The End - Visions of Apocalypse

“Oh, please. You putting on a show so I’ll tell John you were a good little girl? Give me some credit for having a spine of my own.”

She’s smarter than I thought. I open the car’s gun box and take out the side-arm, a P226. Old but reliable.

“Take this.” I offer it to her, grip first.

She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Besides, I got this far without guns.”

I nod to the playground. “I’ll be in there. If anything happens, run to me in a parabolic curve. That way I can shoot what’s chasing you without hitting you.”

She laughs. “Were you this weird already, or did it turn you this way?”

I am half way between crying and laughing hysterically before she laughs again and lays a hand on my arm. “I’m kidding! The strangest thing would be if any of us were still normal, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

I force a smile and we go our separate ways. I head to the same bench as before, checking over my shoulder to see where Diana goes. She disappears into the dead trees, a dash of colour in the grey.

It’s a good thing she didn’t check up on me. I take out the petri dishes, all of them empty except for sterile Agar nutrient. I’ve decided on a different test.

I open the lids and spit into them. My saliva forms a wet, bubbly island on the gel.

The sun is out and the sky is blue. I sit back and close my eyes, soaking up the warmth. For an instant I can picture children playing, mothers and fathers watching with fear and pride.

They only wanted what was best.

The super-bugs. The drug-resistant strains. The return of diseases that were supposed to have gone forever. Something had to be done.

And so we made a glorious beast to hunt for us. A killing machine forged from lipids and proteins, sold to anyone scared of death.

Don’t care about infectious diseases? It’s also a miracle weight-loss pill. With your gut flora dead, all that food they used to digest goes straight through. No more farts without those pesky bugs metabolising polysaccharides. Good-bye bad breath, body odour and tooth decay! They flew off the shelves.

We deserve everything we got.

Diana shouts from somewhere ahead. I snap into focus and swing the M16 off my shoulder, thumbing the safety off. She comes out, waving.

“Are you all right? You looked kinda zoned out.”

I lower the rifle. “I’m fine. Find anything?”

“Nope. But I did something I always wanted to do. Took a shit in the woods.”

My smile is not forced this time.

“Been saving one up. I got to thinking: If there’s anything still alive, it’s hiding away inside. In fact, it’s given me an idea. We’ve survived this long, maybe the bug we need is right inside of us. We’re kind of a nature reserve, and we have to re-introduce the survivors into the wild.”

I sling the rifle over my shoulder. We walk to the car, side by side. “I’ve been feeling the same, but I guess I didn’t know how to put it in words until you said it.”

“I know! It’s great, isn’t it? Tomorrow, we can come back and examine my poop.”

I laugh. “And those petri dishes. They’re full of my spit.”

“No way!”

“I’ve been experimenting on myself. Trying to get infected with something.”

“What happens if it works?”

“I’ll have died for a noble cause.”

“Not if nobody knows about it.”

“Now you do.”

For a few seconds we forget the world is dead, that friends and families are gone. We are just two women, walking. I look forward to a few more moments like this in whatever time is left.

Maybe it won’t be so bad. I unlock the car.

Before I can open the door, a pair of hands reach out from under the vehicle and grab me by the ankles. With a sharp tug, they pull hard, slamming my shins into the footplate and knocking me flat on my back. Most of the skin below my knees is scraped off, but the most painful thing is the rifle digging into my shoulders.

Diana screams, backs away. A second attacker scrambles out on hands and knees.

I twist and kick, but the grip on my ankles is too strong. Diana stops screaming, which I am sure is bad. I manage to turn over, in time to see her caught in an embrace with a Thing. It holds her in a mockery of tenderness, jaws closed on her neck, blood dripping. Her arms hang limp.

The rifle is somehow in my hands. I pull the trigger, at the same time as teeth tear at my calf. The Thing sprays blood, drops to the ground. Diana slumps with it.

The teeth let go, but the hold on my ankles gets tighter. It tries to pull me further under the car, but with both of us lying flat, it struggles for leverage.

I break the impasse with a burst of full auto between my legs. The hands on my ankles tighten for an instant, then release.

Instinct and experience take over. I crouch low and sweep round the car, looking for anything else on the prowl. Where there were two, there could be others.

No sign of movement. I check Diana in case the last sixty seconds were part of some intense hallucination, a possibility I refuse to discount until I see her ripped throat.