“Yeah, Sidearm Restoration and Rifleman. They write about fixing up old muskets and pistols and the occasional crossbow…and then sometimes they cover notable modern weapons. But they all had knives.”
“Do they have guns?”
“I don’t know if they were supposed to bring them into the building.”
For a few seconds, I thought he might actually troop upstairs and go poking through empty offices to see what he could turn up. In the end, he shook his head. “We can do more in the morning. Let’s just batten down the hatch here and hope there’s more news soon.”
In short order, he had me set the alarm—to keep out the riffraff—and dig up some blankets. The magazine kept pillows, blankets, and even a noise machine in the television stand, along with an old Nintendo gaming system no one ever played. I’d always suspected that management felt guilty about keeping us cooped up in the dumps of Astra, and gave us some pretty plush interiors to make up for it. The overstuffed couches and chairs made for damn fine napping during lunch hour, and I’d slept on the couch near the fridge three or four times before, usually after a particularly late ship.
Dax took the other couch. Part of me wanted to protest all this—sleeping through the end of the world? Really? Six people had melted into the street outside the building, thousands more might be dead in Harkin, and we were sleeping?
I stared up at the ceiling for what must have been hours. Several times during the night, I swore I heard something moving around upstairs; the panels would creak, or the fluorescent lights would flicker as if someone had walked over to the fridge. The gun guys were always out by the end of the day on Fridays, though. Something about getting up early to go shooting in the desert every Saturday.
In time, I slept.
TWO
I woke up thinking about rabbits.
Rabbits? I yawned and stretched my hands over my head. Fucking Blood Nuts. I need to go home and shower…
And then I remembered.
I sat up and scrambled off the couch. The clock on the wall told me it was eight o’clock, right about the time I usually woke up on a Saturday. Dax had curled into a little ball on his couch, his blanket pulled snugly around him.
I shambled to the counter and checked my phone, but it remained at zero bars. Silently cursing my bad luck, I headed out of the kitchen to my editor’s office. His landline didn’t work, either. Damn, damn, damn. I bent over to pull a bottle of water out of the nearest flat, then paused when I caught sight of the old television stored under his desk.
Rabbit ears.
I scooped up the little Quasar and took it to the kitchen, setting it down somewhat noisily in front of the bigger, more modern television set. Behind me, Dax shifted around on the couch. “What’re you doing?”
“Going around the cable company.” I plugged in the set and turned it on, then fussed with the antennae. Rabbits. I never liked rabbits. I remembered he had this stupid thing under his desk. Did I dream it?
“There,” Dax said. “Stop! It’s on.”
Score a point for Vibeke at the end of the world. I turned up the volume and scooted backward to watch.
I had never been so damned glad to see Gloria Fey. She’d lost much of her annoying perkiness since the end of the world; her mascara had run, her hair frizzed, and her perfectly tailored pantsuit showed definite signs of rumpling. “…rescue crews are still unable to penetrate the impact sites and may not gain entry for quite some time. Crews are focusing on the smaller impact sites, and working to evacuate those closest to the larger ones…”
“Sites,” I hissed. “Multiples?”
Gloria rubbed her eyes, smearing what remained of the smoky brown eye shadow she’d probably donned the night before. “The National Guard is assisting where it can, but please bear in mind that all those within three miles of larger impacts are likely dead, and those within five to ten miles may have been injured in the blast radius. Stay indoors if you can find a structurally sound building. Eventually, everyone within a fifteen-mile radius of a larger impact site will be evacuated. This is the most up-to-date map we have of the strikes…”
The reporter faded, replaced by a washed-out display screen. It looked like the map of the general area that you’d see on a weather report, but instead of little icons representing the sun or rainclouds and temperature, there were big X marks. I guess they hadn’t figured out a tasteful way to shrink down the big giant rock icon to a manageable size.
“Shit,” Dax murmured.
I counted the strikes. At least twenty-seven in California alone. Sacramento nearly gone. San Francisco clinging to life. Los Angeles? Forget it. Two hit there. The impacts continued across the continental United States, some landing in what might be the ass-end of nowhere, and others taking out well-known cities.
How many were there? “This wasn’t just one comet...asteroid...what the fuck?”
Dax stood up, blanket drawn over his shoulders. “The government must have known. Someone must have seen…seen this coming…”
“They didn’t want to cause a panic.” Awhile back, when I had financed my last two years of college as an EMT, several patients had developed signs of a new type of bacteria that resisted all the antibiotics Behrens Hospital could throw at it. Our supervisor had gathered us around and delivered terse instructions as to just how we were supposed to handle emergencies involving this bacteria—and what to tell the frightened people who would be asking questions. The doctors had developed an effective cocktail, but the situation had been a hell of an introduction to government protocol.
“They could have warned us!” Dax flung his phone at the set. It knocked into the yellow plastic and clattered to the ground. “Something that big, they’d see it coming…”
He was right. Something didn’t add up.
I lay down on the floor in a vain effort to stop the room from spinning. My family. Where was my family? I couldn’t make out Portland on the map, though Oregon in general looked like it had taken a beating.
“Please don’t puke.”
“I’m not going to puke,” I said, even though I had no way to guarantee that.
“Don’t cry, either. I can’t deal with crying girls.” He sounded truly panicked by the prospect.
He was lucky on that one. EMTs learn to compartmentalize pretty fast if they want to stay on the job. As a result, I’d gotten pretty damned good at shutting down the waterworks before they could even get started, an ability that came in handy during breakups. “Don’t worry about me.”
“…our helicopters aren’t able to get near the sites. We do have confirmation that South Harkin has been completely destroyed, and the 27 freeway is ruptured about three miles past Astra.”
Shit. That was us.
“How are we supposed to get out, once the pavement stops trying to eat us?” I asked. “I took the 27 every day, and it was always murder…and that was before the rock fell on it.”
The signal faded out. Neither of us moved to fix it, and why bother? It would only be more bad news.
“This is the end of the world, isn’t it?”
Dax shrugged. “Maybe it’s just the end of the world we know. It’s not really over, just…messy. But come on. Let’s consolidate food. I want to check the upstairs kitchen.”
“Sounds good. They have chicken-flavored ramen up there.” The restocking guy only gave Rock Weekly the shrimp-flavored ramen, despite my numerous written requests.
I grabbed some change from my purse, then headed up the stairs. Dax begged off to run to the bathroom, and I stepped into the third-floor lobby alone.
The lights were still on. The dual row of offices and storage rooms on this side all showed similar signs of disarray; most were black holes with furniture sticking out, and a gigantic image of Restoration’s editor with President Bush had toppled off the wall. I picked my way through the bits of broken glass and into the kitchen. It looked more lived-in than ours, and a blanket was carelessly tossed across the back of one of the couches.
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I dumped my change into the vending machine and punched in the numbers.
Click. I’d heard that noise before in movies.
“That,” someone said behind me, “is not your ramen.”
Something cold and hard pressed against the back of my head. If I’d had anything left in my bladder, I’m pretty sure I would have wet myself.
Okay. Nut with a gun on the third floor. Why hadn’t we figured this out earlier? I took a shallow breath. He hasn’t killed me outright, that’s a good thing. How had he even gotten in? “Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was up here.”
“Where’s your boyfriend?”
“I have a boyfriend?” It took me a minute to replace my ex’s face with Dax’s. “Oh, the guy. He’s…around, I think.”
“Turn around.”
I held up my hands and turned around.
Dark eyes peered at me over a black bandana, and a hood concealed the rest of his features. Dammit, I did not have time for the Unabomber.
“What’re you doing up here?” He didn’t sound angry, just matter-of-fact.
“Ramen.” I was pleased that my voice didn’t shake. “I wanted the chicken-flavored stuff.”
He kept the gun steady. Great, I’d survived the end of the world only to get popped in the face by a post-apocalyptic nut with a gun.
“Ramen’s not good for you,” he said.
“But it’s filling.”
“Too much sodium.”
I kept my eyebrows from going up. “Does that really matter now?”
The eyes narrowed, then abruptly softened. “I liked you better with the purple hair,” he said. I blinked; I had restored my hair to its natural black shade a week before. “And let me just say, those fruity candles are goddamn irritating.”
I realized I knew his eyes, and some of my terror ebbed away. “They’re not irritating,” I exclaimed, lowering my hands. “They’re scented!”
Pop. The safety clicked back on, and the gun moved away from my nose. The gunman pulled his bandana down. Dark stubble dotted his cheeks, and he flashed a familiar, devil-may-care grin that had once made my knees weak. He tucked the gun into his belt. “They make me sneeze.”
“Then don’t sniff them. You don’t even work on our floor!”
Tony McKnight had joined Sidearm Restoration about two months after I started at Rock Weekly, and we had become unlikely cohorts amidst the company cliques. I vaguely remembered him stopping by my office on his first day of work, looking at all of my candles fearfully.
“It travels through the ventilation system.” He bent down, pulled my ramen out of the machine, and shoved it at me. “Here. Take all of them, you’re always swiping our ramen, anyway. Why the hell did you put money in? You really think Roger’s gonna come by and collect it once Bruce Willis saves the world?”
I flung my arms around him. “I am so glad to see you.”
It caught him off-guard; he yelped and skittered backward, then grudgingly draped his arms around me. The gun pressed between my shoulder blades. “What the hell for? I just threatened to blow your head off.”
I hugged him tighter.
Tony sighed. “Your survival instincts are sadly lacking.” But he gave me a squeeze, and I decided he was secretly happy to see me, too.
“Vibeke? I heard—” Dax turned about three different colors when he saw me hugging the guy. “—voices?”
“Should get that looked into.” Tony released me and turned around. “Voices are only the first sign of a larger problem.”
“Dax, this is Tony. Tony, Dax. He’s one of the gun editors.” I made a cuckoo gesture, spinning my finger toward my head.
“I saw that,” Tony said. “Hanging out with Clive’s little ghost, are you?”
“She was interviewing my band,” Dax said to the gun. “Nice of you to come visiting. Or not.”
Tony waved a hand dismissively, then tucked the gun under his belt. “I was thinking about paying a social call…but then you’d want to get together and have dinner and talk about old times, or maybe cook me up for a try at cannibalism. Had to weigh the risks.”
“Why would we eat you when we have perfectly delicious ramen?” I hugged my hard-won treat to my chest. “I thought everyone went home.”
Tony shrugged. “I was working late on a story and decided to just spend the night. Next thing I know, the sky is falling and I got two guttersnipes as neighbors.”
“It’s nasty,” Dax said.
“We are not guttersnipes!”
“Besides,” he went on, “sooner or later you’d have come looking for my guns.”
Dax turned to glare at me. “You said there weren’t any up here.”
“No, I said they weren’t supposed to bring them in. And if we’d gone tramping all over the place this loser would’ve shot us.”
“I don’t waste ammunition on those beneath me,” Tony said.
In one of the wisest actions of the day, Dax chose not to pursue that line of thought. “So…how do you two know each other?”
“We work for the same magazine company,” I said. “We’re sort of comrades.”
“And we once went to a really great party together.”
I scowled at him. “It was Clive’s wedding.”
“Had an open bar, didn’t it? That means it’s a party. Speaking of bars, you guys have any liquor downstairs? I feel like the apocalypse warrants some binge drinking.”
Dax looked at me. I shrugged. Sorry, I mouthed. Tony was a handful even before the end of the world. He’d probably turn out to be a downright pain in the ass after it. Still, three was better than two, as far as I was concerned.
Tony looked back and forth between the two of us. “You guys got any idea what’s going on? I heard the EAS on your radio last night.”
“I pulled out Clive’s old television and caught Gloria Fey,” I said. “It’s bad.”
His brow furrowed. “The rabbit ears work? They must be broadcasting on any frequency that’s still functioning. What’d Gloria say?”
We repeated her grim message, and Tony nodded thoughtfully. “Wonder if this has anything to do with the Osiris Asteroid that was supposed to pass through the system.”
“Osiris Asteroid?” I didn’t remember hearing anything about an asteroid.
Tony went on as if I hadn’t spoken up at all. “We can’t do much until the asphalt cools. The scientist on NPR said that might take a day or two. Seems like we’re sandwiched right in between two big hits…that means the freeway’s wiped out. National Guard will have to come in through the side streets, if they come at all.”
“Can they do that?” I’d never pursued alternative routes to Astra.
“Oh, sure. We back up to Elderwood’s residential area. They can go through there, and also...what’s that other city? Muldoon. Assuming the 27’s still intact past Elderwood, they’ll probably take it as far as Muldoon and come through that way. It’ll take awhile, though.” He leaned back against the countertop, folding his arms. “I assume you planned on raiding my food supply.”
Dax and I nodded. “We were going to consolidate.”
“Good idea. We’ll do an office crawl, bring in any food and useful items we can find. Then we’ll figure out rationing and the like. We might be good for a week or so. Hopefully someone will get to us by then, or phone service will come back up.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Dax asked.
Tony grinned. “Then the situation’s a lot worse than they’re saying.”
***
Dax took the first floor, I took the Rock Weekly offices, and Tony prowled through the Restoration level. We brought everything to the second-floor kitchen, since even Tony couldn’t protest the fact that we had a working television.
I tried not to riffle through my coworkers’ belongings too much, but I couldn’t help a little snooping. People leave all kinds of crap in their offices; after forty or more hours a week in a little room, the place becomes a home away from home. Cosmetics, extra clothing, books
, half-written phone numbers and little knickknacks…and food, of course, plenty of junk to fortify the worker bees as they trudged through yet another blown deadline.
Clive’s office was hardest. He lived up in Harkin, which I was pretty sure had been ground zero for our local meteor strike. He’d perched the wedding portrait of the Fairway crowd on his desk, and I picked it up. Clive and his new bride smiled for the camera, and the rest of us were either genuinely happy to be there, or at least genuinely happy about the open bar. Tony and I stood together near the back; he had me in a half-dip. I remembered goofing off while the photographer shouted instructions, but not actually being caught in the act.
Parts of that night were still hazy, anyway. My ex had broken it off the weekend before, and I was all too happy to let Tony goad me into drinking.
I left the picture where it stood, and instead brought in Clive’s bottled water, his granola bars, and the bags of beef jerky he kept in his third drawer. I left the jar of jellybeans hidden under his desk. No nutritional value, I told myself. In reality, it seemed wrong to pilfer it—if he came back and found out they were gone, he’d shit a brick.
If he came back.
Taking the jellybeans meant he wouldn’t come back. It meant Clive and the rest of them were dead or at least completely unable to get to work, and this was all really happening.
Jellybeans. The end of the world brings strange forms of denial.
I brought out pocket knives and toenail trimmers, fruit candies and a can of mace. After a moment’s thought, I tucked the mace into my purse.
Dax turned up more water and what looked like two dozen frozen dinners, which we wedged into the freezer. “What magazine was downstairs?” he asked. “They have beer, too.”
“Some classic car rag. They weren’t around very much—their garage was across town.” I inspected some of the gear Dax had brought up, then paused between the sweatshirts and the socks. “Why’d they have a machete?”
“The better question here is, why don’t we have a machete?” Tony tottered in, almost invisible behind a huge armload of antique guns. I gaped and stepped out of his way, and they all landed on the table with a clatter. “Machetes are useful. Good for hacking, and you don’t have to reload. Better sharpen them up now and then, though.”
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