The End

The End of the World

Jack had taken to carrying around a standard hotel Bible, that he'd scoured off a corpse in a broken down DLR train. I could hear him muttering prayers at night when he thought we were sleeping. That went on for a week. Then the fever found him.

When it first broke out, the internet went crazy and even the proper news started talking about zombie apocalypses, quoting pop culture as expertise. That was of course pointless; the dead never rose up, they stayed dead.

So then people started turning to religion for answers instead. The problem with that was that the preachers were the first ones to go. By the time the rabbis and shamans, and even the nuns and monks, started dropping like flies, we were quickly running out of prophets to turn to.

Churches and temples got cordoned off and whole congregations were quaranteened in government issued chambers, that the free press had fun putting into collages with photos from the holocaust for a while. When it became clear that the journalists were the next to get it, they abandoned the click bait headlines and started teaming up with the scientists to try and find a solution instead. The scientists, as it turned out, didn't find their help very helpful. They actually seemed relieved when the last of the journalists died, which happened within weeks of the first crisis correspondent coughing during a live video.

After the journalists, it was the screenwriters and the novelists turn. The poets, for some reason, were fine. I think it annoyed them more than it annoyed anyone else.

Finally the scientists dropped off as well, and it was every person for themselves after that.

I sat with Jack and held his hand — it was scorching, but I didn't let go until he stopped crying and dozed off — it took three days for him to die, but he never regained consciousness. I would have broken down by that point, I think, if it wasn't for Michael.

They knew each other from before, Jack and Michael. Jack was a TA at the SEN school where Michael had been a student. He told me once that working with autistic kids was the closest he ever got to mindfulness. It was one of the things we had in common, why we clicked. We used to joke about how people like us wouldn't be needed much longer, since it seemed as though all the neurotypicals were dying off and autism isn't an issue if there isn't a non-autistically structured society to fit into.

And maybe, we'd say, the world would even be a better place then.

We'd joke about that, but after a while we stopped laughing.

After Jack died, I was on the move with Michael for another four or five weeks, until finally one day he announced that he was tired of walking and wanted to stay where we were. It was a nice enough place. It had lots of trees and, like Michael, I've always felt at peace when I'm in nature. But the thought of staying put in one place kind of felt like giving up.

Michael wouldn't be swayed though. He'd seen a squirrel.

I could have left him there and continued on my own, and I did think about it. But in the end I stayed to help him build a shelter, then I stayed to help him gather supplies and food, then I just stayed. I never made a conscious decision to stop walking, it was always more of a decision to delay my departure. I told myself I had to stay with Michael because he needed my help. But the truth is, Michael was fine without me.

I guess I was scared of being alone.

Michael barely talks and he's not too happy listening either, but it's still company.