Nearly Gone

The apocalypse.

I read a poem once about how the world was going to end. How some said that it would end in fire and others, in ice. Thinking back on that poem now I am amazed at how wrong it really was, and how right, because little did the author know when he wrote that poem, the world would indeed perish twice.

It started out like any other day though. We didn’t even know it was happening until it was too late. We were all so wrapped up in our own individual lives, and jobs, and problems to care about the meteors in China, or the flooding in Africa. We didn’t even bother to stop and ask about it when a ‘blood disease’ struck down the first born sons in Russia a few months ago. Blamed on faulty genetics and too much inbreeding. In Russia. Yeah, okay. There was no way that these were some kind of portents or signs.

We simply accepted the lame excuses.

We didn’t care.

So, we didn’t notice.

Until that day.

But it really did start out just like any other day.

The tremors began in the Earth’s core, building in strength and intensity like a pregnant woman’s labour pains. Few of the souls on the surface felt the earth quaking with its agonized tremors, once again predicting the end of the world as we knew it. Not that the rest of us believed the portents of doom. Why would we? We’ve all heard the prophets before. It’s not like anything ever really happened.

Man, if most of us hadn’t died that day, we’d probably all feel like real idiots now. But then again, maybe not. Like I said, none of us really cared until it happened. We were all so wrapped up in thinking about the normal everyday things in our boring, everyday lives. Wake up; go to work; get home as soon as possible; maybe watch the Super bowl. Send the kids to school; meet our secret lovers and keep them a secret from our wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sons… The list goes on and on about the normal, boring thoughts that each of us had every boring day, and in particular, on that day.

Myself, I was enjoying a lazy day that only one of the recently unemployed can fully enjoy, by wallowing in my depressingly bad luck. My life had recently started feeling like one of those old country songs. You know the ones where the singer is whining about how his wife left him, he lost his job, and his dog died, but the saddest thing of all is that his truck broke down? Yeah. One of those. That is exactly how my life was feeling, even though I didn’t actually have a dog, and I took the subway everywhere… But still, two out of the four applied. And although she was just my girlfriend, the heartache’s the same, right? Actually, it’s worse, because by the time you’re married to a woman long enough for her to leave you, you’re probably praying that she’ll go. So, yeah, even though two of those crappy experiences didn’t apply to me, the second made up for most of that pain. But back to the end of the world.

When the power went out, I was so far into my depression that I thought the hydro company had simply gotten fed up with my continuously late payments and finally cut me off. My depression sank deeper as I thought about the food in the fridge that would soon go bad. Then I remembered that there was no food in the fridge. Crap! So I dragged my sorry a*s off of the couch that sat in front of the TV that no longer worked and trudged down the stairs of my decaying apartment building and into the blinding rays of the harsh yellow sunlight that only served to highlight the dirt-ridden streets that smelled like something had recently died out back.

It was probably another cat.

I wondered briefly why the Chinese food take-out place down the street didn’t collect the stray cats, like that other place that had been all over the news had done, and use them in their dishes. They are Chinese after all, and it’s really actually doing the city a favour. So what if that other place had been closed for using cat meat? I sure wouldn’t tell anyone. It’s not like I ate Chinese food anyways. Why would I? I was American, after all. In fact, this area was such a blight to the rest of the city that God, in all of His mighty glory, should just wipe it off of the map entirely.

And that was when the first earthquake had enough seismic activity to be felt on the surface.

Holy crap! What the heck was that?!

I rushed over to a haphazardly parked car, where the owner was listening intently to his radio as frenzied reports began coming in over the airwaves.

“…Unusual weather activity has lent credence to many earlier reports of the impending apocalypse. Surface and core temperatures everywhere are skyrocketing. We are being warned to expect earthquakes of increasing intensity and the city has been put on alert. To anyone out there that's listening: it’s time to start praying." Which was followed by panicked screams in the background and the sound of crashing. The reporter's voice came back for one final sentence.

"We’re all going to die!”

And that was when the report came to a rather abrupt halt. For moments I stood in shocked silence, thinking about how utterly rude it had been of the news reporter to try and scare countless masses of people who, no doubt, were probably now screeching about the end of the world as well by now. Humph. I’d have to find a more reliable source.

I shoved off of the car, not quite sure where to head for my ‘more reliable source’, and continued on my way towards the nearest subway station, never bothering to think that they may have been closed (as they were) due to the earthquakes. Once again, annoyance pulled at my nerves. How can they just close the subway for Pete’s sake?! Don’t they know that countless people rely on it to get to where they have to be? So what if we had a little tremor just now? Surely they didn’t expect people to just walk everywhere! Absurd! Unacceptable!

Eventually I accepted the reality that my squawking at the security guards wasn’t going to get them to just open the subway for me. So I would go back to my apartment and call whoever oversaw the general management of the subways and get him to open them.

It was as I was walking back towards my apartment, planning exactly how I would bend this person to my will that the first meteorite hit us. I watched as the force of it rocked buildings, obliterating everything in its path, the heat scorching my body like a bad sunburn.

Great, now I’d probably get skin cancer, or radiation poisoning!

Screams filled the air, and sirens added to the sounds of chaos admidst the destruction. An unexpected violence done in an exceptionally violent part of the city. I watched, still not quite believing, as a mother wailed over the half charcoaled remains of her dead son. That was probably when the terror really hit me. I felt heat rip into my feet and, glancing at the ground, noticed that the asphalt had completely melted the rubber soles of my shoes.

Oh, God. We’ve all gone to Hell!

We didn’t even realize it, but overnight, we all went to Hell!

To be fair, I wasn’t quite thinking rationally by this point, so I jumped to a rather irrational conclusion. But hey, there was no one around to correct me, so I just kept on thinking that this was Hell.

And everywhere I looked I saw the Devil!

I think that was about the time that I picked up the rock, but truth be told I don’t really remember when I did pick it up. What I do know is that I was standing there completely stunned and some man touched my arm to ask if I needed help and I just exploded.

Bam!

I clutched my rock in my hand and, turning around, began to bash his brains in.

I didn’t stop long enough to think about the fact that this was a cop I was killing. When he finally lay there like a collapsed doll, all I saw was his mangled face, the damage obscuring his features, blood soaking into his white-blonde hair and dying it a deep scarlet, and I thought to myself, “This is the Devil. I’ve just killed the Devil!”

I raised my rock and cried out at my victory, never really seeing the other cops that had already pulled their guns on me and were threatening to shoot if I didn’t put down the stone. What I saw was my fellow penitents cheering me on. Offering me their fealty for slaying the Demon!

Man, was I wrong.

It was as I was voicing my victory that the first shot spun me. Then another and another, until the rock fell to the ground and me along with it. I fell in just the right way, so that lying there immobilized I stared into the mangled face of the young cop I had killed.

Damn.

I guess the Devil got his revenge.

I guess God did too.

Breakouts of random violence committed by panic-driven citizens rocked the world that day. Turns out, the apocalypse was all man’s doing. By the end of the day there were so few survivors that almost no one was around to see the storms calm and the earth return to its normal state. Some places had been left so completely desolate that they were occupied only by the corpses of the foolish people who had sought out their own destruction.

Damned, rude weatherman!

I should have killed him first.

Author's Note

The views of the main character do not reflect the views of the author. They serve to reflect my criticism of those who do (and yes, there are North Americans who do) think this way.