T H E
S A M E
P L A C E
B Y
A L E X
A T C H L E Y
The world ended unceremoniously on a Tuesday in afternoon, during that 2 PM lull. The caffeine had worn off, and the regret of fast food lurked deep within in their guts. Alvin, an old codgerly bastard, was on one of his tired ignorant rants, indirectly addressing Dale and Syrus. They listened and laughed in uncomfortable amusement and genuine pity.
“There's nothing funny 'bout it! He's your goddamned president. I didn't vote for him. He's a goddamn Muslim.”
Alvin threw his hands in the air and concluded with “Good thing I got a gun in my truck, boy. I'ma kill that sumbitch if I ever got a clear shot.” They didn't stop laughing. After Alvin was out of earshot, Dale said, “ is the irony of him working for a company contracted exclusively by the United States government is completely lost on him?”
A moment hung there while Dale and Syrus processed the tirade, and caught their breaths. All they could hear was the hum of the ancient cooling system flowing from the vents, the sound of The Last Electric Typewriter on Earth filling out a sales order for a picky customer, the sound of a distant phone ringing with a secretary responding with heavy, contemptuous sighs. Their boss's wife, a Licensed White Person, created all the slightly-off paintings of desert landscapes and Native Americans gracelessly tacked upon every wall of the office. A deeply yellowed Shania Twain poster hung in the shipping office. “She's a real Texas gal,” the shipping manager would say. He would die not knowing that she was Canadian.
“It'd give that rant a 'C',” Syrus said, “no creative or new racial slurs, nothing about homosexuals or abortion. Pretty middle-of-the-road.” Dale agreed.
Syrus slunk down at his desk. “I need to leave this place,” he moaned.
“Then leave.” Dale knew what he was going say next. It was a little skit they had worked out, and nearly every day they would rehearse it again and again. Back and forth about the same tired subject of who had a better reason to leave than who. Dale was sick of it.
“It's not so bad. It's boring, but we get to do basically zero workfor a living wage.” Dale paused a bit and reminded both of them, “you get to see your best friend every day.” He concluded with a stupid face that would usually get Syrus to laugh, but he wasn't so amused that day.
Klaxons erupted from beyond the walls.
An unearthly force shook the building. Anything that wasn't nailed or bolted to the ground jolted and fell over. Binders and punch-cards flew off the shelves, computer monitors flipped on their faces, the painting of a red wolf howling at the moon in front of a teary-eyed Native American fell on Dale's desk sending shards of cheap glass everywhere. Window glass turned white and spilled like sand pouring out of a child's hand.
Mr. Lowell fell out of his chair and yelled out across the bull-pen, “boys, get in the basement!” The moment he said this, a light-fixture detached from the ceiling and split his face open. Blood sprayed from the gash. He lost his balance and fell over, into a filing cabinet. The metal corner hit him straight below the skull on the back of his neck. Dale and Syrus had a bit more luck keeping on their feet, as they were the only ones at the office under the age of fifty. The confederacy of old-timers were not so lucky. They would die like turtles flipped onto their backs – helpless.
“We havea basement?” Dale found this more surprising than the quake, somehow.
Amongst the cacophony and chaos, they made their way to Mr. Lowell's office. Lowell assessed the damage to his face, he felt the warm sticky blood harden in his palm as he touched his wound.
“I knew this day would come,” Mr. Lowell said, “I've been ready for some time.” This comment flew over the friends. “Just pull...Red...and...” he trailed off, drifting in and out of the veil. Dale pulled the only red-spined book out of the shelf; a loud clanging sound emitted from the wall. The bookshelf slid aside, uncovering a metal door that opened inward revealing a dark concrete bunker. “Get in there,” he said.
The sirens screamed a final, distant, shrill squawk, and were suddenly cut off. The rattling of the earth ceased. A calm, crisp wind swooped in from the broken windows. They stuck their heads out, looking for signs of anything at all. They could see a bright, unnatural light slowly moving towards them from the horizon, devouring everything in its' path.
Lowell's eyes remained open, but the light was gone. He stopped breathing. By the look on his face in his final moment, the form of his final expression, you could see the look of disappointment as he stared deep into the void enveloping him.
Dale and Syrus made their way down the concrete stairs as the steel door closed tight and sucked all the light out. They didn't get a moment's notice before more violent and powerful tremor jolted them, sending them both hurling violently down the stairs and into the black. The seism ended as suddenly as it swept through. Minds and bodies were too battered to function and so, they just laid there as they listened to the small tremors that snaked around in the ground beneath them and the sound of their mouths screaming silently into the dark.
Time was meaningless.
What followed was an excruciatingly long period of utter darkness interspersed with Dale's claustrophobia and night terrors, dry jerky, Wetknap baths and the growing of beards. Finally, after some increment of time, the metal door at the top of the concrete stair way opened up on its own, as if something knew it was safe to come out. The blinding wave of sunlight flooded the bunker. The two gasped like vampires and shielded their eyes. When their eyes adjusted, they slowly climbed the stairs, into the glorious light. Then began the months of wandering, with only each other as company.
#
The highway stretched out for miles ahead of them, derelict vehicles scattered across in no particular pattern. A truck dangled off of a guard rail of an overpass, the remains of a family sat crumbling in a nearby minivan. A dead man's broken neck hung over the steering console, dried gore splashed across the inside of the windshield. “Better than a day at the office, right?” Dale said. He thought it was a good joke, but Syrus rolled his eyes.
“Some respect for the deceased, please?”
“Lighten up.”
“How can I possibly lighten up?”
“Because if you don't, you'll get depressed and go insane and try to kill yourself or something.”
Syrus rolled his eyes. He thought about the possibility of them two being the only humans left alive. He wondered if mutated people or wildlife roamed the deserted streets of America. He wondered if he'll ever have sex again.
“You're right,” Syrus said. “I don't have anythingto be depressed about.”
“Why do you insist on acting like a sad sack of shit all the time?”
“Everyone I know and love is dead. Has that even sunk in for you, yet?”
“But you still have me.”
“My girlfriend.”
“What? Everyone's girlfriend is dead. They've been dead for months now. Years? However long we've been out here.”
“You didn't have anyone, you don't know what its like for me now.”
Dale laughed and said “are you serious? You know what? I'm glad she's dead.”
“What?”
“She was ruining your life. I'd say this is a step up for you.”
“How can you say that?”
“I saw it in your eyes when you were with her — that desperate, smothered look. I could see your mind twisting itself into knots trying to convince yourself that you loved her.”
Dale saved up the venom for years, and after spraying it in Syrus's face, he felt a wave of relief gently pick him up. It was like taking a great piss after sitting in the car for hours on a long road trip. Syrus looked away, trying not to break down. He scrambled to find an equally harsh counter-argument, but he came up empty handed.
Dale's scathing barrage continued “You need to harden the fuck up. The world has changed. We need to carve ourselves a niche in this rock before it rolls along without us. Stop bitching. Stop thinking of only yourself.”
“Fuck you, Dale,” Syrus said as he started walking in a different direction.
“All roads lead to the same place,” Dale said. Syrus ignored him and continued onward into the horizon. Dale watched him for a bit, and he thought of chasing after him. Instead, he did nothing.
An unknown time ago, Dale and Syrus carpooled to work together to AviInc on this highway. Before that, they had been friends since middle-school. Their youth was now far behind them and the road to adulthood wore them down day after blood sucking day. The very highway they marched upon was the same that separated them all those miserable college years. Now, they wanted nothing more than to put it between them again.
As Dale walked away from Syrus, he found it difficult to ignore the guilt sloshing around in his guts.
How long have I been walking, Dale thought to himself. He turned around scanning the new road around him. He was lost, but it didn't matter – all roads lead to the same place.
Months passed. Weeks? He didn't know.
Dale spent his alone-time breaking into buildings, grabbing dry nonperishable foods and bottled water. Standard post-apocalyptic shit. He was over it at that point. He always fantasized about this, but he never thought of how incredibly boring it could be.
He crossed another nameless highway winding its' way through a forest and found a small forgotten town. Little else stood except the decrepit shops and some surprisingly intact homes. One shop was named Phil's Phamily Pharmacy. Dale laughed aloud at the creative nomenclature of this new monument. Syrus wouldn't think that was phuckingphunny, he thought to himself. He laughed until he cried. Dale collected himself after a moment or two and finally, the fact that he was alone finally sunk in.
A quick plundering of the pharmacy yielded a decent haul. A few bags of jerky, trail mix, bottles of water, soap and expired medicine filled Dale's pack as he left to search one of the abandoned houses.
He came to an unassuming Cape Cod style home in good standing. The front door opened easily – suspicious. But he decided to continue on. The interior was nearly immaculate. The furniture looked clean, considering the circumstances. Nothing was destroyed or ruined. The walls were painted a pleasant gold, pictures of various family members in frames sat unbroken on the floor. Nothing valuable appeared to be tampered. Dale thought to himself, if this house hadn't been touched since then that means it hasn't been looted, which means maybe Syrus and I are truly the only ones left alive. Wait, no, he thought, it could also mean that someone has been here to clean up.
“Anybody home?” Dale hadn't said anything aloud in a long time. It felt strange, like he was out of practice. There was no response. The kitchen and bedrooms were relatively tidy as well, even the pastel-pink room filled with toys looked to be in order.
He found a small stair case leading down to a wooden door, which opened into a basement. He pointed his flashlight into the room and examined it in small increments. Initially, he found nothing out of the ordinary: TV, video games, ping pong table, stereo with a collection of set of records and tapes scattered on the ground. As he moved deeper into the room, he saw something unusual - a large gaping hole punched into the concrete floor without precision or grace. Stone steps lined the entry and lead deeper underground.
He addressed the darkness once more asking for signs of life anywhere, shining his light further down into the deep. Again, no response. He took a deep breath and plunged.
Dale could feel the soft rock give way under his feet; every narrow step was met with anxiety. After traveling a couple of yards at what must have been an eighty nine degree angle, he found the bottom. A smell acrid and thick choked him immediately. It was rank like a mass grave of sea creatures piled onto a city dump in the summer heat.
He puked.
He pulled his shirt over his mouth and nose and continued on.
The walls were covered in strange drawings, crude renditions of what seemed to be an unknown culture's lore regarding creation:
A red sphere appears from nothing. It uncoils into a red wolf. The wolf opens its' mouth and all its teeth dislodge and sail out into the nothingness of space. Using its' paws, the wolf molds the points into eight balls - eight planets. The wolf once rolls itself back into a red ball and lights the galaxy.
Innumerable distance of wall depicted more of early man. Dale beheld stick-men representing all the great civilizations, great wars, and human history all the way up until the modern age. The cavernous path went on twisting for several miles. There were no straightaways. Whoever designed this path insisted on disorienting and nauseating whoever was unfortunate enough to be traveling it.
After some distance, the drawings became more detailed, eerie, and horrifyingly specific. The walls depicted a group of black-hooded figures gathering around the red wolf. Jagged lines of energy juts out from its body, as the hooded men die, their blood pools in their grand meeting chamber. The jagged lines head towards two stick-men, one blue, and one green.
The two men ran down a staircase that leads them underground, and then out another staircase up, and finally going their separate ways. Green appeared to wander about a destroyed metropolis for several yards of cavern-wall, while Blue rambles around a forest. Green finds a book. Several feet were dedicated to him reading the tome, and him performing some kind of experiment or ritual or dramatic reading. The drawings were crude. Meanwhile, Blue scavenges for food and finds a house with a strange basement. Finally, Green starts a fire and considers throwing the book in, but he does not. Blue appears before them, and they fight for a couple yards of wall.
A strange energy came over Dale. His instincts detected a severe irregularity and ordered for a temporary shut down of all systems. He dropped and broke his flashlight. An immediate, chaotic panic consumed him while he continued to lurch forward with his hand on the wall. He continued on, though his mind was a catacomb filled with a mist of dust so thick that anyone bearing a torch to navigate it would be incinerated upon ignition.
A light from the other end of the tunnel revealed another destroyed wall. As he approached, a concrete room revealed itself. Dale immediately recognized it.
His old work clothes were laying next to the cot he spent countless nights of panic and depression on. The bunker was still riddled with their garbage: the empty water bottles, ration wrappers, a mountain of soiled Wetknaps. The single light bulb still, somehow, had just barely enough power to flicker rapidly at a beat that no virtuoso could count the time signature. His panic attack continued. It was the close walls. He never wanted to be in there again.
He repeated the mantra: “this isn't happening,” over and over to himself. This was his first prayer since he stopped going to church. A warm southern breeze flew in from the open metal door at the top of the concrete stairs. He knew what was waiting for him beyond the door. One leg over the other, slowly and steadily, Dale made his way out of the bunker once more—despite himself.
The ruins of AviInc surrounded him once again. The taste of a coming rainstorm was palpable. The walls were mostly topped and decayed, the roof was gone, every desk and copy machine and computer were ruined by severe weather and covered in dense sheets of ash.
Dale asked “Syrus? Are you here?” He crossed the broken frame of Lowell's office into the area where their desks were. Syrus sat at his.
Syrus wore his work clothes, now spoiled from constant wear. His face was devoid of emotion, like a cursor on a terminal screen, blinking steadfast waiting for a command. His white hair was down past his shoulders, his beard hung down to the top of where his belly used to be, where only ribs remained.