As always, if you want to give me feedback, please e-mail me at blochster@gmail.com. This is a beginning draft of this story. I encourage constructive criticism only and doing so in a personal message would be best. I appreciate you reading and giving tips on how to improve this story and my writing. My hope is to one day become a published writer.
PS: This is not a zombie story!!!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dead
City
(this is my original work and any attempt to reprint or copy needs my written permission)
(this is my original work and any attempt to reprint or copy needs my written permission)
“No tomorrow. I find it kind of funny, I find it kind
of sad. The dreams in which I’m
dying are the best I’ve ever had.
I find it hard to tell you cause I find it hard to take. When people run in circles it’s a very
very mad world.” This was my new
soundtrack to life. Mad
world. Two words that reflected my
new reality so very poignantly. I
don’t need any other description to you just: mad world.
I
have always been a huge fan of apocalyptic fiction. I’ve read Max Brook’s zombie fiction as well as The Road, The Stand, and Zone One. A zombie apocalypse would have been exciting. A story of cannibalism by live would be way more interesting than what
actually happened. I really
thought I would have been prepared for anything except for this. There was no book on earth that could
have prepared me for this, the reality.
Strange how reality is a lot stranger than fiction. The end of the world? This is it! No fucking way!
My brain was still registering everything that had happened in only a
couple of very long, drawn out weeks.
What’s
funny is that even my dreams could not have prepared me for what actually
transpired. I used to have dreams
of fires and floods, earthquakes and tornadoes; each one resulting in traumatic
pandemonium and unprecedented heartache.
In each dream, I was either alone or with one surviving family
member. We always united in search
of our other lost family, knowing deep down that the others were dead. In my dreams, I heard screams and
whales. I saw miles and miles of
bulletin boards stretched out with people’s faces and names, numbers,
places. People scrambling to find
lost loved ones and best friends.
Each person knowing what I knew, that whoever they were searching for
was dead. Dead like the brown
leaves in late November. Dead like
a black, decaying toenail. Dead as
in absent from the role call of life.
The
first day, the day when things started going awry is a day that will be etched
into my memory forever. A day just
like 9/11. I remember exactly
where and what I was doing on that day too. On September, 11th, 2001, I was a sophomore in
college. I was coming back from
taking a shower, and the cleaning woman for my residence hall, with the same
(female) version of my name, Frankie, told me that a plane had crashed into
some tower. At first, I thought
she was talking about some television show or a dream that she had. Frankie and I often had very animated
conversations in the hallway of the dorm.
However,
this time I could see the panic in her eyes and hear the fear in her
voice. What she was saying didn’t
make any sense. I went into my
room, closed the door, got dressed and came back out where Frankie still stood
in the hallway, like she was waiting to guide me to knowledge. She took my arm and led me into the rec
room with the lone television on our floor. I saw other students glued to the TV set and gathered around
on couches hugging their knees and each other for comfort. It was a blue sky Tuesday fall morning
and usually the television was off and students were lazily lolling out the
door to class.
Today
was different. I watched,
horrified, transfixed, as the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I thought I was watching a movie. It didn’t seem real. Worst of all is that I had to rush out
the door to get to my meeting with my History Professor. I was meeting to discuss my
thesis. However, that meeting like
all of my classes and activities for the day would be cancelled.
When I knocked on my professor’s
door, I saw a body hunched over a desk, sobbing. I wrote a note on her door, and went to the dining hall to
eat. It was emptier than usual. I didn’t see any friends which was fine
and good because I wanted to eat in silence. In fact, I spent the whole rest of the day in silent
meditation. That’s when I heard
screams coming from the entrance to the dining hall. “The second one fell.
They got the second tower too.
And the Pentagon is under attack!”
The world was in pandemonium.
I decided to split and return to my dorm room. I wanted to spend the day in sequestered silence, like a
monk high in the mountains. I thought it was the end of the world.
The
first day of my new life was just like this. The first day of the end was etched on my memory like a
branded cow. It really was a day
like any other. A day full of
promise and hope. It was a
blistery winter day. All the trees
were naked and exposed to the elements.
The sky was a sheet metal shade of grey. I had to hold my scarf to my chest to keep it from blowing
away.
I
didn’t think it strange to find my apartment empty, as it was almost
lunchtime. People were at work,
doing laundry, watching soaps, maybe cooking soups over their stoves. I walked out onto Bedford and didn’t
notice that there were no cars or people.
I usually was pretty oblivious to what was happening around me. As a New Yorker, you know to keep one
eye in front of you and one eye roaming to your left and right. However, when it’s cold and you need
orange juice and bread, you just plug in your Ipod and keep your eyes straight
ahead. So, no nothing seemed
strange. That is, not until I got
to Flatbush Avenue, which was usually bustling with activity this time of day.
As
I turned a corner and hit Flatbush Avenue, that’s when I first noticed IT. The ‘change’. It was mid-day and most storefronts had their metal gates
down. It looked like a Sunday
morning. Flatbush Avenue with its
wig shops, beauty salons, Chinese
restaurants, and dollar value stores was empty. Not a soul, not a peep. I could hear the wind in the trees and a few dogs barking in
the distance but that’s all.
Was
I dreaming? Had there been a
terrorist attack? A natural
disaster? Nothing else seemed
amiss. There was just an absence
of people and sound. It reminded
me of an exhibit I saw once at a museum in Massachusetts where vintage carnival
equipment was set up in a large room.
A few lights went on and off but there was little movement and an
absence of sound. The laughter and
merriment that you associate with a
carnival were stripped from the room. It was eerie just like the moment I was experiencing. I felt like I had gone deaf but I knew
my ears were working just fine.
Did I step into some alternate reality?
It
was at that moment that I decided to go into one of the only open storefronts,
a Dunkin’ Donuts. 24 hours. At going in, I would regret opening
that door the minute I entered the warmth and silence of my usual haven for
reasonably priced coffee and donuts.
The stench was unbearable.
Have you ever had a dead mouse in your apartment? It smells like dead leaves and
rotting vegetables. The stench is
unforgettable. Well, almost
immediately I felt like vomiting.
I covered my entire mouth and nose with my scarf. But even then, that particular smell of
death still permeated my lungs.
Death and donuts. I saw one
of the cashier’s bodies strewn across the counter still clutching a now gone
cold cup of coffee. Another
cashier was lying on the floor under the donut display where some Boston Creams
were blocking a view of her disfigured and rotting face.
I
saw other bodies too. A West
Indian woman clutching a toddler to her breast. A little girl not past the age of two or three. The woman had long, grey and brown
dreadlocks which covered most of her face. I, however, could see the dried blood seeping from her
mouth. The little girl had blood
all over her dress. Her tiny hand
was clutching a chocolate munchkin in a napkin. I turned away in horror. Then I noticed an elderly Chinese man seated in a chair,
slumped over a table. His hot
beverage spilled and sticky all over the tiled floor. There was a pool of blood under his face that mixed in with
whatever he had been drinking.
What
had happened here? Murder? Carbon Monoxide poisoning? This Dunkin Donuts had a Grade Pending
after all. I ran out of the Dunkin
Donuts and screamed a blood curdling horror movie scream. Nothing. No one came running.
No undead came shuffling down the street. Whatever had happened had possibly involved the entire
neighborhood, the entirety of New York City. Maybe even the whole nation, the whole world. I then realized that I couldn’t make
any calls because I had left my cell phone to charge at home. A common occurrence when I ran out
quickly to pick up a few things at the grocery store. Thank goodness for my photographic memory. So, I went back into the Dunkin Donuts
and noticed the Iphone on the floor right next to the dreadlocked woman. I picked it up.
I
went back outside and did what anyone living in the 21st century
would do. I tried to call my
girlfriend, Marita. I kept getting
a fast paced beep. Busy.
Busy. Busy. I tried to call her again. Nothing. All the lines must be tied up, that or dare I say it, dead. I tried calling 911. A nasalized voice said ‘I’m sorry, but
the party you’re trying to reach is unavailable.’ Unavailable?
How could the NYPD be ‘unavailable’? What exactly was going on?
I
walked up and down Flatbush Avenue.
Either stores had their grey metal gates up or the ones that were open
had the same internal organs as the Dunkin Donuts. I would look in the glass window and see bodies on the
floor, on the register, strewn out over clothing racks, hands outstretched like
mannequins of the macabre.
It
was the one time in my life, being a New Yorker that I longed for company. I wanted to hear a voice or a
laugh. To breathe in cigarette
smoke or car exhaust would mean an explanation. Seeing a vagrant or widowed housewife would mean I could
understand. It was like my senses
were handicapped, AWOL.
I
tried calling a slue of phone numbers.
All of them got the same response.
Everyone I knew was quite possibly dead. Their fate being similar to every corpse I had already
seen. Why weren’t there any bodies
laying in the street? Was everyone
waiting for death silently in the warmth of modernity? That’s when I saw it. A pillar of smoke and flames. There was a massive pile-up of cars
down by Caton Avenue, by the Caton Market. When it happened, it must have blocked off all traffic. Semi-trucks and mini vans, livery cabs
and sedans, vans and city buses.
There were about fifty or sixty vehicles and more stretched out past my
field of vision. I didn’t have to
go any closer to see that each driver was dead and rotting like the bodies I
first saw in Dunkin Donuts.
Whatever
traffic there had been on either side of Flatbush must have created one giant
human puzzle of carnage. A barrier
to any cars and buses getting through to the part of Flatbush I had been
walking down. And in this reality,
no bodies came walking out of the flames.
Everyone was dead as reality.
Nothing supernatural about burning flesh and bloodied corpses.
At least I wouldn’t have to worry
about fending off swarms of mobs, dead or undead. I could still waltz into the grocery and get needed
supplies. Well, first thing on my
list would be a cloth mask. A few
dozen packs of them. Maybe an air
freshener or two to stick on the inside of my scarf. Apple Cinnamon or Hawaiian Breeze? Funny how I still had these choices of an American consumer. Yet all of the people coming up with
the ideas for flavors and advertising were probably now deceased. Their products would live on with the
memory of the minds that came up with their concepts at a board meeting.
What
would I do now? Well I guess I had
an eternity to figure that out.
Maybe I’d just find a penthouse overlooking Central Park, one devoid of
bodies. Could I look for other
people like me? Did I want to find
anyone? Yes, I think so. Today Brooklyn. Tomorrow Manhattan. Then Queens, the Bronx. Staten Island if I could get to it at
all. The rest of Long Island. Rochester, Albany, Schenectady, Buffalo. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,
Vermont. South America, Mexico,
Alaska. I’d go anywhere my feet or
a vehicle could take me. The world was now at my fingertips.
Just
put in my Ipod headphones.
Continue to walk on and explore my new world. That’s what I would do. “I know you didn’t realize that the city was gone. You thought there would be
advertisements to give you something to go on. And so we search the sky for any flashing signs. We’ve gone too far beyond the borders,
it’s just you and I. And if this
is the end, best place I’ve ever been.
It feels so good to just get lost sometimes. Only the horses.”
Yes, indeed, now it’s only just me and the horses.
------------
mmm...brains,
~R~
------------
mmm...brains,
~R~
No comments:
Post a Comment