Cataclysm III

Chapter 2

            I didn’t know her name, but I knew who she was. She had been summarily the object of affection/lust for half the guys in the complex when she moved in with a female roommate. During the summer, they had rarely worn much more than a bikini top and shorts, and spent most of their time lounging near the pool, or driving around in a red Jeep Wrangler one of the girls had. When the roommate moved out, she stayed, and her comings and goings stayed of great interest to the eligible men of the complex. I stayed out of the news, but every time a male visitor came to her apartment, speculation would run like disease as to who it might be. I had heard she was going to school for art, but I didn’t know if that was a rumor.

            Right now she was huddled on my bed, having wrapped my comforters around her. She sat there, shivering like a tiny mountain. I sat looking through some survival books I had gathered over the years.

            “What are those?” She asked, pointing to my wall. I glanced up and saw what she was looking at.

            “Fencing awards.” I told her.

            “As in, building fences?”

            “Swordfighting.” I said. “I was a fencer in college.”

            “So those came from winning competitions?”

            “Yeah.” I felt vaguely embarrassed, but somewhat proud. I’d never had anyone to show them off to, besides my teammates.

            “Were you pretty good?”

            “I was B rated,” I said.

            “That’s good?”

            “Well, you have to win in a competition that consists of quite a few people and most of them have to be A’s and B’s.”

            “Wow.” She was quiet a moment, and then said “Why didn’t your gun work?”

            “I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s just my weapon, though. I think that something has qualitatively changed about our world. The gunpowder exploded, just not with the force needed to propel the slug very far.”

            “Do you even know what happened?”

            I briefly explained what had been planned for the night before. She looked disgusted.

            “So, we’re going to be stuck in winter for how long?”

            “I don’t really know.” I admitted. “I do know that the earth is moving toward the sun at a gradual pace, but that’s an incredibly tiny increment.”

            “Can we just spur on global warming?” She said, half-kidding. “Run our cars, use up plastic bags…”

            “I don’t know if that’ll work. A lot of the data was gathered over such a short time some people believed that the warming trend was cyclical. Which means that your actions probably had little to do with global warming as it was presented. And if gunpowder won’t combust correctly, there are other changes that might have occurred in gasoline engines as well.”

            “So cars won’t work anymore? Global warming was caused by humans.”

            I shrugged. “Not really. The twentieth century was among the coolest in human history.”

            “Then why would the government push something like this on us?” She asked.

            “Power?” I guessed. “Never waste a good crisis. It allowed them more control.”

            She sighed and flopped backwards onto my bed. “It’s all so much to handle. No more swimming or popsicles-“

            “The entire world is a popsicle,” I broke in.

            “-or beaches or summer or watermelon.” Her voice started to shake.

            “Stop.” I said. “You can’t think about it that way. We’ll find a way to reverse the effects.”

            She sat up. “I suppose you’re right.” She gave me a suddenly curious look, and laughed. “I haven’t even asked what your name is.”

            “Simon Mensa.”

            “I’m Melody Wright.” She smiled. I suddenly felt slightly out of sorts and turned away awkwardly.

            “I need to do some planning. You should get some rest.”

            The apartment fell quiet as I picked up pencil and paper.

Chapter 3

            Since time was practically nonexistent, as the bluish orb hanging in the sky appeared to never move or change color, I switched my digital watch to military time. It was apparently four in the afternoon now, but I didn’t feel tired. According to the calendar and what memories I could drag together, the event—or The Cataclysm, as I had dubbed it—had happened today: January first, 2021, at 6:17 A.M. GMT. I resolved to begin keeping an accurate calendar as far as I could, and schedule rigorously to avoid losing my mind. As Melody slept, I started piecing together what I knew of the event that had so drastically altered our world. I started writing.

1.      Earth has been fundamentally altered and is in the midst of a severe ice age.

2.      Some, if not all, forms of combustion appear to be obsolete. Gunpowder among those.

3.      Sunlight, moonlight, or natural day and night cycles are altered qualitatively. There appears to be no distinction between night and day.

4.      Radio waves are possibly obsolete: no radio signal, not even white noise, has broadcast.

5.      Electricity appears to still function normally.

6.      Much of humanity appears to have suffered some sort of shock-based aneurism of the brain. From data collected, survival chances are around ten percent, but data is too incomplete to form hypothesis.

7.      Government appears to be at a total collapse as a result of genocide.

8.      There have been no broadcasts on television.

9.      The internet has been destroyed.

I stared at my list. Just the first three things were overwhelming, and I felt sick looking at the rest of the list.

There was a way out, right? Firstly, without firearms, the world would revert back to melee weapons, so I needed, first and foremost, to gather a supply of hand to hand weapons, or forge my own if the need struck. Secondly, survivors were going to need to stick together, much as Melody and I had done. Looters and gangs were going to run rampant, and the government was a non-issue. Thirdly, food sources were an issue. When canned food ran out, how would we cook food? Gas-run generators might not work, so some other form of electricity to cook food, or perhaps gas stoves, would be necessary. Liquid propane grills might work as well.

            The first thing that I needed to do was search the building for more survivors and supplies. The second thing was find a sporting goods store: they would have the items I needed to begin this harsh life.

            I awoke with a start. Melody was standing over me, wearing some kind of fluffy robe and a blanket draped around her shoulders.

            “How long have you been sleeping?” She asked. I groaned and sat up on my couch. The propane heater I had set up was still glowing at the other end of the room, taking the edge off the chill.

            “Not long enough.” I rubbed my face.

            “I need to call my mother.” Her voice was small. “I want to make sure she’s all right.”

            “I doubt your phone or mine will work.”

            “I tried, my cell is dead.”

            I tried to see her expression in the dimness. We needed candles, badly.

            “My landline is over there.”

            She tried it, and a moment later slammed the phone down. She sank down, back against the wall and started to cry.

            “Did it not-“

            “No!” She screamed. “Of course it didn’t work! Nothing is working!” She broke into fresh sobs.

            Helplessly, I moved toward her.

            “Don’t touch me!” She screamed. I raised my hands.

            “Okay. I won’t. I’m leaving, I’ll be back in a few hours. If you want to stay with me, then you can. If you don’t, you’re welcome to leave. Just lock my door when you go.”

            I put on my snow gear and stepped outside, closing the door behind me. She’d be gone by the time I returned, I knew.

            The rest of the apartment building was quiet, the sun, I guess it was, hanging still in the icy air. I found a sledgehammer in the caretaker’s shed behind the office, and began to go through the apartments, knocking the door in where necessary. Every home, every room displayed the carnage of the cataclysm. Bodies lay in pools of frozen blood, some of them from whatever unknown shock had killed them, some of them from looter’s hands. I filled pillowcases with things I would need: scissors, can openers, canned food, some candles, blankets, pillows, knives when I found them. In one apartment I found some skis and poles, and I took those as well. With each house I felt more and more despair. No one had survived the initial destruction, it seemed, save Melody and me.

            I returned when the low hanging sun began to lower further. I had been wrong when I thought there was no difference, day seemed to be a cool blue light, about seven hours long, and whatever night had become was fast approaching.

            Melody was inside when I arrived, and I dropped the supplies I had taken. She gave me a half-smile when she looked up from my small Coleman stove she had pirated from somewhere in my apartment.

            “I thought the least I could do is make us something to eat.”