Disappointment Awaits

Shuffling down the street, the figure hummed a lively, though toneless song. "It's the end of the world, dah dah dah…" He bumbled his way past obstacles of long-parked cars, his feet whispering over dying grass. He was always amused by how soon the grass took over the roads. Persistent fucking stuff.

"Well, Paul, ol' boy," he said, his voice loud – he liked the echoes. "Everything's all fucked up, in Disappointment. Population: 1. All fucked up, and almost out of meds." Small animals skittered underfoot. Rats, maybe. Rats really took over, after the flu hit. "Buggerlugs!" Paul shouted. Everything in the area seemed to quiet down for a moment. But, then the birds recovered their balls, and back they were at their mating songs. It just wasn't the same, being in the city, and hearing all the birds. He longed for the quiet, sometimes; well, as quiet as traffic makes nature seem, anyway.

Here he was: outside the last grocery store in town. It was amazing how many stores only carried a bottle or two of boexitine, his antipsychotic medication. He was now 5-hours' walk away from his nesting grounds. This was it: soon there would be no more. The voices would come again. Well, no, that was a lie. Terrance and Stapler were back now; 3 years in to the End, meds were getting weaker. Being untrained medically, and not crafty enough to pour through medical books, Paul was left with playing with his doses. Ahh.. a limited, weakening supply. Would he leave Disappointment after this? In search of boexitine, that wonderful, wonderful suppressor of insanity?

Ahh, but if you leave Disappointment, where will you call home? Stapler cooed.

There might be others, in Vancouver – you never know, Terrance added.

Yes, but are THEY looking for the boexitine too...?

"Are they?" Paul asked, shivering despite the bright sun. "Are they?" he inquired louder. The voices stayed quiet. It was a game they all played: when he needed them, they were quiet. When he wanted to be left alone: there they were. Asking inane questions, like, "What is your favorite color". He looked around, his eyes darting about the street. A dog cantered in to his path. It growled half-heartedly. Where there was one dog, there was bound to be a pack somewhere behind it. He offered a hands-up surrender. The dog wuffed, and trotted in to an alley.

Paul treaded on, his comfy hiking boots keeping his toes warm. He'd found them in a locked mall. (He'd overcome that by crashing through with a gun and a park bench. He saw that on a movie once.) The mall had been smelly – all that food going bad. The freezers were still working around that time, so, it wasn't all that bad. The shoe store had been left open – odd, in a locked mall, but at least he didn't have to bring the bench in for it. There he was, holding one of the last-ever shoes in his size. Putting it on was kind of thrilling. Back then, there'd still been about 5 people left in town. Since then, they'd all wandered. Mostly in search of loved ones. But hell, when the survival rate for a 90,000-person town was 10, what hope did you have? Skrit-skrit-skrit, his shoes had said, upon meeting the shiny surface of the mall floor.

The skrits were gone from these shoes. But, that was okay. They'd had a lot of walking in.

Ahh, the present: outside a Startser Pharmacy, embedded inside a Roller's Groceries. Both were reputable companies once. Now? Now they were subject to selective looting, ala Paul. Was this shoplifting, or survival? Startser awaited, no time to debate. The doors were the pully-type. Unlocked, as per one's great wants, in Disappointment. He grasped the handle, breathing in deep. There were little bells atop the door, announcing his entry to the great invisible masses inside. The dried remains of some little old lady lay resting against the pop fridge. "I bet she wanted some ginger ale for that fever," Paul mused. The fever, mm, yes. The fever that washed away a nation, Stapler added. At least the smell of the people left inside had greatly dissipated. Now all that was left was a faint, dusty-spice kind of smell.

Aisles and aisles. Shopping carts askew. Bodies left loosely guarding the store. Is this what Hell looks like? Terrence asked. "I don't know. For Hell, it's awfully quiet." The quiet is hellishly boring, though, ain't it? Stapler queried. Paul agreed; the quiet was something that had taken him this whole time to accept. His backpack's calendar was outdated, but, he counted the years off them, all the same. Today was September 3. Soon it would be cold, and he'd have to move to a house with a working fireplace. Ahh, to get in to these locked houses without damaging them much! Break a window? Gotta trek up the hill for 2 hours, to get to the Home Hardware. Break a door? The house is fucked now, move on. Most times, he was lucky enough to find an unlocked door; usually there were a few crispy corpses waiting inside, though. The first year was the worst, because the bodies stank so bad. The whole city had been a wasteland of bodies; he'd been working on that, dressed up like a fireman, for a while. It was too much for one man to tackle – by the time he'd gotten in to the task, all of the others had vacated. He knew, because the city was too quiet now for anyone to go unnoticed. Fires and vehicles sprang up, sporadically, but usually in the summer. The whole west end of Disappointment had lit up, last year, due to some moron on a motorcycle. The dumb bastard had lit a fire in the woods, and WOOF!, there went that area. And, what did that one do? He fled, on his motorcycle, past Paul -- he'd been too polite back then to do more than cry out, "Please, come back – don't leave me alone!"

Aisles and aisles. Yup, back to business. He fiddled with the knife. It was a big one, the biggest he could find in the hunting store. He jabbed at the air, smirking, and twirling. Light became scarce, the broad windows didn't reach this far back. He pulled out a long, back flashlight from the side of his pack. The beam played upon stinglets of webs. Stringlets, starlets, harlots, Terrence sang, merrily. "Aw, shuttup," Paul said, offhand.

And, there it was: the pharmacy.

What a beautiful sight.