Broken glass crunched under his shoes as he walked up the main street toward the apartment. He had better boots at home, and a warmer jacket too, but his place was on the other side of town. There was no time.
He eventually had to train his eyes to concentrate on the ground a few feet in front of him, because when he looked up, he saw more and more bodies behind the wheel of their cars, their necks arched upwards or down in some unnatural fashion, indicating that they were no longer alive. Some were outside; resting against park benches as if the whole world had gone on some terrible drinking bender in the middle of the night. It was a much more pleasant thought than what was gleamed by looking around at all the carnage.
The traffic lights were all out. Paper boxes framed the headline story from yesterday: the silhouette form of a teenager who claims that the mayor forced himself on her in a city hall boardroom.
Then, the silence of Jess’s march was shattered rudely. There was rustling up ahead and then animal-like sounds, like a pack of dogs had cornered a racoon in some unseen alleyway. He moved forward quietly, shuffling his black shoes through the dirty snow-covered streets. His knee throbbed the way it did when the temperature cooled quickly. He made an effort to concentrate on his breathing, trying to move quickly but quietly. There came into view a group of people standing around surveying something, leaning in like a group of pedestrians at the scene of an accident.
Survivors,
he thought.
Jess was elated. Though he was hardly the most social of men, he was thankful to see that there were others around after all. When his football career ended, he mostly wanted to be left alone. He stood silently in corners of rooms at parties drinking rye out of chilled glasses. He shut the door to his driving quarters on subways, whereas he knew that some of his colleagues liked to keep it open to chat with the passengers. He hadn’t been this happy to see strangers in ages and it oddly put him on guard, despite the initial euphoria of the find. His mind was telling him to look at it as being proof that his family could still be alive. He moved more quickly towards the group, squinting his eyes to try and figure out just what it was he was looking at.
He was only about 50 feet away when they saw him. Each of them turned, almost in unison, exposing grotesque faces covered in red. A low growl came from the people, maybe six in total, and one took a step forward. It was an uncertain step, like a drunk on uneven ground. The man’s arms came up in a plea and the mouth opened. A low moan could be heard as he moved towards Jess. The others followed as if this was their captain in rough seas. They all looked horrible, and had skin covered with the boils and bruises beneath the red that streaked their faces. Their faces had sunken looks, like the dead that had been lifeless in their unmoving vehicles, only these people were moving.
They were slow – every step looked as precarious as that of a tightrope walker - walking as though they were all crippled and their dying faces looked upon him with a singular menace that made him know he was in danger. They reminded him of Bill from the train tunnel, not a sign of humanity in their faces apart from old familiar countenances.
He turned to run and discovered that two more of these sickly people were coming at him from another street to his right. The buildings, all largely over 10 stories high in this part of town, echo and bounce around so much noise that it’s difficult to tell where anything is coming from. But the sound that comes from their voice – it sounded the same no matter which being it came from – was unearthly, and they all seemed to release it once they locked eyes on him. He scrambled to get away but every time he turned around they were all watching and reaching; pleading almost, for him to come back. He saw one of the things fall halfway through a giant hole in the ground and it then scrambled to get back up to surface level, never once taking its eyes off Jess’s form.
He backtracked through the cars with the intention of finding another route that would take him to the valley. His legs were starting to burn, begging for rest.
One of the bridges would get him across, he thought.
If there’s some kind of infection, I hope it’s contained in the downtown core.
He was beginning to mumble to himself – kicking rocks in the road and generally not paying attention to what was ahead of him. He had Orson show a map of the route on his wristwatch but all this seemed to accomplish was that his progress was barely perceptible. He darted between cars. There was a streetcar stopped in the middle of the street. Jess curved around its back end in long strides – running, rather than racing. There was someone at the front that he didn’t see until the last moment and Jess ran straight into her, knocking her over and landing on top of her. A thick thud could be heard as her head hit the ground. She had a brown jacket up with a hood up over her head. Curly blonde hair covered her face that was now turned to the side from the impact of their collision.
He reached out, worried that he killed her. He tried to turn her face to him. Her neck extended and her mouth snapped open for him, as though he were food. He pulled his hand back and she bit at the air. Jess rolled off her and started running again, turning for a moment to see her slowly staggering to her feet.
And the moan. The very same moan, again.
There was a bite to the wind. Not turning from it was like letting someone slap you continuously – on your face, your thighs and his ears in particular were starting to feel dangerously numb.
The walk up the lip of the valley was long and tiring. There was this strange stench in the air – like garbage or shit and it seemed to get stronger with every passing moment. Jess tried smelling himself – he smelled like sweat but nothing strong enough to repulse his nose the way the air around him was. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he ate. Most of the shops along the way were either locked with steel bars or their windows were smashed – already looted of everything but broken and stomped on containers mangled about the floor. A thin layer of grime covered everything. It fell from the sky looking so much like snow and floated down like something harmless, yet it smeared like dried oil against anything warm.
He couldn’t fathom what might have caused this. Many years ago there was a massive blackout that caused the city to halt movement for a few days but that was nothing like this. It was like the entire city had evacuated in half a day and everyone else had died. Despite America’s best efforts, there were still threats to the North American way of life – including those hidden behind the newest Iron Curtain in Asia. But there hadn’t been trouble brewing. Jess only browsed the world news in his morning newspaper perusal but he was fairly certain that the U.S. hadn’t been making enemies with countries that had nuclear weapons at their disposal. At least during the second Cold War of the 2020s, everyone knew that fingers were poised over big red buttons.
Jess always thought that Canada was the safest place in the world to live, except when it came to their proximity to the Americans.
He came to a vegetable market that still had some fruits and things piled in cardboard boxes outside the front doors. The red apples were all covered in soot. He pulled one off the top of pile and wiped it off with his hands. It looked perfect beneath the ash. He let it roll from his fingertips and knocked a few dozen more from the table onto the street behind shoes. He grabbed one at the bottom, underneath all the others – not a spot on it seemed to have been touched by ash – and he wiped it on his shirt, polishing it like a valuable stone and took a bite. It was a good apple, firm but juicy. He grabbed two more from the bottom, and pushed them into his jacket.
There was a sound that Jess wasn’t quite familiar with, coming from behind him. He turned, and realized it was coming from within the shop. Something was tapping at the glass window, behind letters that were painted on the window itself, describing some kind of business slogan or sale.
There was someone behind the glass. Jess had to lean in close to make out what was happening. It was a man, who had tapped on the window with a gun that appeared as big and long as a baseball bat. He was motioning something with his head.
“What?”
The man cocked the gun at Jess and then waved it down the street. He wanted him to leave.
“I just want to talk! Please, what’s going on?”
The man’s features were difficult to make out. The window seemed hazy, like it was the kind of thick imperfect glass used in a bottle rather than the kind they usually use in windows.
Jess put his hands up.
“I just want to talk – please!”
The gun dropped and the man disappeared for a moment. Jess turned and surveyed where he was. He was only partway up the road of the valley. His eyes stung from the crap that fell from the sky. It was in his hair and on his shoulders and it certainly smelled like something burned into near nothingness.
There was a loud band and he jumped, turning back around to find that the man had written a note that he had pressed onto the glass of the window. Now Jess understood that the glass was clear – it was just glazed over by dry ashes, just like everything else.
The note said:
Go around to the back.
The shop was basically an old house turned into a small grocery store. It was at the end of a street with thin semi-detached houses.
At the back of his property there was a small laneway and a kind of backyard contained by a fence about three feet tall. There was a small table, an umbrella and four chairs. He opened the back door and immediately trained the gun upon Jess again.
“What do you want?”
“I just want to ask you some questions. You’re the first normal person I’ve seen since this all happened. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Beats the fuck out of me.” The man scratched at his closely cropped head. He had blisters on the right temple of his forehead. “I don’t think anybody knows what’s going on. There was the explosion, shit started falling from the sky and the whole world went crazy. It’s like something out of the bible – not that I’m a religious man but all this shit is starting to make me think of converting.”
“There was an explosion?”
“Where the fuck have you been hiding, under a rock?”
“I’m a subway worker. I was about 100 feet underground when it happened.”
He scratched again, this time, dragging the tips of his digging fingers from his scalp down to his face, rupturing one of the blisters and drawing milky white liquid down his face.
“Fuck.” He wiped it away on the sleeve of his shirt. “Probably not a bad place to be, all things considered.
“So you said there was an explosion.”
“Sure seemed like it. Big explosion in the sky. I mean, there’s been lots of explosions the last few days but this one was big, and so bright that you couldn’t look at it.”
There was a rustle behind Jess and he turned to see a naked woman, covered in ash.
“Are you okay?”
“Get the fuck away from her man!”
Jess started to walk toward her when a loud bang issued from behind him and something in the air whipped by his head.
The bullet hit the woman in the chest, knocked her down and went flying up in the air. A rubber bullet, Jess realized – the kind police used to subdue people, not kill them. People normally writhed in pain after getting hit by these rubber bullets, Jess thought.
The woman got up, momentarily seemed to look down at her bosom, inspecting the unknown thing that had hit her and Jess instantly hit the ground, now realizing what had happened.
There was another shot that hit the woman’s shoulder, spinning her around.
She again looked at it, composed herself and started walking towards the shooter.
Jess scampered off towards the opposite street, as low to the ground as he could manage. There were two more shots and when Jess turned to look back there were several more figures descending on the house. One had opened the gate of the fence and several of the creatures made their way in.
The man shot at least three of them but they overwhelmed him, dragging him down into a pile of flailing arms and legs.
Jess tried to quietly move away.
“Where the hell are we Orson?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been having trouble getting a GPS position. Must be the heavy cloud cover you mentioned earlier.”
“I’m not sure that’s clouds – looks more like ash and smoke and who knows what else.”
Jess was walking along what had become a very commercial area. Bars and restaurants and fast food joints were everywhere. He stood before The Iranian Bull. Red and Gold letters clung right to the big front window of the place. Jess cupped his hands to the side of his face and tried to peer inside from the window. It was a long and slender restaurant with little square tables and chairs in the front and a bar area that took up most of the back.
Jess turned around on his heels, surveying the area. It was extremely quiet, as if it was three o’clock in the morning and the entire city was sleeping.
There was a rock roughly the size of a baseball in the gutter near where he stood. Jess picked it up and turned back to the window. He wound up and threw the object for the center of the glass pane and it went right through – the rest of the glass fell like a waterfall from the impact.
It was loud, though it echoed all over due to the proximity of large buildings in the area. Someone could have been a few blocks over and would be unlikely to figure out where the sound came from.
The sign on the front door was turned so that it appeared to be open from the outside. For a kick, Jess pulled on the handle of the door. It opened.
The inside was dark but there were several unlit candles already set up on the countertop and Jess located some matches from behind the bar. The entire backsplash of the bar was a giant 15-foot mirror so that when he pulled up on a stool, it was his own image that stared back at him.
He reached over the counter and found several glasses sitting head over arse, drying on a plastic rack. Bottles of all shapes, sizes and liquor types were right within reach. He poured himself a drink from the first bottle his fingers came into contact with.
He sampled 11 different bottles. The flames atop the candles flickered wildly from the wind that came through the open window. His image in the mirror started to blur until it became someone who just looked familiar, rather than an exact image of his own face.
“Alright you. Stop looking at me or I’ll sock you right in the nose!”
Sometime later Jess decided to lock the door and stumbled out the broken front window. He left the candles burning. He walked for a ways, swaying this way and that, like the equilibrium of the world was in constant flux and he had to compensate for the continuous spinning and the terrestrial threat to upend him from his feet to his backside.
He didn’t get far before he realized that he couldn’t continue. He clung to a tree that grew out of a square cut in the concrete of the sidewalk. Another door stood before him, leading to a small room with an old ATM machine that hardly anyone used anymore. Jess pulled his wallet from his back pocket and wondered when the last time was that he had used his bank card. He tried inserting it into the little black slit in the door and yanked it out just as quickly as he put it in. Nothing happened.
He pulled on the handle of the door and it opened. Jess walked in and moved to the terminal before him. The small little screen and the metal keypad were things that he hadn’t seen in ages. He pressed a few buttons but there was obviously no power inside this little room.
“Who needs money now?” he said aloud to no one in particular.
Orson, Jess thought with great adoration, has learned not to respond to every single word and expulsion of air like some of these other new PALs who don’t have a clue how to connect to the owner.
“It’s mildly warm in here buddy,” Jess said.
“The temperature is considerably warmer than on the outside,”
Orson added.
Jess sunk to the floor and pulled an arm up under his head.