Apocalyptica

“…city’s Nuclear power station… meltdown… lethal toxins seeping into food and water supplies… standstill… political upheaval, public demanding answers… uncountable fatalities… reanimation of biblical proportion… the dead are walking…”1

I recount these words which I have transliterated with a terrible accuracy from the various radio newscasts I am able to receive from my squalid condition, in some invented hope that in my debauched ignorance, someone may truly explain as to what has occurred here. Perhaps if I explain my disquieting story, it may aid you in an understanding which I cannot simply appreciate. Please know that I do not ask for your sympathy, as it would go withered for I can see that there are shades closing in about me. I ask only that this extraordinary week be comprehended by someone, somewhere, some day.2

I awoke amid a panic on the morning of January 19, 1998. Outside, in the streets below the apartment building where I lived, chaos had engulfed the streets. Looking out across the city’s dawn skyline, I espied a giant plume of choking black smoke. It reached across the entire metropolis’ position and further with its immense and obstinate embrace. The screams of people raised themselves to my open window, and although their words of horror were indiscernible, they were laced with a palpable fright. The nearby power station where I worked as a rudimentary errand-boy was the font from where the cloud had rolled. I knew from the disorder in the streets that something unconditionally more cataclysmic than a simple explosion had happened, and I rushed to dress and descend the fifteen storeys to the ground floor.3

On entering the street, I was immediately seized by a fleeing passer by and questioned briefly yet disturbingly robustly as to my slow escape. When I produced the answer that inquisitiveness had led me to stay those few moments longer, they took their chance and ran. Something which I now regret having not done. 4

Deeper into the heart of the city there were less people, either dead or alive from what I had now learned was a meltdown at the plant. The few remaining were grasping tightly to various small possessions, holding them against themselves. As I passed through the emptying streets I saw an old man walking silently, comically unaware of the terror which surrounded him. He wandered alone, humming a tuneless song. Further on my ludicrous amblings I came across a young mother, absently pushing a vacant pushchair along the ruined pathway. Her face was muddy and streaked with tears which had carved out fascinating and irregular patterns across her features, giving her an almost Neanderthal quality in the way she appeared. 5

Hours later I saw no one. Still powerfully striding on my aimless ramble, the silence had become belligerently intense. There were strips of paper and loose debris fluttering around in the cool wind upon invisible wings of the panic which had engulfed the public so mightily this morning past. Shop windows had been smashed and crippled in the vast expanse of the martial law which now reigned. Random fires had broken out, but there was no one around to worry about these desolate streets. The local government’s call for “immediate evacuation on the grounds of public safety” had drained the municipality in mere hours. 6

The strong stench of rotting death had been caught upon the breeze, and my head had dismissed it at once without any assumption as to its cause, yet as I rounded the corner, emerging from a side-street, I became despondently aware.7

Along the main high street which dissected the city cleanly into two halves like a great, sharpened blade through perished, softened fruit, there were unbound bodies lying amid the wreckage of countless vehicles. I audibly, and unashamedly, winced at the colossal, external mausoleum which was so precisely and ominously created. I walked, inhaling the states of death and already-beginning decomposition. Beside me, at one point, was a scene which I will try best to recall. My current dementia (as I have so diagnosed it) has made my memory rather indistinct, yet certain images stand clear. It is these I will try to remit.8

An old car, I could not say what model or year, for it was charred beyond detection, lay heavily upon its roof. There was still a small flame coming from inside, and it tangibly highlighted its contents. A man was lying dead, his torso hanging out of the shattered window in a position mirroring that of someone who had either pushed something away, or were trying to recall it again. His arm outstretched, yet his face attached to the asphalt. A few metres away, there was another vehicle which had collided vehemently with a street light which had surprisingly withstood the impact moderately well. Pinned between the compacted front half of the car and the Herculean light was a child of no more than ten years. He (or she, the small body was thoroughly ruined) had ran, by the wishes of the reaching man in the over-turned car, seeking safety, but only found the front of the escaping car which swerved either out of loss of control, or sheer trepidation. Even so, from witnessing this picture and nauseatingly replaying the several possible deaths of the infant in my head, there was something else which made me want to abandon the place.9

I had by chance found a vehicle which was largely undamaged and completely forsaken, and during my tampering with buttons and keys, I had managed to make it start. It coughed and spat its obedience at me for a moment, an then settled to a steady, dark drone. In my meddling with the controls I had failed to notice the company I kept, lying in the back seat, and it only caught my attention when it gurgled and sound from a blood-filled throat. Its scorched flesh had melted eerily and the communication that it gave me had directed my ponderings to believe that this was a human. Its slurred and imperceptible discourse made me automatically speed off in search of any possible help I could find.10

Hurrying down the main street of the city, I had my attention clutched by something, and I slowed as I passed, ignoring the choking moans from behind me. The haunting picture was of an ambulance, it was parked ordinarily and it was fully functional and wholly undamaged. There were no paramedics or medical staff visible, which was indeed unusual, but by no means the strangest thing. Lying still behind the open doors of the vehicle was an abandoned stretcher, crowned with a long, heavy-looking, thick, black bag, and as I watched it, it moved. Then more, it sat upright and moved its convulsing shoulders. 11

Afraid almost to the point where catatonia takes charge, I turned to face once more, the road ahead. I smashed head-on into a military van heading the opposite way.12

Somehow I have escaped with only minor wounds. I would call it a miracle, but I do not believe it to be so. I can hear the sombre lamentations of hopeless souls not far away from where I am hidden, and last night I think I saw a small child crawling inelegantly, for their legs and lower half were severed clean away.13

End.14