THE END
By Dan J. DesRochers
For my Grandfather, Maurice Westridge, who passed his
passion for writing down to me.
“People fear death, even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over.”
-Jim Morrison
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOUGE 6
RE-BIRTH 14
RE-EDUCATION 21
REGENERATION 27
RECREATION 39
REACTION 48
RESUSCITATION 53
SALVATION 57
IMPACT 61
EPILOUGE 69
PROLOUGE
It was unseasonably hot, that I remember distinctly. For a September night it was unseasonably hot. Things were different then, I was living in Staines, just outside of London, I had a wife and daughter, Linda and Eve respectively, and the world was about to bear witness to the greatest astrological event in history. For all the horror to follow I must say it was beautiful. The word “awesome” has degenerated into another form of cool, or neat-o, or groovy, for those who grew up in the seventies, but this sight was true to the definition of awesome. It left the world bewildered and amazed and if the silence wasn’t so deafening, you could hear the sound of five billion jaws dropping simultaneously.
People gathered in parks, on skyscrapers, the roofs of their homes, anywhere where they thought they could get the best view. Truth is that everywhere had the best view; the entire planet had front row seats. It was treated as a global holiday, the first I can think of. The sounds of neighborhood parties and barbeques littered the air, but in an instant, as all eyes took to the heavens, you could hear a pin drop.
At first it wasn’t that alluring. There was even a brief moment where I thought it wouldn’t live up to the hype. It started as nothing more than nothingness, just an empty void where stars once were. Then it came closer, blotting out part of the moon, it was so defined that for a split second you could see its craggy outline against the milky white surface of our pock ridden satellite. Then it was completely gone, where the moon once was there was only dark. As it came to the apex of its flight path, you could see the lights from the cities being reflected off its metallic surface. It moved silently across the night sky for a few more minutes before the moon reappeared, then it disappeared over the horizon. The asteroid CM114 had passed between the moon and the Earth, the closest a celestial body had ever come to our home world. Science regarded it as a near miss.
I’d like to say that I awoke like any other Saturday, later in the morning with the sounds of Eve’s cartoons bouncing off the walls. That wasn’t how things happened. From the moment my eyes opened, I could tell everything was different. Something in the air tasted stale, but I shook it off and rolled out of bed. As my feet hit the floor, a static shock surged up my calves. I knelt down and rubbed them, it was not like your usual rub your socks on the floor then touch a doorknob kind of shock. This was more of a fork in an electrical socket type.
The kitchen, which was usually filled with smells of frying eggs and brewing coffee, was empty that morning. Not a thing out of place. I wandered the house for what felt like hours before I stumbled onto Linda sitting almost weightlessly on the side of Eve’s bed. She stroked her hair softly, like a wife strokes the hair of her deceased husband before giving him a final kiss. When she looked at me sadness seeped from her eyes and into the room, everything suddenly felt heavy.
She didn’t say a word, but she really didn’t have to, her eyes said it all. She took my hand and led me into the living room. The TV was on but muted, she reinstated the volume and with the push of a button, the world changed. The voices of the news anchors rang in my ears all day. They all said different words but they all stated the same thing, it was over. The gravitational pull of the Earth had affected CM114 more drastically than scientists had previously estimated.
It is amazing how an insignificant number can become significant in an instant. One is only one when surrounded by many, but when it’s the only one; one is something larger, something more important than just one. One billionth of a degree was our insignificant number fourteen hours prior, now it was everything, literally. CM passed close in 2031, within 18,500 miles of the planet, and was supposed to miss us by over half a million miles on it’s next orbit seven years later. One billionth of a degree and seven years later, we weren’t going to be so lucky.
Direct impact. Total devastation. Extinction-level event. We’ve all heard these words before, in the doomsday movies that came out year after year. There they were safe words, we sat in the darkness, watching motionless from our seats munching on our popcorn as the hero overcomes adversity and saves the planet/his family/his love/himself. In reality these words take on new meaning. If there was a word that was more frightening than terrifying, it couldn’t describe the thoughts going through my head.
Apparently the same thoughts going through my head somehow made their rounds. Within hours the world around us dissolved into utter chaos. People you’ve known for years, people you refer to as well adjusted gave in and bowed down to their fears and instinct and in doing so forgot their humanity. My neighbor, an insurance adjuster with three kids a dog and a 401k walked into his front yard where his boys were playing, kissed them all goodbye, and swallowed the business end of a shotgun. In the note his wife found in his pocket he apologized for not murdering the rest of the family before himself. His wife rectified the mistake that evening; she drowned everyone including the family dog.
As night fell the situation worsened. With no future good people in the world turned bad and the bad people became evil for lack of a better world. Some say that it’s kind of symbolic that with the darkness of the night came the darkness of man. I heard that it only took two hours for the west coast gangs in California to band together and claim Los Angeles. It took only three before they turned on each other and subsequently eliminated the gang problem that the police never could. People like myself and my family huddled in their homes, using whatever sharp or blunt object as a security blanket, knowing inside that if the worst was to happen it wouldn’t matter but still needing to have that iron grip on the weapon at hand. All night around us the sounds of screams and gunshots bombarded us, the smell of fire filled our nostrils, and the sweat of fear peppered our faces.
I didn’t sleep that first night, neither did Linda, Eve slept like a rock. That always amazed me about children, no matter what the situation, no matter what the danger, monsoon earthquake, or rapture, they never batted an eye. However, every Christmas they shot out of bed like jackrabbits at six in the morning. We sat all night, cradling our sweet angel and jumping at every creak and groan. We didn’t really speak, though in retrospect we should have thrown a bloody party seeing as how the looters were out in full force and a dark quiet home is much more enticing than a house full of drunken frightened Britons, but that’s what we did, sat silently in the dark praying for forgiveness for bringing such a beautiful child into a dying world. As dawn approached things quieted down, we had survived the first night.
That morning the sun rose, as it would everyday for the next seven years but no more than that. Knowing things like this was enough to drive a person mad. With first light came a fleeting feeling of safety as the calls of morning birds were interrupted by the calls of the police. The armored police vehicles drove through the streets in a convoy, with the commanding officer of that particular unit barking into a loudspeaker. “Stay in you homes,” he ordered “you will be informed when an adequate level of safety has be attained.” We took Eve and laid her in her bed, then retired to the living room and turned on the television. Most the channels were out, the only things on were two news shows, four religious ch
annels, and cartoons some station manager had no doubt just put on a continuous loop and left running. We opted for the cartoons.
The thought of the end of the world is many things. In the past it was a myth, in the present it was terror, and in the future it wasn’t anything because there was no future. A life without future brings forth a lot of emotions, fear, depression, anger. Its strange how with all those thoughts rattling through your head, the slightest thing will set you off. Seeing a flower wilting in a windowsill makes your brain ultimately connect to your own demise and puts you in a uncontrollable frenzy of tears or seeing a cartoon of Mighty Mouse saving the world from an oncoming asteroid would cause you to lash out angrily and lash out at the woman you’ve loved since high school in an all out gloves off brawl. We didn’t have flowers on our windowsill.
It was about noon on day -2441 when she walked out the door, it was a Thursday. I can still see the look on her face as she left; it’s permanently etched into my memories. It wasn’t a look of hate or even sadness, it was more like disappointment. The last time I saw Linda she looked at me with more disappointment than anyone in my life before her had and as the blood and tears swirled together to make a milky red mixture on her cheeks, I knew that she wasn’t going to come back. Even if she hadn’t been brutally raped and beaten that evening by a work friend who she had turned to in her time of need, she still wouldn’t have come back. Eve and I sat on the couch all night watching Mighty Mouse save the world.
I decided not to go to work that Monday which was okay because half of the world’s population made the same decision. The only things really still operating were the government on a barebones staff, the banks as everyone emptied their life savings, the half of the police force that hadn’t been killed over the weekend or quit, and the drug dealers. It’s been since estimated that over 600 million people became addicts over that first weekend. 600 million new users who saw the only way to cope with their own mortality was through numbing the mind to its own thoughts. Out of that 600 million there were 20 million overdoses on Sunday alone.
Over the next couple of weeks things got a little better. I guess once the initial shock ended people began to act like people again. A lot of the current religious leaders like to say it was due to the unflappable human spirit but I think people just got bored. Boredom is powerful and sitting around thinking about your final moments is tiring and the only way to cure tired boredom is to break the monotony. Some people began to work again as food supplies started to run short. The one thing that really amazed me was the amount of people that joined up with the police. People that had lost loved ones or almost lost their own lives felt compelled to come to the aid of others and do good. There were still the criminals and thugs in the world but for a while, we outnumbered them.
The dichotomy yo-yoed like that through the course of the next months until the police system as we know it just dissolved onto itself. The criminal element outnumbered the police four to one and since half the force had succumbed to the wickedness of the world it could no longer support itself, the stations closed. There still were a few men and women on the force that even though they weren’t getting paid felt that it was there personal duty to keep the peace. It was one of these few that would change the path of the remainder of my life and I never even knew his name.
It was in March, I remember this because it was right before Eve’s eighth birthday. We had gone to the market, I say “the” market instead of “a” market because it was the only one left operating in town, with the intention of trying to secure the ingredients for pizza, Eve’s favorite food, but outside there was a ruckus. In the middle of this rolling mass of degenerated humans was a kid still in his uniform, trying to stop a fight. He couldn’t have been more than 20, fresh from the academy, and felt that he still needed to help the innocent in his hometown. The fight between two men over a bag of groceries quickly escalated into a riot with this poor good-hearted sap stuck smack dab in the middle of it. I couldn’t stand idly by and watch him take the beating of his life that would probably be the last. I put Eve down by the lamp post, told her to stay there, and threw myself into the fray. I got about three of them off him before feeling that microsecond of sharp pain to the back of my head, then darkness.
RE -BIRTH
My legs were sore as all hell. The first feeling I’d had in over two thousand days was the worst pain I’d ever felt. I could hear the sound of water dripping onto stone all around me, overpowering the gentle beeps of what I could only assume was hospital equipment. I could only assume because at that point my eyes had been shut for a little over six years, I wouldn’t actually open them up for another three days due to the pain of the light that poked through the stone walls. “We were taking bets.” I heard from my left in a strong American accent. “You’re American?” I asked. “We are in America,” he snapped back “we were taking bets, I lost.” “Bets on what?” I said, head pounding with six years of dust “If you’d wake up before the end.” “The end of what?” “The world friend, end of the world.”
The memories flooded back to me. The market, that gung ho policeman, the fight, Eve. EVE. “Where’s Eve!?” I belted with my now decrepit lungs as I lurched forward trying to get out of the bed. I felt the needles rip from my arteries as I fell to the floor, the tubes around my nose and the catheter in my dick did nothing to slow my descent, I hit the ground with a thundering crack. I clawed at the floor, moving forward screaming the whole time “Where is she, where is Eve?!” The man to my left, unmoving from his original position and uncaring in his tone said “She’s not in this room and she’s certainly not on that floor, I don’t know who Eve is, hell, I don’t know who you are. What I do know is that from the sound of that crack you broke your tibia, but what do you expect after lying in a bed for six fucking years then throwing yourself to the floor like that.”. “Six years,” I said in a quiver “I’ve been out for six years?” He clicked his tongue “That’s right pally, according to this chart, six years, eight months annnnnnd twenty one days.” He chuckled a bit, followed by the sound of a match striking and tobacco leaves burning “There’s only eighty four days left man, live it up.” That was all I could take for the moment, as a safety mechanism to stress and shock my body decided that it should just shut itself down, but before blacking out I knew that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t make everything right like it did in the past, not in this world.
I awoke what I perceived to be several hours later with a start. I instinctually reared back at the feeling of either too hot or too cold on my right arm. That’s when I heard that voice for the first time. It was a voice that penetrated you with a soothing quality that just rolls fluidly through your soul, filling it with a sense of safety and calm. She gave me an injection of something, it stung as it coursed through my veins. “I didn’t believe him at first.” She belled “I though he was making it up, he does that sometimes, he thinks he’s funny.” “Who,” I asked “the doctor?” “Doctor?” She answered “Frank isn’t a doctor, he’d think it was funny that you said so though. He used to be a librarian, he read a lot of books at work so he knows a few things about medicine. Where do you think you are?” “The hospital.” “There hasn’t been a working hospital in New York in over three years. Frank moved in here last year and you were just down here, in the basement, all hooked up like this.” “Are you his wife?” “No, I just live out in the back yard,” she answered “you would have been dead if it wasn’t for me though. Frank was going to let you die, not refill your IV, but I wouldn’t let him.” “Be sure to thank him for me.” I snipped. She stayed silent for a moment, then came back to me with a different tone in her voice “You know,” she said “misguided or not he did save your life. He acted selflessly and helped you even if it took some prodding by myself, someone acting selflessly in these times is not something you come across too frequently, most people are just assholes.” She shut off my overhead lamp, plunging me into darkness, leaving myself alone with that sweet tender voice “Yo
u’ll come to learn that after you’ve been awake a bit longer.” She concluded as a sliver of light erupted from the right wall as she exited the dark room.
The next day was better than the first, but then again a hive of rabid Africanized killer bees could have landed on me and the next day still would have been a shave better. I woke up to a smell this day, it was semi sweet and a little tangy, it stung my nostrils slightly but in that clean air kind of way. My eyes licked open to a glorious sight, breakfast the first real food I’ve been privy to for over six years, all be it I was completely unconscious at the time, but your stomach still knows the difference between a protein and vitamin solution injected into your bloodstream and real tangible food, trust me it prefers the latter. I know this personally because the moment I saw the plate in front of me my stomach imploded into a flying array of emotions from squeezing up completely to the point where I thought I may die to it expanding to almost double its size, needless to say my stomach was very excited.
It wasn’t much, a modest breakfast would be giving it too much credit, but it was better than a hotel continental breakfast. There was a fruit which I had never seen before, a modest handful of grains and nuts, and two slices of cold toast. The toast and nuts I knew was safe and immediately devoured them, I’d seen them before, but I really didn’t feel as if risking my health for a bite of an reddish orangeish green mostly square fruit, so I waited for someone inform me of it’s origin before ingesting it. A little over ten minutes passed before my stomach decided that it had been teased enough and prior to it crawling its way up my gullet to obtain such pleasures, I succumbed to its pleas and took the risk.
I ate that red/orange/green sphere like an anteater in a picnic cliché. Small chunks of food flew across the room, splattering the walls with a cavalcade of brightly colored fruit pulp that would have made Jackson Pollack jealous. I can safely say that for the first time since infancy, more food ended up on my clothes than in my mouth, I rectified this shortly with large slopping handfuls of nutritional goodness. Of course, she caught me in this state, me lying in my own half eaten filth. She didn’t seem to be taken aback by it, she came into the room as causal as the Fonz, she looked down at me without looking down on me and grabbed a cloth from the table. She wiped gently, painting my gown with invisible strokes. “You really liked your breakfast.” She said. “It was delicious,” I answered “but what kind of fruit is this?” I pulled a pulpy bit from under my shoulder and showed it to her before popping it into my mouth. She answered “It’s an orange.” I looked down at the remains of the “orange” peel which, ironically, did not contain all that much orange. “The world,” she said “stopped caring about the environment about three years back. All of our measures for dealing with garbage and pollution were deemed unnecessary for a terminal planet.” I stared in awe at the peel, deeply exploring its pollution ridden exterior. It’s pockmarked surface strewn with a spin art of colors, brown stains that looked like the effect of too much light turned out to be nothing more than another pigment. Not knowing it then, it was a symbolic fruit that reflected how the world had become, still vaguely familiar yet completely different at the same time.
The End Page 1
