Were I an enthusiast of the sprawling, “realistic” type of writing ever so popular in my

youth, my narrative would continue thus-

Thus found the man a haven from that cloying darkness of complete abandon, that

pinchbeck darkness closing from left to right on his eremetic corpus. A tombal concrete massing

of Bauhaus monstrosity wherefore a refuge might be found against the everpresent night.

Oh Gawd said he, where’s the dayumn food at.

He uttered like the monks of old in featureless ecstatic rumbling. The man….

Fortunately, I never really liked that style. Corny may have been from my home state, but

I never let regionalism cloud my literary judgements. I’ve always been rather a traitor, a

Benedict Arnold if you will, regarding my country’s (former country’s? The apocalypse has

caused such confusion) literature. What I wouldn’t give for a copy of Brideshead! Or Lucky Jim,

or Uncle Fred in the Springtime! Or even better, a complete (all twelve books, damn it) set of A

Dance to the Music of Time. Oh, well. Who am I to question the wisdom of the apocalypse, and,

for that matter, the clear authority of this ramshackle, democratic (?!?!?!?!?) Marxist-Leninist

state? We’ve made progress; it used to be you’d go to some vile capitalist establishment to buy,

say, a copy of King Lear. Now you have to promise to blow a greasy official and use your

connections to make him keep from persecuting you whenever you don’t deliver. Or so I’ve

heard, I’d certainly never get into that kind of situation myself. I have my dignity.

Moving on, moving on. You’ll have to forgive me, I get carried away at times.

I came to a rather large complex, a series of imposing, square, concrete buildings with

hints of Brutalism and Bauhaus in their design. I crept along the edges of the highway, trying to

see any obvious signs that the building was inhabited. It seemed uninhabited.

A large sign told me what the complex was- Edward K. Boner Community College.

Ah, a college! There might be food somewhere! And books! I’d never leave this place, I

told myself.

I made a thorough, cautious exploration of the buildings. No one was there (funny how I

hadn’t encountered, at that stage of my wanderings, as many people as one would expect. I’d

soon make plenty of friends) and the supplies were plentiful. A labyrinth of rooms behind the

cafeteria had months worth of canned food, and I could get all the fluids I wanted out of the

vending machines. Funny, I thought to myself, why didn’t I just do this before the apocalypse?

Why didn’t I just bust open a Coca-Cola vending machine and plunder its Sprites whenever I got

thirsty? I was on my way to becoming the fabled noble savage, you see.

For the first time since the disaster began, I found some honest to goodness

entertainment, some real intellectual stimulation. The place’s library hadn’t been touched. Every

sort of book I could possibly want! I was like that fellow in that episode of The Twilight Zone,

except I was sure that nothing could possibly ruin my happiness. How many lovely hours I spent

reading some plundered tome in the pale, ash-diluted sunlight!

Ladies and gentlemen, mark my words, this was the most lovely, most idyllic point in my

entire life. I still fantasize about it. I’d spend my nights in a break room in the library, peacefully

snoozing on a threadbare couch. I’d rise at an early hour, eat some corn out of one of those large,

industrial-sized cans for a healthy breakfast. Throughout the day I’d slake my thirst on some

pilfered bottles of water and/or soda. I’d spend, as one might expect, all of my daylight hours

reading. I may as well establish that the toilets in the place still worked (thank God for simple,

analog plumbing) and I was not reduced to open, bestial relief of my more shameful bodily

functions, I was not, I repeat, I was not, a savage.

Nights were always rough, though. All of the clouds of bullshit in the atmosphere made

the nights long, cold, and horribly dark. I didn’t dare build a fire in that enclosed space. Best case

scenario: I would die of carbon monoxide poison. Worst case scenario: the burning of all the

books in the place.

The cold and the darkness brought the most horrible thoughts and fancies. I thought of

my family and the horrible deaths they had likely endured, or, even worse, were enduring at the

moment. I thought of the deaths of everyone I knew; coworkers, enemies, even those peculiar

strangers I happened to see every now and then…

Far too horrible to think of. The apocalypse tinged even the best situations with

unspeakable horror, you see. Moving on.

My idyllic stay in the library ended one grey afternoon when I had a presentiment of

doom. I was sitting at one of the tables, reading from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, when it

hit me. I’ve always had little psychic episodes like this. Mother had them too, made my

childhood quite interesting with her strange little bursts of insight. I remember how she told me

about that near-fatal bout of illness I had in college a week before it happened. Ah….

Yes, once the presentiment struck me I got my rifle and some food and ammunition. I

holed up in an empty room behind the bookshelves- I put a thick wooden table against the door

and sat in a corner, my rifle ready.

I had sat like this for an hour when I heard a few voices from outside the room. They

talked loudly, and seemed to be giving the whole floor a thorough inspection. They eventually

reached my room. They found the door locked, to their chagrin. Then they started yelling

through the door.

“Come on out, buddy. We know you’re in there. Come on, if we have to break in there

we’ll have to hurt ya.”

“Tear your tongue out, heheh.”

“We done it before.”

“He’s a monster, I can’t control him, don’t what he’ll do to ya.”

It was then that I knew what to do.

“Alright,” I said, “I’m coming. Please don’t hurt me, I’ll do anything”

“Just come on out.”

I walked to the door with my rifle in hand. I leaned over the desk and put my ear to the

door.

Then I said, “Hey, I don’t think I’ll come out.”

Then they screamed at me. I could tell by the volume that they were just outside my door.

I could even tell, by the vibration, that they were only inches from it. The knocking helped me

even more. I raised the rifle to the door and pulled the trigger. A hole the size of a man’s fist

appeared, and the kick almost dislocated my shoulder. Someone let out a high pitched scream

and fell to the floor like a sack of rotten potatoes.

Then the screams, the shouts, the threats got started.

“Oh gawd Oh gawd!”

“Shit, shit, shit!”

“You son of a bitch, I’ll kill you.”

I wasn’t stupid. I got to the right corner of the room, parallel to the door, and waited. I

waited maybe a minute, aware of every little thing around me, Outside the room I heard someone

making a blubbing sound; my victim, who wouldn’t last much longer. I kept my eyes on the

door, waiting for it to come down and an army of degenerates to storm the room and take me off

to their horrible chamber of torture.

A dirty hand reached through the hole in the door my gun had made, feeling around and

trying to find the doorknob. This was an unwise move, as my next shot almost took the poor

fellow’s hand off. My, how shrill and effeminate were his screams! I was having a lucky day,

perhaps the luckiest day of my life.

He was injured and panicking, and he had difficulty getting his hand out of the hole in the

door. I took the opportunity to move from the corner and put another hole in the door. He only

screamed for a few seconds, before going quiet.

I listened attentively for a few minutes. It sounded as though there were no others

roaming about. I decided that I needed to get away, I wasn’t safe and I may have attracted the

attention of others. I pushed the desk aside and slowly made my way out of the room.

I looked over the bodies of the two men I’d killed; ragged fellows with machetes. The

first one had limped a few feet away from the door before collapsing. He was a massive fellow,

so massive that I felt a sense of pride for having felled such a grand creature. I often regret not

having him mounted. It would be an excellent conversation piece. The second one was long and

skinny, and his face reminded me of a rat. He lay right outside the door, bubbling. He might have

still had life in him, I don’t know.

I cautiously walked over to the reading area, where there were large plate-glass windows.

I saw a few ragged, heavily armed men walking across the grey lawn. They’d heard the shooting

and the screams, and undoubtedly would have gave me several new orifices had they got their

hands on me.

Fortunately I had already planned for this kind of event.

I ran past the bookshelves and past an elevator; I came to a librarian’s office with a

sizeable window. I locked the door and loaded my rifle. Then I moved the small desk to the wall

and put a footstool on it to make the climb easier. The butt of my rifle took the window out

admirably. I climbed to the window and threw my rifle through. Then I climbed through and

jumped.

Don’t worry, gentle reader, I was not harmed. A dumptruck with a bed filled with grey,

dirty water stood thirty feet or so beneath the window, and I safely landed in the muck. I climbed

out, cold and miserable. I found my rifle on the left side of the vehicle and clung to it like a child

to a toy. Soaking wet, miserable, and frightened, I decided to make a run for the woods. They’d

likely find me, I thought, but I’d at least make them expend some effort on it. Make them earn

their meal or whatever it was they planned to do with me.

I had to run across a parking lot and a thin, elongated lawn to reach the woods. I broke

into a brisk run.

These cretins were pretty clever, I’ll have to give them that. When I was nearing the lawn

they came around the side of the library, perhaps two hundred yards from me, and started

screaming and shooting.

I began zig-zagging and ducking behind automobiles. A few bullets whizzed by me, one

even coming a few inches over my shoulder. I thought they would give up after I started running

across the lawn.

Instead, they switched to full-auto, evidently enraged by my success in keeping alive.

Fully automatic gunfire is much more frightening then it is dangerous, fortunately for me. They

were reloading when I made my way into the woods. As before, I spent many hours stumbling

through a dead, rotting forest.

Eventually I came to a remote house. It was evening and I could see dim yellow light in

the windows. Smoke was billowing out of the chimney. Like a fool I decided to knock at the

door and ask for help. I was in dire straits, you see.

A tall, blonde man in a ragged grey suit came to the door, revolver in hand. He had a

stern expression on his face, as if trying to keep control of the situation. Strangely, he wore

square-framed glasses that lacked lenses.

“Who are you,” he asked, “and what do you want? Back up, take that rifle off your back

and set it on the ground. Good. Hands up. Now, who are you and what do you want.”

I explained my situation. He seemed sympathetic and invited me in.

Thus began that most fantastical, most strange and exciting period of my life, when The

Business-Man took me under his wing.