After People (S)

After People

Preface

It scorches my nostrils. The smell of burning gasoline in the air is thick and heavy. It's the norm for me now. The smell of the hairs in my nose melting into nothing. I don't even remember the last time I was able to go outside and take “a breath of fresh air”. At least I don't sneeze anymore.

I want food. So I get it.

I travel into town, I live off of the highway over by a…not a river, more like a creek. It's the only clean water I've found lately, and only a ten minute walk or so from town.

There's a meat packing plant there that used to be a very good source of meat. It didn't stay for long, and now I can't even go near the block without almost retching. I hold my nose and run past the block, my lungs screaming, before the putrid stench can penetrate my guard. Once I'm past I take in deep breaths and try to regain my vision. On I go. Only one more block until I get to the supermarket.

I walk up to the front doors, which have long been suck in the open position, letting myself in. I look around, seems as quiet as usual, and grab myself a cart. I walk down the canned food isle as if it was just another day and start shoving arm-fulls of cans into  my buggy before walking back out the front door. I take the cart down the road, using it like a scooter to get past the smell.

As I walk past the oil refinery beside the highway the sirens blare like they have for the past six months or so. I’ve tuned them out by now, so they didn’t bother me. Nothing catches my attention until I hear the first explosion. I cock an eyebrow and turn around.

Now, I don’t know if you know anything about oil refineries, but they work like this: there is a bunch of those wide barrels that hold oil, and when those are heated up, the oil is used as lubrication to keep the machines from running on themselves. Now, when oil is heated for too long it begins to evaporate, and when the oil runs low a light will turn on, and when they get dangerously low a siren goes off. This siren has enough battery power to last for almost four years, the plant, doesn’t.

Now, as I was walking past the barrels, there was no more oil left at all, leaving only gasoline fumes in them. The tubing that runs beneath the barrels begins to spark and, therefore, lights the gasoline fumes causing the barrels to explode, one by one.

I stand there watching as the lids are blown off of the giant barrels and look around me. Nothing there, as usual. I sit on the nearby curve and open my canned sausages and start to eat it, watching the building burn in front of the setting sun.

Dinner and a show, I think, Nice.

After People

Chapter I

The Disease

It wasn’t, like, some weird day or anything. It looked and felt just as normal as any other day. I don’t think I’d ever even thought of seeing it coming. Who could, I mean; it all happened in one day. I don’t think anyone would have expected it. Excluding maybe those involved.

I grabbed my backpack and ran out the door, as usual, and my mom grabbed my arm and pulled me back, giving me my daily obnoxious hug and kiss on the cheek. She was so over emotional. Then I ran to the bus stop before it left me and I was on my way to school, like any other day, sitting on the bus, wishing to god that they’d get some air conditioners on ours like they had every other bus. Then they pulled into the school, just like any other day, and I got out and went to math, just like any other day.

I sat through my first three classes, just barely making it, and then drudged off to lunch, eating my crappily prepared school depicted health regimen. Then, I went to my favorite class of the day. Art. It was the only time in my whole existence that I was happy to be in school. I aspired to be an artist when I was older. But it wasn’t like that’d be too long, I was already sixteen and ready for the world to take me as its own. I wanted to paint beautiful pictures of amazing people and captivating places. That was my dream.

No one agreed with it though. Everyone told me that it wasn’t a good plan, that I needed a steady cash flow, a “real job”. They didn’t understand. If I put my mind to it, then I’d become the best, and people would notice, and they’d know me by name.

Hah. Now I look back on that and think, what people?

Then, halfway through art class the sirens went off.

The sirens were only used if there was an immediate emergency, we lived in Palm Bay, Florida, nothing happened there, the sirens never went off. Needless to say we were only a little panicked. The principal came onto the intercom requesting the calm and organized evacuation of students. Of course that didn’t happen.

As soon as we were released from class we were corralled towards the busses. I didn’t know what was going on. I noticed that obviously, neither did anyone else; everyone had confused faces. I didn’t realize how bad it really was until a girl next to me yelled out what she’d found on her phone about the panic. Some scientist in NASA had helped create some ultra awesome disease that would wipe out a whole group of people. She screamed about how the incompetent scientist had dropped it and the disease was spreading at an alarming rate and would consume the country within the day. I let myself get pushed by the crowd, thinking over what exactly was going on.

It was a terrible disease. It only affected humans, not plants or animals. It was a form of the Black Death; burning throat and sores everywhere, only it lasted a few hours instead of a few weeks. It was airborne, it spread like wildfire. Not even water stopped it. It would be in Europe within the week.

I looked around at everyone, really taking in their faces. As the crowd pushed me towards the buses my fate really hit me; we were all going to die.

This was it, there was no cure, and there was no chance of survival. No hazmats, no cover shelters, no vaccine. Nothing, we were doomed.

I’d never really thought about how people on death row felt, but this must kind of be like that. Moving towards something you know is there, no way to escape. But it must be different too. All these people running away, trying to escape it; they don’t realize that they are only running further into it. There is no escape. And unlike those on death row, it’s not our fault. They didn’t have anything to lose.

I started thinking about how I was going to miss everything now. My family, my life, my dreams. I would never become an artist, I would never grow up, get married, or have children. I would never eat my mothers chicken pot pie again; she wouldn’t kiss my cheek before I leave, tell me she loved me. Would I make it to her fast enough to see her one last time?

I looked around at the students on the bus, most were coughing, some even hacking. It was here, or had it already been here for a while? Had it been inside of us, fermenting, so quick to affect us?

I reach up and grab my throat. It didn’t burn, or itch. I wondered if it would take me longer to die than the others, it obviously wasn’t hitting me as fast.

How odd, I thought, I’m talking about this like its nothing. It was almost like it wasn’t really happening to me.

Cold on my leg.

I touch my face and feel the wet. I’d been crying. I hadn’t even realized it. My eyes were so blurry I couldn’t even see anymore. My face was like a river, and I was drowning in it.

The bus pulled into another school, a middle school, one close to my home. The teachers were trying to get us organized and call our parents. If my father hadn’t heard about it, he wasn’t going to come get me. He probably wouldn’t even if he had. He’d call it, “Some stupid government conspiracy theory,” And to, “Stop obsessing with fantasy and paint the skyscrapers, that’s where you’re going to end up.” Like I had a choice.

I slipped away from the teachers and started walking home. It would take about three or four minutes. When I reached my house I realized that both my parents were home, but there wasn’t going to be anyone there.

My fathers car was drove straight into the garage door, the engine was still running and it looked like he’d tried to keep going, as if he wanted to drive into the master bedroom on the other side of the wall. I ran up to the car and saw him, his face down on the steering wheel. I didn’t check to see if he was okay, or alive. I could guess.

I went inside and walked into the living room. I could hear the kitchen sink running and splashing. It was overflowing. I didn’t want to figure out why. I ran with my eyes close past the kitchen and into my bedroom.

I sat on my bed and pulled my knees up to my face, hugging them tight. I wanted to fall asleep and just let it come for me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay here, obviously there was nowhere to go, nowhere to escape it, but I couldn’t just accept it and sit here on my bed, waiting for death to hit me as hard as it seemed to be hitting everyone else. I had to go somewhere; I had to at least try.

I packed a bag of clothes and grabbed the waterproof camping pillow and blanket my dad had bought a few weeks ago, planning ahead for a camping trip that would now never happen. I shoved it into the  bag and walked out my door. On my way down the hall I realized I would need food. I really didn’t want to go into the kitchen, but I seemed to have to. I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes as tight as I could and ran into the kitchen. The floor splashed under my feet and I knew now for a fact that the sink had overflowed. I dared not open my eyes to see why.

I reached around until I felt the handle for the fridge and griped it tightly, determined, for the moment. I pulled it open and started grabbing food. I took anything that I knew would go bad quickly and threw it in my bag, then started packing the things that would last a little longer.

Cans, I thought, Cans last forever. Then it hit me, I’d have to go to the pantry to get cans. The pantry right next to the sink.

I took a deep breath and waded my way over to the pantry, using the counter as a guide. I could tell I was almost there, the sink was getting louder and I could feel the lapping of the falling water on my ankles, I would need to grab a new pair of socks, I thought, a little dark humour at a time like this, but you can’t help where goes.

I’d almost made it when I tripped over something soft. I fell, my eyes ripping open. I gripped the wet counter and hoping for traction, but got none. I toppled helplessly to the ground, bracing for impact. When I hit the ground it dazed me, but not because of the impact, because of what I hit, it was soft. All I could see from the corner of my eye was a pale blue shade of a cotton dress.

I almost looked up, but caught myself. I knew what I’d see, and I knew I didn’t want to see it. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and stood back up, ripping open the pantry door and shoving as many cans into my bag as possible, I didn’t even read them to see what they were.

When I felt I had enough I slammed the door, as hard as I could in the deep water, and ran out the door, completely forgetting that I needed new socks and shoes. I ran down the driveway and across the street, running on the sidewalks, completely ignoring my surroundings, going as fast as I could. I didn’t want to be anywhere around here.

I ran and I ran and I ran until the sun dimmed.

I only remember the sirens and screaming. I don’t remember when I fell asleep, or how my feet got so swollen. It felt like I’d woken up from some freaky dream that I never wanted to think about again.

Then I opened my eyes and sat up.

The sky was orange and the street that was usually so busy was completely empty. It made sense that the town would be mostly abandoned by now, with people evacuating, but the fact made me cry none the less.