The red letters encompassed my room in crimson while a black shadow fell behind me. I trembled where I stood trying to process what blared from the television. My thoughts were an amalgamation of the Four Horsemen that stampeded around my head.
War? A plague? An asteroid ready to fall upon us? I looked out of my windows and saw the peaceful cold of the night. A full moon loomed above as stars twinkled in the sky as they always have. The winds were quiet but nothing was out of the ordinary. I wondered if it was a scare-tactic or prank but every channel on the television rang the same. I checked my phone and the same alert covered my screen until I exited out of it.
“Don, did you see the alert? Are you okay???”
[MESSAGE FAILED TO SEND]
[RETRY?]
[MESSAGE FAILED TO SEND]
[MESSAGE FAILED TO SEND]
[MESSAGE FAILED TO SEND]
I tried calling but was met with constant ringing that turned into a crackling buzz of static. It hung itself up after five minutes. I tried all of his social media. Half of them didn’t load while the other half failed to send any messages. My feed was unable to refresh. It felt like I was cut off from the world and left to drift in my own bubble of terror. There was nothing for me to do except worry the entire night until the sandman took me.
* * *
Yellow beams of sunlight shone through the veil of my dark curtains. I felt exhausted. I wished for nothing but to stay in my bed all day. In habit, I unplugged my phone from its charger and opened up my socials. Nothing. Not even the posts from yesterday morning or the days before. Each of the apps were endlessly loading and my service bars were constantly jumping up and down.
“Maybe my phone is just fucked,” I sighed.
I buried the news of yesterday with my morning routine: washing my face, brushing my teeth, and getting dressed. There was still no sign of my brother so I put another pinch of fish food for Freddy and went to gather my own breakfast. A bowl, a spoon, and a mountain of Captain Sugar’s to scratch the roof of my mouth. I went into the fridge where I was greeted with the lack of milk inside.
“Goddammit, Don.” I pondered the idea of using juice or water but I shivered the thought of using anything but. I never used a replacement in my 22 years of life and I didn’t want to start now. I put my boots and jacket on and peeked my head outside. The weather was calm. I could see my breath and the snowflakes that gently fell to the frosted earth.
I stepped into the soft powder in pursuit of Archie’s Groceries. The store was roughly a mile away and I lacked a car or bike. I was fortunate to have always lived near schools or bus stops so I never bothered to get my license. Don had one, he was planning on buying a car when summer came, but that was just another dream lost in the frozen mist.
On my trek through side streets, I didn’t see anyone on the road. I walked past a car with a running engine that sputtered every few minutes but no one was inside. “You’re lucky I’m not a thief,” I muttered. It wasn’t all that uncommon to see running vehicles absent of their owners, especially in the winter months when the car still needed heating up.
Signs of life became more evident the closer I came to the grocery store. It would have been dishonest of me if I didn’t say I was relieved to know that I wasn’t the last person on Earth. When I came into view of the parking lot, I could see dozens of people rushing in and out of the store. The glass windows were broken and the automatic doors were stuck open. Unfamiliar faces were loading their vehicles with shopping carts and driving recklessly away. The first words I spoke to someone in this new world were to my childhood friend, he was crouched behind a car and wore a striped track jacket.
“Ralph?” I asked.
He heard my voice behind him and without a second thought he aimed a handgun at me. I instinctively ducked behind a snow-piled car and yelled at him.
“Holy shit, dude! What the hell is wrong with you!?”
“Sage, is that you!?” he exclaimed.
“Yes, you goddamn psycho! Are you going to shoot me!?”
“No, I’m sorry! You spooked the shit out of me. Come over here.” Ralph waved his hand over to me and instructed me to stay low.
After collecting my breath, I went over to him. “What’s with the gun? Why are we hiding?” I whispered.
He looked back at the store, “I saw like four fucking guys armed to the teeth go in there. Nothing good could—” before he could finish his sentence the rhythmic pops of gunfire echoed from the store. The number of shooters was unknown but it was clear to all that it was two different calibers being shot.
The mass of people took what they could and rushed out of the store when the shootout started. Some bled when scraping against shards of glass while others were pierced by stray bullets. Soon, the gunfight stood quiet and the four guys Ralph pointed out were sprinting out of the store. The rough-looking men with rifles threw duffle bags full of supplies into the bed of their trucks and sped off. They jumped over the concrete curb and drove through the snow-covered fields of grass surrounding the store.
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“Now’s our chance,” Ralph said.
I pulled on the back of his shirt, “I know a better way inside.”
We went around the back while it was quiet to avoid the mess of glass and debris. I guided him to the delivery depot for the supply trucks that arrived at night. A semi-truck was currently backed into it and the large shutter door was open to deliver the goods. Ralph and I entered through the side door next to it, the key was still under the rubber mat.
“How’d you know it’d still be there?” Ralph said with a smirk.
“I worked here for like half a year when I was 19. They haven’t changed a thing. I bet I can still call over the intercom too.”
We entered the warehouse through the heavy steel door. Cardboard boxes and pallets sat upon shelves that reached the metal rafters. They were all full of stock for the front of the store. Besides all of the untouched goods, the warehouse also hosted two managerial offices, a dingy employee break room that I always hated, a bathroom, and a freezer dedicated to the cold items and bags of ice. I noticed they all sat empty with lights on.
I took hold of a clipboard that was on top of a shopping cart full of goods labeled Damaged. The checklist on the board was unfinished, I almost envied whoever quit while they were in the middle of working. It was a monotonous job to write down all the stock that got ripped, shattered, or smashed, but it beat stocking or being a cashier.
Ralph peeked into one of the boxes and smiled, “All the employees must’ve left, huh?”
“I would’ve left too if people were breaking through the windows. I know for certain I wasn't paid $9 an hour to fight off looters.”
Everything was untouched in the backrooms. In the beginning of the apocalypse, the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign still defended itself against all intruders… except for us. It was like Christmas in the back of Archie’s. Plain cardboard boxes labeled with only the names of brands were opened to surprise us with whatever food awaited to be in our baskets. We each filled up two shopping carts to the brim and were as giddy as schoolchildren. Cereals, snack cakes, pop, sugar, flour, water, bread, chips, pasta, cans of sauce, vegetables, tuna, beans, beef, soups, and stews alike.
We packed and balanced as much food on top and beneath our carts. I hadn’t realized that we didn’t have any bathroom products until after we were full. Before I went to the front of the store I noticed Ralph had sat in one of the small forklifts, quiet sniffles and soft whimpers came from within.
“It’s all screwed, Sage. It’s all screwed…” Crumbs fell to the floor as he took another bite from a spongy cake.
“What happened, Ralph?” I asked somberly. “Everything was normal just the other day.”
Ralph shook his head, dripping tears onto his jacket. “I don’t know. It’s like the fucking rapture, Sage! I was talking to my mom in the kitchen, and then I was filling a cup of water from my fridge and then… I just heard her voice fade away. I couldn’t find her anywhere—call her—she was just gone!”
“The rapture? She must’ve just gone somewhere, Ralph.” Thoughts of my brother crept into my mind again. Don couldn’t have just vanished.
He shook his head again and bit his quivering lip. “Her car was still in the driveway. A lot of our neighbors are gone too. Empty cars that are still running are piled along the highways. And it’s not just here, Sage, look.” He took out his phone and opened his gallery. He showed me screenshots from his friends saying the same thing in other countries.
“Are you still able to go on the internet?” I asked. Perhaps there was a way I could still contact Don.
“Not anymore. This was yesterday around noon. I can’t load anything now. Sage, if the majority of people vanished, the world as we know it is fucked. First, it’ll be the internet. Then cable. Then the electricity and plumbing will be shut off. The world will be in shambles if the government doesn’t come back.”
“The alert last night didn’t inspire much hope,” I muttered.
Ralph gave a slight laugh, “No, it didn’t. But there’s still remnants. Maybe they could form a coalition and start building the country back together… I don’t know. Is Don still around?”
My stare turned blank and all I could do was repeat the phrase, “Is Don still around? He must be. All he did was go to the movies. If the internet and phones went down then maybe that’s why he wasn’t able to respond to me. He must still be at the movies or went to his friend's place.”
“I hope he comes back… along with everyone else,” Ralph said. He hopped off the forklift and wiped his snot and tears on the sleeve of his jacket. “I need a tissue.”
The generic pop music of our time resonated through the empty store while we gazed at the rampage that occurred. Glass everywhere, shelves toppled, cereal and flour ripped apart and scattered across the floor. It was a mess. Fluorescent lights flickered above while he went to the toiletry aisle.
Archie’s had a small selection of non-edible goods: toilet paper, tissues, tampons, pads, soaps, air fresheners, trash bags, candles, and mops. There was usually a mountain of toilet paper stocked against the back wall but it was thinning. Ralph and I both grabbed three ginormous packs that had to be balanced atop our carts. I didn’t want to think of when I’d run out. I didn’t want to think of anything being different. I didn’t want to think of my brother now gone from this world.
Ralph and I were skirting along the perimeter of the store. After I grabbed a gallon of milk, we passed the fridges of cracked eggs and the booze coolers. It was unsurprisingly missing a few cases of beer.
“Might not be able to get another chance,” he chuckled. “You want any?”
“No, thanks. I didn’t care for it before the world turned to shit.”
We passed by the butcher and deli. Most of the meats and cheeses were strewn about and missing from their shelving. We took three packs of chicken and ground beef each. If the power was going to go out soon, the only freezer we’d have was burying it in the snow outside.
Lastly was the produce section, the prepackaged bags were missing but individual carrots, lettuce, potatoes, and the seven different types of apples still sat on their stands. Ralph was bagging me some while I wandered about near the registers. Bullet holes riddled the candy shelves. I stuffed a few Betwixts and Regi-Sweets into my pockets before I turned to the canned-goods aisle. I remembered there being jerky at the end of the row next to the pickles.
Shell casings clinked and rolled along the tile with each step I took. About all of the cans were gone or shot-through. At the end of the aisle, I smelt the pickles before I saw the body. Smashed jars dripped a vibrant green liquid below to the corpse hunched along the shelf. He was full of holes. The elderly man’s gore stained the white tile beneath. It was an image that cemented into my brain. The smell of vinegar. The sight of death. The mix of both components made me turn my head and gag viciously.
Ralph ran over and turned his head at the sight, but still kept an eye on the body. I spat along the floor and wiped my nose while he stepped near the corpse. The man’s pistol landed a few feet away from him, avoiding the blend of pickles and blood.
“It has 11 rounds in it. You should keep it,” Ralph said. I instinctively took hold of it when he handed it to me but I didn't want it. Ralph refused to take it back but I grasped it tight when I heard the rumbling of engines outside.