The End Boxset: Postapocalyptic Visions of an Unstoppable Collapse (2 page)

A few more steps from the door and then it happened: an unexplainable fall and Brian was on the ground in no time. The books he carried flew into the air. He hit the ground hard, as if the extra weight of his backpack pulled him down. He could smell ammonia from the freshly mopped hall. For a quick moment there was silence. Then it began. The surrounding children pointed and roared with laughter. It was a magnificent fall and destined to be talked about for ages. 

Brian had tripped over his own foot, flying into the air, launching his books even further. He hit the ground with not only a thud, but a comical slide. Had this been the Olympics for sixth graders, he would have broken records. The children gathered around to see his face. Some kicked his books as they walked by. He tried not to make eye contact with anyone as he got up. If his face were to be recognized he knew that the incident would follow him forever. 

The next day fared a little better. It didn't seem like anyone had remember. It almost felt like he had been given a clean slate. Then again, the first period bell hadn't even rung yet. Brian made his way to his locker looking down, trying to remain inconspicuous. He opened the metallic locker in front of him on the second row and tossed some books inside. He reached in his backpack for the new lock his mom had bought him. It had to be in the bag somewhere, because there's no way he would have forgotten it again.

Brian felt the heat of anxiety and frustration overtaking him. Where the hell was the lock? He dug and dug through backpack, but could find nothing. The sound of lockers opening and shutting from all sides irritated him further. Brian felt sweat forming on his forehead. His anger was increasing with each slam of the surrounding lockers. Brian threw his backpack to the ground. “Shit!” he shouted. Suddenly a locker shut right next to him, revealing a boy his own age. “You okay?” the boy asked.

Brian felt foolish and squatted down to retrieve his backpack.

“Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks,” he said while slinging the bag over his shoulder.

The other boy nodded and looked back at Brian. His eyes squinted. He raised his finger and pointed.

“Hey...you're that kid who fell yesterday,” he said, star struck.    

Brian looked at the ground, embarrassed that he'd been recognized. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

The other boy was undeterred. “It's you alright. I remember your face. Man, everyone is talking about that,” the boy said laughing. “You're a legend!”

“That's great, whatever,” Brian said attempting to push past the boy.

“Hold on, you didn't lock your locker,” the boy said while blocking his path.

“I forgot my lock.”

“Hey, why don't you just use mine for the day?”

Brian stopped for a moment and turned to face the boy.

“That's okay, thanks.”

“I'm serious, just put your books in mine. I'll be here after every class period.”

“Nah.”

“Someone is going to steal them, I'm dead serious.”

Brian had heard just about enough.

“Oh yeah? Who? Who is going to want a bunch of stupid school books?” he demanded.

The boy shifted Brian's focus down the hall where a disheveled and aged man with a beer gut mopped the floor.

“See that guy there?” the boy said pointing, “He steals stuff from lockers, like, all the time. I think he does it to teach the kids a lesson. They say he used to be an Army guy. That he's, like, been to war and now all he does is mop floors and steal things out of kid's lockers.”

“Whoa. Really?” Brian asked, mildly impressed.

“Yep. The kids call him GI Joke,” the boy said laughing.

Brian laughed as well. He couldn't remember the last time he had a good laugh.

“I'm Tobias,” the boy said.

“I'm Brian,” Brian replied.

“So you gonna put your books in my locker or what?”

Brian didn't see the harm in it, and turned back to his locker to get them. Tobias spun the combination on his lock and swung the locker door open. He took notice of the books Brian handed him.

“Pre-Algebra? Hey, I have that class too. It makes me want to puke.” Tobias said gagging.

“It's not that bad,” Brian said while closing his locker.

“Who you got next?”

Brian pulled a schedule from his pocket and unfolded it.

“Uh, biology with Mr. Chase.”

Tobias looked surprised.

“I have him next too,” he said.

“Cool.”

For a moment the two boys stood there with nothing else left to say as other students scurried around them. “We better get to class then,” Tobias stated. “Sure, yeah. Sounds good,” Brian answered, and the two boys walked off to class together.

Chapter 4: Alice: Prepper Mom

Alice was prepared for the worst. She had passed the point of just passively accepting that society was on a one-way collision towards disaster. She fully expected it to happen. In all of her planning, she never felt like it was enough. She hadn't worked since the move to Pittsburgh. Randall's salary was their sole income. Besides, she considered preparing for the collapse a full-time job. All day she read things on the internet, along with books about the best and worst places to live following a disaster. She also tended her garden daily, and packed nonperishable food and supplies throughout their storage space in the garage. But what started out as practical planning soon became an obsession.

She sneered at the idea of the apocalypse, or at least in arguments with Randall, because for her, it sounded like a fantasy. What she did believe was that the world was going to face a complete economic collapse. This would then cause rioting and looting, anarchy, and eventual martial law. The thought of an attack by a foreign country was also never far from her mind.

She had never before been this invested in current events, but bankruptcy opened her eyes to some disturbing trends. Food prices were going up. Utilities were rising. Fuel prices were unpredictable—rising, then dropping, then rising again. Then for a while everything remained stagnant. No economic activity whatsoever. This, an internet friend told her in an online disaster prepping group, was the “eye of the tornado,” the moment before disaster. The manipulation of the market and the setting of interest rates by the Federal Reserve was one of the reasons behind this stagnation, her internet friend would say. Once they raised interest rates, which they would have to do at some point, double inflation would inevitably occur. Cost increases of every basic necessity would follow, driving the economy into panic. This, she was told, was the problem behind the misguided micromanagement of the dollar.

Initially Alice didn't pay the concept much mind. She was aware of the effects of inflation and she knew that, in her lifetime, the nation had gone through things like this before. “You don't understand,” her internet friend typed, “We're 26 trillion dollars in debt. There are 150 million people unemployed. Fifteen major American cities have gone bankrupt. It's coming down. All of it. It's already there. You still seem to think there is some resolution to this. There isn't.”

That was back then. That was before Alice got laid off from her fifth job in the past year. Before she met Randall. It didn't make any sense to her. She was a hard worker with extensive experience in the service industry. Her last job was at a call center. She had to fight for an entry level position fit for a teenager. Within weeks of starting, the call center cut fifty personnel. More downsizing. As she took the bus home, Alice placed her hands in her head and said, “I just can't do this anymore.”

Even the latest news report on the national unemployment rate couldn't conceal the fact that it had neared 32 percent by the end of the year. The news looked at this as “progress.” They reported a minor drop from 32.5 percent to 32 as a success. Alice felt overwhelmed. She wanted to have the best for her children. She was sick of the uncertainty. Sick of the poverty. Every cent she managed went to the bankruptcy. The unemployment checks between jobs were hit-or-miss. One week she received a letter in the mail stating that unemployment wages had been deferred until the next fiscal year. “Or until they figure out how to get the money,” she said.

With five hundred dollars in the bank and no retirement savings, Alice was facing desperate times. Her parents of modest income lived in Tennessee, but she hadn't spoken to them in years. Ages it seemed. They never approved of her marriage to her first husband, the drunk, and that disapproval turned into bitterness on both sides. Contact was eventually lost. After the divorce, Alice attempted to make amends and call her parents. “What do you want?” Her mother said on the other line.

Her mother was every bit as stubborn as Alice. This inherited stubbornness is part of the reason she kept her children away from their father after he crashed her car and ended up in the hospital. The same reason she got a restraining order against him and forbade him from ever coming to the house again. After his life descended into hard drug use, bar fights, and constant trouble with the law, she would toss the letters he wrote from prison into the garbage.
You'll never see these children again, you've shamed us enough
,
she would write back.
It felt good to write letters back condemning him, but they were never mailed. They went in the trash with his letters to the children.

Alice had been an attractive woman, but life had worn her down. She was aging. Her straight shoulder-length hair was turning gray. Her eyes looked more sunk in than they had five years ago. And the wrinkles on her face were showing, even with makeup. “I'm only forty!” She shouted at the mirror in anger.

She met Randall at a weekend retreat for middle-aged singles. Never in her life had she ever thought that she would end up at a place like that. But she figured that a reasonably priced weekend in Savannah countryside couldn’t be that bad. Plus she hadn't had a date in two years. She would have to take her chances at the ranch. A friend stayed at Alice's one bedroom apartment for the weekend to watch the kids, and she was off. She had hoped to find something beyond the disappointment she had become so accustomed to.

During the initial meeting in the lobby, the group was introduced to each other by an outgoing southern Baptist couple in their 50s. Uncomfortable feelings of awkwardness plagued Alice her entire trip so far. None of the men seemed particularly striking, but Alice told herself she had to be willing to give this place a chance. To add to the issue there were six women and eight men. Something was going to have to give. The outgoing couple apologized for the gender imbalance, “a glitch” they called it. They swore up and down about how great the retreats were and how the weekend could possibly change the lives of the guests. The man, who resembled a new age televangelist, went over some ground rules.

“You're all adults here, and we just want to emphasize that this purpose of this retreat is to bring like-minded individuals together under the eyes of God. This is not a place for casual hook-ups. We expect everyone to treat each other with a fair amount of respect.”

“What have I got myself into?” Alice asked to herself, feeling herself shrink smaller and smaller.

After dinner, everyone went to the bar in the lobby to loosen up. Alice could have used a drink, and the thought had crossed her mind. She noticed the uneven number of men trying their best to intermingle with the women. Every other woman seemed to be younger than Alice
.
Did she wait too long to do something like this? No man had said so much as a word to her yet. Instead they vied for the attention of the ladies at the bar. It was an interesting spectacle to watch. It looked like something off of the animal channel. If the men had antlers they would have probably butted heads by now. 

On the other room sat a man on a couch, reading a newspaper, and casually admiring the wilderness outside. Alice recognized him from the dinner. He was a slightly bald, slightly paunch man wearing a flannel button-up tucked into his blue jeans. He wasn't Prince Charming, but he did look approachable.

“Why aren't you at the bar? “Alice asked as she approached.

Surprised, the man turned to look at her. He flashed a genuine smile.

“Me? Oh. Well, I don't drink,” he replied.

Alice extended her hand.

“Hi, I'm Alice, nice to meet you.”

The man took her hand with a light caress and shook it.

“I'm Randy, it's a pleasure to meet you.”

Chapter 5: Jeremy Rafelson: Preparing for the Worst  

The man the kids called GI Joke had a real name, though few knew it. When not cleaning the grungy bathrooms of public schools, he spent most of his time preparing for the worst. He believed a cataclysmic disaster was fast approaching, most likely an airborne biological virus delivered into the country by a terrorist sleeper cell. He was convinced that such cells were all around him. He was convinced that Pittsburgh alone had at least twenty factions in it all planning to raise havoc. These things kept him up at night. But scenarios would often change. Some nights he believed that the end would come from a nuclear bomb attack from North Korea or Iran. Other nights he believed the attacks could be from domestic infiltrators. Whatever the scenario, Jeremy Rafelson was certain that the end was near.

Jeremy had been a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the army. When his service ended, and all other prospects out the window, he found himself at the very same middle school he attended in his youth.

“Great to be back at this shithole,” Jeremy said to himself as he opened the double doors leading to the orientation for new staff. Though technically it was not the same school he attended during his youth. The school had been highly refurbished, almost unrecognizable to what he remembered twenty years ago.