This Is the End (11 page)

The first video is footage from a news chopper outside of a shopping mall. It looks completely normal. I pull my headphones on and listen to the audio report from the reporter in the chopper. It’s entitled “Garrettsville Mall Massacre.”

“
There’s been an outbreak of what health authorities are calling the H6N7 strain of flu, at the Garrettsville Mall. Police and security from the mall are on the scene and are attempting to lock down the mall and establish a quarantine zone. Be advised that if you are watching this and know someone in the mall or are someone currently trapped in the mall, that there is a standing order by officials to use lethal force on anyone coming out of, or going into the mall at the present time. Authorities on the ground are advising that you please stay put or away from the scene.”

As the reporter continues and the chopper lowers itself down to get a better shot, police cruisers and tactical vans begin establishing a perimeter around the complex. The cops jump out of their vehicles and look like black knights defending a pointless citadel. Their full head-to-toe riot gear glistens in the sun and instead of normal insignias and badges they have the big white DHS emblazoned on their backs. They’re all carrying heavy munitions, lots of firepower, military spec stuff you wouldn’t imagine cops having.

The camera on the chopper zooms in on a couple who have made their way out of one of the bigger department stores. They’re running towards a group of police who look like they’re motioning for the two to stop. They keep coming; the woman has blood running down the front of her shirt and is holding her hand up to her neck. The man is almost dragging her along behind him. Poor fuckers don’t even know what’s going on. Behind them another group of people has made it out. The police put their hands up and then raise their weapons, sight down the couple and, when they don’t stop, they begin shooting.

Blood and tissue and most likely fragments of bone fly from the first couple. Their clothes begin to turn from brightly advertised consumer goods to a comically bright red and then to crimson-soaked rags. A couple of the cops land head shots on the woman and her face splits into three separate parts. Pink and grey chunks of brain blow backwards, up into the air and then come to settle on separate sides of the bodies.

The second group of escapees hit the ground but meets a similar end; then more and more people begin to run out of the mall, filtering out in clusters of threes and fours. Hundreds of people are gunned down in the same fashion as the first couple. The feed from the chopper cuts to two newsanchors in a green room studio. One is a man in a black suit and impeccably crisp, white shirt, which is offset by the purple bags under his eyes. The second is a bleach blonde woman who looks like she’s about twenty-five and hasn’t eaten in months. The man looks down at the screen that’s embedded into the large desk in front of him. He starts to turn green. The woman has her hand up to her open mouth.

The video goes on for a few more seconds; the man attempts to read the script, but after a few brief sentences about how the station should have warned viewers about the shocking content, he turns his head away and sprays sick behind him. The woman begins crying. The video stops. The video aggregator pulls down another clip.

It’s an on the ground, hand cam, gorilla-style piece of footage entitled “My Hood.” It looks like it was taken with a tablet or a phone. The audio sucks, so it was probably a device not running my app. The voice sounds like a teenage boy; I’d say he sounds fifteen, tops. His face comes into frame a few seconds later. It’s a bad close up and even with the terrible resolution from the device’s camera you can see he has a terrible haircut that makes him look like he’s a girl. He’s got a pretty horrific case of acne and braces fighting an overbite of epic proportions that make his words almost unintelligible.

“
So, yeah, I woke up today. Which is cool
,
I guess. I haven’t heard from Mom or Dad yet, but they were downtown, and that was locked down about three days ago, so they haven’t been able to leave their buildings yet. I got an email from Mandy this morning; she said that her college was about the same, but she was safe. I have enough food for now, though I blew through all the Mountain Dew last night. The television doesn’t have anything on it anymore except emergency broadcasts, which blows. But the real reason I’m taking this video is
‘
cause after I woke up I looked out the window and there was this outside…”

He turns the device around in his hand and sticks it through the curtains. As the camera spins, it tries to focus on everything, making my eyes want to cross. Shitty device doesn’t even have steady hand technology; he should have been running the app. Then as the outside comes into focus, you can tell that the sky is bright and clear, the clouds are heavy and white. It’s a picturesque suburb where every house is some slight variation of the next one. But as he pans the device from left to right you begin to see lumbering silhouettes making their way up and down the sidewalks and street. They look like the broken, crooked bodies that I saw out of the window, like the crooked man when I first woke up: empty, open eyes, grey-green skin, some have dried blood stains on their clothes, and some look impeccable except for their skin.

They stalk silently, panning their heads from left to right, looking aimlessly at everything, as if it didn’t register that they were outside or that they were looking at the ground or sky or plants. One of the figures that passes by is a woman in a nightgown, flowing white and tattered, nearly sheer, showing off everything. Her belly looks distended but then I realize that she is, or in this case,
was
, pregnant. Her hair is a tangled mess of auburn and crusty, dried chunks. She’s the closest of the monsters to the house that the kid is in. She slowly turns her head from side to side, as if it were nearly impossible for her to move her neck.

She takes a step forward, then, as if she knows the kid is in the house, as if she sees the device he’s holding or maybe even his hand, she begins to turn. She begins to walk toward the camera. One foot in front of the other, she silently hobbles over the grass towards the house. Her mouth agape, her teeth look as if she’s been eating black liquorice, her tongue is swollen and green. Her nightgown moves on the wind and if it wasn’t for the way that she’s stumbling around like she’s just woke up from a three-day bender, she would look like she’s floating. She continues forward.

I know what’s going to happen here; the kid doesn’t. It’s in every cliché monster movie I’ve ever seen. It’s the truth. The camera pulls back around; the kid pulls it back to his face and starts talking again.

“
I don’t know what’s going on…”
he begins, and then there’s the crashing of glass. And then the device is dropped. He runs out to see what it was, then a scream, a gut-wrenching, horrible scream. A scream of innocence and first and second and third kisses not kissed and fucks not fucked and beers not drank; pain and terror bleed out of the audio and into my ears, the noise makes my stomach drop. I want to reach out and tell him he’s a cliché. But I can’t because he’s not, this is how it happened. I’m watching it, living it with him. This is the legacy of the internet. This is shooting the pain; this is collecting communal scars on the fabric of society and all I can think about, the only thought that’s running through my head, is that he should have had a better device. Something that would have allowed him to see what was happening without taking his eyes off a screen.

The clip keeps going; the audio catches every plea and cry. Every tear drop, every single sound of pain and all I can do is watch as his bloody and mangled body hits the floor like a five pound sack of potatoes.

I stop the video, pull the frame out of the aggregator and drag it towards the recycle bin. But I stop my finger before I can throw it away and look over to Scott. He’s passed out on the floor, the screen is still running and the game is still going. He must be lying on the controller because Simon Belmont is jumping up and down in the same corner of Dracula’s castle. Over and over again, eight-bit Simon tries to get up and jump from landing to landing and each time he falls.

Scott’s Labatt Blue pint is lying on its side, empty, next to an ashtray full of cigarette butts and I’m about to throw this kid’s life away.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I say.

I leave the “My Hood” video up on my desktop but minimize it. I turn and watch the glow of the fires come from the horizon, creeping closer and closer to the city center. Running fire, wild fire coming to cleanse and I want to cry. But it isn’t for the city, or Skinny Scott, or Simon Belmont unable to jump and slay his demon. It’s not for the kid on the video, not for my dad or Janet or Phil. I want to cry because I’m watching the last seconds of this kid’s life and all I care about is screen resolution, megapixel quality, device stability and processing speed.

I watch more videos, more scenes like the mall, more eulogies and last wills and testaments, more
I love yous
and
I miss yous
and
Please, God, help mes
. Official reports and news footage full of more lies and more carnage and more of the press’ feeble attempt to pacify regular people too scared out of their minds to heed official positions of power.

I even watch as the President of the United States tells everyone that things will be better. I watch as a grown man lies to millions of people as if they are children, children that know better, but that can’t do a damn thing about it except get spanked for doing the right thing. Then I get to the last few folders of videos that have anything to do with all the keywords.

I lean back in my chair and light a cigarette. It’s nearly morning and I decide to make another pot of coffee. I stare at the morning sun, cresting the sprawling dead remains, muting the fires just for a second or two with its natural brilliance.

I still want to cry but I can’t.

I sit there and watch as the last bit of pure, unfiltered sunshine shimmers against the steel and glass and still-brown surface of Lake Erie. After it’s made its way past the horizon line, I can’t see it anymore, engulfed by the rising black and grey smoke of the now not so distant fires; it looks cancerous and wicked, like the eye of God passing judgment. I turn around and continue to work my way through all the files. I don’t stop until I pass out.

* * *

I’m dreaming again, but this time it’s not the same dream I always have. I try and make sure that I know this is a dream. I try and tell myself to remember that I didn’t have the crowd dream. To remember that I had a dream of pure white silence, blinding perfection and glistening raw nothing. But it’s a dream and I’m sidetracked by the fact that there is nothing. Like I’m back in the freeze chamber, like I’m dead again, my mind is racing but my heartbeat and breathing feels calm. I see the world come into focus and it looks like a stream of codes. Big codes, small codes, little pieces of code are everywhere, they make up everything. I can manipulate the code; I can pull the sections and strains out into the air and make flowers or park benches, trees or a car. Everything is unified and mathematical and I can make it into whatever I want.

I stand in the bleach bottle white space and tap and pull at the codes, but now I’m not just building, but rebuilding the world. Rebuilding the city, rebuilding the sidewalks and street lights. I make sound and it sounds like
Ping
. The sound comes and goes every other minute.
Ping. Ping. Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping.

The more I put things back together the more clear and definite the sound becomes, like it’s right next to my ears, like it’s in my head. It starts out as a soft and subtle undertone, just under the surface of the great nothing; then as I move faster and faster and faster it becomes louder and louder and louder until I can’t stand it anymore.
Until I wake up.

Kel and Scott are standing in front of the desk and looking at me as I raise my head up. A thick strand of drool that smells horrible follows my bottom lip.

“What?” I say at them.

Kel points to my desktop, the screens are still going, and her eyes look like bright white tea saucers.

“Are you messaging with someone?” she asks.

“What?” I say back and then realize that, as we are talking I hear the
Ping
sound that was in my dream. I tap the screen and bring it out of hibernation. I stop and look down. I have eight unread messages, sent today, all within the last hour or so.

8.

“That’s impossible. I thought you said that there wasn’t an internet anymore,” I say to Scott. He’s standing at a slight angle next to Kel and he looks as if he’s going to heave all over everything. Beads of sweat glisten on his forehead and the hair around his temples is soaked.

“There isn’t supposed to be any,” he says, then puts his hand up to his mouth as if he’s keeping the whole of his insides from coming out of his mouth.

“Go to the bathroom, Scott,” says Kel and he moves past her and then the desk; I can hear his stomach making horrible noises as he runs into the bathroom.

“And turn on the water in the sink, for Christ’s sake; no one wants to hear that,” I say to him through the door. Kel is already next to me behind the desk, looking over my shoulder at the screens.

“This is one of CENTCOM’s handles. It’s trying to ping in,” she says. She smells earthy and unwashed, though that could just be her clothing. She nudges me out of the way so that she can see more of the screen; I protest and then get up and motion for her to sit down.

“This could just be the main servers trying to establish any sort of satellite connection, but it could also be someone on the other end,” she says. She opens up a command prompt, copies the messages and starts typing in directives I’ve never seen. Her fingers tap at the screen as if they are on autopilot, her slender hands moving at speeds that I’ve only seen on a couple of other coders outside of myself. She’s good.