Declan McCreary - Pandemic - We've Run Out of Toilet Paper!

I can hear yelling from afar “Get out of the car and we won’t hurt you,” faintly, almost indecipherably. I can feel my penis retract into my body and my heart accelerates, my palms get moist. Do or die time this is. I lean back in my seat thinking up all the horrors they have in store for me, I take a look at my passenger seat, all for food and water, or do they want more than that? Anyways I suddenly really wish I could get out and take a piss in the trees to my left. I can’t say how many cars and people and how they are dressed, but I would wager they are what we would call marauders. They aren’t partial to dialog and thinking, rather they just like to get what they want, at least I think so and I’m not going to risk it.

Decisions, decisions, decisions, and I floor it back in the direction I came from. I see a weak point between two cars where it’s just a guy with a supposed AK-47 and head right for it. The accelerating feels great and I feel ready to vomit out of fear and the tree of possibilities, each branch signifying a different but equally brutal and undignified end. They aim their weapons at me and I calculate the distance and steering requirements, duck down and keep the wheel steady. They start shooting and I can hear the bullets whisk through the hood, windshield being pelted-I hear the headlights shatter. Snap, crack, and I hold steady. Suddenly my body gets jerked to the left and blood streams from my left ear after my head smashes the steering wheel. I sit up and look around, I see the roadblock retreating in the rear-view mirror, and realize I must have just skirted one of the cars. Damn that fucking hurt but it feels good to slip by. It’s kind of like when you get an extra twenty at the super market but you feel a bit guilty taking it, in this case there’s no guilt, just pure satisfaction. It doesn’t last long though, my heart sinks when I see about 10 cars pull up on the horizon. Whoever they are, they must really be looking for some new friends. I shove down the accelerator as far as it goes and sit back, the windshield’s got a bunch of holes in it now and from the looks of it so does the passenger seat and my own. Periodically I look into my mirror and notice they are still on my tail, we keep this up for miles and the whole time I’m in a state of complete depravity. It’s as if my heart had fallen into a morass of hate and despair, a miasma of disturbing scents and a great pulling down from within your own body—like a hand choking you from inside; I’m just so fucking scared. No matter my fear I drive on, I feel like I’d like to take a shit and a piss but unfortunately my band of brothers doesn’t think I deserve any kind of rest-room break.

We drive on and on and once my tank hits below half way I start to take this to its logical conclusion, will my gas outlast theirs and if not what’s going to happen? I look a little bit forward into the future and my arms shackled behind my back and a few dicks in my mouth; I only wish my car could go faster. I reformulate, that’s not an acceptable outcome—I’ll take one of these exits and lose them in the city.

We drive on like this for another 20 minutes, around 120 MPH is where the limiter kicks in and you can’t go any faster. There’s an exit coming up and I figure this one’s as good as any other. I swerve through the exit hoping to increase the distance between myself and my new crew. I see a small town come into view, good news; somewhere to get them off my tail. They’re all taking the exit and one of them screeches off the road and their car flips into the underbrush. I fly through the main thoroughfare doing 80 in what’s supposed to be a 35 zone. It’s not that difficult given it’s mostly empty but the occasional corpse or burned out car mean I stay hyper-vigilant. I slow to 40 and take a sharp right into a side street but the car slides, took it too fast, bam. My head whips forward into the airbag and the wind flows out of my lungs. I lean back blood coming from my nose, I’m reminded of pennies, everything is silent and slowly a faint ringing enters my perception. It grows until I realize the horns stuck, I also realize I’m about to get my face cut off if I don’t bolt. I grab my Swiffer/Broom and backpack and run out the car across the street busting into the first apartment building I see and run up the stairs. I fly up two flights when I notice a door slightly ajar and jump in slamming the door behind me. The floor’s littered with an inch thick layer of extra delicious snack offerings from your local convenience store and the usual sugary drinks, Coke cans, and Gatorade bottles. As if it had settled to the floor over time, building up more and detritus as humans receded further and further from the world. The door’s locks are busted, must have been kicked in before, I head to what I assume is the living room. I’m startled by what I see, two small kids, a boy and a girl probably between 8-10 years old just staring at me wide-eyed.

“Fuck, you scared me,” spurts from my mouth, thinking on this I probably scared them a lot more than they me. “Look, we need to be really quiet ok, there are some very bad people outside, and if they hear us they will hurt us,” I calmly tell them.

I grab the couch and shove it through the pile of junk barricading it against the door, it needs something more though to keep it in place. I shove my Swiffer/Broom between the couch and the doorway to the kitchen, making it fit snuggly so as to keep the coach in place against the door. The kids stand their staring, the boy walks over to me and takes a revolver out of his back waistline and I get a sudden vision of having my insides blown right out, drooling in pain on the floor, wondering what just happened. He hands me the revolver saying nothing as I think about what must be going through his mind, a leap of faith, a complete lack of reason, or the perfect decision?

“Are you hungry or thirsty?” I ask and both of them nod, “Okay, get me a bottle.” I fill it up from my water jug and they take long draughts, breathing out with an “ahh” passing it between each other for seconds and thirds. I give them a one of my bags of Cheetos, it doesn’t stand a chance.

I go and sit on the coach putting my finger to my mouth making sure the kids are aware that they should be silent and I listen for coming death, boots against the ground, and orders of any kind. I can faintly hear the car horn and it suddenly stops. Just barely I hear shouting; I assume they are spreading out.

At this point I realize that I have six bullets in the revolver, which meant that I had to kill at least six of them if they wanted to get their money’s worth. I also reckoned that there were more than six of them, so it was kill six of them and then get raped, enslaved, or killed, or on the other hand kill three of them then kill both the kids and myself. I couldn’t imagine leaving the kids behind to those animals and no matter what one thinks about ethics, no matter how much the world changes, one thing remains constant; pain and suffering. These are essential elements of the human condition, it doesn’t matter if you are the last man on Earth—you find avenues to avoid suffering. I readily admit the children’s suffering matters as well, just ask them. Philosophizing aside, the boy stairs stoically at me, I’m not sure if he’s scared or simply incapable of comprehending anything anymore. It’s as if his mind was erased upon the coming of this apocalypse, rebooted with new software, a more rugged operating system. He stands there with a blank expression, is he aware of the coming cruelties the marauders would inflict?

Sounds like a few of them are inside the building banging on doors shouting, “We know you’re in here,” cliché as fuck.

They run past the door and the revolver is dripping with sweat from my palms, my heart palpitates like I just ran a marathon, and the kids just keep standing, a strange bulwark against the madness outside. They give me an ounce of courage; when you have something to protect things always become more lucid. I hear them run back down, they must have figured I wasn’t here; maybe my luck’s turned. We sit like this in a state of sub-panic just to be safe, two hours pass and I figure they aren’t coming back. By this time it’s dark outside and the two kids are sitting together in the corner.