this is how the world ends

this is how the world ends

this is how the world ends

this is how the world ends

not with a bang,

but with a whimper

-the hollow men, t.s.eliot

 

The world ends with a whimper, after all.

 

Within two months, the screaming stops, but the silence is just as deafening.

 

I don’t remember when it became clear something was wrong. That it wasn’t the common cold that had been sweeping through the continent — the cold doesn’t kill within the week. As the first month drew to a close, the rest of the world had closed their airports and harbors, shutting us out. People began to gather around at lonely street corners, wailing for repentance and crying about our sins. But regardless of race, language, or religion: revelation hits, fast, hard, relentless, and leaves a crushed mess in its wake.

 

It’s a losing battle, and I know it. I wait for the sickness to take me, but it doesn’t touch me. Something genetic, perhaps, some final sick joke from the heavens. And soon, there is almost no one left on the streets of my dusty town, except me.

 

All communication had gone down swiftly, with no one to work and power the stations. Syracuse University held out for a while, but eventually, all that was coming through the phone lines had dissolved into a static, mournful buzz.

 

I spend my days desperately trying to reach Roy — maybe the immunity is genetic, and maybe my sweet, happy brother is still alive somewhere in San Francisco. Of course, I can’t contact him, not through the broken telephone wires and crumbling network towers. And so I move mechanically, half-blind with fear and weariness and panic, until there is no more dying because they are all, every single one of them in this crumbling city, dead.

 

The next day, I load my Volkswagen with as much as I can — canned food, clothes, water. There’s a radio on the windowsill of the third floor (old lady Rosie’s, before we lost her three weeks into the epidemic) and I hesitate for a moment before I grab it, sitting it gingerly on the dashboard of the rumbling car.

 

Before I leave, I apologize, one last time, to the white building of bodies I have to let go. Then, I start my journey home.

 

​

Going is slow. Every so often, I make a detour to avoid those shrunken, still bodies strewn across the road. It would be easiest to run over them, to ignore the way they burst under the heavy tires, but I can’t bear the thought. There are no more people left to save, but this is one last respect I can pay them.

 

The bodies slow me down, but there are other things I carelessly forget to account for. A day into my journey, I smell fire in my dreams and wake up to see New York city burning. There’s nothing left but ashes and the stifling chemicals that had broken down and released the toxic waste into what’s left of the Earth. The result is a fire hungry enough to erase the heavens. The crackle of the fire melds into a howl of static, too loud for this broken world.

 

It would be so dreadfully easy to give up — and it’s not a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind a few times; even before the world ended. There’s a pistol in my belt, a rope lying on the front seat, a kitchen knife in the trunk. I get to choose how I go, I realize, eyes bleary from staring at the sprawling miles of tarmac — and that’s a freedom that no one else in the world got to have. I let out a short, shaky chuckle at the irony. Yet the steady mantra of Roy, Roy, Roy beats through my veins, keeping my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the faint ring of moonlight edging the mountains in silver, against the dark sky.

 

I don’t know if he’s alive. I don’t even know if he’s immune. But hope is a powerful thing. So I drive on, the car’s purr ripping through the empty city like an open wound.

 

​
 

The sun has been reduced to a sickly spark in the concrete sky, the moon a little more than a forgotten daydream. The stars Roy and I watched together, shoulder to shoulder, eyes ablaze,  have drowned in a sickly gray.

 

The backroads that I’ve come to resort to are so much more prone to fire — wildlands subject to the merciless beating of the sun and smoke — and more than once I’m forced back a few miles to avoid the crackling, hungry flames and plot a new course. My heart beats in my ears when the world gets quiet, the steady chant of find-Roy-find-Roy-find-Roy thrumming low and terrified.

 

“Roy, you there?” I try the radio, like I did last night — like I do every night, on the station that we used to whisper along on when we were younger. The fact that he hasn’t replied yet doesn’t mean anything. He might not have thought of using a radio. It doesn’t mean anything, I repeat, over the hot buzzing in my head. “Roy, I know you’re there.”

 

The only reply is a desolate howl of static, too loud for this lonely new world.

 

​

I give in, once.

 

There is no heaven, no god, no benevolent being that would let this happen and leave me alive as a grotesque joke, alone to survive. The gun I hold to my temple trembles in tempo with my shaking fingers; but I go with the knife in the end, biting down hard enough to taste copper as I aim it at my wrist.

 

The sharp, bright bite of pain is shocking after months of cloying death. I swear, loudly and for a long time, voice ringing into the empty sky. The blade comes away scarlet, but also brown with rust. Not deep enough. I lean out the window and retch into the earth.

 

By the time I’m done throwing up, the sun had set, a dirty orange glow staining the horizon. I throw the knife out of the window and floor the acceleration without looking back.

​
 

​

“Roy, you asshole, you’re really gonna make me wait, huh?” I whisper into the chunk of metal — is it even working? A single star is visible tonight, and I squint at it while waiting for the inevitable silence.

 

“Hello?”

 

I almost drop the radio. “Roy?”

 

A brief pause — the longest in my life. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know a Roy.”

 

The voice is quiet, but I can tell it’s obviously not Roy. It was silly of me to ask at all, but it’s an honest-to-life person, and it feels pretty damn good. I swallow the disappointment. “No, no it’s okay. Nice to know I’m not the only person left on this hunk of rock.”

 

“Yeah,” he says, and then falls silent again. I bite back my anger. Not only is he not Roy, but this guy can’t hold a conversation to save his life. How unfair is that?

 

“I thought I was alone,” Not-Roy starts again, and his voice is so full of relief that I almost, almost forgive him for not being Roy.

 

“Well,” I say, “It’s you plus Annie Hastur now. Thank god some people have an immunity to this thing, I guess-”

 

“I think you’ll find that thanking god is pretty far down on my list,” he says. His voice is impassive but it's hard to miss the bitterness in his voice. Okay, not religious. I grasp for it, for anything I can understand about Not-Roy from his voice, his words. The mantra in my head, just for a moment, shifts to person-person-person.

 

“You’re alive, that’s something to be thankful for.” I say, pressing my arm closer to myself. The wound in my forearm stings, a reminder, a warning. Not-Roy lets out a short, quiet laugh at what I said. I don’t pursue, don’t want to get into a fight with the last person on earth; wouldn’t be a long shot for me. “What’s your name?”

 

“Michael,” he breathes, a weary release of terror and tension, a sound I’m painfully familiar with. “Michael Coteau.”

 

“Like the angel.” I say, before pulling a face. What kind of lame response was that?

 

“Yeah,” he laughs quietly. I grasp for the sound of another human, another human laughing. “Well, Revelation or not, it’s nice to meet you, Annie Hastur.”

 

“It can’t be the apocalypse, there’s no hellfire,” I said, lightly, after a long pause. What do you say to someone who could be the last person alive on earth with you?

 

“Well, you’re obviously not in California,” Michael laughs darkly. Lightning runs through my veins just then. California. He’s in California, maybe even near San Francisco. Near where Roy lives, in his little apartment by the bay.  Before I can comment on that, however, a burst of static jolts the radio.

 

“The flames are spreading again,” Michael whispers, lowering his voice as though anyone was left to hear him. “I need to go. Now. Napa’s a pile of ash, and well, I don’t fancy joining them quite yet.” My lips are forming around the words Roy and have you seen and don’t leave, don’t leave, I only just found you — all at once — but the other side goes quiet with a loud, jarring clack.

 

It pierces me through and through.

 

I sit in the battered car for a long time holding the radio to my face, static jarring my brains, my throat dry and tight. I look up into the sky, squinting beyond the mournful “Welcome to Missouri!!!” sign, trying to find something, anything. There are no stars anymore, no light from anything except the clouds, tinged a dull crimson from the flames dancing over the horizon.

 

​

The next morning, the radio spits into the dusty morning air, and Michael’s wheeze of “Annie?” comes through, quiet; like he’s afraid he’s speaking into an empty void.

 

“I’m here,” I lunge for the little metal box that now holds the world, the stars, the universe.

 

Michael exhales, deeply. “Good, that’s good.” A brief pause. “I’m sorry I had to leave so fast yesterday. I had two buildings come down on me already and I wasn’t waiting for a third. Not how I want to go.”

 

“S’okay. Are you near San Francisco? My brother studies there-”

 

“It’s next to Silicon Valley and the factories — last I heard, the explosions— ” Michael cuts himself off, as he realizes how that sounded. “They’ve evacuated the area. Cali’s used to dealing with fire, I’m sure your brother got out.”

 

I can’t tell if he’s just trying to make me feel better, but he seems so sincere that I take his word for it. “Why are you still there?”

 

“I’ve been-” He coughs, and this time it doesn’t sound like it’s from the dust. “I’ve been going around to museums, libraries, stores…” He clears his throat again. “There are things that don’t deserve to be lost.”

 

“Things?” A dull anger twists inside me. I imagine Roy sitting at the corner of an abandoned road, wheezing, coughing, bricks crumbling all around him while an inferno devoured him. The way this guy sounded, detached, nonchalant, like he was talking about the fucking weather, while people were dying, have died— “You’re saving things; what about people?”

 

Michael’s voice comes firm and tight, “there are none left, Annie. I’ve sat in hospitals, watching and hoping that this one’s going to be like me and survive but they never do. This was the next best thing I could think of. I don't know, like a reminder of what the world was once like.”

 

I am instantly sorry, so sorry, but I swallow an apology and I don’t know why. “That’s, that’s great, Michael.”

 

There is silence, and I’m sure that I’ve driven away the last person on earth but his voice comes through, teasing, “Hey, you said something nice to me.”

 

“First time for everything,” I say, smiling, but just a little.

 

​
 

The greasy cans of preserved hotdogs and spam that I pulls out of gas station shelves can’t fill my hunger anymore, not in the way Michael’s transmissions do. And sometimes, I think I can go on forever like this. But now and again, I can see a bike overturned, a purse resting on the sidewalk, a pink sweater blowing across the street — and the sheer loss, the realization that I have lost everything, hits painfully hard..

 

Sometimes, I mourn the billions of people in the ground; but most of the time, I mourn for myself. It's hideously selfish but hey, they’re dead. I’m not. I mourned that I would never walk down a street bathed in sunlight, would never wake up and groan at a Monday-morning alarm, might never smile again or love or laugh or feel. And all those people who could have made that happen; all those people I could have known and cared for, they might as well have never existed, because who was left to remember them?

 

“We can,” Michael says, one day, and I don’t even realize I had been talking aloud until his voice jolts me out of all that sadness. Don’t even realize I’d turned the radio on, even though it had become a ritual, a few minutes of conversation before facing our own silent worlds again. I don’t let myself think about what would happen if one day the radio stayed silent.

 

“We can,” Michael repeats. “And we will.”

 

​

Minutes grow to hours, and I talk about myself — about the old house with the blue door and the raintree. Of branches and wind whipping in my face, of music shattering through the quiet night as I tore down the interstate, voice cracking and eyes ablaze like the stars above me. Of escape from life at home, the screaming and shouting, the broken bottles and thick smoke.

 

“Why us, Michael?” I say, mouth bitter. “Why do we get to live?”

 

Michael sighs, and it comes through as a comforting pop of static. “Annie—”

 

“So many good people in the ground, Michael, and I’m walking around like I deserve it.”

 

“If you are still alive, then there are good people walking the earth.” Michael says, then pauses when he hears my breath catch. “You’ve mentioned trying to help the people in the hospital, sometimes, on the nights where you talk like you’ve only got one more day to live. I don’t know if you even notice. You’re a good person, and I am happy you are alive.”

 

“Well,” I say, unsure what to do with this information. It’s almost news to me. A good person. He’s happy I’m alive. Happy. “Well, you’re not too bad yourself, disgustingly sappy as you get sometimes.”

 

It comes out as a rushed mumble. Michael laughs then, and I think he realizes that this is the closest I can come to trusting someone else; to things like thank you and you saved my life and you’re a good person, too.

 

​

In return, Michael offers a little about himself. He’s two years older than me. His family is from Florida, but he moved to California a few years ago. We sit in silence after that, and I watch the night seep into the sky. It’s calm, comforting, despite everything.

 

I learn other things, slowly.

 

He has green eyes.

 

He loves mac and cheese.

 

He’s terrified of the ocean.

 

His laughter is rare, but when I tease it out of him, the whole day feels warmer.

 

​

“I miss the stars,” Michael tells me, one night, after a few minutes of listening to each other breathe. “I feel lost without them.”

 

I push back the ragged hem of my motel curtain, and gaze at the gray sky.

 

“It’s not fair that we lose the earth and the heavens at the same time,” Michael says, quietly, “It’s like, crushing me. Like we’re truly alone.”

 

“You’re not alone,” I say, almost automatically. He is silent for a moment.

 

“I know, I know. But I- I went into a hospital nursery today, looking for medicine. It was a mistake. I forget, sometimes, how much things are gone.” I shudder at that, imagining little skeletons swaddled up in pastel shades of pink and blue.

 

“Yeah. But we’ll rebuild,” I say, working myself up into an emotion I don’t quite understand myself. “We’ll rebuild, you know why? Because we’re human, and the clouds will clear. We’ll survive like we always do, no matter how much we don’t want to, and we’ll get through this. The smoke and clouds will clear, and we’ll see the stars again. We’ll get our world back again, I promise.”

 

There is no response. Heat rushes into my cheeks — what had I just said was sappier than anything Michael had every said: as though we were in some kind of dystopian book, as though some motivational speech could bring back billions of people. It was lame and silly. I was silly. There’s short huffing sound—

 

“Are you laughing?” I demand, cheeks thoroughly feverish, drenched with embarrassment.

 

“Oh,” Michael whispers, and I can hear his smile from all those miles away. “Oh, you. I’m not laughing at you, Annie, never at you. I believe you could rebuild the whole world, if you put your heart to it, Annie Hastur.”

 

Really, it’s not fair how often Michael leaves me speechless.

 

​

I last until I hit Utah, then I crack.

 

“Michael, please, go to San Francisco.” I beg, voice cracking. “I’m at least a few days away, please, I have to know there’s nothing there, or h-his body, or something. I have to know.”

 

“I told you, Annie. There is nothing for either of us there. The place was on fire.” Michael says, gently. “There’s nothing there.”

 

“Michael, please.”

 

A pause. “Annie, the last time I went into a building that was on fire, it collapsed. It took me hours to claw out—” Michael’s voice wilts, and I know how much I’m asking him, but I don’t care, I don’t care. I need this. “I won’t find a body — dead or alive — in a city burnt to the ground.”

 

“Michael, I know it’s a lot to ask but I can’t go another day not knowing-”

 

“Believe that your brother is alive, Annie—”

 

“No, don’t fucking say it.” I snap, fingers digging painfully into the metal of the radio. “Don’t you dare tell me to believe, not when I was finally beginning to believe in you and you’re letting me down.”

 

It’s not fair, and I know it the moment the words leave my lips. Michael exhales sharply, and I’m stumbling over words to take it back, backtrack, anything, when the line goes dead.

 

“Michael?” I plead, quietly.

 

No answer, and this time, the silence goes deeper than bone.

 

​
 

The radio remains silent for two days. I barely eat, and I don’t close my eyes because the moment I do, I see Roy — consumed in flame, withered, shrivelled, and Michael is right next to him, too.

 

​

I’m almost out of Nevada when Michael comes through, coughing like he’s about to expel a lung.

 

“Annie?” He wheezes, and I swerve, barely missing a tree. “I just got out of San Fran.”

 

“You what?” I floor the brakes, wheels squealing, radio shaking in my hands. “Michael, why did you go?”

 

“You asked me to,” Michael said, confused, like there was no other outcome. And it’s terrifying, this loyalty I never did anything to earn, to deserve.

 

“I didn’t find anything at the school you mentioned your brother had gone to, or around the city. Nothing much that I could recognize, anyway. I’m sorry.” He sounds hoarse, and I wonder what it must have been like, wading through stone scorched white and the blackened remains of the fallen and I almost throw up. I still don’t know where Roy is, if he’s immune, and I almost lost Michael, too. I still might have.

 

“I’m sorry,” I say, finally, for the first time. “I didn’t mean what I- any of that. I was angry, and afraid. You’ve never let me down, not once, and- and I wasn’t just beginning to believe in you. And we’re not in the same place so I can’t even tell you not to leave and you could just leave and never look back and I would understand-”

 

“Annie.” He breathes. “Stop.”

 

I do.

 

There is a long silence, longer than anything. Finally, he says, voice lower than ever before. “We could be in the same place.” Everything fades out for a second, and when the world returns, Michael is still speaking. I didn’t deserve days like these, where the world was in ruins but there was something flickering over the horizon, something very close to hope.

 

“Maybe we should be in the same place,” Michael says. And the hope glimmers, brightly, bravely, over the horizon, casting the ruins in a kind of light that you don’t ever forget.

 

​
 

Michael reaches the meeting point first.

 

He’s sitting on the hood by the time I arrive, limbs splayed over the metal, skin stretched tight over his throat as he and I look up at a clear sky for the first time. I climb out of the car, fingertips buzzing. The stars spread a faint nimbus of light around Michael’s head — the effigy of a halo, edging his features in silver. He’s silent as he turns to face me.

 

His eyes are the color of a sky that doesn't exist anymore, and I wonder how, in all of the time we spent talking, he never mentioned how beautiful they were. We still for a moment, sharing a look that makes my skin hum, calmly and infinitely. Michael doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to speak — and inclines his head slightly at the spot next to him on the windshield.

 

I settle into the space beside him, the warm lines of our arms pressing together, and study the night sky. It’s something I never imagined doing with someone else — the stars were Roy’s and my only escape from an angry world; then later on, from a broken one — but it feels almost as comfortable here, with Michael as an anchor.

 

“Gemini’s out,” Michael offers, quietly. 

 

“I don’t know jack shit about this stuff,” I admit. “The constellations, I mean. I make up my own ones.”

 

Michael looks at me from the corner of his eye. “Of course you do,” he says, and his voice is so unbearably full of adoration that I almost turn away from something so unreserved, so open. I don't deserve it. I tell him this.

 

“Of course you do,” he repeats. His voice is gentle, a melody different from the ash and terror, different from the grating anger and cold depth of sorrow; different from everything I’ve ever known. It strikes a new chord in me, a smouldering song that unfolds its crumpled wings and soars. The sky is ablaze, the first time in a very long time.

 

“Yeah,” I whisper, and I know that he hears everything behind it.

 

Above us, the stars glow, searing a new path through the night.