Apocalypse

         The very first thing I saw was a blur. A dark gray blur interjected with a little light blue. I was very stiff, and couldn’t hear anything. I thought for a moment that I was deaf…but I wasn’t. Glass crunched under me as I moved my arm a little bit. I sat up.
         A happy early afternoon sun winked down at me. There was nothing but silence outside. Weird. The bus I was in was on its side—I would have expected for the sounds of emergency vehicles or backed-up traffic…hell, I would’ve been happy to hear a bird.
         But I didn’t.
         I climbed over the seats toward the back of the bus. The window in the emergency exit was shattered in place, so I couldn’t see anything. I pushed it open.
         Connected to the bus by a river of broken glass and debris, a ruined U-Haul truck was parked about twelve feet away from the bus. Way off in the background, a thick plume of smoke towered into the sky. The warmth of the day washed over me. The scene looked a lot like some apocalypse movie I’d seen some time back. I stepped onto the road and let go of the door. The glass inside collapsed and drenched the pavement. I peered around the side of the bus.
         There were a few derelict cars around, the closest being a Chevy Tahoe parked across the median, and nothing else.
         “What the—?” I muttered, setting off at a walk.
         No signs of life anywhere. Not even a bird. The giant smoke plume emanated from a grass fire in the median, which had apparently been caused by a minivan wreck. In the fire, I saw what I did not want to be a charred skeleton. I had no idea just what the fuck was going on.
         I remembered why I was on the bus. It had been a field trip to Mississippi for the biology club. Or was it biology class? I couldn’t remember. The trip had been on a Friday. I didn’t have the slightest clue what day it was now. It didn’t really matter.
What did matter was what happened. The windshield of the truck I was passing was riddled with bullet holes. The car dealership up ahead had burned to the ground. Whatever it was, it’d been terrible. There seemed to be a dried puddle of blood under every car. I saw at least three dead bodies. Spent bullet casings were everywhere.
Up ahead, an armored car had been flipped on its side and quite literally torn apart. Large bills littered the highway. It wasn’t exactly right, but then again, nothing seemed all that peachy at the moment anyway. I started to stuff my pockets full of bills. I’d probably had about $2600 on me before I noticed a matte-black barrel on the ground, buried beneath the money.
I checked it out. It was a pump-action hunting shotgun, a very heavy pump-action shotgun that was out of ammo. I leaned it against a nearby car and continued, still without the slightest idea what was going on.
An exit was close at hand. The bridge and ramps stood silhouetted against the blank sky. I crossed the median to the other side of the road. No wonder I hadn’t noticed the exit until now. A Kia was parked on top of the sign. But I didn’t need a sign to tell me where I was.
I paced up the ramp into Tallulah. To my dismay, it looked exactly like the interstate. Completely silent, devoid of life, plenty of abandoned cars, trash-littered streets, and—I noticed this when I passed by an intersection—no power. Sweat dripped from my forehead and my stomach grumbled. I’d been walking for what the sun’s position told me was about two hours. Not the most relaxing thing someone could do.
A McDonald’s sign towered into the silent air, and a Kangaroo one did the same thing across the street. I smeared perspiration across my forehead. Guess I should get some food before I tried to proceed home.
Home, by the way, was West Monroe, about an hour and a half’s drive away. Chances were I couldn’t make it before midnight, much less before nightfall. I didn’t entirely know why it was a good idea to cut the idea of safe travel off at nightfall, but a feeling in my gut told me that it probably wasn’t the best idea to be walking down a lifeless freeway at night, especially when I had no idea what was going on.
         The McDonald’s had been torn apart. A pickup truck had smashed into the counter, creating a blockade between the restaurant and the kitchen. All but one of the windows was gone. The soda machine rested on the floor in a dry, sticky pool of all kind of carbonated drinks. The almost overwhelming stench of rotting meat filled the building. I looked toward the Kangaroo. Just a lone car in front of one of the gas pumps.
         Ding-ding.
         The bells on the door gave a happy tinkle as I opened it. The only things on the floor were a few bags of sunflower seeds. Of course, there wasn’t a single person behind the counter or in the store. Most of the food in here probably hadn’t gone bad yet. I took some Swiss Cake Rolls and began to munch on them. They tasted extremely good as they always did.
         
         I was probably about fifteen miles outside of Tallulah. The sun was beginning to set. Exhaustion was rapidly consuming me. I sat down on the hood of a car to rest. The hard metal was so comfortable to my aching legs and back that I had to punch myself several times to avoid falling asleep. I probably couldn’t make it any farther on foot.
I had to take a piss, so I stood up, unzipped and unbuttoned, and let it go right there on the road. The urine broke a layer of dust on the pavement. It was the first sound I’d heard all day besides my own footsteps. Relieved, I returned my attention to the car. If it was still operable and unlocked, I could drive the rest of the way home and make it by twilight.
The door opened when I pulled the handle. I got into the car to find an empty ignition slot, so I looked around for the keys. They glinted in the remaining sunlight from the footwell.
“Awesome,” I said, taking them, placing them in the ignition slot, and turning.
The car started right up almost immediately, revealing several things to me at once. It was 5:58 PM. I had three-fourths of a tank to get me home. The air conditioner was the closest thing to heaven I’d felt all day. None of the radio stations were broadcasting.
I put the Impala into drive and set off.

The aftermath of whatever situation had made the world so empty got worse the closer I got to Monroe. Several times, I had to go over to the other side of the road or go off it completely to pass the wrecks. A few were still burning. I was lucky to make it into Monroe, and it was downright miraculous that I reached Texas Avenue.
But I had to stop there. The overpass had collapsed onto what looked horribly like a plane crash. I brought the car to a stop behind a Lowe’s truck and sighed. It was now 6:30. The sun had almost completely disappeared behind the horizon.
Looks like I’m walking.
I got out of the car and set off onto the 18th Street Bridge. There weren’t any cars on it. Compared to the interstate, this was extremely strange, almost disconcerting. Monroe had been hit pretty hard by whatever happened. Garbage flooded the streets and most of the cars around had been trashed. Several buildings had been torched. I turned down Washington Street. There was still dead silence. I shuddered a bit.
All sorts of paper littered the street. One scrap in particular caught my eye. I recognized the logo of the local newspaper, The News-Star. I picked it up and smoothed it out. The headline came dangerously close to making me pass out.

HORROR

 MYSTERIOUS INFECTION TEARS APART UNITED STATES
 ARMY GIVEN KILL ORDER
 MASS EXODUS FROM MAJOR CITIES CLAIMS THOUSANDS
 PRESIDENT CONFIRMED DEAD
 COUNTRIES THROWN INTO ANARCHY

A mysterious viral infection causing chemical insanity rose to epidemic proportions Tuesday. Within hours, hundreds of thousands across the South had become infected with the unnamed virus, turning into bloodthirsty walking corpses with superhuman abilities.
Evacuations have been ordered in every city in the United States and Canada with a population of more than ten thousand. Highways were jammed to gridlock with people desperate to escape. Thousands are believed to have died in this exodus from major population centers. Nearly three hundred plane crashes were reported Tuesday alone. Several airports have been destroyed by stampedes. Amtrak shut down its entire rail system late Monday due to overload.
Infection also spread to other countries—

I couldn’t read another word. I dropped the paper to the ground as the realization hit me.
I was the only person alive in Louisiana, maybe the U.S., maybe the entire world.
There wouldn’t be anything for me to go home to. The power was out, all the TV stations had probably quit broadcasting, and now there was the threat of “bloodthirsty walking corpses with superhuman abilities.” I took off at a run. The last thing I wanted to do was walk. Ten minutes had me halfway across the Endom Bridge. I stopped, even though it wasn’t safe to stop. Nothing was coming after me, though. No crazy zombies anywhere.
Still not even a bird.
The sun was down now, but I was nearly home. My house was the first (or last) one on Lazarre Avenue. Okay, it was actually a mobile home, but it was still home. I walked cautiously down the river road. The mere thought of the products of the infection, which seemed to have destroyed the world, made me want to hurl.
But again, nothing attacked me. Something glinted in the middle of the road. I walked up to the glint. It was a .38 Special revolver…a Smith and Wesson Model 66. I checked the chamber. Six shells in there, but five useable rounds. I removed the spent round and replaced it with one of two I’d found lying next to the gun. It had become almost instinct to throw the chamber using wrist strength and give it a nice spin, then to twirl the gun.
Inspection of my home from a distance revealed my house to be exactly like all the others in the area—completely empty. I continued my careful advance toward it, the revolver in my left hand. I was halfway across the street when something roared.
It was a person…but it wasn’t a person. It was one of those zombie things described in the newspaper. A trail of blood led down its shirt from a large wound in its neck. I stopped dead in my tracks, tightening my grip on the .38. For a moment, it looked at me with glazed-over eyes, then it roared very loudly.
I visibly saw a tendon tear in its ankle as it started a furious sprint toward me. I took aim with the gun, but the zombie was fast. It was two feet away from the barrel of the gun when I fired. The gun slammed backward into my hand as a .38 Special round exploded from it into the zombie’s left cheek.
That cheek disappeared, spewing blood all over the place. The zombie dropped to its knees and seemed for a moment like it was going to fall down dead.
But it didn’t.
It gave another, even more furious roar.
And lunged for me again.
“HOLY SHIT!” I roared, jumping back.
I struck the zombie in the back of the head with the gun and pulled the trigger.
That took care of it.
Everything in my house was exactly as I’d remembered it, plus about half an inch of dust and a note written on a Prozac notepad on the ottoman.

Josh: We’ve come to find you.

I crumpled the note in my hand and collapsed into the chair. God only knew where my family was right now—probably with Him. I left the gun on the ottoman and went back to my room. My bed was still as messy as it was when I’d left the house for school for the field trip. I collapsed onto it and looked out the window. By now, I could barely see Monroe’s skyline.
And before I knew it, my face was against the window and I was crying my eyes out. I didn’t have anything to live for anymore. No family, no school, no friends, nothing. It would probably be the best decision to go back into the living room, get the gun, and shoot myself with it.
But I didn’t.
Something was stopping me from going to get that gun.
I banged my head against the window, cursing and sobbing.
The lights in the parking garage flickered on.