Part 2: Anarchy

John laid on his apartment floor for an unknown length of time, unable to cope. It was only when he smelled smoke, did he return to his senses.

From an old safety course, he knew that smoke was bad. It meant combustion, toxic chemicals, and fire.

He trudged over to the window and looked outside.

Thick black smoke crawled up the side of the building, Flames licked at the third floor from their place on the second. Hooded people stalked the building’s surroundings, pointing and laughing at the burning apartment.

One of them took out a canister of something and threw it. It splashed against the brick walls, and the flames grew higher than before. Gasoline.

John pulled his head back into his window. There were arsonists outside his home, and they had already started burning it.

He needed to move. Move or die.

Was death preferable? After all, the world was ending. He would die soon anyway…

He shook his head to clear his mind. He couldn’t fall into the mentality of those maniacs outside.

But he did know that burning to death was one of the most painful ways to die. Heat affected nerves in a relatively uniform way, so compared to other forms of death, burn wounds were the most painful inch-for-inch.

What was it Lenny had said all those days ago?

‘I can’t say you’ll make it out, but… well, hopefully it’ll be quick and painless.’

John didn’t want to die quite yet.

He got to his feet and began running out of his apartment, into the hallway. He took the stairs down to the fourth floor, wincing at the increasingly-intense musk of smoke.

The fire escape was his last bet.

He sprinted down another hallway, passing random units, until he found the fire escape, obscured by smoke.

With no other choice, he put his shirt over his mouth and nose and plunged into the smog.

Down the steps he went, blinded by the smoke’s thickness. He kept moving, hands on guardrails to keep track of where he was. Faster and faster, until his feet touched concrete.

He opened his eyes and found himself in the alleyway behind his apartment. He was covered in soot.

His legs felt heavier and heavier as he limped away from the burning building. A glance back showed it to still be in flames, the fire having reached the sixth floor.

He watched as the incandescence consumed the floor he used to live on.

Wiping his eyes, John turned around and kept moving.

The streets were horrible now, like a vision from some deranged man’s nightmare. Smells of rotting, burning flesh were prominent and corpses haphazardly lined the sidewalk.

Some had obviously thrown themselves off the rooftops of their apartment buildings in a suicidal bid for a cleaner, more numb death than the one the impending apocalypse promised. Their crushed bodies littered the areas around tall buildings, creating a river of blood that streamed into the nearest storm-drain.

Others had been murdered by the more hedonistic people. Gashes in their throats, bloody fountains streaming from their chests, intestines spilling out from where their abdomens had been sliced open… some were still fresh, with knife-marks and cigarette burns littering their graying faces. Apparently their murderers thought they were better as ashtrays than people. At least before their deaths.

John averted his eyes, trying not to hurl. Before today, he’d never even seen a corpse before.

It was horrible. It was disgusting and horrible, what people were capable of when they had nothing left to lose.

He needed to leave before a murderer found him too.

In the corner of his vision, metal glinted. A bicycle caught his eye.

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He felt ridiculous as he pumped the pedals, but that feeling was overshadowed by the physical pain, and not-so-physical grief.

His home was lost. He was beaten black and blue. The whole apartment had burned down, and now he was pedaling out of the burning, screaming city he once called home.

The world was in anarchy because everyone was now faced with the fact that by next week, they’d all be dead.

Bodies littered the streets, and murderers roamed around like hyenas in a jungle.

On his cycling, he’d see gangs roving around, banging on doors and screaming at each other. They laughed, cried, and prayed as they committed the worst of atrocities.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Naturally, John avoided them. They had guns, after all, and he did not.

The earth shook occasionally, as more of the planet’s surface came loose.

Biking to the West End of Chiquita was a chore. Not for the act of biking itself, but seeing how the place had changed after the apocalypse became imminent.

Less than a month ago, it had been a quickly developing suburb, filled with families and workers. Now, it was a depopulated graveyard.

Likely a cult-gang had passed through. Crosses were dumped in the streets, nailed to doors, and thrown onto rooftops. Christian paraphernalia had become litter, things that the gang had left behind in their religious fervor.

There were bodies too, as expected. Ones he didn’t look at.

He just continued his biking, confident that the gang had left the neighborhood after killing everyone in it. He was relatively safe.

The ground trembled again.

So did his stomach. Hunger.

One of the houses nearby had their front door unlocked and opened wide. Hoping to find food, John carefully made his way in.

Immediately, the stink of iron and meat filled his nose. His appetite waned, but he still walked.

‘Kitchen. Just gotta find the kitchen.’ He hurriedly thought.

He didn’t want to spend another second in that horrible place.

He found a refrigerator that had childish drawings stuck on its doors with magnets. His stomach sank.

The fridge turned out to be empty.

His search bore no fruit, so he took it upstairs.

A bedroom door opened, and he found…

More bodies. A woman, unclothed and spread-eagle on the bed, skin torn to shreds and a scalped skull showing. The murderer had taken his time with her.

There was also a man’s body with piercing wounds in his torso and dark, shadowy holes remaining where his eyes once were.

John didn’t look any longer than he had to.

He was even more disgusted than before.

Was this the city he once loved and called home? Was humanity so depraved that when they lost everything, this was how they responded?

Was this how people acted when there was no one to enforce justice? Did justice even exist anymore?

He knew the answer now, and it saddened him. Life before Lenny’s call felt so far away.

Eventually, his search led him to the house’s pantry.

He didn’t even bother checking the child’s room. He just took whatever food he found and left.

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Once outside the house, back in the bright sunlight, he threw up on the front lawn. His orange vomit swirled in the grass as he blankly stared.

A moment passed.

He wiped his mouth and kept moving. He didn’t know what for though. Not anymore.

The West End suburb was dangerous, so he decided to leave and go to the very edge of the city where the wilderness was. People weren’t likely to be found there.

As he rode away from that bloody neighborhood, a voice called out from behind him.

“You! Step off the bike, or I'll shoot!”

Heart beating like a jackhammer, John began pedaling faster.

A gunshot rang out, but missed him. John dove behind a car, pulling the bike along with him.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?!” He shouted.

“Just gimme the bike!” The gunman shouted back. “It won’t even matter, so do it!”

He was just another person lashing out at the world. Acting crazy, maniacal, hysteric, yet somehow, not unreasonable.

“Screw you!” Called John, taking out his own weapon.

The ensuing fight was loud and painful. A shot fired from behind one car, another from behind a fence.

It continued until another earthquake began. John was fine, as he was hiding behind a car, and low to the ground. His opponent was not so lucky, having lost his balance. John’s attacker stumbled, briefly coming out from behind his cover.

John took the opportunity and fired once more

He was lucky. A red hole was blasted through the area above his attacker’s eye, and the man slumped to the shaking ground.

John had won. He’d live a little longer.

He’d killed someone.

Like the ground, his hands shook.

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Before John stood the St. McCarthy Hospital, one of Chiquita City’s premier healthcare centers. It was dark now, as electricity was no longer being supplied.

Still, John headed inside.

“Freeze!” Called a voice, as John stepped inside the place’s waiting room.

He put his hands up.

“I’m friendly.” He said. “I’m just here for some food. If there’s any.”

“Weapons?” Asked the voice.

“A gun.”

“Throw it away.”

John hesitated, remembering how the weapon had saved him earlier. But he eventually complied, and tossed the gun out of his reach. It clattered to the hospital’s hard, cold floors.

“Alright. You’re good.” Said the voice.

A new person stepped into John’s line of vision. It was a dark-skinned doctor with a graying beard.

“Not gonna pat me down?” Asked John. “I could’ve been lying, and had another gun.”

The doctor shook his head.

“Not much point. You wanted food?”

“Yeah.”

“Follow me. We have plenty to spare, even if we can’t distribute it all as well as we’d like.”

“What do you mean?” John asked as he began following after the doctor.

The bearded man’s fist clenched.

“Not enough personnel. After the announcement told us the planet was coming apart, most everyone either left, or… well, they’re gone either way. And now there’s too few people to look after all of the patients.”

Oh.

“Those b*stards… leaving us like that. I bet they ran off to join those gangs.” Finished the spiteful, angry doctor.

John said nothing.

The pair of old men made their way down the hospital’s darkened hallways, past wards and care units. Despite his better judgement, John peered inside each.

In some rooms, sick men slowly suffered, immobile. The electricity had shut off many hours ago, which didn’t bode well for those on life-support. Their slow fate was less kind than the apocalypse would have been.

Some of the rooms did have doctors. They hung from ceiling fans, chairs laying on their sides beneath them.

John stopped looking, and just followed the doctor in front of him. He didn’t bother looking when they passed the maternity wards.

Would this nightmare ever end?

“Hey, what’s your name?” He asked, as the earth lightly quaked.

“Caleb.” Said the doctor.

“What made you stay behind?” John asked. Immediately, he knew it was a bad question.

Caleb seemed to age more in that moment, the old doctor deflating as more and more hope left him.

“I… I wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives, heal people, make them happier…” Said Caleb, staring at nothing with a haunted look in his eyes. “That's why I became a doctor in the first place. But this… thing happened, and now I can’t save anyone. They’re all dying left and right. People offing themselves if they can, people running off to kill whoever they want and steal whatever they want, getting their licks in on the world before they die. It’s madness.”

“Yeah.” John quietly agreed.

“And you know the worst part? My work was for nothing. It never mattered. No matter how many people I saved in the past, they were all going to die. I suppose they were going to die anyways, but not like this!... It never mattered. I was deluding myself.”

“Then why stay?”

“Because what else do I have? This work is all I’ve ever known. Even if the world is ending tomorrow, I’ll still do it because there’s nothing left.”

There was silence after that, as the two men finally made it to the food-storage.

John didn’t speak again except to thank Caleb for the food he was given.

The gratitude felt hollow.