by Stevie Kopas
Gordon turns in his seat and watches people scurrying by like spooked cattle; not yet fully panicking, but past the point of keeping their cool. He turns back to the table and Elena is doing that thing where she picks at her cuticles and chews her bottom lip. He can’t help but think about how adorable she is when she gets nervous, and has to stop himself from reaching across the table and grabbing her hand. He used to get onto her about picking at her fingers — with all the money she spent on manicures every two weeks, it was a waste if she was going to let a nervous tick muck it all up.
His face grows hot and he’s annoyed, both with himself and with Elena. The TV continues to blare in the background, contributing to his sudden onset of exasperation. It’s hard for him to care about the country’s problems when his own feel so enormous and suffocating. And there sits the root of his problem, in all her clueless glory, picking at her fingers and sipping a fucking Macchiato.
“You know we’re getting divorced today, right?” He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms.
Elena looks up at him and raises her eyebrows. “Uh, no shit.”
“So why did you even come here?”
“To get a coffee, obviously.” She rolls her eyes.
“No, why did you sit at my table?” Gordon’s annoyance is quickly turning to anger. “Why are you sitting here, shooting the shit with me? There are like, a million other places to get coffee and you still decided to stay and sit at my fucking table. What’s wrong with you?”
Elena stares at him, her nostrils flared. She hates when Gordon is right, and she knows she should have left the moment she saw him sitting here by himself. When she’d walked in and her eyes fell upon him, her feet brought her to him on their own. A big part of her didn’t want to accept that it was over, not yet.
She has the overwhelming urge to throw something at him and fall into his arms for comfort all at once. Just because they were getting divorced didn’t mean she didn’t need him. It was weird to think about having someone for so long that would no longer be there for you. They were both to blame, her mostly, but even if she’d decided to take all the blame and try to work things out, she felt it futile. As her mother had told her the other day, some things aren’t always meant to be in the end.
“Hello? Anybody home?” Gordon snaps his fingers in her face.
Elena shakes her head. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Seriously though, can you please find somewhere else to fucking sit?” Gordon asks her, his voice bitter. “It’s bad enough I have to play nice with you in some asshole lawyer’s office today. I’m not in the mood to sit around and have a chat about current affairs with anyone. Especially not you.”
Elena looks down, her hands in her lap. “I’m just a creature of habit, I guess.”
Gordon, the level of disdain in his voice growing, sets his coffee down on the table. “Well, go find a new habit. Oh wait, you already did. How’s Titus?” Elena looks away. “What kind of fucking name is that anyway? Titus. What is he some kind of video game character?”
“You know, I was just trying to have some civil conversation with you.”
“What the hell about our relationship has been civil in months? You don’t get to pretend everything is normal, Elena.”
“I know but—“
“Can you leave? Or do I need to?” Gordon raises his eyebrows, awaiting her reply.
Elena rises from her seat, coffee in hand. “Guess I’ll see you at the lawyer’s.” She struts away and looks back over her shoulder with a smirk. “I probably don’t need to remind you to be on time, you’re pretty consistent with coming early.”
Gordon shakes his head and can’t help but laugh.
“Bitch,” he mumbles under his breath, watching her as she returns to the counter and requests a To-Go cup. The black skirt she chose this morning frames her hips and ass perfectly and he curses himself for thinking she looks so good in it.
Gordon knows he’s allowed Elena to get the best of him again — he’s in an even worse mood than when he first arrived at the coffee shop. As he takes another sip of his coffee, he realizes that it now leaves a bad taste in his mouth, just like his marriage. He stares down at the cup and zones out, trying to clear his mind.
Elena takes a peek over at Gordon, staring down at his coffee, his shaggy brown hair falling into his green eyes. She remembers when she used to threaten to cut it while he was sleeping and it brings a smile to her lips. She catches herself smiling, longing for the familiar contentment he always provided, and looks away quickly, cursing herself under her breath.
The coffee shop is now silent, save for the distressed voice emanating from the television set, and the unspoken, mind-tingling dread that spreads through the room snaps Gordon back to reality. He looks up in time to witness the unbelievable real-time footage outside of NYU Medical Center. A river of people floods the street, oozing in all directions. People trample one another attempting to escape some unseen attacker, but as the camera zooms in on the growing mayhem, the coffee shop patrons can see that not everyone is running away from something.
The children, once thought dead, alongside adults, latch on to screaming people and rip open their throats. The bloodshed is surreal.
Gordon and Elena’s eyes meet, and for the briefest of seconds they’re able to share something with one another again: Fear.
The small cluster of people inside the coffee shop don’t dare make a sound. The newscaster’s voice, overwhelmed with emotion, screams through the TV.
“Zombies!”
Gordon stands suddenly, his palms sweaty. The realization that this gruesome scene is unfolding less than a mile away sets in and he looks around at the other shocked faces in the shop.
They’ve realized it, too.
Panic sets in as the patrons scramble to the exit, knocking each other out of the way, some turning to aggression. Gordon is overwhelmed by only one thing: the sudden desire to keep Elena safe. He stretches out an arm and she rushes to him. She grabs his hand and he charges through the cluster of people fighting for the door, dragging her close behind him.
Outside on the city streets, it’s evident that the bizarre news of the sudden onslaught of zombies has reached the eyes and ears of everyone in Gordon’s immediate vicinity. He’s forced to grab hold of a street sign to keep from being swept up in the crowd of fleeing people. Elena squeals with fright as she’s nearly crushed. Gordon pulls her into him and holds fast to the post. He looks around, observing all the people. Where they’re running to, Gordon can’t be sure, but he knows if he and Elena don’t get somewhere safe, they’ll be lost in the wave of chaos consuming New York City before the zombies can even get to them.
They move with the crowd, knowing they can’t stay latched onto the street sign forever. They run as fast as their feet can carry them; Gordon in his slip-on Vans that Elena hates, and Elena in her four inch, Jimmy Choo pumps that Gordon thinks are ridiculous. In the years they’ve been married, the two have experienced it all together. It was a sort of monotony that brought them to the point of carelessness and extra-marital affairs.
But now they were finally experiencing something new together: running for their lives.
Gordon’s eyes move to the never ending gridlock of cars. He pulls Elena into a vacant store’s entryway, momentarily escaping the rushing crowd.
“I can call for my driver! We can get out of here!” Elena screams over all the noise, her eyes wide with fear.
Gordon shakes his head and points to the massive traffic jam. “Look around, Elena. There’s no way anybody’s driving anywhere!”
Everywhere Elena looks, it’s bumper to bumper. The air is alive with not just people’s screams, but endless blaring horns. She can hear metal crunching and glass breaking as vehicles smash into one another at a nearby intersection, further adding to the inescapable gridlock. Cars attempt to squeeze past one another on the sidewalk nearby, running over countless numbers of frightened people. Elena looks away, tears in her eyes.
/> “Take your heels off, I have an idea.” Gordon orders Elena. She doesn’t argue, slipping her black pumps off one by one. “Stay close and keep up.”
They make a run for it, breaking through the crowd and bounding up onto the closest vehicle’s hood. Angry shouts are heard from within the cars, but they fall on deaf ears. Others see Gordon and Elena as they attempt to escape the madness, jumping from vehicle to vehicle. Soon enough the panicked swarm has spread from sidewalk to street, and when Gordon looks back he can barely see the roofs of the cars as a sea of people envelope everything.
His mind flashes back to the zoomed in shot from the news, the grayish corpses of children ripping open the throats of the closest living humans. The recently maimed people seized violently, arterial spray arcing in every direction, and in a matter of seconds, they too were gray. Gray and attacking, the near-instant spreading infection could not be stopped. Gordon doesn’t see a way in which this ends well for anyone.
As the estranged couple rounds the corner, hopping from one vehicle to another, a flurry of commotion erupts from above. The deafening roar of jets fills the air; frightened faces look skyward in an attempt to catch a glimpse of one of the military crafts, but those that take their attention off the task at hand are trampled and crushed beneath the crazed crowd.
“Keep moving!” Gordon shouts as Elena begins to fall behind.
He holds his arms out to her when she slips and nearly tumbles into the chaos below. She grasps both his hands and he pulls with all his strength, nearly falling himself. The people behind them have nearly caught up and Gordon panics, knowing that once the crowd reaches them they’ll have no escape route.
He spots an opening up ahead and considers his options: continue this imitation parkour and risk falling, or head down into the subway. Even if the trains weren’t running, Gordon figures there are enough access tunnels that he and Elena could slip into and escape the deadly streets. It was only a matter of time before the dead joined the ranks of the scared, fleeing humans. And with Elena nearly slipping from one of these motionless cars, their chances of survival were beginning to look grim.
Elena looks back at the approaching, terrified faces scrambling over the cars. “Gordon, we have to move!”
Gordon painfully waits for a gap in the crowd below. “Get ready to jump.”
They leap from a Lincoln Town Car and Elena stumbles into Gordon’s embrace. They continue forward, pushing through as best they can. Approaching the descending steps of the subway, two men fly up the steps toward them, horror plastered on their faces.
“They’re coming, the place is fuckin’ full of them! Get outta here!” One of the men warns, screaming at the top of his lungs. He repeats himself over and over, hoping to save some lives, and then disappears in the oncoming crowd.
A bizarre sound, similar to that of a squealing animal drifts up from below. Gordon furrows his brow and meets Elena’s frightened eyes. People shove past them, ignoring the warning, and descend the steps, crushing the unfortunate few who trip or fall. The squealing and shrieking gets louder, and within seconds, screams of terror and pain can be heard as well.
Gordon’s face grows pail, he can only imagine the bloodbath in the subway below.
“Gordon!” Elena shouts at him, tugging his arm. “We can’t stay here!”
He snaps out of it and the two are on the move again, sticking close to the storefronts, bobbing and weaving, trying their best not to get caught up in the wave of people. An explosion rocks the city and smoke billows on the horizon. People scream and windows shake in their frames as a countless series of explosions erupt somewhere close by. Elena buries her face in Gordon’s chest and covers her ears. Gordon cringes, the cacophony of sounds are unbearable, but then the gravity of the situation sets in.
“They’re blowing the bridges and tunnels…” he says with disbelief.
A woman screams beside him, her eyes wide with horror. People begin dropping and seizing on the ground before Gordon is even aware of what’s happening. The infected have arrived, and right before his eyes, the city was falling.
He looks around frantically, hoping to find some sort of escape route, but he sees none. He pulls Elena with him, closer to the building behind them, their backs against the wall. Gordon locks eyes with one of the infected. The man’s face is gray and shiny, his expression fierce. He sports a fist-sized hole in his neck and his mouth is wide as he shrieks, flesh and blood spilling from the orifice.
Gordon’s heart pounds as he realizes the infected man is now moving toward them at lightning speed. He grabs Elena’s hand and squeezes. He wants to look away but he can’t, his gaze locked permanently on the soulless eyes of his approaching killer. Gordon prepares himself as best he can for the end in what milliseconds he has left. He’s about to force his eyes shut as the infected man leaps from the asphalt, but the door beside Gordon bursts open.
The infected lands on top of a portly woman who screams for her life, gurgling as the man sinks his teeth into her throat. A man equal in stature, who’s also fled the building, trips over the massacre at his feet, falling prey to the infected. Gordon feels faint, he can barely breathe as he tightens his arms around Elena and rolls through the doorway while the infected are distracted. He pulls the door shut and fumbles with the deadbolt, but he finally gets it into place.
It appears that someone’s suddenly thrown crimson paint all over the windows, but Gordon knows better. It’s the blood of those who had tried to follow him and Elena inside. Gordon feels no remorse for his decision, he’d found his escape route and been the first to the finish line. Elena moves to the rear of the long, narrow shop, the back door wide open. She pulls it closed and secures it.
There’s a staircase near the back door, and she waves Gordon over. They scurry up and find the solid oak door locked. Elena pounds her fists on it, yelling for help, but Gordon hears no movement on the other side. He tells Elena to keep quiet and pulls her back downstairs. Elena frantically looks around and finds a door behind the shop counter that they’d missed when they first came in. The two enter and secure the last door they’ll ever close before collapsing to the floor. Elena tries desperately to suppress her sobs, while Gordon wipes tears from his own face.
“This can’t be happening.” Elena mutters.
Gordon leans back against the wall, resting an arm on a small safe bolted to the floor. “It is,” he tells her.
“We’re going to die in here,” she states, matter-of-factly.
He nods, but still finds the courage to tell her that everything is going to be okay.
Elena looks around the tiny room, mascara running down her cheeks. A corner desk fills most of the space and a small AM/FM radio sits near some framed photographs. Elena grabs it off the desk and turns it on. The Emergency Broadcast Signal blares through the speakers and Gordon panics, snatching the radio from her and turning the volume down to an almost inaudible level.
“We have to keep quiet. I’d like to try and live as long as I can.”
Another explosion sounds off in the distance, far enough to not cause damage, but close enough to rock the building in which they cower. Elena whimpers and brings her knees into her chest, huddling close to the wall opposite Gordon. He places the radio on the floor between them and fiddles with the knob until he finds a station where there are actual people talking as opposed to the high pitched squeal of the Emergency Broadcast.
“…Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, and Seattle are confirmed dead zones. New York City quarantine underway…”
Elena’s eyes go wide. “Dead zones? Quarantine? Gordon, what the hell does this mean?”
Gordon puts a finger up to his lips to shush her. “Just listen.”
“I’ve just received word that Miami and Boston have also fallen, along with countless other smaller cities across the country, however no other countries are reporting infection or casualties at this time. I’m receiving new information now,” there’s a long pause and Gordon and Elena can hear th
e broadcaster begin to choke up as he utters his next words. “Confirmation received, the President of The United States of America is dead,” the man pauses again, barely able to control his emotions. “Extreme measures are being taken to ensure the infection must not leave the country. I’m afraid our worst fears are being confirmed on this dark day. Ladies and Gentlemen, if anyone is still listening, may God have mercy on us all.”
They hear a single gunshot followed by dead air.
Elena holds a hand over her mouth, silent sobs racking her body. Gordon slumps back against the wall, his head falling back, eyes closed. The room is silent, save for the screams of God-knows-what beyond the frail doors of their building.
“Fuck.” The word leaves Gordon’s mouth as barely a whisper.
Elena’s sobs turn into fits of laughter, causing Gordon to open his eyes and shoot her a look.
She wipes tears from her eyes and laughs again, her eyes on Gordon. He can’t help but think about how much he missed that laugh, and it brings a smile to his lips. Soon the two of them roll about on the floor, clutching their bellies, giggling until their faces hurt.
The couple lie on the floor, nose to nose. They stare deeply into each other’s eyes in silence, allowing the sounds of the falling city to serve as their soundtrack to the end of the world.
“Cheating bitch.” Gordon mumbles, chuckling.
Elena grins. “Jobless leech.”
The two of them fall once again into hysterical laughter, until their sides ache and their cheeks sting once more.
“Fucking divorce,” he says, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
“You’re the one that wanted it.”
“I don’t think now’s the time to place blame.”
Elena brings a hand up to his face. She runs her fingers over his stubble and breathes his scent in deeply. “Is now a good time to pretend that everything is back to normal?” A tear escapes her eye and falls to the carpet.
“It’s about as far from fucking normal as things could get. But yeah, I think now’s as good a time as any.”