Mark woke up, looking at the graffiti-covered underside of the bridge he had slept under the night before. His mouth tasted like death and his threadbare pants had left a rash on his thighs. Overall, he had come out of the night pretty decent. He went to brush his dark hair out of his eyes, but a sharp pain came from his hand. He looked down and saw that he had been clutching his old medal in his sleep again. Delicately, he pried his fingers from the dirty but otherwise undamaged gold pin and flexed his fingers gingerly. His morning rituals completed, he got up for the day.
His friend Francis was digging through the nearby dumpster, checking to see if they had missed anything when they went through it for last night’s dinner. Francis didn’t speak English very well, so Mark just tapped him on the shoulder and patted the bulge in his pocket. Francis sighed and nodded. This wasn’t the lifestyle the guy had wanted when he came here, mugging random tourists just to get by, but it was the best option the two had.
In practice, the two were supposed to go out in shifts, but Francis never had it in him to do it, so he just begged outside the mall while Mark went hunting. While Mark left, Francis waved him off with a slight smile.
Mark began walking the city streets, looking for people who seemed lost. He stopped by the shelter to pick up some bread for the road, then slunk past the volunteers handing out pamphlets. He could already get kindling from recycling bins, and preferred to avoid talking to people. It was a shame he and Francis couldn’t pick up food during the afternoon shift, since the volunteers at that time remembered his face from when he tried to pocket some of the loose objects lying around a few months ago. Since then, he and his friend were kicked out of the shelter if they showed up after eleven. Mark, unlike most of his botched thefts, actually felt bad about that one. Francis didn’t deserve to get deprived of food for what his friend did.
Eventually he spotted someone looking around in confusion. The guy was wearing a loud Hawaiian t-shirt, wore a bulky camera around his neck and had one of those dumb fishing hats. It was like he was trying to look as much like a stereotypical tourist as possible. The perfect target.
Mark walked up to him, adjusting his shirt so that he looked less homeless. Once ready, he cleared his throat. “Hey man, you look lost. Where you trying to go?”
The tourist turned to look at him. “Hm? Oh, hi! I’m trying to get to the aquarium, do you know the way?”
“Yeah, sure, it’s close. Just go down that road and make a left and you’ll see it, but there are a bunch of scammers on that road. If you wanna avoid them, cut through that alley there.”
“Oh, thank you!” The tourist began to make a call on his phone, probably to tell his family he had found the aquarium. Meanwhile, Mark speedwalked ahead, disappeared into the crowd of foot traffic, hurried into the alley, hid behind a dumpster and waited for his target to arrive.
Eventually, the tourist started to stroll down the alleyway. He saw that the other end of the alleyway was a chicken-wire fence, looked around confused for a moment, and started to turn around. Mark emerged from his nook, pulled out his switchblade and started the dance he’d done a dozen times.
“Alr-“
Without warning, a burst of light separated the two people. Two wispy tendrils of faintly glowing white smoke encircled Mark and the tourist, one per person.
One of the tendrils flew around Mark, getting in close for brief moments before hurriedly pulling away. After about ten seconds of it seemingly inspecting him, the tendril dissipated into thin air. Meanwhile, the other tendril did the same for the tourist. After roughly fifteen seconds for him, the tendril rushed into the centre of the tourist’s chest, melting into his shirt.
After a few seconds of frantically patting his chest, the tourist dissolved into white light and vanished, leaving Mark alone in the alley. Mark simply stood there in stunned silence, as the alley began to echo with the sounds of the entire world flipping its own lid.
-
According to the frantic news broadcasts that everyone on the street were listening to on their phones, billions of people from all over the world had vanished. White smoke-things had appeared in front of everyone on earth and, after hovering around the nearest person for a few seconds, either vanished or evaporated the person they inspected. An uncountable number of people were gone, including several prominent world leaders. The number of missing people only climbed as everyone remaining looked around, too baffled and afraid to do anything.
It took about fifteen minutes for everyone to process this information. Then the rioting started. Considering what seemed to have just happened, most people simply dropped all their inhibitions and switched to their apocalypse instincts, Mark included. He rushed back to his ‘home’ to check on Francis, who was hiding in a bush and looking confused and scared. Mark grabbed him and started going somewhere where he could get something to keep the two of them alive.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Avoiding cops trying to keep the peace and looters out for blood, the duo took to alleys and side streets. Eventually, Mark found a gun store with slightly less bullet holes in the brickwork than the others he had checked.
Motioning for Francis to stay put and keep watch, Mark went inside through one of the broken windows, crouching low to see if anyone was in the store with him. He didn’t see or hear anyone, so he stood up. He took a duffel bag from its shelf and took two pistols and a compact assault rifle, stuffing the latter in the bag. He then went into the back room and filled the remaining space in his bag with ammo, placing a few clips in the guns themselves just to be safe.
Suddenly, a short cacophony of indistinct shouting, which was abruptly cut off and replaced by the sound of shattering glass and splintering wood came from outside. He heard a man say “Alright, search the place, take what you need, then we’ll drive out to the countryside”. Peeking out from the back room, Mark saw a middle-aged man followed by two kids, both about eleven or twelve, who looked visibly shaken. The man was holding a bloody machete and Mark saw a pool of blood by the busted door, where Francis had been standing watch.
Enraged, Mark dropped his bag, pulled out his pistol and emerged with the gun pointed at the man. “Alright, what did you do to the guy outside?”
The two kids, a boy and a girl, screamed and huddled in a corner of the store. The man shushed them and gave them a reassuring nod, then turned back to face Mark with his hands raised, still clutching the machete glistening with blood.
“What, the guy outside? I found him like that when we got here.”
“How much of a moron do you think I am? I’ve only been here for a minute. I see that blood on you.”
“That? That’s jam, I had to use this to open a jar earlier.”
Mark growled. “I am seriously insulted by how stupid you see me as. Give me one reason in the next five seconds why I shouldn’t shoot you.”
“Oh, are you not as stupid as I’m making you out to be? Because circumstances say otherwise.”
Mark was pushed to the right as the boy shoved into him, having snuck behind the aisles and using his presumed father as a distraction. Mark fired a shot from the surprise, which went wide and shattered the unbroken window. The boy straddled Mark and tried to grab his gun, but Mark managed to shove the kid off and onto the floor.
The man dropped his arms and charged at Mark with his machete raised, but Mark rolled back around and discharged a shot into the aggressor’s gut. With a cry of pain, the man stumbled and crashed into the shelf next to him, just a few feet from where Mark was lying.
Mark got up, kicked the machete across to the other shelf, and started going through the man’s pockets as the kids cowered in a corner. Eventually, he found the guy’s car keys. He ran back to the back room, got his bag and ran outside. A khaki SUV covered in camping bumper stickers was parked just outside. Hurriedly, Mark unlocked the car doors, threw his bag in the back seat and got into the driver’s seat. Looking through the windshield, he saw the aftermath of the encounter.
Francis was lying unmoving in a pile of his own blood, his corpse covered in shards of glass from the window Mark had shot. Through the busted door hanging from its hinges, Mark saw the two kids crowding around the bleeding out man, tears streaming down their face. The man appeared to be speaking to the two kids, who were listening intently to what he was saying, though Mark couldn’t hear from where he was sitting.
Mark put the keys in the ignition and started driving out of the city.
-
About fifty miles outside the city limits, Mark’s breathing became too fast for him to keep going. He pulled over to the side of the highway filled with deserted cars, took his medal out of his pocket and grasped it tightly as he did the breathing exercises he had been taught.
After a few minutes, he managed to get his breathing and heartbeat back under control. This was as good a time as any to take stock of what he had. He got out of the car and checked the boot.
The family from earlier had been stocking up well. The back of the car had a few filled gas canisters, two spare tires in addition to the one fixed to the back, and half a dozen tote bags filled with non-perishable food and water bottles. If he rationed it out and supplemented it with hunting and scavenging, it was probably enough to last almost three months.
Mark stole the batteries from a few abandoned cars and put them in the backseat. He then drove off-road into the middle of nowhere and set up camp.
-
Every few hours, he tuned into the radio to see how things were going back in civilization. Every time he checked, things kept getting worse. Countries started declaring war on each other, civil wars were erupting worldwide and relations in general kept getting worse.
But things weren’t only happening far afield. After a few days, Mark started to come across refugees fleeing the nearby city, a small part of the global exodus from chaotic and dangerous urban centers. Mark preferred to avoid these groups when he could, keeping to himself in his isolated camp. As if in response to the mass flight from the city, what military the government could muster moved across the highway to secure and contain what little population remained in the city, a feeble attempt to protect what shred of normalcy may still have existed. Mark heard no news of their success.
After about two months, the world’s superpowers crossed the turning point and full-scale nuclear war broke out.
Mark wasn’t particularly worried for his immediate safety since he was miles from the nearest town, but he did pack up and start heading for the coast. The Sahara Desert seemed like a good place to ride out the nuclear winter, and there would now likely be a glut of ownerless boats. As he drove back onto the highway, he saw a rising mushroom cloud form behind him in the rear-view mirror. He didn’t stop or slow down to look at the devastation in his wake. He couldn’t.