How to Find Peace at the End of the World (2 page)

I walk back downstairs to my busted car. I root around inside. Just when I’m starting to lose hope, starting to feel the paranoid suspicion that it had flown out the open window, into some inaccessible crevice, or possibly even into another dimension, my hand chances upon something plasticky and slick and I retrieve my card from under my passenger’s seat. I put the sim chip back in my reassembled phone and turn it on, hoping and sigh with relief as the network connects again. I call Amy. Nothing. I leave a message. “Hey babe. I don’t know what’s going on. Houston looks like a warzone. Was there an emergency? Toxic? Did we evacuate? I don’t know. I woke up late today. I’m coming up there where you are I’m thinking. I hope at least you get my message. Call me when you can. I love you babe. Kisses.”
I turn the phone off and stow it in my pocket, gingerly. Backups. I need backups. I go into scavenge and hoarding mode. I get like this each time a hurricane forms in the gulf. I have more MRE’s in an unused upstairs closet than ten of your run of the mill natural disasters can deplete. I make a note to go back for those. I know the office has a loaner phone pool, the same phone as mine. I head back upstairs wondering how I’m going to get into the badge locked part of the building. I’m surprised to find the green light on the badge reader is still on. Power. I swipe my card and hear that usual click, except now it resounds in a sinister way. Maybe it’s because the office inside is dark. I know what that means. The lights are set to motion detectors, a “green” energy saving measure the company instituted just recently. It means not even a mouse has farted in the office for at least thirty minutes.
I walk towards the tech room passing cubicles on either side. The computers are still on, humming away, screen saver darkened screens. Warm cups of coffee on the table. Donuts on little wax paper plates. I double check the cubicles of the guys I usually go to lunch with. Terry’s keys are still on his table. So are Matt’s. I head towards the office where we were supposed to be meeting our client. Nothing. Ha! Right? My boss’s car is sticking out of the front of the building and I’m checking to see if our client meeting is going on?

No. That’s not it. I have to find something out. I head into the conference room. The room is empty. The ledgers for the meeting aren’t even in their places as Carol puts them beforehand. The meeting was scheduled for 8:30 AM. It means the emergency must have happened some time well before then. I go back to my own desk where I’d left my computer on from the day before. I log in. I open my email. The last message to our group inbox was received at 7:35 AM.
I go to the tech room. Great, the door is closed and nobody’s manning the station. The lights are on inside, though.

What if all this blows over tomorrow? What if they all come back to a smashed tech room window because I shit my pants for no reason?

Think. My boss’s truck is sticking out of the front of the building.

I’m going to steal it. I’m going to high tail it to Dallas. To Amy.

I go down the hall and tear the axe from where it hangs by the fire hydrant. I go back to the tech room. In one big swing I merely crack the glass. The next one doesn’t yield the results I had anticipated. I look at the glass again and remember the little metal wires it has crosshatched through it. I try swinging through the glass again with the axe. It bounces off and hits my thigh. Shit! I drop the axe and examine myself. It’d hurt a good deal but no blood because the axe head had bounced around and the blunt end had smacked me.

I decide that a fire axe against the tough but bouncy glass is a bad idea. I aim at the door. It’s harder going than I expect but eventually I knock out the knob and cypher lock, taking a good chunk of wood off with it. I feel the axe head. It hasn’t got much of an edge. A part of me thinks it might be handy. I drop it, though. There’s another in the lobby.

Inside the tech room I grab a few phones from their cradles. Then I take the cradles and the car chargers. I take ten extra batteries. I take three loaner tablet laptops, the newer ones with twenty hours on a charge. Extra batteries for those too.

I’m not a crook, I tell myself. This might mean the difference between survival and death.
Ha! How’s a laptop going to help you survive? You need to go get guns, ammo, MRE’s. That’s what you need to get
, the rational part of my brain chimes in. I tell it to shut up and load all the crap into a cardboard box and head back downstairs. I sure look like a looter, I tell myself. It’s both hard to laugh and not to.
10:45 AM. The box of tech is all I want from work. Work can take all the rest, the important files and documents and what not, and shove it. But I’m a man of honor: I even take the time to set the box down and turn off the lights before I leave. I load the box into the back of my boss’s lifted gasoline Super Duty.

I look out at the parking lot and sweep my gaze to survey things. It seems so strange without a plane screaming overhead. Quiet and weird. Working so close to Hobby airport you almost get used to the noise, the regularity of it. On one side of the parking lot is the wood plank fence that we’d sneak behind to grab a smoke and watch the planes land, to talk on the phone without being seen by management. It must have happened early, this emergency. There aren’t that many cars. Most people usually don’t get in until eight thirty, nine. There are a few beaters here and there, all the poor temps and receptionists that work fixed and early hours. Some nice ones. Nothing I would take over the truck with a thirty three inch lift in a pinch, though. And then I see it.

I see the CEO’s Ferrari parked in its usual spot. It’s very tempting, but not practical. I look around like I’m about to do something wrong. I am.
Who cares?
The only part that sees me, what I am about to do, is the rational part of my brain.
You’re not taking this seriously Dan!
I’ve always wanted to drive that car. I head back upstairs, to the other side, to the large corner office.
There’s been a release. The air’s full of dangerous chemicals, Dan. Get the hell out of here as fast as you can. No time for joyrides.
It’s a Ferrari Italia, though. I go through the doors to the big wig side of the building. The lights are all still on this side of the office. I guess they never got the memo about saving the environment.
I’ve only ever been in the CEO’s office once and that was when my boss introduced me for our initial meeting. I remember Patrick patting me on the back while shaking my hand and baring teeth whiter than the snows of Kilimanjaro. Faker than fake, but of course I work for a marketing firm. Or used to work for a marketing firm, especially after today. I walk into the receptionist’s area lined with nicer carpet and plush cherry wood. I step up to the corner office door. Now or never. Go big or go home. All the lingo we use in our group to pump ourselves up before a pitch. I walk inside with a big fat smile on my face in case this has all been for Candid Camera. Empty. And just as other things have been going, there is the little key fob with the Ferrari horse sitting on his wide oak desk. Us common folk always seem to have more keys on our key rings. I wonder where rich pricks keep all theirs. Or used to. I guess they never needed them in the first place. Everything’s finger print and voice activated probably. I grab the Ferrari keys and stilt walk quickly out of the office. Downstairs, I hover over the beauty for a while. I look around again. I rub my hand over the red but seal slick skin of the car as if it provides its own frictionless coating to ease its passage through fluid air. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever been so close to such an elegant machine, unless you count auto shows. I’m somewhat of an enthusiast. I know it’s got 562 horsepower at redline and that it’s paddle shifted. I’ve watched countless videos on the driving mechanism. Everything should be good, right?
When I open the door and slide into the leather seats, that’s when the magnitude of what I am doing hits me. Not just the grand
grand
theft auto, but the simple insanity of this act, the way it crosses so many unspoken boundaries. For one, you never touch another man’s ride unless he gives you express permission. Fuck it. I already have the key fob here in my hands. If it’s just a dream, I’ll be creaming or pissing my boxers soon enough. Creaming, then, because when I push the start button, the throb seems almost to be something originating deep in the earth. It’s coming up through the thousands of miles of magma and crust up the through the soil and pipes and asphalt, through the thousand dollar custom racing tires, through the two thousand dollar bucket seats, and right into my genitals.
I lean on my Internet video learning, at least what I can remember of the steps needed to make this ride fly and paddle my way up to first gear to get out of the parking lot.

The office abuts a long, broad avenue in the corporate park, straight as a landing strip, flat and two lanes wide. We always wondered how pilots from the airport nearby never mistook it for one. Often I’ve seen the CEO drag racing others in the office, his Italia usually winning against kitted out Beamers and Vettes. Well, just me now. I rev the engine, fingers on the upshift paddle. The imaginary start lights in my head go off. Red. Red. Red. Green. I’m still sitting on the asphalt, idling.
My foot hovers over the pedal, my hands on the wheel.
What am I doing? I ask myself. I should be doing my damnedest to save myself. I should be trying to get to Amy.

What am I doing? Amy’s fine. Got to be fine. She’s fine. There’s been, maybe not an evacuation, but an incident. But Amy’s safe in Dallas. Dallas is two hundred and sixty seven miles to the North. Amy’s safe. The network is out. Or she had to leave her phone behind as everyone fled North. She’s in Colorado or something. That’s where the National Guard took her to. The imaginary state borders have neatly contained this thing whatever it is. I’m coming unglued, I think. No. I’ll be fine, too.
My foot comes down, the paddle in 1st gear. Five hundred and seventy horses kick me up to sixty in three point four seconds. I find that despite my concerns I can’t help from smiling. As if the corners of my mouth are being pressed back by the acceleration. The corners of my eyes are wet.
I’m crying. I know. Pussy, right?
All the strange things of the morning. Strange feelings. When was the last time, honest?

I’m taxed.

Fear. Exhilaration. Uncertainty. Paranoia. Madness. All of it comes out as the South East Houston Corporate park turns to a smear against the Italia’s windows. I’m blowing by all the nice pretty buildings, the manicured flower plots. How many times  have I pulled the up paddle? What gear am I in? Sixth. God. One hundred and eight miles an hour. At this speed the road joints feel like running over pets and small woodland creatures, like the axles are going to tear off.

A ringing starts in my ears. It’s the acceleration. Or it’s the crazy. The ringing is getting louder, closer. Are my eardrums about to burst?
That when I catch it in the rear view mirror. I double take. Triple take. It’s hard to know where I should put my attention going at one hundred and fifteen miles per hour: possible obstacles before me, or the impossibility I see in the rear view mirror. An airplane. For a moment I feel ridiculous. Surreally I am that little guy on Paradise Island. I’m screaming while pointing into the sky. We’re going to be rescued. But I feel myself wilt just like that little guys face wilts as he realizes, no, there aint going to be a rescue. The plane, a jet, is impossibly close. It’s angled so that I can see the full on circle of the nose. I’ve only ever seen them from way down here when they’ve been way up here. Never even been on one, but they land all the time at the airport a few miles away. We used to take cig breaks behind the dumpster, before I quit, and watch them loping through the sky. And now I’m staring one down the nose through the rear view mirror. I can even make out the windows maybe and I don’t even have to be close enough to know there’s nobody inside. It’s coming straight for me. It’s going to crash.
My foot falls the rest of the way. The car pushes me back into the seat as if saying “hold on.” I’ve watched so many videos of inexperienced drivers wiping out in sports cars. The muscles in my arm strain against the slight wobbles at such speed, hands clenched to keep the wheel perfectly straight.
My eyes flick back to the rear view. I see the tip of the plane’s left wing come down, sheer light poles I’d zoomed by moments before. The poles, stalks of steel fifteen inches in diameter, snap like dry spaghetti, their tops spinning off in every direction. Peripherally I see a big steel bar fly towards my office building, right at the Beast where it sits in the parking lot, before pitching up at the last second and slamming into the glass façade, billows of glittering shards exploding outwards onto the parking lot.
Then, time slows even more. The tip of one wing touches the grass embankment and as if upon hitting a plow blade the embankment erupts in a vertically flowing sheet of dirt and grass. Then the wing snaps off, the wide blade of metal disintegrating into millions of pieces. The spinning turbofan blades were blasted everywhere, chunks of metal flying faster than the tumbling plane body, landing all around and even in front of the car. The wing’s detachment spins the plane fuselage sideways. The body’s bank of empty windows turns in my rear view, and then I see the blank roof and then the windows on the other side. The other wing, still attached swings down like a falling axe and it seems the sun is being blotted out. I gun it, flipping into the last gear and pull away. Behind me the ground shakes. Sparks fountain from behind me, molten bits of metal flying past, pieces of glass splattering in the grass embankments and concrete all around. In the mirrors a spinning storm of metal and passenger’s seats and suitcases flying open, internal cargo blooming and shedding in a split second. The demon cyclone seems to follow the car, the pieces of the plane’s fuselage billowing out in a great cloud, threatening to consume me as it rolls forward swallowing me.
I keep the gas pedal floored. God. God. God.  My tongue squirms against gritted teeth.