Geoff North - How the World Ends

Richard appeared at the far end of the corridor. “Louie? What the hell are you trying now?”

Louie struck the container again as the security chief ran towards him. The glass didn’t shatter, but the ticks had found enough space in the cracks to get out. They crawled up the canister’s surface in a dozen strings of black for Louie’s hands. He released it and backed up for the open doors. Richard was less than twenty feet away. Louie slammed the doors shut and removed the key from the wall. The locks clicked back into place.

What have I done?

Louie thought he was going to vomit inside the sealed helmet of his suit. He worked it off and sucked at the air outside until the nausea passed. He looked at the gloves on his hands and wiggled the fingers. He tore the Velcro straps open and shook the gloves off. They’re on me. They’re crawling up under my finger nails and biting in… biting, burrowing deep. Louie studied his finger tips. He turned his hands over and stared at the palms, looking for black lines moving along the wrinkles. He saw nothing. They hadn’t gotten to him.

Louie removed the rest of the suit and let it fall to the floor with the gloves and helmet. There would’ve been no escape for Richard. He was running straight into them when the doors closed. What did they do to him? What must it have been like?

There was only one way to find out. Louie left level 10 for the last time, and headed back up for the security control room.

Richard was lying face down on the floor with one bloated hand rested up against the door. Louie adjusted the controls and zoomed in on his former boss. He wasn’t moving. Richard Sheffield was dead. That nauseating feeling crept back up into Louie’s throat. He had totally intended to kill them all, but seeing this one dead man—the first of many—finally hit Louie like a punch in the gut. I killed him. I did that.

Louie adjusted the camera’s angle, zoomed in closer on the corpse’s hand. He thought he’d seen something. Perhaps Richard wasn’t quite done yet. Why were his fingers so swollen? Louie brought the image into focus and gasped. The fingers were vibrating. Something was inside of him. One of the fingers suddenly jerked. The hand snapped back at the wrist. Louie watched in terror as Richard’s arm slid away from the door and his entire body began to spasm. He flopped over onto his back, and Louie cried out.

The man’s neck had swollen out like a balloon ready to burst. The skin was grey and mottled over with moving black patches. The ticks were inside him, moving about, feeding on his cooling blood and growing. Richard lurched up into a sitting position. His head twisted from side to side until the skin could take no more. It burst open at the center of his throat, like a giant pustule popping. Brown gunk erupted out in a stream and splattered across the floor. The liquid started creeping along the tiles; it climbed up the walls, and it slithered over the gurney wheels. The gorged ticks had multiplied a million fold in the last few minutes, and their babies were searching for food. They moved down the corridor, like a terrible black wave, towards the living quarters beyond.

Louie snapped the monitor off and puked all over the keyboard. He stood on legs that barely worked, and swayed back and forth. “What have I done? I never meant… I never suspected… Oh dear God… what have I done?”

He had to get out, and not just out of the control room. Louie had to escape from this underground hell. The thirty-seven people left on level 10 would be dead in minutes at the rate those things were multiplying and spreading out. Louie didn’t plan on becoming one of them. He went to the stairwell next to the elevator and tested the door for the first time. He’d lied to Richard; he didn’t know for sure whether or not the outside world was completely cut off. Louie only knew the main elevator couldn’t travel up any further than level 2.

The door opened and Louie craned his head up. Part of the stairwell had collapsed, but he knew he could get out. He could see dim, grey light poking through the battered chunks of concrete and flattened drywall. Louie climbed up into the rubble, wondering to himself why he’d waited so long to try and leave this place. Because I was too afraid to find out what was really out there. He yanked on a twisted piece of stair railing and pulled. Plaster rained over his head, and Louie coughed on dust. The cracks of light had turned into a gaping hole. No, I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to stay down here because I wanted to know how it felt to be in control… of other people… of their lives.

Louie crawled through the rest of it, pulling himself up and out into the depressing grey light of day. As sick as it had made him to watch Richard die, Louie wished he could have seen it happen to the others as well. I should’ve stayed.

Someone spoke from behind him. “Hello there.”

Louie spun around, shocked. “Hello?”

“Saw you climb up out of that mess,” the stranger said. “Surprised anyone could live through that. You okay?”

“Yes, I suppose I’m fine… yes.”

The big bald man looked concerned. “You sure about that, buddy? You seem a little confused to me.”

Louie looked back down through the opening he’d come through. He thought he could see something moving down in the stairwell shaft. He hadn’t seen the ticks overtake the others, but he was sure they had.

They’re dead, all of them.

He could’ve sworn Richard was dead, too. But he’d seen his boss come back with his own eyes. He had seen his limbs move, and he’d watched him sit up. The ticks did that. They took Richard over, and they’ll take the others over as well.

The man spoke again, softly. “You ready to get out of here, pal?” He held his hand out.

Louie took the hand. “Yes, I’m ready to leave.” A piece of masking tape was stuck over a name tag on the man’s chest. Three letters were scrawled there in red marker. “Thank you… Roy.”

They had spent their first night together sleeping in the ditch. The night after, Angela and the children slept on the seats of an abandoned minivan. They stayed on the highway, taking water and food from cars, avoiding buildings altogether and sticking with what they could find from the openness of vehicles. Angela no longer wanted to sleep in houses, and the Fulger twins didn’t argue. They had all had enough of the terrors of being trapped inside strange houses and shopping malls.

Angela wouldn’t let Michael and Amanda talk to strangers. It wasn’t safe , she’d told them. And the further they traveled out from the city’s center, the more people they found. There were more survivors on the outskirts where the bomb’s effects hadn’t been as devastating. The three hadn’t met anyone dangerous since fleeing the shopping center, no more needle-stabbing teens and fat gun-wielding maniacs, but nor had they encountered people wanting to help them. Everyone was in it for themselves now. There were no more friendly neighbors or concerned strangers. People seemed as scared of Angela and the children as they were of them.

“I don’t think we should go out any farther,” Michael said as Amanda handed them each a bottle of water from a shopping bag of groceries sitting in the backseat of an old Chrysler Intrepid. “There’s not going to be as much stuff farther away from the city.”

Angela shut the car door quietly and nodded. “I know we’re limiting ourselves. There’s lots to eat and drink in the city, but do you kids know what radiation sickness is?”

“It’s when people’s hair falls out and they start throwing up,” Amanda answered. “Me and Michael have seen tons of movies about nuclear war and zombies taking over the world.”