He’d have to figure out some way to play CDs. Even Charlton Heston, who played in that movie from the 70’s, Omega Man, where he was the sole survivor of some terrible biological war, had music to listen to to keep from going completely mad in his penthouse bunker. Well, at least he didn’t have some zombie brethren, run by creepy Anthony Zerbe, trying to kill him.
With that thought, he took his drink and went to the window, half expecting some robe-clad army with a huge catapult massed in front, ready to lob fireballs at his house.
He pulled the blanket covering the window aside, and even though no mass of torch carrying freaks were there, what was outside startled him all the same. Five whitetail deer were ambling up his street nice as you please, and one stopped at his neighbor’s house to nibble on the hydrangea bush. He watched them for over ten minutes until they made their way out of sight, up the street in the growing darkness.
He went back to his cot and sat down, looking into the fire through the wood stove’s glass door. So the deer were unaffected… Pennypack Park was a block over to the north, and there was a huge deer herd living there. Sometimes they’d stray out of the park and get hit by a car on Frankford Avenue, but they basically kept to themselves, hidden from people. Now they were wandering around the neighborhood. He finished his drink and smoke, and fell onto the cot, immediately falling asleep.
After another night of dreams, he awoke around the same time the next morning. He got up, washed, and made himself some coffee. Taking that out to the living room where he’d set up the card table, he lit a smoke and said aloud: “It’s not a card table, Sar’ Major! It’s a ‘desk, command, wooden-folding, one each! Get the proper nomenclature correct, soldier, or I’ll have to write you a bad fitness report!”
Even though he was Army through and through, he was still amused by the way the military described things. Earlier in his Army career, when he was still low enough in rank to have friends (Sergeant Majors didn’t have any friends), they’d joke around about the horrid horn-rimmed glasses the Army had issued its soldiers whose eyesight wasn’t perfect. “Repellent, chick, one each.” He smiled at the thought but it quickly faded when he thought of his situation at present.
What to do today? Another exploratory drive around, maybe?
Yes, that sounded like a plan to him. After that decision was made, he finished his morning routine, got dressed, and left the house. Heading out into the lifeless city with no rhyme or reason, he drove around aimlessly, mostly looking for signs of other people. He thought about the deer last night, and realized that nature was coming back rapidly. More rapidly than he would have thought. He was driving down State Road, saw the sign for the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, and decided to see what New Jersey looked like.
Halfway up the span, he noticed the bridge was raised for ship traffic on the Delaware River and he stopped the truck and got out. Walking over to the railing, he looked down at the water, where he saw what must have been the reason for the bridge raising. A medium sized cargo ship had slammed into the Pennsylvania side bridge footing, tearing a huge gash in its side. It was now blocking the whole channel, its deck awash where it sank in the shipping channel.
“So much for going to New Jersey,” he said. He could have gone a bit further south and crossed over the newer Betsy Ross Bridge, but he decided to head home. After he got home, he sat in the truck for a while, looking at his front door, not sure of what to do next. It frustrated him that he didn’t know what to do. He’d always been one to make quick decisions in the past. It was how he’d made the rank of Brigade Sergeant Major, and the one thing he couldn’t stand was indecision.
He shut off the truck and stepped out, took his grease gun, and walked down the street towards Garvin’s Pub. He really didn’t have a plan at this moment, but he walked on anyway. He noticed the deer were really making a highway of the area, and he made a mental note; he’d run out of fresh meat before the end of winter. He got to the front door of the bar, grabbed the knob and pulled. It opened easily, letting him know that whatever happened the other night had happened from between the time he’d left and fell asleep, but before 2 AM, legal closing time for the bar. Mickey would still be here. With that thought in his head, he pulled open the door all the way, and entered the dark room.
Looking around, he didn’t see much until his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. He noticed a patron that must have come in after he’d left sitting propped up in a booth at the far end, his head slightly askew, but still clutching a half-full mug of flat beer. Tim wasn’t sure he was losing his mind just yet, but nodded to the corpse in acknowledgment before going over to the bar and sitting in the same stool he’d used the other night. He noticed the fifty dollar bill he’d left was gone. He tossed the M3 unceremoniously onto the wood bar and said loudly, “Barkeep! I’ll have a beer, and give another one of whatever my friend is having,” motioning with his hand to the dead guy in the corner.
He sat for a moment or two staring at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
“Well I guess Mickey is in the shitter, or dead as shit. It’s self-serve night guys!”
He got up off the stool and went behind the bar, where he saw Mickey lying on the floor in the doorway to the small kitchen.
“Don’t get up, Mick. I know you’re probably dead tired. I’ll get it myself!” Grabbing a mug, he went to the tap, pouring himself a beer. At least that still worked. No power needed for a good old fashioned beer tap.
He placed the mug on the bar next to the machine gun and spied an ashtray hidden under the bar. He took it and put it next to his beer, and then grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from the glass shelf behind the bar. This too, he sat next to his beer, and walked back around to his barstool.
Sitting back down, he took a huge pull from the mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So, what do you think the Phillies will do this year?” he asked the dead guy in the booth. “You think they’ll get the pennant and go all the way to the series?”
The dead guy with the beer just looked back at him, with sunken, dead eyes.
“Yeah, I agree. Their bullpen isn’t worth a fuck.” He lit a cigarette. “Hey guys! The city repealed that smoking in bars ban as of three days ago! Smoke em’ if you got em’!”
Tim poured a shot of Jack into the shot glass and downed it in one gulp. “Everybody has to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another shot!” he said, pouring another, and downing that one just as quickly.
He leaned back into the padded back of the stool, looked up at the ceiling and took a long drag of his smoke. He stubbed it out and looked around. “Yeah, I know the things will kill me. I know I should quit. But fuck! It’s the end of the world! We should celebrate!”
After he finished his beer, he went behind the bar to pour another one. He looked around at some of the photos behind the bar of times past, happier times. He was even in some of them, along with his wife Connie. He pulled down one and looked at it. It was a New Year’s Eve party from a few years ago. He had on one of those silly bopper hats, with the bouncy antenna. He was holding a drink, and his arm was around Connie. He was smiling, but her gaze was looking to the side, to someone or something out of the frame.
Was she looking at Mr. Montana? he wondered, and crumpled the photo into a ball, tossing it aside. He grabbed a bag of Lay’s potato chips, and walked back to his seat. He sat back down, munched his chips, sipped at his beer, and poured another shot of Jack.
“Hey, Mick, got any jokes? Here’s one. Two blondes walk into a bar. You’d have thought one of them had seen it! Badda dum dum!”
Tim slammed his beer down on the bar, laughing uncontrollably for a minute. He’d not eaten anything at all that day, except for a light breakfast early in the morning, and the beer and liquor was hitting him hard. The bag of chips would do him no good at this point. He stood again uneasily, and taking his beer, he walked over to the dead guy in the booth.
“Mind if I sit down, buddy?” he asked. Sliding himsel
f into the booth, he got a better look at the man. He was wearing a Tastykake bakery uniform, the name ‘Chick’ embroidered over the right pocket. He must have gotten off the late shift around 11 PM, and come in for a few cold ones before heading home, wherever that was. He didn’t look familiar to Tim, but he’d been gone a while, and there were a lot of new people in the neighborhood.
“Are you new to the area? I haven’t seen you around here before,” Tim asked the dead man, pulling a chip from the small sack and popping it into his mouth. “Me? Oh, I just got back from Afghanistan. It’s a fucked up place far away from here. It’s been all over the news for the last ten years or so.”
Taking a long pull of beer he pointed at the guy and said, “I’ve been there on six deployments, six of them. Not a goddamn scratch. Oh, I’ve been injured before. I got one in the groin in Grenada. What’s Grenada you ask? It’s a little island in the south Caribbean. Ah, forget about it. No one remembers that anyway. People tend to forget shit like that. I’ve been shot at a lot of times. Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Iraq. Only the one Purple Heart though. I call it my Cuban Marksmanship Medal. He got one up on me, the fucker. But it’s okay, I put a bullet in his left eye so he won’t be shooting any more Army Rangers...” Tim trailed off, ate a few more chips and looked at his mug. “Yeah, buddy. I’ve been all over the world. Join the Army they said. Travel to exotic, faraway places. Meet new and exciting people, and kill them!
“Hey, you want another one? It’s on the house!” he asked the dead man, pointing to him. Getting up, Tim crumpled the now empty potato chip bag, tossed it into the corner, and went back to refill his mug. He saw the dartboard with the bull’s eye missing, saw the empty .45 casing still on the ground and chuckled, kicking it aside.
“Hey, Bud. You better be careful. The neighborhood isn’t what it used to be, me and Mickey had two jokers in here the other night. Wanted to pick a fight with me, they did. I got rid of them. Scared them so bad they’ll never come back in here. Right now they’re lying dead as dog shit two blocks north of here at a Route 66 bus stop.” Tim looked over at the body in the booth as he poured another beer into his mug. Walking back around the bar with the bottle of Jack Daniels, he sat back down in the booth opposite the dead man. “Nope, they aren’t going anywhere. They missed that last bus home. And there’s never going to be another one. Septa is now permanently out of the bus business. When it thaws in the spring they’ll rot away, but first the scavengers will come out. Buzzards and rats, maggots, ants and blowflies will eat all the soft flesh. It’s really not a pretty sight, or smell, really. Kind of like the way you’re starting to smell my friend…”
Tim downed the beer and poured another shot of whiskey.
“Yeah, this whole town is going to be pretty ripe in a few months.” He got up from the booth, walked back over to his stool and sat back down there.
“Yeppers, kiddies. It isn’t going to be pretty. The rats and mice will have a field day munching on humanity. You probably won’t be able to get within twenty miles because of the stench. The world ended two days ago, and the funny thing is, nobody except me in this whole godforsaken fucking city is here to see it. That’s a goddamn hoot, I’m here to tell you!” he said to an empty room, save for the dead guy in the booth.
Pouring another shot of Jack, he downed it at once, then threw the empty shot glass at the bottles and mirror behind the bar. The glass shattered loudly, and cracks ran out from the hole like a huge spider web. He looked at his reflection in the shattered glass, and it gave him a funhouse appearance that made him laugh. Pushing himself back from the bar, the stool’s feet made an awful screech. He picked up the M3, flipped open the ejection port cover/safety and cocked the weapon. Holding it mid-chest high, he aimed it at the mirror and all the hundreds of booze bottles lined up on the glass shelves. He pulled the trigger, and at once, the gun began to belch lead with a deafening rattle. A huge muzzle flash extended for about two feet in front of the gun as Tim hosed the barrel left and right.
The gun chugged out a staccato sound, shattering bottles left and right. The bolt slammed home on an empty magazine and Tim quickly and expertly changed magazines, slapping a fresh one home in the gun’s well, cocking it and continuing to fire. This he did two more times until all but one bottle remained. Tim looked through a thick haze of cordite smoke, at the bottle precariously perched on a sliver of glass, that had once been a 90 year-old handmade glass and mahogany bar back. His shoulders went slack as all the stress of the last few days was drained from him. He let the weapon hang loose from his hand, and finally, as if it decided to finally give up the ghost, the bottle of unopened imported brandy tipped over and smashed to the floor behind the bar.
“Sorry about the mess, Mickey. Put it on my tab.” Tim took a book of matches out of his pocket, and folding back the cover, lit the whole pack and with a flick of his wrist, tossed it behind the bar. Instantly the alcohol erupted in a fireball and a loud whumph. He left, not looking back, and staggered in the freezing cold all the way to his house, singing an old Vera Lynn song from World War II. By the time he reached his house, he could see the glow of the fire over the rooftops. He unlocked the door and entered the house on uneasy feet. He peeled off his jacket and top, and in a very un-military way, tossed them on the floor in the center of the room. Without even checking the wood stove, he fell back on the cot, falling into a deep sleep.
Tim’s bad day was finally over.
***
Halfway around the world, in the Indian Ocean, and about a hundred nautical miles from the Horn of Africa, another military man was just getting a handle on a very bad day indeed.
A dirty and disheveled man headed to the squawk box on a stanchion and picked up the phone handset. “Yeah?”
A disembodied voice came through the other side on the line. “Mr. Johnson! I don’t care what happened; we’re still in the goddamned US Navy! Answer the call professionally!”
“Yes, Skipper. Engine room!”
“Good. This is the bridge. Are you about done down there? Can we make revolutions to get underway?”
“Aye sir, just finished. But only one turbine will work, so only one screw. I should be able to get the other three turbines on line in another day.”
“Very well. Secure down there and get back topside. There are still a lot of bodies that need to go over the side.”
Johnson winced. They really should give them all a proper burial at sea. They were sailors, damn it! They should be wrapped in canvas and weighted down, not just thrown overboard like garbage, where the sharks could get to them. The last batch had been messy, and the sharks were in a virtual feeding frenzy. The seas had turned red a few hours ago. At least now they could get underway and get the hell out of there.
The “Skipper” on the bridge was Lieutenant Commander Winthorpe Wright. He came from old New England money, fourth generation Navy, where his grandfather had distinguished himself at the Battle of Leyte Gulf during WWII, retiring as a Rear Admiral. Where the former was the top of his class at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, his progeny graduated dead last. The Weapons Officer on the Arleigh Burke class Aegis Destroyer USS Hughes, DDG-193, or “WEPS”, he was now skipper for the mere fact that he was the highest ranking officer left in the Wardroom. He knew now for certain he’d never see Flag Rank. Seeing the small anti-piracy Task Force go to shit three days ago told him that much. It was just by sheer luck they’d missed being rammed by another US Navy ship, and seeing the other ships collide and sink one by one had shocked him to the core.
Besides him, he had Ensign Johnson from the engine room still alive, which was fortuitous, and two enlisted men still alive, to run his ship. They had been foundering on heavy seas for two days when, although hardened against EMP, the ship’s electrical systems had been overloaded and they lost power.
Now he finally had his Command, and he didn’t know how yet, or exactly what had happened, but he knew he was going to Take Charge and Make His Mark…if it was th
e last thing he did.
He sat back in the captain’s chair on the bridge, his back to his new skipper, and smiled. If the young helmsman could have seen it, he’d have jumped overboard and taken his chances with the sharks.
“Come right to 060!” he barked, savoring the feeling of absolute power.
“Coming right to zero six zero, aye, sir!” the helmsman said smartly, and did as his commander wished.
No, not absolute power yet, he thought. Not yet…
And he grinned again.
Chapter 3: Booze, Books and Bullets
Tim woke the next morning with the mother of all hangovers. He felt ashamed at his behavior the night before, or what he could remember of it. At that moment, he decided that he wasn’t going to fool around anymore, and needed to get his proverbial shit all in one sack. No more getting blind drunk, having conversations with dead people, and certainly not burning places to the ground for no reason.
Throughout November and December, he started to really get to work. Tacking a large map of Philadelphia and the surrounding counties to the wall in the dining area of the house, he started marking off areas he’d already checked for signs of life. This he found in abundance, though no people as of yet. There were plenty of deer, rabbits and squirrels. And rats, lots of rats. Even though it was the middle of winter, he saw a lot of rats. Crows too, and buzzards were even now starting to come in from the suburbs and countryside. Pickings were good.
On his daily explorations, he’d gone to the police department’s mounted unit’s stables, but found no live horses. The bodies of the dead horses were already being devoured by predation and scavengers. It was a shame. Horses were one of nature’s beauties. He did see a fox one day, and before he could really get a good look, it scampered back into the woods by Holme Avenue. His supply of fresh meat had run out a few weeks after The Event, as he started calling what had happened. He shot a nice sized doe from his front yard with the M16, keeping himself in protein for the rest of the winter.
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