Greg Krojac - The Schrödinger Enigma

Sitara could stand it no more and let herself fall to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. Through her tears she could see the clear blue sky above her head. How could something so obscene take place on such a beautiful day? She shouted up to the heavens before lying down on the ground and curling up in a ball.

“How can you do this Allah? How can you let this happen?”

Jason Green sat in an armchair watching a DVD movie. He had a large collection of films, but it didn’t make any difference which one he watched, the scenes shown on the screen bore no relation to the world. Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. One film, ‘I am Legend’ starring Will Smith, looked exactly like the world outside. The streets were deserted and silent. No birds sang. No dogs barked. It was as if the wildlife recognized that the city was becoming a giant morgue and had decided to steer well clear of it. Jason would have liked a dog for company, even Will Smith had a dog with him in the film, but he was totally alone. If he stayed there, the outlook was for a very lonely life with no one to talk to, no living creatures anywhere. He had been forced to stray out of his comfort zone in order to look for more provisions, but looters hadn’t left much. He’d seen a few living people but they had run away as soon as they saw him, probably fearing that if they got too close, they too would become infected. If he stayed where he was, the choice appeared to be death from hunger, thirst or sheer loneliness.

He had no idea why he was still alive.

Three days earlier, Jason had been helping plan a group evacuation to find a new home with more resources, but by the following morning he was the only one alive, having spent a restless night listening to the death throes of his neighbours.

That [16] spacing on this paragraph is different morning, having had hardly any sleep, he had taken it upon himself to clear up the mess, the ‘mess’ being the bodies of his friends. Xi-Wang Ren, the local pharmacist and his seventeen year old daughter Mai had been the first two that Jason dragged from their homes and placed in the now deserted square that had once been the social epicentre of the community. Then, Burt and Mary Prentice, the elderly couple from number twenty-three, had been hauled across the road to the square, where they had been placed carefully on top of the Chinese father and daughter. Jason had been surprised that the pensioners had survived as long as they had; they were obviously tougher than they looked. Jamaican graphic designer, Marshall Frank, and his website-designer Japanese wife, Sayuri, had died wrapped in each other’s arms, their devoted love for each other masking the horror of their deaths. It was having to deal with this nauseating aftermath that had convinced Jason that he shouldn’t stay in his home much longer. He just wanted to get away from the place, to leave the bad memories behind him. Of course, they would always be in his head but he hoped that with new surroundings and perhaps new friends, he could relegate them to the back of his mind. Removing local builder Patrick Dunbar, his wife Sally, and their twin two year-old daughters was the straw that broke the camel’s back. As he threw the bodies of the two innocent toddlers onto the small pile of bodies, the sound of their giggles invaded his mind. He didn’t really have a game plan as to what he was going to do with the small heap of bodies – he couldn’t burn them because the smoke might attract outsiders and that could be dangerous. Maybe he should have left the bodies where they were and saved himself a lot of distress. He also knew that if he stayed in the square, the stench of his friends’ rotting carcasses would be a daily reminder that he was alone.

He switched off the TV and DVD player and walked across the room to where the two-stroke electric generator was still chug-chugging. He pressed the kill switch and the apartment suddenly became silent. Eerily silent. He picked up his backpack and the Remington R-15 Semi-Automatic rifle that he had ‘found’ in a local hunting store and headed towards his front door. He left his apartment and trotted down the two flights of stairs to the main door. Opening the door slightly, he peeked through the small gap as a precaution, although he knew that this was no guarantee that it was safe to leave. However, if he stayed at home, he would simply be living in a gilded cage until he died. No, not living. He’d be merely existing. Shutting himself inside a box might be the safer choice, but it certainly wouldn’t be living.

He opened the door wider. Fortunately it was quiet outside. Some might say too quiet. No birds singing. No dogs barking. A tabby cat suddenly ran across his path, startling him. If it had been a dog he may have been tempted to try to befriend it – even four-legged company would be better than none – but a cat wouldn’t need him and would be a fair weather friend.

He looked out into the street, rifle at the ready, as his eyes became accustomed to the bright sunlight again after having been immersed in the near darkness that the closed curtains of his apartment had provided. The road was completely empty. Even the sprinting cat had disappeared out of sight. He checked his backpack and the semi-automatic rifle again. One of the side pockets of his backpack contained spare magazine clips for the rifle and the pocket on the opposite side of the bag held ammunition for the Beretta 9mm semi-automatic pistol he had holstered by his right hip. With a bullet-proof vest he felt he was ready for anything.

The rest of the backpack was filled with ‘rescued’ clothes and food rations. A flashlight, a water-bottle, and a spare pair of boots hung from the buckles of the bag. Jason cautiously stepped outside and surveyed the kingdom that he was about to leave. His kingdom, population one, and about to become population zero. He turned around, pulled the door closed behind him, double-locking the door. If he needed to come back, he wanted there to be a good chance that the building would be unoccupied.

He walked for about forty-five minutes, not seeing a soul, until he came across an old school building. He stayed a short distance away, just observing, trying to evaluate the characters of a small group of people who had occupied the building. They seemed harmless enough, a mixture of men, women, and children, and looked reasonably secure behind the high walls surrounding the playground. He didn’t see any weapons, although that didn’t mean that they didn’t have any. He doubted that they would have stayed in one place like this, in a semi-secure environment that didn’t offer impregnable protection, without weapons.

Suddenly he heard a sound behind him and instinct drove him to dive to his right, narrowly avoiding being hit by a bullet fired by one of two men who had crept up on him. That answered that question then – they definitely weren’t friendly. Although he too was armed, he had no time to even think about defending himself with his rifle. Fight or flee are the two survival instincts, and he had been left with no choice but to make a run for it. He had to be more careful in future. He had always been a fast runner, be it sprinting or long/middle distance running, and that was what probably saved his life. He leapt to his feet and started sprinting away from the school compound, zig-zagging as he did so, so that the gunmen would find him a much more difficult target to hit. He darted left and right, into roads and alleyways, having no idea where he was going and not really caring either – as long as he was heading away from the school that was good enough for him. He was athletic, but he knew that even he couldn’t keep up this pace for long. The gunfire ceased, and he hoped that this was a good sign; perhaps his pursuers weren’t as fit as he was and had given up the chase. Perhaps they considered that the distance between him and the school was now sufficient that any threat Jason may have posed had disappeared. He’d better get off the street. He saw a door to a warehouse. It was impossible to tell whether it was empty or not but that was the least of his concerns. Fortune looked down on him as the door wasn’t locked and he ducked inside the building, closing the door behind him.