The sirens barely registered beyond his headphones, thus merely adding to the general mood of the MOEV song he was listening to on his Shuffle. He’d heard the song a million times before, so it was not a factor in his choice to ignore such an addition; he simply chose to incorporate all the added noise of the world falling apart around him into the well-known music. The ambient noise of the drawn-out apocalypse he’d grown so used to. In fact, even though there was a curfew in effect, he could give a rusty fuck about the “horrible consequences” he’d heard about for months, on the surviving radio frequencies, regarding the “risks” of wandering from one’s home after dark.
Instead, he chose to journey beyond his domicile which, according to the authorities was a miracle in and of itself, to find some toilet paper and a lighter. Such things were doled out by the state only on certain days, under the caution that seeking them out otherwise would result in the aforementioned “horrible consequences”.
Of course, he’d heard the same ominous sounds at night that his neighbors had; screams and shouts and night-splitting cracks. Of course, he’d seen the same eerie lights and flashes in the night sky that his neighbors had seen. They simply did not concern him anymore. Sitting in the same shitty 1 bedroom apartment, looking at the same walls and the same empty bed. The same empty reasons for cowering in the corner. He was alone. Nobody to share in his terror and paranoia. Nobody to ask, “Why?”
So, it no longer mattered. He had to find a way to cook his meals, and he needed the amenity that accompanies defecation. He had been cowering long enough, waiting for such appurtenances. Why wait any longer, considering this dismal situation?
“What’s the fucking difference?” he asks himself, at 11:00 PM on the night of October the 15th, 2014.
His name is Charles, and he is walking toward something he has been told not to walk toward, especially at this time of night. As he is walking, he sees many things. These things include yellow & black tape strung across the doorways of homes, which seem to him, to be nothing other than vacant. He sees things hanging from the trees, which appear to him as the bodies of people.
Charles is not an idiot. He knows that what he is seeing, in the shadows that were so recently forbidden to him, should stink really bad. He has smelled death before, and this is not it. To him, it smells like horseshit.
However, Charles is merely breaking curfew in order to attain a few necessities. He does not care about the things he sees or smells. In fact, he does not care about anything, which is why he was able to make the trip in the first fucking place.
In fact, he was just listening to his I-POD Shuffle, with whatever power was left and whatever songs he left on it, and wandering out into whatever horrors he was supposed to believe awaited him. In the end, he did not believe in these horrors. The sounds he had heard at night, eventually, seemed like nothing more than what he was used to just watching the fucking news. The lights? Well, they might as well be fireworks.
After walking for about an hour, Charles came to a Walgreen’s that was trying very hard to appear abandoned. It did not fool Charles, for he was beyond caring if knocking upon the sliding glass doors and making any noise that would alert…whatever, would do him any harm at all.
Charles waited awhile, then he picked up the large trashcan beside the doors, took a couple steps back and threw the fucker as hard as he possibly could through the glass. It shattered loudly and without disappointment. Shards of potential pain littered the floor of the entrance near the defunct ATM as Charles ducked into the building. All was dark, as he had no flashlight. He knew, however, that there were such things immediately available to him at the registers directly to his left. At one point they were known as “impulse buys”.
It was easy enough for Charlie to find what he needed, so in short time, he had a working flashlight. Toilet paper was the treasure he was in search of, yet he decided, while he was at it, to procure some food and some beer as well. He had made it this far without any repercussions from whatever it was that he was supposed to be afraid of. As long as he kept his shopping spree short enough, and remembered the route he’d used to get where he was, he should be fine. After all, nothing has stood in his way thus far. Not that it mattered anyway. In the end Charles could give a rat’s ass less what happened to him at this point. However, his neighbors did give a rat’s ass.
It had been a few weeks since anyone had even dared to venture as far as their front porch, even in daylight. Charles and his neighbors would at least stand outside, shouting pleasantries from across the street, in order to glean some sort of human connection to keep them all sane. He lived in a predominantly college-type area, so there were no children. Just people roughly his own age, if not several years younger. However, it had been many days since he had seen or heard from anyone. Maybe they’d succumbed to the paranoia? Maybe they offed themselves? He would probably smell it by now if they had. As far as the aforementioned offing, he was not there yet himself. Maybe he was too cowardly to see it through? Charles didn’t know.
Then again, maybe that was why he finally decided to go out into the dark, in order to find supplies? Maybe he just wanted someone, or something to do his dirty work for him? It would certainly answer some fucking questions, he told himself.
At any rate, here Charles was, pushing a cart around an abandoned Walgreen’s, shopping by the light of a small stolen flashlight. Down the isle of toilet paper. Down the isle of snacks and such. To the cooler, which hasn’t worked for months, but whatever, there was still beer inside. Load it all into the cart, now, how do I get it home?
Well, Charles says to himself, we get it home in this fucking cart, I guess.
So, after shuffling around behind a small pinpoint of light within the Walgreen’s for about an hour, Charles decides to simply push his cart out the shattered door, and onward toward his apartment. Well…what else is there?
The dark dark night appeared no darker than when Charles began his improvisational hopeless quest. In fact, nothing at all seemed different. Charles simply pushed the cold shopping cart under his quivering fists up the street in the direction of his apartment. The shopping cart filled with bags of chips and six-packs of beer and flashlights and batteries. He wasn’t even going in the same direction from whence he came; he was simply too excited about his bounty to be concerned about retracing his steps. Some mysterious instinct led him to a major avenue which, eventually, led to the street where he lived. However, Charles had many blocks to go, before he reached his meager apartment.
Charles pushed his cart a few blocks, in the dark, before the left wheel hit something in its path. The unexpected impact sent the handle of the shopping cart into his stomach, shocking him out of his headphone reverie. NOMEANSNO would have to wait.
He coughed a few times and then made his way around to the front of the shopping cart. The wind was blowing again, and he could hear more sirens off in the distance. Southeast; nowhere near his apartment. He looked down. Next to the left wheel was a handgun. Charles recognized it, from his days watching too many episodes of CSI, as a 9 millimeter Beretta. He picked it up. Other than feeling slightly greasy, there was nothing untoward about the pistol. So Charles jammed it into one of the six-packs of beer he had pilfered.
Charles then took his previous position behind the shopping cart, replaced the headphone buds back into his ears and continued on home. “Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed” was just ending. The next song, “Misery Is The River of the World”, was just beginning.
The walk back to his apartment went uninhibited, which was amazing in and of itself, considering the fact that he was pushing a shopping cart containing three six-packs of beer, five bags of chips, three four-roll packages of toilet paper and several boxes of 500 milligram Ibuprophen pills.
His amazement continued until the last hundred or so paces before he and his rickety metal bounty reached the steps of his derisory domicile. Of course, it was then that the homes straddling his derisory domicile began to show signs of life. Like a raft of ducks swarming to a cluster of soggy stale bread, which someone has thrown from the shore of a scummy late summer pond, several dark figures poured out from the shadows toward Charles’ shopping cart bounty.
These figures, whom he did not recognize due to the meager light, tore him away from his cart in a way that he was viciously thrown to the cold pavement, cracking his skull volubly against the bottom step of his apartment. And, if the din from the assailants raiding his cache weren’t quite so suddenly and shockingly loud in the dead of this terrified night, one would have heard the sickening sound of Charles’ skull impacting upon said step. Making a sound that any foley artist worth his salt would give up his trade secrets to perfect.
Charles could feel rivulets of hot liquid, which could only be his own blood and spinal fluid, running down the back of his neck. He could not, of course, move at all then. And so the only vision available was directly above him, which consisted of the stars and a few quickly moving human forms swarming about him.
The “raid” took only a few moments, and then he was left bleeding and immobile upon the uncaring ground, staring at the aforementioned stars. For whatever reason, he found himself thinking:
I hope they share what they got. Not as if it matters to me now…
…which, he guessed, was the point of him going out in the first fucking place.
