N. White - The End - Visions of Apocalypse

Did he really have nothing to burn?

He had his blankets and clothes, but didn’t think burning either of them was such a good idea. The sun was going down but out the window everything was white, everything hidden under a record breaking snow fall. Any amount of snow in June would break records for Virginia, but Irwin was pretty sure the near five feet of white stuff outside was a record for any time of year. The snow was so high it covered the lower part of the window, making it look like an Eskimo’s ant farm. In the neighborhood where Irwin lived there had never been many trees and the houses were built of brick and aluminum siding. The best he could hope to find would be a picnic table, a rake or shovel handle, but those would be in garages, behind doors he had no chance of opening, and likely made of plastic. Come to think of it, his own door would be buried beneath a glacier size drift. At that moment he couldn’t even see his front door. He hadn’t been out of his house since the crisis began and he had needed the wall space to stack books out of his way.

Irwin’s eyes returned to the pot and the dying fire. He’d only had the one cotton ball and just a dribble of alcohol. He’d never had matches in the house and if he let it go out, he’d never start one again. With the now broken window, Irwin would freeze in the coming night. As if to emphasis this, he noticed how long the shadows had grown. He could feel the cold creeping up his body, sinking ice claws into his flesh. All the James Patterson and Michael Connelly in the world wouldn’t be enough to save him if things got colder than the night before.

He felt it unfair that he should die for lack of burnable fuel in a home filled with paper. He noticed a trade paperback sitting absently on top of the foremost tower, its title screaming out at him in three huge, condescending words: Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding. A Christmas gift from Jimmy. His brother thought that giving him a book would be like slipping a pill in a terrier’s hotdog. As much as his skin crawled at the thought of damaging any book, he could burn that.

Irwin tore pages out, crumpled them up and fed them to Audrey II, whose name he mentally changed to Audrey III for originality’s sake. The fire reawakened to its bright self once more spreading warmth and happiness in its glow. Feeding a page at a time, the book was not consumed nearly as fast as the junk mail. He was only up to chapter five, “Applying the Cognitive Strategies,” by the time the sun began to set. If he could make a short book last, how long could he survive on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest ? Not that he would burn that, but there had to be others he could sacrifice. In the immortal words of Spock, “The needs of the many out-weigh the needs of the few.”

He had another gift book. Bill Faber, his next door neighbor had once handed him a self-help publication, apparently not understanding the nature of his situation. Irwin had laughed when he read the title, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Irwin had always thought he was extremely effective at what he did — that was the problem. Jimmy could have told him that. So Irwin had two books then that he could sacrifice painlessly. The question was how many would he have to burn to survive?

With paper from books to use as kindling, he could let the fire die and reignite it whenever needed, so long as he had the sun and his magnifying glass. That meant he could let it go out after sunrise and rely on natural radiation to keep him alive. Sunlight passing through the window would greenhouse the place enough to keep him from freezing. He’d need to do something about the broken window. Irwin had some Ziplocks and duct tape. Breaking the glass was a good thing really. It would allow him to pack the toilet with snow, so when it melted he could flush. With his diet he wasn’t using it as often, but the accumulation was another reason why he didn’t regret the smoke and the open window. He could also sleep during the day so he didn’t need to worry about feeding Audrey III, and he could use her to heat meals. That brought a smile. He hadn’t had a hot meal in two weeks. His pot fire and shattered window was really a huge step forward. He might be able to ration his burning and get by with just a couple books a night. Only how long would the winter last?

It couldn’t stay this cold for too long. Not in Virginia. Not in June.

If normal temps returned in a few days, the snow would melt almost instantly and he’d be able to strike out in search of wood. Maybe he’d even find some stove piping and a grill allowing him to make a chimney and fireplace of sorts. If he went out he’d need to be careful. It was possible others survived and they would be after his food, his clothes, his books, his Mountain Dew, and think nothing of killing him. In post-apocalyptic times, life was always cheap; at least that’s what his books had told him. His best bet was to remain hidden.

Still, he could risk looting a few close houses, get some more food, blankets. Most of his neighbors likely migrated to greener pastures, or… died. Irwin grimaced as he imagined tip-toeing through Bill Faber’s house and finding him and his wife rotting like spoiled olive loaf, slick and oily, and covered in a mat of flies. Were they over there right now, wondering how he was faring, or were they already dead; husband and wife, huddled on the bed in winter coats like that scene from Titanic ?

It was possible he was alone. Everyone might be dead.

Outside the darkness closed in and with it a greater sense of isolation. Just looking at the solid black of a window that reflected only Irwin, listening to the wind beginning its nightly howl, he wondered if he was the last. Not just in the neighborhood, or the city, or even the state, but the whole world. Maybe some still survived in remote places. It couldn’t be Jack London’s To Build A Fire , everywhere. Near the equator there had to be pockets that the oceans hadn’t swallowed, clusters of people not freezing to death. Barefoot free spirits dinning on bananas, papaya and pomegranates. Free of governments, free of international trade laws and unilateral arms treaties, they celebrated, dancing on beaches of white sand around bonfires of their own. But did they have books? Did anyone?

The digital invasion had extended even to the jungles and deep deserts with literacy programs based on dispensing lightweight, waterproof, solar powered e-readers, pre-packed with a thousand books — from novels by H. G. Wells to manuals on digging wells. Charities handed out the equivalent of hand-held libraries to every village with sunlight. Gutenberg delivered the written word to the masses; ebooks delivered masses of written words. The age of wonder had arrived, but thousands of pounds of paper books had no place in a brave new world that still sported muddy roads. Fire and floods arrived. No one made an effort to save dying relics. Who could care about ink stamped on pulp, when they had devices that would speak books aloud in five different languages. It all seemed like a good idea at the time, but so had hauling that Greek horse inside Troy. As it turned out, in both cases, disaster occurred over night.

Irwin’s legs were going to sleep and he shifted his position on the floor. He shivered, inching closer to the pot. Something about looking outside into the unforgiving night chilled him. He turned away to face his massive stacks now illuminated by the flicker of his pot fire.

Irwin imagined he retained the greatest collection of literature in the world. He had all the classics, the books everyone wanted to have read but no one wanted to read. Mark Twain said that — Irwin had his works too. Plenty of non-fiction, history and science mostly — just the sort of knowledge a struggling new mankind would crave. Neil Degrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan being the new Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. He had vast collections of mysteries and crime novels that could assist in the foundation of a new code of law. In his kitchen he kept the horror: Lovecraft, the rest of King, Poe, Barker and Koontz — the parables of motivation and morality. In the grotto were the thrillers, lessons in individualism and tenacity, but it was in his living room that he kept his real treasures. No other room in his home could hold the two most significant branches of literary achievement, what Irwin understood to be the pinnacle of all man’s art — science fiction and fantasy.