: 9 :

He put the phone to his ear, half expecting to hear nothing but dead air. “H-H-Hello?” He was soaking wet, shivering in Earth’s last lonesome wind. “Hello?”

“Jeremy?”

“Alysse?”

“Oh, thank God,” she breathed, and it sounded like she held back a sob, maybe put a hand over her mouth. It sounded like she was walking somewhere fast, not quite out of breath but harried. “Um…well, this is awkward. This is not…not how I wanted our first conversation to…oh, God. What’s happening where you are? Is everybody dead? I…I c-can’t…”

“I—” Jeremy’s voice caught in his throat. He turned around slowly, looking out the park, the growing puddles pushing down the path where he and Peter Stanton had chased one another after a game and tossed the ball back and forth. “I don’t even know how to describe what I’ve—I slept in someone’s house last night! Alysse…who does that? I don’t even know whose house it was, I just got tired and I walked inside. Everybody and everything was dead. Just puddled out on the roads. And so I just—”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Acworth. I think? I don’t know. I think Dellinger Park is in Acworth? Maybe it’s technically in Kennesaw—”

“I know where that is. I can’t get to you.”

“Where are you?” he asked, walking to the edge of the gazebo and taking a seat on a bench. Someone had left half a bag of spicy Cheetos there. The wind pushed wet leaves and a paper cup down the trail beside the gazebo. “Where are you right now?”

“We’re in Atlanta.”

“We?”

“My niece and I.”

“What about your brothers?”

“They, uh, they didn’t make it.” She whispered it, probably didn’t want the niece to hear.

Jeremy’s heart suddenly demanded to be heard, even if it was off-topic to say. “I wanted to give you a book yesterday. I was going to give you an autographed copy of the Star Wars novelization. Remember? By Alan Dean Foster? And the VHS tapes and DVDs of the original trilogy. The OT. The Wars. I was gonna watch the Wars with you.”

Alysse snorted. It wasn’t a derisive snort, nor hateful or acerbic. It was the kind of snort that said, Yes, well, we all know that that was another life. We’ll always have Paris. Or something like that. “I can’t get to you,” she said again.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said I can’t get to you! Roads here are all blocked. We’re walking over to another interstate—heading towards 285. There was a military roadblock there, hopefully there’s…someone, I don’t know. Think you could find a way to meet us?”

It suddenly sounded like she had a plan, or was trying to develop one. Something in Alysse’s voice struck him as resolute. It was a delicate voice, yet it held some iron. A fighter, someone who hadn’t quite given up, and was looking for any reason to feel hope again. There came a metallic clang from her end, it sounded like someone had kicked over a trash can. “You still want to meet?” he asked, astonished at his own question.

“Sure, why not?” It was both sarcastic and serious. “What’s the name of that movie? Seeking a Friend for the End of the World?”

Jeremy had to search through the fog of his mind to find it. But yes, he had heard of that movie, had even seen part of it with Jess, an ex-girlfriend years back. He gave a chuckle, looking out into the rain that Clyde had said might be acidic. “I don’t see why not. But I’ll have to, uh, find a car, siphon some gas, maybe. I don’t know how far it—”

“Do you have somewhere to go?” Suddenly, Alysse blurted out a laugh. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

And then Jeremy did something unexpected, too. He put down the phone and leaned back on the bench and shook his head, both laughing and crying. Mostly laughing. A moment of hysteria that he knew he had to let himself ride like a wave. He put the phone back to his ear, and said, “Okay, princess. Just give me an address. I’ll put it in my GPS and then I’ll come find you guys.”

“Thank you, Jeremy.” Her voice sounded more grateful than any other person’s voice ever had. Jeremy didn’t think a person could be more genuinely grateful than the two of them in that moment. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Jeremy suddenly realized hers was the first voice he’d heard in almost two days, and that knowledge nearly stole all his hope and courage. Somehow it made him despair, made him think she would surely be dead by the Ecophage, eaten by the time he got there. Because he had been chosen by Mr. CDC and his note saying For all the good it will do you, and presumably Alysse and her niece had not. They had survived by, what, dumb luck? Only he, Jeremy Braxton, had the yellow vision, the special anti-nanite nanites in his blood. How were they going to—

“Sending you my location now,” Alysse said. To someone else, she said, “Step around that puddle. Don’t look at it.” Then there was muffled speech for several seconds. Finally, she came back to Jeremy and said, “Did you get my location?”

He had. He looked at it. It was almost an hour drive, but he could make it. He would make it. “I got it.”

“Good. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“What?”

“Do you have anywhere for us to go once you pick us up?”

“No,” he said, desultorily. “No, I—” Wait a minute. Yes, he did. But just as he’d forgotten to check Google Earth for a whole day after the attack, because his mind was so fucked by all that he’d seen, he had completely forgotten about the other person that had contacted him just minutes ago. “Wait, yeah. Yeah, I think I do have someplace to go.”

“Where?”

“It’s—it’s a longshot. I’ve been talking to someone on Reddit, a guy heading to some limestone caves in Alabama. Supposedly they were used in the Civil War, some billionaires souped them up for end-of-the-world bunkers. He sent me the address—”

“Underground?”

“What?”

“The caves! Are they deep underground?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. They’re caves,” Jeremy said, shrugging even though no one could see him. “The guy didn’t say just how deep.”

“They’ll need to be deep.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Alysse said, sounding like she was struggling to pick something up or step over something. “We were in the basement. Kayla and me, we were in the basement when we heard screaming upstairs. That’s when—when we went up and we saw what happened to my brothers. We ran back down into the basement. We would’ve stayed down there but Kayla’s got diabetes and needed her insulin, so I went back upstairs and…and I…I…I saw them.” She meant her brothers, what was left of them. She started sobbing.

“Alysse? It’s okay. I know. I saw the same thing happening. Happening to everybody.”

“Oh God!” she sobbed. “I saw…saw them there. I saw them and I…I went back downstairs. Kayla and I stayed down there until we couldn’t take it anymore. There was no food down there. So we ran. All our neighbors…they were all dead. But then we heard barking and it was coming from one house, and when we went inside we found Mr. Timbleton’s dog, still in the basement, alive. But when we let Scruffy out he ran away. So, I was thinking…maybe the Eco-whatever didn’t find us because we were in the basement? Think maybe they don’t know about underground?”

Jeremy hadn’t considered that. Wouldn’t a superintelligent, interstellar-traveling swarm of nanomachines know about digging underground? Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they didn’t want to bother with it. Who the hell knew what went on inside the hive-mind of a swarm of nanomachines that were ringed around the entire planet? “Maybe that makes sense,” was all he said on that. “Maybe going underground is good.”

“So, the caves,” she said.

“Right, the caves,” he said.

And just like that, these two strangers seemed to be in agreement on something.

“Alysse?” he said.

“Yes, Jeremy?”

“I’m on my way, girl. Just hold tight. Jeremy is going to steal himself a car and then he is going to siphon as much extra gas as he can get. And then he is on his way.”

Her voice cracked. “Oh, God, Jeremy! Thank you! Please hurry! And thank you, thank you, thank you!”

: 10 :

2 HOURS LATER

The drive down Interstate 75 was, as Alysse had predicted, fraught with traffic, cars and eighteen-wheelers jammed together, five or six car-b-cues that had finished burning and were now smoldering, a jackknifed truck blocking an exit, a school bus for Cartersville Elementary wedged between an ice-cream truck and an Abrams tank. Jeremy saw bald patches of earth, grass missing for miles, and then abruptly he’d come upon trees that had only been half eaten, and grass that appeared to be unmolested. The rain had let up, but the skies were still poxxed by black, angry-looking clouds with the occasional flash of lightning. Jeremy felt like the traveler in that old Outer Limits episode, a lone man driving on into a storm, his fate entirely unknown.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The blue Chevy Blazer he was driving had belonged to someone named Otis Carmichael. He knew this, because the half-eaten corpse of the driver had still been partially in the driver’s seat when Jeremy opened it. It had been parked at the far end of the parking lot at Dellinger Park, and the body of Otis Carmichael only existed from the waist up, his legs having dissolved and he’d bled out. It looked as if ol’ Otis had been trying to climb in. Half his face was also eaten, and the other half was possessed of a strange sort of rictus that Jeremy knew he would never get out of his mind.

He’d pulled the half-body of Otis Carmichael out of the driver’s seat, forcing himself to get over the smell of blood and ammonia and bile—it was frightening how quickly he was becoming acclimated to that smell—and he used the keys that had been in Otis’s hand. After cranking the Blazer, he was glad to see Otis had half a tank in her.

He then drove into a town called Cartersville, splashing through countless puddles of congealing gray sludge, hydroplaning and jerking the wheel for control, until he came to a Texaco. He got out, tried the pumps, and was happy to see that his credit card worked perfectly. But someone still needed to start the pump. He’d worked a summer at a QuikTrip and so vaguely recalled how it was done. When he opened the door to walk inside the Texaco, he saw small bits of torn clothing amid all the sludge puddles, and waded through them, no longer like a man stuck inside a dark dream, more like a survivor who had finally acclimated to his circumstances.

He thought at the time, Was this what it was like after Hiroshima? Shell-shocked survivors just getting on with it? Picking up the pieces? Does it really not take that long to get used to the end of the world? Or maybe it was because he actually had hope in the guise of an unknown beautiful woman waiting for him in Atlanta.

In any case, he’d started the pumps, filled up the Blazer, and took all five gas cans off the shelves inside the Texaco and filled them up. He put the filled cans in the back of the Blazer and got on moving down the road. Over that hill and through that hog wallow, his father would have said. One foot in front of the other, one mile at a time, that’s all you can do.

Along the way, he’d needed something to listen to. No one was reporting anything from any radio station, so he hooked his phone and charger into the Blazer’s charge outlet, and turned on the most comforting thing he knew in the world: the audiobooks for the Thrawn Trilogy of Star Wars novels, read by Marc Thompson. In Jeremy’s mind, there was no greater narrator of Star Wars stories anywhere, no sir.

Jeremy still remembered how old he was when he first read the Thrawn Trilogy. It was a trilogy of books written by Timothy Zahn, a science fiction writer of no mean skill, who, in 1991, released the first official continuation of the Star Wars films. Sure, there had been some comic books and short stories before that, even a cartoon and a book or two, but the Thrawn Trilogy had actually been called “The Official Continuation of the Star Wars Saga.” In fact, such a proclamation was written on its back cover.

As he drove down the road, Jeremy’s mind peeled back the years, trying to think of a better time…and yet, he couldn’t help thinking of the worst days of his life. That time when he woke up and his legs wouldn’t work.

One day, when Jeremy was twelve years old, he’d one day woken up without the ability to move his legs. Guillain-Barre syndrome, it was called, extremely rare, most people never fully recovered, but he had. But during that year and a half when he’d been wheelchair-bound, pushed to school by his father (who often wore a brave smile that Jeremy now thought had masked shame) and then guided around the school by his teachers throughout the day, Jeremy had been left out of P.E. and most at-school games. And he’d been bullied. Severely. The taunts and the name-calling had sent him crying to bed many nights.

With nothing to do but sit and watch other kids play, he got into reading. He started by reading Star Wars novels, and he liked them so much that as soon as he got home from school each day, he played the movies over and over again, back to back. It would sometimes drive his mother and father crazy, but he couldn’t help it.

It was pure escapism. Escapism at its absolute finest, in fact. Who wouldn’t want a ship like the Millennium Falcon, one that could take you anywhere you wanted to go? Just tell the navicomputer where you wanted to go, fire up the hyperdrive, and blast off into hyperspace. Into adventure!

Around his house, his parents had started referring to Jeremy’s obsession as “The Wars.”

“Is he watching the Wars again?”

“He’s all up in those Wars, honey, he can’t hear you.”

“Jeremy, it’s time to put the Wars on hold, dinner’s ready.”

“Jeremy, sweetie, you have to read something else besides the Wars.”

Jeremy knew the films by heart, and he’d read dozens of the books, some of them several times. He even bought books that explained how the starships supposedly worked, books like The Star Wars Encyclopedia. He’d read avidly about how lightsabers were constructed, the biology of Hutts, and the “science” behind hyperspace. These were books that were put out by Lucasfilm to make the Star Wars universe seem more lived-in, more real.

But of all the novels, Jeremy’s favorites were those in the Thrawn Trilogy. The first in that series, Heir to the Empire, told the story of a cunning, blue-skinned alien Imperial, named Grand Admiral Thrawn, who came out of hiding after the Rebels had destroyed the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. In the story, Thrawn was a devious schemer who was slowly winning back planets across the galaxy, tricking the Rebels at every turn, testing Luke, Han, Leia and Lando in ways they’d never been tested before.

The idea that a series of movies could be continued in a series of novels had fascinated him. He became obsessed with every facet of the lore—where lightsabers got their crystals (the planet Ilum), what Obi-Wan Kenobi’s homeworld was called (Stewjon, named after the comedian Jon Stewart), how the relativistic shielding worked inside a starship while it was in hyperspace, the name of Darth Maul’s species (Zabrak), and on and on and on his obsession went.

Escapism. That was all it had amounted to, and he knew it. Everyone had their thing. Some people escaped into sports, following their favorite athletes through every game. Other people obsessed over cars, or food. Several of his ex-girlfriends had obsessed over food, talking about it constantly, looking up recipes and watching reruns of Gordon Ramsey. Once upon a time, people collected baseball cards. Jeremy collected Star Wars stories.

Jeremy drove on through gray slush, thankful whenever he saw a single tree or grassy hill. He swerved when he saw the half-eaten body of a small girl in the road. He nearly went off into a ditch. Fighting back a small panic, he tried focusing on Marc Thompson, the audiobook narrator, as he described events that happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. A place where there were still heroes, events happening, people to fight for.

Hope.

: 11 :

1 HOUR LATER

Some niggling thought had started poking at the back of Jeremy’s mind as he drove and reflected on all those gray puddles, as he splashed through them and the Blazer slipped and slewed through the remains of a world. And that thought was this: he’d seen very few bits of clothing in the remains of the dead. Funny how that had not occurred to him before, but now that he had time to do nothing but drive and think and flip through one radio station to the next, each one broadcasting either Emergency Broadcast System messages or weird AI-sounding voices saying “We are experiencing technical difficulties, we will be right back after we have this problem fixed,” Jeremy could at last reflect on everything he knew about the Ecophage so far.

It became more noticeable when he saw, to his increasing dismay, that quite a few traffic signs appeared to have rusted and decayed, and several powerlines were eaten, the wood in the giant poles devoured same as most of the trees. He drove past powerlines on the road, some of them snapping with electricity, and held his breath in these moments, realizing that if he stepped out into that sludge he would be fried.

The downed powerlines had ignited the sludge in some areas, creating a raging inferno with flames so high they aspired towards Heaven. The flames of Hell aspiring towards Heaven, he thought dejectedly, as he looked for other roads leading around these flames. Sounds almost poetic. I should write that down. Then he thought, Why? I’m not a writer. And even if I was, nobody’s gonna read it.

Nobody’s going to read anything ever again.

He occasionally pulled over to call Alysse, making sure that she and Kayla were still okay, still safe. After pulling over into an Arby’s parking lot, and staring at the baby carriage in the middle the road, filled with the same gray sludge that coated everything, and after he had called Alysse to check in on her and her niece, Jeremy had a strange thought, which he said aloud: “I pulled over. I actually—pulled—over.” He laughed. “You pulled over, Jeremy. Just like Mom told you to do before you text anyone.”

Even at the end of the world, staring out at the sludgy remains of his people, even while staring out at the world through yellowed vision and wondering how he was still alive, he had remembered to pull over before texting.

He got back on the road, turning up the volume on Marc Thompson. He was at the chapter where Luke Skywalker’s X-wing had broken in mid-hyperjump, and he was forced to conduct repairs while in outer space. One of his favorite chapters. His phone chimed, and he looked to see he had an email alert. Another message from Reddit. He stopped in the middle of I-285, right between a Penske truck and a silver Toyota Carolla that had gone onto the shoulder, and down into a ditch.

He looked at his phone and found a message from u/ClydeBoyGaga18, it was simply a question.

u/ClydeBoyGaga18: Where you at, dawg?

Jeremy sent back a quick reply, saying that he was on the road heading into Atlanta to pick up some friends who had somehow managed to survive. He relayed that Alysse and her niece may have survived because they’d been underground at the time, and that anyone in basements at the time of the Ecophage attack might still be alive, too. After he sent the message, Jeremy ruffled through his bag, past the autographed copy of the Star Wars novelization, past the OT on VHS, and past the resumé packet he’d been ready to give to the person who interviewed him for the clerkship. He rummaged past all this detritus from a previous and now obsolete life, grabbed the cereal bars and water, and had a meal.

He happened to glance at himself in the rearview mirror. He looked like shit. Hair disheveled, his face pallid and perhaps slightly green (A side effect from the syringe’s contents? he wondered), and two-day stubble. Shaving razors, he thought. I forgot to grab those when I went into Walmart. No matter, a half-eaten, sludge-covered sign up ahead said there was a Target at the next exit. He figured he could grab razors there, and some deodorant while he was at it, and some shampoo and some more food.

A chime from his phone. Another message from Clyde.

u/ClydeBoyGaga18: Better hurry. I’ve told some other people about the limestone caves, people I know in Mississippi and Kansas. They’re heading there. Apparently a few dozen people survived there, at some underground rave. An UNDERGROUND rave party inside some cave! Seems like you might be right, underground is the way to go. Even more reason to reach the limestone caves. I read online that they were built for a few hundred people and their motor homes, so there should be room, and lots of diesel-fueled engines, so that’s good! Since gas goes bad pretty quickly. Plenty of room. Still, just to be safe, you’d better get there fast.

This gave Jeremy more hope than he’d dare consider before, and now as he cranked the Chevy Blazer back up and headed the road, he drove with greater purpose than he’d felt in ages. He turned up the audiobook, which was playing the famous Star Wars score by John Williams, even as Marc Thompson regaled the exploits of Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 evading the evil Galactic Empire.

But along the way, Clyde’s last words lingered in Jeremy’s mind, nagging at him. He pulled up his phone, and said, “Siri, how long before gasoline expires?”

Siri answered promptly, “Gasoline will usually expire between three and six months. Though, it can last longer if properly stored.”

Three to six months. The entire planet had three to six months of gasoline supply, assuming they weren’t making any more of it, and at this point Jeremy believed that was the safest bet anyone could ever make.

Mankind as he’d known it was basically over, and he had at most six months of gasoline left, no matter what. He looked up how long it took for diesel to expire. Turns out, that lasts a little longer, about a year, maybe a year and a half if it was kept cool, say around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and treated with something called biocides and stabilizers. But after that year, the fuel degraded.

After that, there would never be another automobile driving anywhere on planet Earth ever again.

With that gloomy thought hovering over him, Jeremy felt a cold chill move through his body, reverberating through the marrow in him. As he drove into the heart of what used to be Atlanta, Jeremy tried dismissing these dark thoughts by turning up the audiobook even louder. Getting lost in those heroes and their heroic deeds. Getting lost in the Wars.