February, Part 3

Like statues we stood motionless before the TV, still processing the news. In approximately one year, humanity would cease to exist. The pit of my stomach was a black hole, dark and dense, twisting everything around it and quickly consuming me. I felt myself fading into it, mind awash with existential dread, every cell of my brain was being overrun with terror. Words can’t express the feeling, it was the grief of a loved one dying a thousand times over, and the fear of realising your own mortality multiplied a thousand times over that, yet somehow still far worse.

I didn’t realise I was crying, or that my mother was holding me so tight it hurt. Reality had slipped away entirely, taking physical sensation with it. We were catatonic. Even though we had a year left, in our minds we were already dead.

My father recovered fastest. Ever practical, these were his first words. “Food. We need food.” He muttered.

I only half-heard him, but I latched onto the fact that someone else was speaking to get me out of my own head. It was a light in the unending darkness that I was spiralling into, I had to grab it, no matter what. “Food? We have food.”

“No, we need more. Stuff that’ll last.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It's only been a few minutes, if we leave now…”

“Dad?” My voice was small, body still too in shock to commit the necessary energy to speak at volume.

“We need to leave. We need to stock up.” He didn’t really speak to us, more to himself.

“We do? Why?” My mother snapped back to reality, finally loosening her vice-grip on me.

“The food supply chain is going to fall apart. If the world’s really ending, the economy will be crashing as we speak. There’ll be shortages in no time. We need to stock up now, before the stores all shut down.”

“Let’s go then! If I remember correctly the nearest place open is…” Mom began, finally releasing me.

“No! You need to stay here. It’ll be pandemonium out there! You could get hurt!” He snapped. “And… If things are really bad, we’ll probably need someone watching the house too.”

“Really? No. Our neighbours wouldn’t…” Mom trailed off. She was unable to say anything for certain anymore, the end of the world had made certainty an outdated concept.

“Mark, come with me.” Dad barked. Mark didn’t respond, he just stared forward at the now empty TV screen, it reflected the darkness that consumed his mind.

“I’ll go with you.” I volunteered. Dad opened his mouth to protest, but time was of the essence. He swallowed his words and led me out to the car without another word.

After an hour of gridlocked traffic, we had finally arrived at the store. What I saw when it first came into view has been burned into my mind ever since; As my father had warned, it was pandemonium. People of all shapes and sizes jostled and clashed just to enter the building, they shoved and dragged their rivals to the ground to get in just a step earlier. They were like crabs in a bucket, they took every chance to sabotage one another for the slightest advantage. People stampeded in through the large automatic doors at such a rate that they hung open, never once making a motion to close.

Dad clenched his fist, scrawny arms so tense that they appeared muscular. “Stay in the car.” he ordered.

He took a sharp inward breath and rushed out, narrowly avoiding another vehicle that was swerving to park next to us. There were scarce few spots available, most had just given up on parking correctly entirely, driving directly up to the store. Order had gone out of the window and chaos reigned.

Thanks to his smaller stature, Dad managed to weave between the crowds, escaping into the store and disappearing in the mass of bodies.

Only a minute or two passed before I followed him, but those short minutes drove me mad. I couldn’t stand to be left to my thoughts. I would rather risk dying amidst the mob than living one more moment alone in that car.

He caught me as soon as I arrived, having barely left the entrance himself. To my surprise, he didn’t berate me, just remained still, observing the madness unfolding around us.

There was carnage localized around the canned goods, outright brawls between what were once average people. Desperate hands clawed at each other, slapping and scraping as they fought for purchase on the few remaining cans on the shelves, leaving everyone involved with long shallow scratches seeping blood along their arms.

I saw one man with an armful of food literally sprinting down an aisle get tackled to the ground by a woman. His momentum taken out, he tumbled to the ground, rolling for several feet. As he did, the spoils he had gathered spilled out, quickly scavenged by the vultures hanging around him. They didn’t care to check on him after his fall, he was irrelevant, all that mattered was claiming what was once his as their own. It was humanity at its most human and yet its most inhuman, all at once. It was nothing but primal, animalistic competition.

Come to think of it. I don’t think the man who fell ever got up.

“Fresh.” Dad muttered. “Let’s go for what’s fresh. If it's just a year, we can get by with freezing it.” He grabbed me by the arm and led me away to the fresh produce, an area relatively untouched by the madness, though there was still a constant, thundering foot-traffic around us.

Immediately he began scooping up vegetables by the box, dumping them into brown paper bags, giving no thought to the eventual cost or how he’d handle them. “Go find a backpack or a shopping cart or something; Anything that can hold a lot of food.”

I dashed away on his orders. I already knew the shopping carts were a lost cause, so I made my way as fast as I could to the general goods. I hadn’t realised it, but I had already become part of the chaos, just as rushed and wild as the others around me.

When I arrived there was only one bag left. The rest had likely been taken by survivalist types early into the chaos. Frankly, it was a blessing to see just the one. It’d be able to hold at least a few day’s worth of food. That could make all the difference.

I practically leapt towards it, clutching it close to my chest in an embrace. Before I could turn away with my prize, I felt an opposing pull on it. I hadn’t held onto it for even a moment and already someone was trying to take it away from me. I should have expected as much, the world had reverted to the law of the wild: Dog eat dog.

I looked up at the source of the tugging to find something familiar to me twisted beyond recognition. Mrs Cook.

She was hardly the woman I knew. She was a swooping harpy now, face warped into a dower snarl as she bared down upon me. I wanted to speak but my throat was a desert, and not one syllable could make the long journey past it. She tugged again at the bag, instinctually I tightened my grip like a baby would.

This only drew more irritation from her. “Let go.” The smooth tone I had grown so used to was replaced by a sharp, spitting hiss. I shivered. What had happened to the woman I once knew? My eyes met hers for the last time they ever would. Gone was the kindness they once had, gone was the way she would consider me as she spoke, gone was everything I once knew her to be. She was merely another animal, looking straight past me and toward her prey.

And like an animal, she took it, smacking me away with an open-handed slap, long nails slicing my cheek as her palm struck somewhere around my chin, rattling me and forcing my grip loose. I fell to the floor, dazed, only the thundering of feet around me remaining comprehensible. By the time I came to, she was long gone. I returned to my father empty handed.

In the end, we only made it out with a scant few bags of vegetables and an armful of meat. Though, in many ways, I believe we left with more than most. We left with our humanity intact, and in a world where we were soon to lose everything, I’d like to believe that was far more valuable.