The Apocalypse Seven

by Gene Doucette

  She ended up turning the radio back on and resuming the emergency channel broadcast. Then she started looking for ways to insulate the radio and reinforce the door.

  An hour later, it was sunset and she was talking to someone named Pastor Paul.

  7

  Two nights later, she was back at the radio.

  The wolves were in the hallway, whining and barking, but she hardly noticed, because her reality was falling apart.

  She needed to talk to someone, but Paul wouldn’t answer.

  “Paul, it’s Ananda. Are you there? Over.”

  She’d been trying for twenty minutes. The sun was already down, and the wolves were going to be late for their evening hunt.

  It didn’t matter. According to her calculations, the universe no longer made sense.

  She’d finished the math, but none of it added up, so checked it again and again. Then twenty more times. When that still didn’t change the numbers, she re-proved the equations she was using and tried once more. No change.

  “Paul, are you out there? I’m worried.”

  A big storm had blown through earlier in the day. He might have been caught in it.

  The weather is a new kind of violent now, she thought. He could be dead.

  “Paul, if you can hear me, I’m going to sign off now, but I’ll try again tomorrow. Be safe.”

  She turned off the radio so that the coywolves pawing at the door behind her could go back to their evening schedule.

  Hearing Paul’s voice had been just about the only thing keeping her going the past couple of days. She was looking forward to his arrival so, so much . . . if only to have someone to share the death of the human race with.

  Also, though, she really wanted to ask him what year he thought this was. Because according to her calculations, she hadn’t just lost ten hours and six months.

  It was much more than that.

  That was the thing about the stars. They moved in ways that made sense, would always make sense, thanks to a lot of firmly grounded mathematical calculations going back to before Galileo.

  When she looked up into the night sky, she realized that not only was she looking at the wrong stars for the time of year, but those wrong stars weren’t in exactly the right places, either. They too were off. It was a tiny difference; almost immeasurably so, the problem being that almost from her perspective meant light-years for the stars she was looking at. It simply wasn’t possible for all of those vast, distant objects to have moved in the way that they clearly had in only six months.

  This time, the overwhelming contrary evidence wasn’t enough to override that impossibility; not when a more viable (yet still impossible) conclusion existed.

  If the observer and the observed change position in respect to one another, either the observed has moved or the observer has moved. But if she was the one out of position . . . well, it would take a cataclysmic event on a scale far larger than anything she’d witnessed—​way more than a volcanic eruption—​to tilt Earth in such a way that would align with her measurements.

  Unless the problem wasn’t where Earth was in respect to the stars, but when. The year was the variable.

  Adjusting to account for Earth’s obliquity over time, she worked out what year it would have to be for the measurements she’d taken of Polaris, the pole star, to work.

  The conclusion was unequivocal and refused to change no matter how many times she reran the numbers. No matter how many times she stress-tested the formulas. No matter how many times she retook the measurements.

  It had not been six months since Ananda had put on her Monday clothes and headed to work.

  According to the stars, it had been more like a hundred years.

  Part two

  We Have Seen the Enemy

  Seven

  Touré

  1

  The hailstorm really drove home the point that they were unprepared for the arrival of inclement weather.

  It came on with such suddenness and ferocity that it caught Robbie and Touré out in the open, a few hundred yards from the dorm, at the mercy of hailstones the size of golf balls. They made it inside before the real rain came, and the heavy winds that had them all wondering if their building had a bomb shelter. (It did not.) After the rain came the severe lightning. They began to question if any building was safe, then.

  But once it was clear the storm wouldn’t be taking out any windows, and the lightning strikes were heading away from them, and once the hail stopped (and since they had no power to lose) it was treated as a spectacular thing to witness from their safe remove.

  The day was washed out, though, so they couldn’t do anything until the next morning. That was when Touré said the words he promised himself he’d never, ever say.

  “If we want to get this done fast, and right, I think Robbie and I have to split up,” he told the others.

  “What are you talking about?” Robbie asked. “We have to stick together.”

  “No, I’ve been thinking about this. We have too much to do and maybe Carol’s right that there isn’t enough time to do all of it. We’re going to have to start taking some chances; we can’t afford a day where neither of us finds something we can use, and that’s gonna keep happening if we’re looking in the same place all the time.”

  “I can go out too,” Bethany said. “I know the Square as well as you do.”

  “And what, carry all of it back in your arms?” Touré asked.

  “Dude, the Square is six blocks that way. Don’t make it sound like you’re on some high crusade. I can make more than one trip.”

  “We’ve checked everything six blocks that way. Learn how to ride a bike and we’ll talk. Meanwhile—”

  “What were you looking for?” Bethany asked.

  “When?”

  “When you checked everything six blocks away.”

  “I dunno,” Touré said. “Stuff.”

  “Underwear? Bras?”

  Touré looked at Robbie.

  “Help me out, man,” he said.

  “Because we need undergarments,” Bethany said. “And some other things.”

  “Women’s things,” Carol said.

  “Then tell us and we’ll get it,” Touré said.

  “Oh, big hero,” Bethany said, “protecting the womenfolk. Aren’t you just, like, running from bunnies?”

  “Okay, hold on,” Robbie said. “Bethany, it actually is dangerous out there. You know that. But if you think there’s a place you want to check out? You’re right, it’s just a couple blocks. I can stay here with Carol—”

  He didn’t finish this suggestion, because all three of them wanted to jump in then. Carol ended up claiming the floor by stamping her cane on the ground.

  “I’ve told all of you this before,” she said, “so I’m beginning to wonder if you have hearing problems or just comprehension problems. As much as I appreciate it, I do not need one of you to stay here with me. Bethany is right that we need certain sundries that may not immediately occur to a man as being a necessity. If she wants to go find some of those things, we are in no position to stop her. Touré may be right that he and Robbie can cover more ground by heading in different directions, but it would be wise to work out the exact parameters of such a plan beforehand.”

  “That’s what I was trying to say,” Touré said. “I already have a plan. Are you guys ready to listen now, or do you wanna argue some more?”

  2

  The plan wasn’t all that complicated.

  The bike shop had lightweight two-wheeler trailers hanging from the ceiling. The trailers were meant to hook up to the back of a bicycle so that parent cyclists had a way to drag their spawn around town without adding to their carbon footprint, or so child-free climate-conscious locals could go shopping. Or so local health-conscious serial killers could move a body, probably. They were multifunction.

  Touré figured if both he and Robbie took one of these and headed off in different directions with a shopping list, if they were l
ucky, they might be able to collect all of it in a couple of days. Then he and Robbie could go back to looking for survivors, an explanation, or whatever, until the weather turned.

  “So where do you want to go?” Robbie asked. They were looking at a map of the area, which was probably the fourth most helpful thing they’d discovered after the Noot bars, the matches, and the lighter fluid. They had been using the map to mark the areas they’d already visited.

  So far, their exploration focused on Cambridge and parts of Somerville. Touré had been talking a lot about “trying the Paul Revere”: going down Mass Ave., through Arlington, into Lexington and Concord. It was as good a trip as any if you were looking for survivors, perhaps to notify them that the British were coming. It was less useful if you were looking for provisions.

  “I’ll head downtown,” Touré said. “You head up the river to Watertown.”

  “I’d rather see Boston,” Robbie said. “It looks like more fun.”

  “It is more fun. Have you ever been there?”

  “You know I haven’t.”

  He did, because whenever they planned out their day trips, Robbie asked about going into the city. Touré argued—​correctly, he thought—​that survivors would head out of the downtown area, not into it, for the obvious reason that there was nothing on the other side of Boston but the ocean.

  “Then you won’t know where anything is,” Touré said, “and it’ll take longer to find stuff.”

  “I’ve also never been to Watertown.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been to a mall, right? Here’s what you do: Keep the river on your left, then bang a right on Arsenal, and you’re there. Two malls, right across from each other. One with a great big hardware store.”

  “Well, I don’t like it.”

  “Which part?”

  “The part where I don’t get to go into Boston.”

  “If we do this right, you’ll get to see the whole town before the snow starts.”

  Touré was about to wax eloquent about the charms of the city and what it looked like in the winter. The whole “Norman Rockwell with brownstones” deal.

  Then he remembered, Oh yeah, but everyone’s dead, and he couldn’t breathe for a couple of seconds.

  3

  There was a moment, as Touré crossed the Mass Ave. bridge from Cambridge into Boston, when he felt free.

  Not normal, as in there was no apocalypse and the world was back to the way it was supposed to be. Free—​in a way he hadn’t ever been before, even back when things were normal.

  The center point of the bridge gave him a great view in every direction, and came with a pleasant wind and bright sunlight, clean air, and the whole shebang. And because he was alone, he could ride down the middle of the road without having to worry about becoming a victim of vehicular homicide.

  Sure, the sun was still tinted kind of reddish in the early morning—​it went away by the middle of the day and came back again at sunset, and they still didn’t know what was going on with that—​but it was still beautiful. Also, the air was clean enough, though there was this gassy kind of aftertaste to it he’d been trying to ignore for the past two weeks.

  The river was over its banks, too. That was different. It was because of the storm; it’d go down again. It never used to do that, though, or if it did, not after just one storm.

  The Longfellow Bridge was on his left. That was the bridge they always used in movies and what he grew up calling the salt-and-pepper bridge, because of the towers in the middle that looked like saltshakers.

  Or rather, it used to have towers that looked like that.

  Two of them had collapsed, one onto the bridge and the other (he assumed) into the water. Touré stopped the bike to get a better look, which soon turned into a much more thorough review of the panorama than he’d allowed himself previously.

  “Sleep through one apocalypse and the whole town goes to hell,” he said.

  The Hatch Shell, on the Boston side, was in ruins, and parts of Storrow Drive were underwater from what he assumed were more incursions from the river. Several of the buildings that marked the edge of the Back Bay neighborhood looked damaged in ways that insurance companies used to blame on God. And, weirdly, the city had added a skyscraper, to the right of the Prudential.

  This last one was probably his fault, for not paying more attention, but for the rest? The only thing that made sense was that the condition affecting the quality of the streets was also affecting some of the buildings. The entire commonwealth had gotten decrepit at the same time.

  It did not bode well for the four of them, holing up in a dormitory building that was a couple hundred years old. He made a note to recommend they find someplace newer.

  “What about a disease, where everyone gets super old at the same time, including all the buildings?” he said. “Let’s add that.”

  He was walking around with a collection of apocalypse theories in his head. He hadn’t shared any of them with the others so far, because they seemed pretty broken up about it right now, but they’d appreciate it later. He planned to write it all down just as soon as they rediscovered computer technology.

  Or with a pen and paper, if absolutely necessary. Like a barbarian.

  He hopped back on the bike and continued into town.

  4

  The bottom half of Newbury Street was in ruins.

  The shops on Newbury were designed strangely, at least in the context of potential flood concerns. Half of them were belowground—​you had to descend a staircase to reach the front door. The other half were on top, up a flight of stairs. (It was clear that this was a design that predated the legal requirements for handicap accessibility.) All of the below-street-level shops were wrecked from some combination of flood damage and wild animal foraging, but the top-level businesses looked relatively unharmed.

  Touré’d had an admittedly immature notion about what he might do as a survivor of an actual apocalypse, back when the entire exercise was still hypothetical. The idea was that he would get to wear the nicest, most expensive clothes available, because price was no longer a problem.

  There were plenty of issues with this idea, none of which he’d bothered to explore back then. To begin with, he was in no way a fashion-forward kind of guy, so his even knowing what the finest clothes might look like was wishful thinking. Also, there was no reason to think the finest clothes might look good on him, expensive or not. He cosplayed as Batman once, thinking he would look at least a little like Batman. Instead, he looked like a chubby bad idea of Batman . . . only worse. Fashionable clothes would probably have the same effect. Admittedly, there were presently only three people in the world who could laugh at him about it—​two, really, since Carol couldn’t even see what he looked like—​but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t know if he looked ridiculous . . . and judge himself poorly because of it.

  He still wanted to at least check out the clothes. And although he was (probably) not capable of picking the very finest of clothing in a mannequin storefront lineup, he knew where that clothing was sold: on Newbury Street.

  Except, again, Newbury Street was half destroyed.

  He stopped in a couple of shops. One was a clothing store with a front window display consisting entirely of antique sewing machines; there, he tried on some jackets. A couple fit, but by then he felt embarrassed to have even come out this far for such a waste of time. He was supposed to be shopping in bulk for survival reasons, to save everyone, not picking up a good wool topcoat.

  Also, all the clothes had these antitheft clips on the sleeves that he couldn’t pry off. He hadn’t considered that in his post-apocalypse planning.

  Another place he stopped was a coffee shop. The one near their supermarket on Memorial Drive had been cleaned out, which continued to be a source of frustration for Touré, so he was excited to find another one and hoped for a more positive outcome.

  He got his wish.

  Deep in the back of the store was a tiny supply of vacuum-sealed coffe
e beans and an unused French press. It wasn’t pre-ground, so they were going to have to figure out how to grind the beans—​and also produce hot water—​but it was progress. Until then, he could chew the beans. He was pretty sure that was safe.

  Other than that, Newbury was a straight-up bust.

  The end of the street opened up on the Public Garden. On the other side was Boston Common. Beyond the common, and up a hill, was a shopping area called Downtown Crossing, which had a ton more clothing stores.

  If he didn’t have any luck there, he could hit the mall at the Prudential on his way back. If he timed it right, he’d return to the dorm well before nightfall.

  5

  Touré was biking past the edge of the theater district when he realized a pig was following him.

  He’d made a conscious decision not to go through the Public Garden, even though that was the fastest way to reach Downtown Crossing. The park was an oasis of plant life that he figured would likely attract all sorts of animals, and he wasn’t in any mood to be in the middle of all that wildlife.

  Either in spite of or because of that very intelligent decision, there now was a pig running behind him.

  He was probably calling it the wrong thing. It was almost certainly a boar, but they were scarier when he called them that, so he stuck with pig.

  The pig wasn’t really running very hard in its efforts to keep up. Touré wasn’t biking as hard as he could, either, but he got the sense that if he were to pick up the pace, the pig would have no trouble staying close. That was a little disconcerting.

  “Should I be scared of you?” he asked the pig. He didn’t say it loud enough to expect a response, and also, it was a pig.

  He turned the corner on Tremont, going the wrong way down a one-way street, around the bottom corner of the common to climb the hill toward Park Street.