Eliot Strange and the Prince of the Apocalypse

5) First Night

When I opened the door, there was Steven with his backpack and a sleeping bag.

"Where we staying tonight?" he asked nonchalantly like he didn't notice the knife inches from his left eye. 

He knew the why of the knife because I had told him all my dad stories and that when there is a catastrophe, things can get real crazy, real quick. Panicked people go nuts. 

I looked at Steven, all packed and ready to go. He looked a lot more prepared than me.

"We are staying here tonight," I said. "This is all still new. I think we will be safe here for a few nights. If things get worse, we need to be ready. We need to make some plans. Gather supplies, find shelter."

He nodded. Steven trusted me.

"Where's Nana?" I asked. Nana was all Steven had. She was his mom and his dad and his real Nana.

"She said she wasn't going anywhere. She's too old. She told me come find you and make sure you're safe. She has a gun, and you know my Nana. She will use it."

I smiled at that. I did know his Nana. God help the person who thinks she is helpless.

Stay alone or with family was one of my dad's rules of survival. Steven is family. He can stay. 

That first night was a night without sleep. I could only think about the survival rules my father taught me. He said we would need them one day, and it looked like that one day was finally here. There were so many rules.

You can't depend on anyone, only yourself. That was rule one my dad taught me before I quit visiting him in summers. When it goes bad: don't stay with large groups, don't trust others, don't trust the government. Stay alone or in a small group of three or four, but never more. Only trust family.

My dad taught me the rules when I was still listening, before I discovered friends, real friends, and boys and sports and taming my wild hair and all the things that make middle school way more exciting than trapping a squirrel or sterilizing pond water. After I quit visiting my father, I spent most of my time on my phone watching what everyone else was doing and trying to get them to watch me. My father's newly found disdain for certain types of electronics only made me want to live in that world even more. Because he was a computer geek himself, I added hypocrite to the list of things I hated about my father.

At first, I got lost in that cell phone world. It was easy to get lost there because all my new friends were lost in that world too. I followed celebrities on Instagram and Twitter, all the most popular ones - Taylor and Ashton and Kim and Prince Torin and his look-alike bodyguard, whose name I could never remember. I didn't stay in the Social Media universe long, only maybe eighth grade, but it was enough for me. Turns out, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl. I hated talking on the phone, even when it was texting. I faked it to belong, but I had rather be outside, and that is all because of my dad.

That first night Steven couldn't sleep either. I guess we both had the same feeling. This was something new. Something scary but still exciting. We were scared but not that scared yet. With reports and rumors coming from many directions, it was hard to sort out the truth. We didn't know it then, but we learned that this would be the new normal - lots of information, some truths, some exaggerations, some flat out lies. We learned soon enough that the truth was scarier than the lies, and that even made up rumors had a hint of the truth, just like my dad said.

That night all Steven wanted to talk about was his favorite celebrities and not what might be happening to them. He was worried. Some of the chaos before the EMP involved attacks on the famous. It was like someone was trying to tell us that no one was safe, no matter how much they were loved and followed or how much money or security they hired. Hollywood and television stars and even internet influencers were in hiding months before the EMP because of the brutality of the attacks. Most people agreed that it might be better to be killed outright than to be a survivor of the atrocities.

That night Steven did not want to speculate what was happening to his idols. It was too scary to imagine, so I just listened to him rattle on about his many favorites. It made things seem more normal, more like our usual sleepovers.

Steven was a big follower and fan of famous people. He talked about these people like he knew them, and if it was on Snapchat or Facebook or Twitter or TikTok, he did know them. Steven was a Wikipedia page of celebrity gossip. It is one of the ways we were not alike at all, but also one of the things I loved most about him. His frequent updates on his favorites kept me tethered to a teenage world I wasn't quite a part of anymore. Steven was different from me in many ways, and that made us compliments of each other.

Steven's favorite celebrity crush was Prince Torin. According to Steven, Prince Torin and his bodyguard were visiting the United States when it ended. That first night we talked about the prince like there was still hope. Like he and all the others made it out. It was only later that we learned the truth about Washington and the other big northern cities.

Since most of Washington, DC is destroyed now, the prince and his equally beautiful bodyguard are both probably as dead as my cell phone. All the celebrities are gone now because, if you don't have the internet, then you don't have famous people, and you don't have fans following their every move. Celebrities lost their fan clubs, and if what they say is true, California and New York City are gone. Unless they were visiting their ranch, the famous are dead along with a lot of other people like probably, my aunt and uncle.

Some died quickly from various methods of mass destruction, and some died later when there was nothing to eat or no way to get to it. They were destroyed - just like in a movie when the disaster finally hits after the big build up to the end of mankind, only this time, even the beautiful movie stars didn't make it.