throughout the house. Even though I’ve only opened the door once since it started, it’s building up inside. There’s a thin film of it on just about every surfaces. Worse still, it blocks the TV signal so I’m not getting any news. Outside it keeps building up and up. It’s now becoming a problem because it’s sitting about 20cm above the base of the sliding doors at the side of the house. I can only assume the situation is the same at the front door and back door, although I can’t see what’s going on out there.

  I’m gonna go on a mission today and clear access to the sliding door and laundry door. I’m still debating whether I do the same out the front – I’m not entirely sure I should advertise any sign of life to the world yet.

  I think I’m gonna head out for a whil
e. The house is starting to drive me crazy. As much as I tried to get closure from my parents’ funerals – and it did help – I’m constantly looking at, and living with, reminders and memories of them. Everything in this place is a reminder of some part of their lives. I think I just need a different perspective on the world. There’s also this sense I’m carrying the burden of what happened to them all on my own. I’m not sure I have what it takes to cope with that at the moment; I need to tell someone. I figure I’ll head to the Hardigan’s – they knew my folks pretty well and the walk won’t be too far. Plus, I’ll be able to catch up with Hardo himself as I think a dose of peer company is exactly what I need.

  It’s a tactical move at some level too, I guess, as I’m paranoid someone will discover how well I’m set up, and the most likely people to rock up at my door are the Hardigans. I’d rather go there and avoid that scenario. Plus, if I clean the ash and then go to the Hardigan’s I’ll avoid the rigmarole of putting the stupid outdoor gear on at least one time. #multitasking

  ****

  Tuesday, April 23, 2014

  2pm: Where to start? That was so hard. For a start, the paths around the house were buried deeper than I thought. Probably as much as half a metre in some parts – thank God the door opens inwards; I could’ve been stuck inside! Before I even started sweeping I had to get the tools from the shed – the wind had piled the ash there over a metre high. I was on my knees, digging with my hands for what felt like forever before I could jimmy the door open. I decided to get every tool I thought could ever be handy out while I had the chance.

  The digging itself was disgusting. Besides the smell, the texture of the ash was just gross. The top layer was somewhat dusty and gritty and not too bad to cope with, but as you got lower it got wetter and turned into this heavy brown sludge. And it smelled like a mixture of over-cooked food and rotting corpse (I’m guessing there though as I don’t really know what rotting corpse smells like). Most of all, it was bloody hard work to move. Anyways, I ended up clearing enough room in front of the shed to allow the door to open, as well as a path to the back door (about a foot wide) and a path to the side courtyard, where I also cleared in front of the door. Not sure how much ash I moved but it was a fair bit. It took far longer than I thought – probably three hours in total.

  Worse still, I think I’m gonna have to do that every few days otherwise the ash will get out of control. And even if I do keep up that level of maintenance I’m soon gonna run out of places to move the ash to as the two piles I created already look rather large. Surely the ash will stop raining down at some point. I hope so; otherwise my efforts today are a bit like bucketing water from the top deck of the Titanic.

  The walk to the Hardos place was just plain nasty. I’ve made that walk dozens of times pre-rock – it used to take 15 minutes. Yesterday it took over an hour – and about the same on the way back today.

  For starters it was black. Pitch-black. There was literally no light to gauge where I was or where I was going. I was smart enough to bring a torch with me but it was less help than I’d imagined. The ash was so thick in the air that when the light was on it mostly picked up all the bits flying in front of my face. It was very hard to focus on any object more than a couple of metres away and overall visibility couldn’t have been more than 10 metres.

  Then there was the ash on the ground. It was probably an average of 40cm deep – pretty much knee-high. Each step was an effort. I’d have to lift my feet high just to break clear of the top of the ash then stride out as far as I could before sinking it down to get a grip on the ground for the next step. The sludgy lower ash would then cling to my wellies, making lifting off for my next step difficult. Complicating each step was the fact the soles of my boots and the sludge seemed combined for almost zero traction. Sometimes the only thing keeping me from falling over was the depth of the ash.

  That’s not to mention the debris hidden under the ash and other obstacles that made me backtrack a few times. A couple of times I bumped into cars not even realising they were right in front of my face. It was insane. As for knowing the way I was going, well, that didn’t seem to help one bit. In the complete darkness everything was new, or looked different. It was a slog.

  Plus the dark can make you paranoid... if you let it. I was cocooned in my wet-weather gear with a visibility of next to nothing, bumping into objects left, right and centre. When you start to get the thought into your head someone else could be outside, near you, next to you, watching you, it’s hard to let go. I felt totally vulnerable.

  Ultimately, what I thought would be about an hour’s worth of tasks – clearing access to the doors and walking a few blocks to my mate’s place – turned out to be a four hour, 20 minute epic. Lesson learnt.

  I must’ve looked like death warmed up when I got to the Hardigan’s doorstep because his dad said ‘Jesus Christ’ in a very pitying way and his mum took one look at me and burst into tears. Then I don’t know what came over me. I think it was the emotion of the last few days, the exhaustion of the trip over and knowing I was about to tell someone else about Mum and Dad, because that made it real. I just burst into tears and blurted it out.

  Mrs Hardigan – Karen – burst out crying again and swooped in and hugged me hard, despite the fact I was covered in an inch-thick film of ash. It felt good. Not in a MILF way, but in an I-needed-human-touch way.

  Mr Hardigan – David – kinda rubbed my head and asked a few questions about how I knew that. I somewhat remember blurting out an answer between sobs and sniffs.

  My buddy, Hardo – Jonah – well I think he was a little overwhelmed by it all and he kinda hung back for a while but the look on his face told me the news had hit him hard and that was enough for me.

  Anyways, they fixed me a bath and I got tidied up and got myself together before joining them for dinner. They had one of those outdoor gas bottle heaters, which had been moved inside near the dining table to provide heat and light. It was kind of strange but kind of nice. We ate minestrone soup and damper bread then shared a massive bowl of FruChocs for dessert. So many things were out of place from what would have happened if I’d come over for dinner two months ago. For a start we wouldn’t have sat down with the adults at all, we would’ve eaten something totally different, under proper lighting conditions and not freezing our butts off. Then we would’ve played Xbox all night – but none of that mattered. In fact, we had a bit of a laugh at our own expense.

  The thing is though, it wasn’t necessarily that funny, our circumstances. I found it quite nice. Just to mash up all the things at your disposal and come up with some shabby version of the ‘old’ normal. It was just nice.

  They’re a great family, the Hardigans – I felt totally welcomed. It was strange table conversation – there were plenty of stories about my folks; I really needed that. I was ready for it. Then we went on to chat about things we’d picked up in terms of news from the TV (when it was working) etc. I can’t say I learned too much from them, but they were almost as well informed as I was. Karen and David are both pretty cluey and so is Hardo – mostly – when he puts his mind to it. There was also a lot of talk about what we’d been doing to survive – what changes we’d made to cope with the lack of utilities.

  The conversation kicked on after tea too. David pulled out a nice bottle of scotch from his collection and we sat around under gaslight, drank, chatted and played euchre. Apparently, concerns about under-age drinking were also victims of the impact on Melbourne  There wasn’t even a mention of not being the right thing to do. I liked it too – felt like I totally fit in. And after everything I’ve been through I deserve a drink as much as the next man. Besides, I’m 18 in nearly a year, so close enough, right?

  The Hardigans’ plan was pretty similar to mine – just survive until next Monday and see what happened when the survivor registry people come back. They had plenty of resources to get through to then, according to David.

  I couldn’t help but wondering what life was really like for
them on a day-to-day basis. I mean, we were having a surreal moment at this dinner – a break from the mundane. But what would it actually be like to be cooped up with your family inside the same eight rooms, 24 hours a day, every day, for the foreseeable future, with no electricity for entertainment.

  I hadn’t imagined spending the night there when I’d left the house yesterday but after eating I couldn’t imagine leaving that night. I’m glad they insisted I stay. I slept on the pump-up mattress on the floor in Hardo’s room and we chatted for a few hours more. Mostly about the girls we felt this cruel apocalypse had denied us the chance to nail. Bad, life – very, very bad.

  The next morning they tried to insist I stay and it took me a long time to convince them I was leaving. But having reassured them I had the supplies and the desire to go it alone until next Monday’s survivor registry, I went with their blessing. Karen farewelled me with a care pack of supplies – just some cookies she’d made and some chocolate – it was really sweet. A part of me felt very guilty taking it, as I know I already have more supplies than the three of them combined, but I couldn’t really tell them that. We’ve also agreed to meet at the survivor registry at 10am next Monday, so it’s good to know I’ve got another organised chance to meet people I know.

  4pm: I’ve just cleaned up from the walk home. God I hate this ash. Filthy, stinking, gets-everywhere goop! Hate, hate, hate.

  At least the wind has died down today for the first time in days. It meant the visibility on the walk home was far better than the way there. When I shined the torch I could probably see up to 20-30m away.