Sunset
Sunrise crested the hill as Adam sat with his shirt glued to his chest with sweat, drinking cold instant coffee. The heat was unbearable most days, and the nights were no reprieve. Sitting on his makeshift bed of scavenged pillows, he looked out over his mountainside. It had been about two months since the world burned out. The End wasn’t anything exciting. The sky had burned a little brighter every year as the ozone layer was depleted. Cars overheated on the freeway and simply stopped working. Cell towers melted like the ice caps did years previous. Anyone not killed when the End burned its way across the globe spread out to find colder places. Adam did not realize that the world had ended until the electricity went out for the last time. It’s a hard thing to track, the collapse of society as a whole. It didn’t happen all at once. When the communication networks collapsed, the governments winked out afterwards. All the bureaucrats had their own families to take care of. He had been travelling abroad at the time, seeing the sights across Europe before everything had a chance to go bad. In the week before the world ended, they went to Finland to see where the Greenpeace Accords had been signed, unsuccessfully, twelve years ago. Adam had taken Finnish in primary school, and figured it’d be the easiest place to visit. They had spent the week partying, and when his friends realized it was the End, Adam was passed out in his small Kitee hotel room, windows closed, curtains shut, nursing a hangover.
In the time since the End, Adam moved from his hotel room to the Ural Mountains. The air here used to be frigid but is now bordering on lukewarm at best most days. In the winter, it probably still snowed, but not much. What was once a desolate wasteland of cold had become a weedy bog. Over the last month, his time has been spent gathering and creating a safe living space for his survival, a treehouse in a tall fir tree, obscured from the ground with several leafed branches.
That day, he was in the nearest town, sweating through what used to be a thin white dress shirt which had slowly disintegrated into a glorified tank top. He rummaged through what remained of the Army Surplus Store, Adam found a hatchet. His only other weapon was a knife his father had gifted to him on his eighteenth birthday, with the stupid quote about “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” engraved on the handle. It had remained in his sock drawer until Jessica jokingly suggested he bring it on his trip.
Jessica.
He used to think about her every day. The sunset reflecting off her platinum hair. The skin around her eyes crinkling as she smiled that smile. The way his skin tingled as she brushed against him. “One last travelling stag party with the mates,” he had said. “Gone no longer than a month,” he promised. The party had morphed into a quest for survival after the End. It was him and his two best mates, Pierce and Charlie. Charlie had killed himself when the government’s emergency broadcast signal had gone out. He walked right off the hotel balcony onto the concrete sixteen stories below. He just gave up. Pierce had lasted longer. It was his idea to get somewhere colder, somewhere safer. Somewhere away from people, but not so far that they couldn’t scavenge for anything they couldn’t get for themselves. Before the solar flares had begun to interfere with television signals, Pierce had watched a lot of Doomsday Preppers on the History Channel.
He had died in the night crossing the border from Finland to Russia. Bear attack. They were so tired from walking and had collapsed in a broken-down lean-to and had forgotten to hoist their food. This was back when they were carrying around the food from their trip. Now all he had left from that were a couple dry sticks of beef jerky. When the bear attacked, Adam had run while Pierce’s screams filled the night air. After a while, the screaming stopped. Whether it was from Pierce’s escape or death, Adam never found out. He never went back to check. He didn’t want to see what was left.
I’ll never know what happened to either of them, he thought. Jessica was back in Liverpool when he went on his trip. He had tried to call her after Charlie, but the phone lines were all gone to ground. He tried calling until his phone died the next day.
Adam absentmindedly chewed on his last piece of beef jerky, pulling at the knob of the Army Surplus Stores backroom door. It was locked, so he used his newfound hatchet to pry open the door. The smell of rotten food burst through the open door, along with a second smell Adam had become well acquainted with over the past month. Looking through the gap, he could see a body leaned up against the back wall, a gun in its hand, a hole in its head, rotting bits of blood splattered on the wall behind it. Forcing the door to swing on rusted hinges, he moved deeper in.
A wide array of nonperishable food was strewn across the shelves. Most of it had been opened or chewed through by the rats that appeared to have eaten most of the body on the floor. Across the shelves, all that remained were two unopened cans of peaches and a bottle of ibuprofen that had been left alone. Adam quickly put them in his satchel.
On his way back, Adam grabbed a body pillow from a looted department store. It was fuzzy and pink, the only one left on the shelf. No more food, a few more hollow bodies. The town was full of ghosts. A mange-covered dog scampered up to him as he strode down the main road. For a moment, the dog sat in front of him, gently whining, ears back, tail wagging frantically back and forth, eyeing the last inch of beef jerky in his hand.
“Scram,” He said. “This isn’t for you and it’s not going to be for you,” The dog just stared, salivating. Its eyes still tracked the beef jerky. Adam moved around the dog, giving it space as it patiently stared. As he turned his back, the dog snapped. It launched itself at his hand, clamping its jaws across his wrist. With a shout, Adam dropped the jerky, which the dog promptly snatched up and ran off with.
A string of unintelligible curse words streamed out of Adam’s mouth as he looked down at the blood oozing out of his hand. The dog’s jaws had left an angry pink stretch of fresh torn flesh across his wrist. He tore a strip of sweat stained shirt off of his waistline and tied it across his wounded left hand and began to trudge back home.
Walking up to the ladder, fuzzy pink pillow strapped to his back, he began to climb. His wound pulsed with pain as he climbed. Reaching the top, he threw his new pillow to the ground with the others on his makeshift bed. He reached into his satchel as the sun began to set and popped two ibuprofen tablets into his mouth. Moving over to an Ikea bookshelf he’d taken from an empty house when he first moved in, he rummaged through his collection of things. He sometimes kept things that reminded him of when things were good. A framed postcard of a beach reading “Warm Greetings from Santa Fe!” in arcing blue bubble letters, a bobblehead from a video game no one could play anymore, an alarm clock that had run out of batteries after the first month. More importantly, a first aid kit. He opened it and pulled out the last packet of gauze, strapping it to his arm with some medical tape. He lay back onto his makeshift bed, gazing at a hanging solar system mobile he found in a gas station.
As the sun set, he remembered how the golden-hour light would make Jessica look like she was ringed in a holy glow while they walked together. Sometimes, he thought about going back home, trying to find her. Walking back through the forests of Finland, the fjords of Norway, finding a way across the Channel to Liverpool. But he never did. She was probably gone anyway. Even if she wasn’t gone, she’d be different. He’d be different. He’d been turned into some animal by the End. He’d left his friends to die. But he was a survivor, he would tell himself. He was made to make it in the end times. They weren’t. Simple as that. But he knew it wasn’t true. He wasn’t really a survivor, just someone who could run faster than the guy next to him. But sometimes, in moments like this, when the light was just right, and he was locked at the edge of consciousness before the day ended, he thought about finding her, even if he’d only find another hollow body.
For the next few days, Adam carried on as usual. He started expanding his search circle, having exhausted his resources here. He thought about what life could have been. Life with Jessica, living in some nowhere cul-de-sac with two and a half kids, going to neighborhood grills. None of that would be happening now. Two days after that, he had exhausted the search radius. His wound began to smell. He was using fabric from his bed of pillows as dressing. He thought about what he’d been doing. Walking into the remains of people’s lives and taking the leftovers. Like some sort of animal, scavenging through the garbage of life. All the same, he was running out of ibuprofen to numb the pain, but he could still feel it burning. It was getting hard to walk when he was outside, sun beating down on him. He was woozy and feverish at best. At times, puss leaked out from underneath his makeshift bandages, and red streaks of infection had begun to climb up his arm from the wound. He knew his time would run out if he let it spread for even another couple of days, and he began actively searching for medicine.
Walking down the center of an abandoned freeway, he began to see signs for a Tokmanni department store. He followed the signs, leading himself through the streets to a flat beige building. “Tokmanni” was written in red lettering across the front, but most of the letters had fallen off, now just spelling out “Toni.” Half of the building was a burned skeleton of twisted metal and fried mannequins, the roof appearing to have collapsed in a fire. The other half of the building was fine, and in similar red lettering is spelled “Abteekki.” Pharmacy. A glimmer of hope kindled itself in his chest, and he quickened his pace.
The door swung open as Adam got within about ten feet of it, a fortified mess of plywood and chicken wire. “Stop right there, son,” A man holding a long-barreled gun said in Finnish. “I don’t want any trouble; I know you don’t neither. So just be on your way, and we won’t have any.” The man looked older, with hair long turned grey and a pair of cracked glasses held together by tape on his face.
Adam froze, thinking. His wound began to buzz on his wrist. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Sir, please,” he said. “I need medicine. I can see you have a pharmacy. Please. Just something antibacterial, that all I’m asking for.”
The old man loudly slid back the lever on the shotgun. “I’m not going to ask nicely twice. Leave.”
“Please,” Adam begged, edging closer. He was now about five feet away. He peeled back his bandages to show his festering wound. “I will die without it. I know you have a pharmacy.”
The man’s calm demeanor faltered. His aim lowered for a second as he looked at the now almost month-old bite marks. “Son, I can’t help you, I have my own people to look out for. Even if I could, I don’t think it would be much of a help.”
But Adam wasn’t listening. Closing the space between them, he grabbed the barrel of the gun with his wounded hand, forcing it towards the ground, and drew his knife with his good hand. Warm blood covered his arm as he drove his knife into the stomach of the old man, who immediately crumpled beneath him. He began to move, and Adam stabbed him again. And again. And again. Until up to his shoulder was covered in the man’s blood and the man lay broken on the pavement. Adam had never killed anyone before. He picked up the man’s gun and walked through the door.
Most of the store had been affected by the fire, the roof collapsed around it, but the portion that wasn’t, the entryway, what used to be a small café inside the entrance, and the pharmacy next to it, was set up to resemble a home. The tables and chairs within the café had all been pushed together, five plates placed at five chairs with silverware to match.
“Scott?” A voice called out from behind the pharmacies back door. “Are you alright? Is he gone?” Adam ducked behind the corner of the café counter as the pharmacy door opened and a man walked out. “Oh fuck,” the man breathed as he saw the body. The footsteps quickened.
Adam jumped from behind the counter, aiming the gun at the man. “Wait!” the man shouted. Adam pulled the trigger, and an empty click issued from the gun. It wasn’t loaded. Grasping the barrel of the gun, Adam spun it around and bludgeoned the man with the stock. The man took a few steps backwards, blood streaming from above his eyebrow, but remained standing, so Adam hit him again. He stumbled back into the pharmacy, knocking over several of the shelves, and fell to the ground unmoving. Walking past the pharmacy counter, Adam knelt down, looking through the bottles of spilled medicine for antibiotics until he found one; amoxicillin. The bottle was cracked, so he picked up a Ziploc bag from the café and emptied the contents of the bottle into it. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the café pastry case. His left arm bandaged below the elbow; his dark hair matted with sweat. Blood coated the entire right side of his body. He picked out a clean shirt from what appeared to be functioning as the bedroom of these people and put it on. Popping two of the pills, he began to walk home, alert for the others whose places were set at the table. He never saw them, but he could feel their gaze on his back.
The walk took two days. His arm felt better by the time he got home. Walking up to the ladder, he began to climb. His wound buzzed on his arm, but it wasn’t as bad as before. When he reached the top, a man stood in his home. His head was patchily shaved, a rough beard clung to his chin. He wore tattered khaki cargo pants above hiking boots, and a makeshift bandolier of homemade pockets strapped across a faded orange Sunkist shirt. He had a pistol strapped to his hip. Hearing Adam approach, he drew the gun and loosely pointed it towards him. Adam froze. He could feel the blood pulsing across the gash on his arm, pounding in his ears, draining from his face. The man said something in a language that sounded like Russian. Adam stood there; blue eyes wide. He did not speak Russian. The man repeated himself, louder this time, moving towards Adam and gesturing to his satchel. Adam put his hands up, and quickly began to rifle through his bag, offering up the first thing he saw: a can of peaches. The man took them, looked at them for a second, and tossed them aside. He motioned to the bag again, angrily spitting more Russian at him. Adam quickly went back to the bag, this time pretending to rifle through it for something important, something to give the man, actually looking for his hatchet. The man staggered forward, reaching for the satchel. The man seized it and emptied the contents onto the floor. The hatchet hit the ground with a hollow thud. The bloodshot eyes of the man and the nervous quivering pupils of Adam’s eyes met, and each intention was known. A bead of sweat dripped down from Adam’s temple. Slowly, he reached into his pocket, other arm raised in surrender, and drew out the unlabeled bag of antibiotics. The man’s face contorted into a corkscrew of distaste, spitting a short string of Russian out at Adam. The man leveled the gun with Adams chest and fired.
Skin tingled.
Eyes crinkled.
Sun set.