How to Find Peace at the End of the World

by Saro Yen

  I park in a spot near the stairwells and keep the lights of the Beast on as I get out with the fire axe in hand. I seem to remember seeing a zombie horror movie reminiscent of this scene. I shake the thought out of my head as I check the door and find that it’s fairly secure: it requires the use of a latch to open and not a simple push bar. I go back to the truck and flip on the top head lamps and lever myself up by the side rails of the truck. I grab the warm bulbs of the flood lamp and swing it around 360, illuminating the dark garage. Quiet so far.

  Keeping the light fixed on the truck bed I go back and rummage around for the things I’d gotten from Wally world yesterday and stuffed into the large green duffel: a bag full of extra coats and sleeping bags, antibiotics and bandages.

  I stuff a box of MREs, a fresh plastic jar of beef jerky, and fifteen bottles of water into the duffel and test the weight. Heavy, but manageable. So I think now. I know I’ll feel differently after X number of flights to climb. I lock the bed back up and lure Charley out of the Beast with some more jerky before turning off headlamps and turning the Maglight back on. The beam is really weak. Shit, I’d forgotten. And also, the one thing I missed packing up yesterday was D-cell batteries. Well, at least it will last us until we get high enough. We won’t need light in the morning, hopefully. I grab a few packs of matches, just in case, though I forgot the candles. Then I remember the lighters and throw a few in the canvas for good measure. Before I push the latch I go back to the Beast and grab the handgun and stuff it in my waistband. Then I check the markings on the wall and take note of the level and the area, just as if I were at the mall. I push through the fire door into the stair well and hold the door open for Charley to follow and make sure the door is secure before starting the arduous climb up.

  11:15 PM I’m so tired. Each flight of stairs the duffel bag’s gained ten pounds, or that’s what it feels like. After floor fifteen, I mark each level by its placard and repeat the floor number to spur me on. By floor twelve, I’m ready to quit. My bad leg is killing me. Charley stops right next to me and sprawls out on concrete landing. As I’ve been doing every floor, I give the fire door a good shove. Some floors have been locked, but this one opens up without complaint giving me a view of a nice marble hallway and a wall of glass. I signal to Charley and he gets up with a doggie harrumph and follows me through. We’re standing in this decked out lobby. Again, all marble and glass. There’s a chandelier hanging from the ceiling through the glass doors and some mahogany and plush furniture that looks like it would be oh so nice to just fall into.

  I test the glass doors and find they open without much of an effort. I yell out “hello” just for the Hell of it and Charley mimics me with his own barked greeting. I drop off my duffel and look behind the receptionist’s desk. Aha! I find what I’m looking for: an emergency flashlight, one of those wind-up types that has a large bank of LED’s and a lantern mode. Fancy. I pull it from its charger and test it out. Full. I take the charger from the wall and toss it on top of the duffel. I turn off the weak beam of the Maglight and with the light in lantern mode start taking a look around. Conference rooms. Offices. Cubicles. Where are the long, fashionable trench coats on chair backs? The left behind bags? Yet I find cups of coffee and plates of donuts just like at work yesterday (Or was it the day before? No. Yesterday). I haven’t yet worked out completely the theory of what happened: what was supposed to disappear with whatever rapture had occurred yesterday morning. Maybe if I can figure it out it will all turn out to be a trick. A game. Like in the movie. And everyone I know will be there, clapping and patting me on the back. Running up to kiss me.

  But I’m so tired now. I go back to the duffel and take the bandages, a few bottles of water and the antibiotics and take Charley with me to go find a bathroom. Down another marble lined hallway and through a door of mahogany and frosted glass I come upon a little anteroom with really plush leather couches and two doors, ladies and gentlemen. Not your parent’s public restroom, eh Charley? For some reason I’m actually picky about going into the men’s room. Habit, I guess. I lead Charley inside. He pricks up his ears upon hearing me whistle at the even more expensive marble and granite within, the oddly shaped urinals that reek not of urine but green backs. I set the lantern on the counter and test the faucet. I chuckle when it works. Must be some private water tank or something. I pool it in my hand and the water feels really soft. Minerally. I wonder if this will be any good or not for our wounds.

  I turn the water off (better save it, whatever pressure is still there) as I slowly undo the old bandages I’d wrapped around my wounds. They’re sticking now, each strand coming off like old scotch tape, and hurting like a motherfucker. It looks nasty. Wounds airing out, I take a few pills from the bottle of doxycycline and down them with the bottled water. I look over at Charley. “Sorry boy. Only for humans. Don’t know what this shit will do to you.”

  I start tending to Charley next. Most of his wounds have stopped bleeding, the clots dry and crusty. He seems OK and I wonder if I should even do anything for fear of making it worse. In the end I take the faux gold safety razors I find in boxes by the sink (just like in a hotel) and shave around the deeper wounds that are still sort of weeping. I take some gauze patches nicked from the pharmacy and glop antibacterial lotion on them and surgical tape them to his wounds. He tries to tear them off a few times but I grab his snout and hold my finger out to him. “No boy. This will make it better. Promise.” He seems to leave them alone after that, turns his head slowly to the side and gives his paw a lick, as if pretending to lose interest. I put the tape back in my canvas bag. I guess I’ll just tape them back if need be.

  That done, I begin to tend to my own wounds. Nothing looks like it needs stitching, thank God. Though one wound is particularly gnarly, with the flesh turned out, I think it might heal better if I let it alone. I do the same for me as I did for Charley: antibacterial ointment and gauze surgical taped over my forearm and my calf. I test the tape to see if it will hold while flashes of what transpired in the plaza come back to me. I’m lucky this time. Yeah. Try not to do anything that stupid (like leave your only means of defense in the truck) ever again, Dan.

  I keep my bloody pants and shirt sleeves rolled up and explore the executive bathrooms a little more. There’s a lot of nice stuff in here and I find a canvas bag that can be cinched closed with a thick roped cord, like one for towels, and begin throwing things into it: the boxes of safety razors, toothbrushes and toothpaste, sowing kits.

  I walk through a few more apparent antechambers and wonder at all the non-work-related innards in a modern law firm office. I come upon this room that looks like a spa, with a little modernist water feature in the center and these plush benches of crushed velvet. The room doesn’t have any exits on the other wall and I turn around to leave and that’s when I notice the bar. It’s through an archway adjacent the door in this little vestibule area that’s kind of like the area I first entered.

  The ceiling slopes gently as it goes up and ends in a large circular vent. There are shelves all round full of boxes of what look like cigars. Apparently law firms come with built in bars. The mahogany shelving contains a shitload of stoppered bottles of dark, very expensive looking liquors. I remove the stoppers on one of them and take a sniff. I come upon the unmistakable whiff of bourbon, probably one of those expensive types with a worth measured out in the age of small children. I stuff some of the bottles in the bag as well, along with some extra bar towels and a few boxes of cigars. I’m stumped on how to pick them out, but they all look expensive. When I turn, Charley is observing me with almost a wry inquisitiveness: strange human, why are you taking all of these strong odored things that don’t smell at all delicious to eat? I shrug at Charley. Hell if I know.

  I walk through a few more rooms until I come upon a library richly appointed with dark wood furniture and shelves and expensive hanging light fixtures. I remember, suddenly, the book I had only recently risked my life for. Where did I leave it? Crap. I think I left it
in the library or dropped it somewhere in the dark plaza. I will have to go back for it, but tomorrow, when the sun is up and my shotguns are with me, fully loaded and pumped. I’m pretty sure I killed one of those pinschers and severely wounded the other, but there’s no telling what else is stalking the streets now.

  I make a circuit through the rest of the floor, mostly offices and cubicles. Slim pickings. Mostly paperwork. Useless office baubles. I can’t see much use in one of those clacking pendulum ball sets. In the drawer of the largest corner office (it takes a few shoves and bashes to splinter the mahogany) I find a case with the biggest hand cannon I have ever seen and a box of twenty bullets. I really do think I have enough guns. I pause to consider: well, you can never have enough guns. I remember now that I had intended to stop at one of the large gun outlets near my home, but had decided my haul at Wally world was enough. That was before after almost being mauled to death. Although, I guess that was my own dumb ass fault: just bringing one of those guns from Wal-Mart with me tucked in my waistband or in one of the holsters I did not bother to use would have prevented everything most likely.

  I might be paranoid, but I further secure the law firm by tying all the doors together with rope from Wally world. The walls that separate the law office from the elevators are all glass, hopefully plate glass, but I should at least hear anyone breaking in.

  I decide in the end to sleep in the largest conference room, one that has an impressive view of the western quarter of the city. The conference room walls are glass, too, of course, but I have the shotgun right on the table and the giant hand cannon on a chair within arm’s reach.

  Before retiring, I pull up a conference room chair to the window. Charley limps up next to me and licks my hand. I sit down and he flops beside me. “Look at that.” The fires that had been streaming smoke into the sky all day are dying out now. There are large patches of forest still smoldering with flames like once buried embers suddenly turned up to the air. I grab a few jerky strips from the duffel, the artificial tasting commercial kind from Wal-Mart and split them in half. Half for me; half for Charley. He sits there, one end of the strip under his paw working on the other with his teeth. He licks his chops with his big floppy tongue and looks up at me. “Good huh?”

  I’d forgotten to get sleeping bags (always something) so I make a bed from various couch cushions. Charley settles on the biggest floppiest one that I throw down first and I make do with a bunch of small ones set down together.

  I am lying there and staring at the nicely trimmed ceiling of the conference room, blank and perfect for inciting contemplation and I feel the thoughts of Amy coming on again. There is a part of me that resists them now because I know of my own tendency to wallow. That I will keep myself up at night torturing myself with her memory when I don’t even know for sure if she is still up there waiting for me. Or even, and I bolt upright on thinking about it for the first time, if she is even now on the way down to find me. My chest begins to beat in rapid rhythm that we could, the two of us, be the very last two possible people in the world, Adam and Eve round two, and we could miss each other in the night, pass each other by on the small roads between our two cities by mere miles. I feel the frantic need to go back down to the Beast right now and start it up and burn its big flood lamps through the darkness, all night, down I-45. But I need rest. My wounds ache. I’m feeling tired, possibly from the antibiotics, or possibly just from the shock. I lie back down and the thoughts push in again. I roll a bit closer to the only warm body and in some sleep addled sympathetic motion Charley edges closer to me on his pillow. It is in the calming umbra of his puffy white shag that I am eventually lulled into a deep sleep.

  10AM I check the phone. I’ve slept for ten hours or so. My mouth is full of cotton, some filmy, brackish coating. The light and the shadows of downtown skyscrapers are falling softly on the scrim of trees that constitute most of Houston. Charley is already awake and looking at me with an air of mischief. He has defecated and urinated in one corner of the conference room, and also, somehow, covered it up with the dirt from a de-potted ficus. Interesting. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Ruff.

  I give him a few more strips of jerky. I take one of the giant, clean cigar ash trays and fill it with water. He laps it all up lickety split and I empty another half bottle into it, then another. I realize how thirsty I am myself and I down my own bottle and then realize how much I need to go myself. I amble off to find the bathroom again. The law office looks shockingly different in the day. Altogether less intimidating. More muted. Tackier, too.

  After relieving myself (in a toilet), I check the bandages and am satisfied to see that the topical antibiotic seems to have done something. The crescent of the dog bites is pale and there’s not much pus or inflammation or other sign of infection to speak of.

  I walk through the maze of rooms until I find the smoking room again. I “enjoy” a morning smoke, or more like I cough my damn head off trying to enjoy my first ever cigar and give up half way and roll a joint. It takes the edge off of any lingering pain in my limbs. Charley even looks a little more comfortable when I’m done. Then, I down a small sifter bottom full of bourbon.

  “Nothing like getting a little bombed in the morning, eh boy?”

  Ruff.

  Adequately watered and fed and relieved I roll my sleeves down again and mentally plan out what I’m going to do to get the book. Simple plan really. Drive the Beast over the curb and back it up right to the entrance of the library, what I should have done yesterday.

  I pack everything up in the duffel again and make another round of the law office for anything interesting, like the gun. All the other stuff that might be useful I’ll pick up at another Wally world on the way out.

  Slowly, I make my way back down the building from the twelfth floor. The lights in the stairwell are off so I clip the flashlight in lantern mode to my slacks by its carabineer. On the way down, I stop on each floor and open the doors that will open and yell through the door “Anybody here?” No answer. All the way down. As expected. Closer to the bottom I grab the S&W 500 out of the duffel pocket. Then I realize I’m a dumb ass and haven’t loaded the thing. By the lamplight I dig around in my duffel for the bullets. When I find it I load up the S&W. Six shots.

  Like some wannabe SWAT cop I kick the door to the floor of the parking garage I’d left the Beast on. I lift the lamplight high, pointing the pistol forward. The bang of the door echoes into silence. Nothing. I lose no time. I lift the truck bed cover up and throw the duffel in. I open the door and Charley, reading my mind, jumps into the passenger seat. I climb in and slam the door closed. In no time we’re screaming up the ramp towards the light and we’re out again in the skyscraper shadowed morning, loose papers and leaves blowing by in a light wind. I head back down the street towards the library, the scene of last night’s violence.

  I see the dark blots of the Pinscher bodies before I even hop the curb, the blood splattering in a cone from the one I shot. Then the other body, its head twisted around by the force of my blow using the fire extinguisher. The third one escaped, it seems, trailing a black leash of blood behind it and I do what I’d planned out in my head, easing the Beast’s front tires over the curb and onto the plaza, scaring a few pigeons away in the process. I jam the Beast’s wheel around and screech through a U. Then I jam the truck into reverse and back up right to the library’s front door. Scanning around the plaza, I don’t see the book. I must have left it in the foyer on the way out yesterday.

  “Stay here.”

  Ruff.

  I get out of the car and close the door behind me, one of the loaded shotguns held in front like a shield. In the library I swing the half open gate the rest of the way with my shoe tip and walk into the foyer. I sweep around the tile entrance but turn up nothing. Eventually, I find the book on the escalator where I had stopped last night. Apparently, my encounter with Charley made me forget completely about the book.

  I have to laugh at myself. My
quest seems so Quixotic now in the rational light of the morning.

  I sit there on the escalator and crack the book open on my lap. What is in here that had felt so urgent? Of course, there was one line in particular warning about some impending doom that I had forgotten about but could not for the life of me remember on my own. However the book is made for TV, for some show meant to scare users into watching. Well, it wasn’t presented as a tragedy in the book, just a fact of what would happen, a doom to nobody in particular. No the real tragedy presented was for all the zoo animals and pets locked in their cages, no way of getting out unlike the Pinschers I encountered last night. I mince through the pages thinking that I will encounter those sad passages again before finding what I am really looking for. But no hesitation is necessary. I find the passages I had originally sought on page thirty five:

  “About ten days after the disappearance of humanity, the nuclear power plants, having run out of diesel fuel to keep the cooling pumps running, will begin to go into full meltdown. Inevitably, the pressure inside the containment chambers will reach such a level as to cause volcanic explosions of radioactive steam and particularized nuclear material. Over days, the nuclear cloud will cover most of the Northern hemisphere, killing or sickening or causing secondary mutations in untold numbers of flora and fauna. However, the wildlife in the Southern Hemisphere will for the most part be safe: even taking into account the few advanced economies, such as Australia, there are only a handful of nuclear reactors in the southern hemisphere, three total in all of South America, actually. So, in this post-apocalyptic world, the rain forest will finally be mostly out of danger.”