Paul Jones - Extinction Point - The End

The bike Emily wanted was about three quarters of the way down and on the right. She’d been eyeing it for months, slowly stashing away a little bit here and there from each paycheck. By the time the red rain came, she was still a couple of months shy of having the twelve-hundred-bucks she needed to buy it. Of course, money was no longer an issue for her now, she could choose whatever bike she wanted, but there was something about this particular model that just spoke to her. She followed the carpet pathway toward the back of the store, sweeping the flashlight left and right as she walked.

Emily didn’t think there would be any kind of threat in the store; Mike was too smart to have stayed. He would have gone home and died with his family just like millions of other Americans probably had. But she was learning to be cautious, so she made sure to check out the entire store, poking her head warily into all the corners and cubbies where one of the creatures could have gestated. She needn’t have worried because, just as she had expected, there was no sign of any kind of a threat. Satisfied she was alone in the shop, Emily headed back towards the center of the store and quickly located her new bike.

It was the perfect bike for the grueling trip that lay ahead of her: a Novara Randonee touring bike in dark green with FSA Wing Compact handlebars and a Shimano Deore LX derailleur. It had a saddle that was the closest thing to a La-Z-Boy recliner, puncture resistant inner tubes and, most importantly for her, it weighed less than thirty-pounds.

Emily pulled the bike from its stand, giving it a quick once-over to check the tires were inflated. She lifted the back wheel off the ground and used the pedal to get it spinning while simultaneously running up and down all the gears, checking for any slippage. Satisfied everything worked just as it should, she pushed her new set of wheels to the front of the store and leaned it against the cash desk.

Next she walked back along each of the walls and grabbed everything she thought she might need for her journey: puncture kits and spare inner tubes, brake-blocks, a hand pump, a can of WD-40, a rain smock, a set of pedals, brake cables, a couple of plastic drinking bottles she could fit to the crossbar of the bike, a multi-tool, and finally, a GPS unit. The GPS had a specially designed clip to mount it on the handlebars of her bike. By the time she collected everything she could think of, a large pile of items had collected on the glass counter of the cash-desk. Emily had to draw the line at a spare pair of wheel rims, though, there really was going to be nowhere for her to carry them. She would just have to hope she wouldn’t need them. However, she could deal with that pile of spare parts she had accumulated.

Emily walked to the furthest end of the store, shining her light into the darkness until she found what she was looking for; a display rack of panniers. She picked out the two largest sets she could find; one to fit over the back wheel and a second, smaller pair that would fit nicely over the front wheels. The addition of the two pairs of modern-day saddlebags would greatly increase her ability to carry extra supplies.

Emily fitted both pairs of panniers to the new bike using the multi-tool she had found earlier. Then she placed all of the spare parts she had collected into one of the rear carrier’s pouches. She gave a final mental run through her list just to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything; once she was on her way, she didn’t want to find herself without the means to fix her only form of transportation. She was sure she hadn’t forgotten anything—apart from those spare wheel rims; leaving them really irked her—so she hefted the bike onto her left shoulder, marveling at how light it was, even with the panniers and extra parts she had picked up, then carefully made her way out of the shop. When she was clear of the debris field of broken glass, she set the bike down, leaning it against its kickstand.

Emily looked at her old bike, battered and bruised after so many years of use, and a tinge of betrayal touched her heart. She felt like she was about to shoot a faithful but old horse while picking up a younger replacement.

“Don’t be so damned ridiculous,” she said to herself and started to wheel her new bike away. But after just a few steps, Emily dropped the bike’s kickstand again and, with a resigned sigh, walked back to where she had set her old bike to rest, picked it up—good God it was heavy by comparison to the new one—and carried it into the store, setting it down in the space left by her new Novara.

“You’re a bloody idiot,” she told herself, then turned and climbed back through the broken window, leaving the last vestige of her old life behind.

The new bike handled like a dream and Emily found herself quickly shifting up through the gears, as she sped east along 79th Street in the direction of the Whole Foods Market. The tires made a satisfying purr of rubber against macadam, and the efficient metallic whirr of the drive-chain complimented it perfectly, creating a simple tune of efficiency that was perfection to Emily’s ear.

She pulled over in front of the Whole Foods store.

Outside the store’s entrance, a confusion of plastic shopping carts lay scattered on the pavement. Spilled bags full of food had emptied their contents onto the sidewalk and road, dropped by their owners as they fled the market or maybe in a crush of looters, like she had seen at the little store next to her apartment.

The store’s automatic doors were closed, and for a moment, Emily thought she was going to have to smash yet another window. They weren’t locked, and Emily was able to slip her fingers between the rubber seals and push one apart until there was enough room for her to squeeze through into the entrance area.

The stench of rotting meat and vegetables greeted her as she walked through the entrance and headed towards the produce section. Where there had once been rows of apples, organic tomatoes, and other assorted veggies, was nothing but a rotting mass of almost unrecognizable decay. There were no flies buzzing around the decaying food, Emily noted. The place should have been black with them and Emily began to wonder just how far along the food-chain the red rain’s impact had been felt.

There was obviously nothing worth scavenging in this section, and even if there had been, Emily wasn’t going to spend any more time breathing in that stink than she had too. She pulled a shopping cart from a row stacked in front of a checkout and pushed it towards the opposite end of the huge store. The front left wheel seemed to have a life of its own, it squeaked insistently and refused to go in the same direction as the other three. The world as she knew it had apparently ended, humanity was on its knees, and an inscrutable menace threatened her very survival, but still she managed to choose the one wonky cart in the store. Typical!

As Emily squeaked her way up the aisles, she spotted a pallet of gallon bottles of drinking water on an end-rack. She pulled four of them from the pallet and set them down in the aisle. She would pick them up on her way out of the store. If she limited herself to a liter or so of water a day she would have enough drinking water to last her almost two weeks, as long as she didn’t exert herself too much. She made a mental note to grab some of that instant energy powder, too. She could add it to her water for when she was riding.

Next stop, tinned goods. The aisle was mainly full of soups, so Emily grabbed as wide a selection as she could. She wasn’t a soup fan but it would be easy to prepare, hot, filling, and most importantly, had a long shelf life. Worst-case scenario, she would simply drink it right from the can. She made sure only to grab the cans that had the pull-tab tops so she wouldn’t have to worry about a tin opener. She spotted a selection of canned meats and added four cans of organic corned beef.