The End - Visions of Apocalypse

If normal temps returned in a few days, the snow would melt almost instantly and he’d be able to strike out in search of wood. Maybe he’d even find some stove piping and a grill allowing him to make a chimney and fireplace of sorts. If he went out he’d need to be careful. It was possible others survived and they would be after his food, his clothes, his books, his Mountain Dew, and think nothing of killing him. In post-apocalyptic times, life was always cheap; at least that’s what his books had told him. His best bet was to remain hidden.

Still, he could risk looting a few close houses, get some more food, blankets. Most of his neighbors likely migrated to greener pastures, or… died. Irwin grimaced as he imagined tip-toeing through Bill Faber’s house and finding him and his wife rotting like spoiled olive loaf, slick and oily, and covered in a mat of flies. Were they over there right now, wondering how he was faring, or were they already dead; husband and wife, huddled on the bed in winter coats like that scene from Titanic?

It was possible he was alone. Everyone might be dead.

Outside the darkness closed in and with it a greater sense of isolation. Just looking at the solid black of a window that reflected only Irwin, listening to the wind beginning its nightly howl, he wondered if he was the last. Not just in the neighborhood, or the city, or even the state, but the whole world. Maybe some still survived in remote places. It couldn’t be Jack London’s To Build A Fire, everywhere. Near the equator there had to be pockets that the oceans hadn’t swallowed, clusters of people not freezing to death. Barefoot free spirits dinning on bananas, papaya and pomegranates. Free of governments, free of international trade laws and unilateral arms treaties, they celebrated, dancing on beaches of white sand around bonfires of their own. But did they have books? Did anyone?

The digital invasion had extended even to the jungles and deep deserts with literacy programs based on dispensing lightweight, waterproof, solar powered e-readers, pre-packed with a thousand books — from novels by H. G Wells to manuals on digging wells. Charities handed out the equivalent of hand-held libraries to every village with sunlight. Gutenberg delivered the written word to the masses; ebooks delivered masses of written words. The age of wonder had arrived, but thousands of pounds of paper books had no place in a brave new world that still sported muddy roads. Fire and floods arrived. No one made an effort to save dying relics. Who could care about ink stamped on pulp, when they had devices that would speak books aloud in five different languages. It all seemed like a good idea at the time, but so had hauling that Greek horse inside Troy. As it turned out, in both cases, disaster occurred over night.

Irwin’s legs were going to sleep and he shifted his position on the floor. He shivered, inching closer to the pot. Something about looking outside into the unforgiving night chilled him. He turned away to face his massive stacks now illuminated by the flicker of his pot fire.

Irwin imagined he retained the greatest collection of literature in the world. He had all the classics, the books everyone wanted to have read but no one wanted to read. Mark Twain said that—Irwin had his works too. Plenty of non-fiction, history and science mostly—just the sort of knowledge a struggling new mankind would crave. Neil Degrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan being the new Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. He had vast collections of mysteries and crime novels that could assist in the foundation of a new code of law. In his kitchen he kept the horror: Lovecraft, the rest of King, Poe, Barker and Koontz—the parables of motivation and morality. In the grotto were the thrillers, lessons in individualism and tenacity, but it was in his living room that he kept his real treasures. No other room in his home could hold the two most significant branches of literary achievement, what Irwin understood to be the pinnacle of all man’s art—science fiction and fantasy.

The possible and the impossible.