Fall of the Apocalypse

The Fall of the Apocalypse

The zombie outbreak didn’t start with
sirens or explosions or government warnings. It started with a man trying to
buy a pack of Marlboros at the Genoa Junction Bp off Highway 12. I was behind
the counter, half asleep, half annoyed, and fully ready to tell him we were out
of his brand. Cyndle was restocking the cooler, humming something off‑key. The
fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like they always did. It was just another
Tuesday.

The man handed me a crumpled five‑dollar
bill, opened his mouth to say something, and instead let out a wet, guttural squwelch
of blood from hi throat. His eyes rolled back. His jaw snapped forward. He
lunged across the counter like he’d suddenly remembered he was starving.

I didn’t scream. I grabbed the tire iron
we kept under the register for “customer emergencies” and cracked him across
the face. He dropped like a sack of rotten potatoes. Cyndle screamed, then
laughed, then screamed again. We dragged him outside, locked the doors, and
watched through the glass as he stood back up, jaw hanging sideways, and
wandered off like he was late for a meeting.

That was the beginning.

The virus spread fast. People turned in
minutes. The roads clogged with abandoned cars. The air filled with distant
screams. The Genoa Junction Bp became a fortress. Cyndle and I barricaded the
windows, stacked shelves against the doors, and armed ourselves with whatever
we could find. We survived on expired snacks, old beer, and rainwater we
collected in mop buckets. Zombies wandered the parking lot like confused
tourists. We stayed inside. The ones we killed just piled up by the carwash.

Five years passed.

Five years trapped in that gas station
turned us into something else entirely. We weren’t just surviving — we were
bored, feral, and inventing new hobbies that would’ve gotten us arrested before
the outbreak. Our favorite was “Zombie Slingshot Roulette,” where we’d load the
giant slingshot we made out of bungee cords and mop handles and launch random
shit at zombies to see what would kill them. Cyndle once rocketed a can of
peaches so hard it took a zombie’s jaw clean off. I sent a stapler through
one’s eye socket. We kept score on the wall with tally marks and stupid
drawings. We laughed until we cried. We cried until we laughed again. We were
losing it, but in a way that made us feel alive.

But winter was coming again, and the gas station wasn’t going to save us forever. The roof leaked. The food was almost gone. The zombies were getting bolder. One night, sitting on the counter eating stale pretzels, I looked at Cyndle and said, “Fuck it. Let’s go to Maine.”

She grinned like a maniac. “Fuck it,” she
said.

We loaded everything we could onto two
motorcycles we found behind the building. Gas cans. Blankets. Tools. A box of
granola bars. A map so old it still listed Blockbuster locations. And the guns
we’d found in an abandoned police cruiser: an M‑16 for me, a pistol for her. We
didn’t know how to use them properly, but we figured we’d learn fast or die
trying.

We rode east.

Wisconsin blurred behind us. Then
Illinois. Then Indiana. Then Ohio. The world was quiet, empty, wrong. Zombies
wandered the highways like broken scarecrows. We dodged them, weaving between
rusted cars and fallen trees. We slept in barns, sheds, and once inside a giant
fiberglass strawberry outside a roadside attraction. We ate whatever we found.
We laughed at things that weren’t funny. We screamed at things that weren’t
scary. We were free, and freedom made us wild.

The motorcycles didn’t last. Mine hit a
pothole the size of a crockpot and snapped its front fork clean off. Cyndle’s
engine seized two days later. We abandoned them on the side of the road and
kept walking until we found the truck.

It was huge. A beast of a pickup, rusted
but functional, with a cab big enough to sleep in and a heater that still
worked. I hotwired it. Cyndle cried tears of joy. We drove east with the heat
blasting, wrapped in blankets we’d stolen from a motel laundry room. We weren’t
the same people we’d been at the gas station. The apocalypse had peeled off our
layers. I wasn’t just surviving anymore. I laughed at danger. I swung weapons
with too much enthusiasm. I talked to myself. I talked to zombies. I talked to
the sky. Cyndle matched me beat for beat, saying fuck it to everything, dancing
on rooftops, screaming at the moon, and treating the apocalypse like the
world’s worst road trip.

We crossed into Pennsylvania; it always
takes fucking forever I swear Pennsylvania doesn’t end... Then New York. Then
finally, Maine. My chest tightened. Home. Or what was left of it. We drove past
empty houses, past rusted trucks, past a diner with a sign that read CLOSED FOR
THE END OF THE WORLD. Cyndle laughed. I didn’t.

My family’s land was deep in the woods,
accessible only by a narrow dirt road that twisted like a snake. I drove
slowly, scanning the trees. Cyndle gripped the pistol. The fog thickened. The
air grew colder. The woods felt alive.

We reached the clearing.

I slammed the brakes.

The bunker hatch was open.

Not broken. Not forced. Just left Open.

Cyndle whispered that someone was here.

My stomach dropped. I stepped out of the
truck, M‑16 in hand. The clearing was quiet. Too quiet. The fog curled around
the trees like fingers. The bunker hatch yawned open, dark and deep.

Then I heard it.

A scream.

Not a human scream. Not a zombie scream.
Something else.

Something ferine.

Something familiar.

I froze.

Cyndle whispered what the hell that was.

I didn’t answer. I knew that scream. I
hated that I knew it. I hated that my body recognized it before my mind did.

Jake. Mother fucking. Ross…

I moved toward the bunker slowly,
carefully, each step deliberate. Cyndle followed, pistol raised. We reached the
hatch. I peered inside.

The bunker was lit by lanterns. Supplies
were scattered everywhere. Cans. Tools. Blankets. Bottles. And in the center of
the room, standing on a table like a deranged king, was Jake.

Naked.

Except for rubber boots.

He held a wooden staff with a bright pink
silicone butt plug duct‑taped to the end. He swung it like a medieval weapon,
knocking zombie heads sideways with the kind of enthusiasm only an untamed man
in rubber boots could muster. He screamed again, a sound that echoed off the
bunker walls like a war cry.

“COME GET SOME, YOU ROT‑SUCKING MEAT
MUFFINS!”

I covered my face with my hand.

Cyndle whispered, “who Is that—?”

“Well… remember that dude I told you
about back home” I said. “Yeah, well, That’s Jake.”

Jake turned, saw me, and grinned like a
man who had just found religion in a bottle of potato vodka.

“CILLAAAAAAA!” he screamed. “I KNEW YOU’D
SURVIVE! I KNEW IT!.”

A zombie lunged at him. Jake swung the
staff. The butt plug connected with a wet smack. The zombie’s head snapped
sideways. Jake whooped.

“BEHOLD MY TRUSTY RUSTY RUBBER GRUBBER
NUBBER!”

Cyndle whispered she hated everything
about this.

Same, I whispered.

Jake dispatched the last zombie with a
dramatic flourish, then turned to us, panting, chest heaving.

“Welcome home, Cilla,” he said quietly.

I stared at him. “Jake. Why are you
naked?”

“Clothes slow me down,” he said.

Cyndle whispered she was going to throw
up.

Jake pointed the staff at her. “Who’s the
nerd?”

“My best friend,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “You’ll need her.”

I rubbed my temples. “Jake, why are you
here?”

“I remember you talking about this place
and one day I was roaming around out here and found your old house. Your pictures
still on the walls. So, I started looking around more” he said head down, “ere
hold my Bubber nubby dubber nubbs?” he slurred the vodka seeping from his pores.

Cyndle whispered to him.   “Stop calling it that”.

Jake ignored her. He walked toward me,
boots squeaking. “I saved this for you.”

I looked around. Supplies were
everywhere. Some opened. Some half‑eaten. Some repurposed into bizarre
inventions. A lantern strapped to a helmet. A frying pan duct‑taped to a
shovel. A potato vodka still bubbling in the corner.

Jake had turned the bunker into a ferocious
 man‑cave.

“Jake,” I said. “We need this place to
survive.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I kept it
safe.”

“Jake. You drank half the medical
alcohol.”

“It was Tuesday,” he said.

Cyndle whispered “I’m going to die here”

I ignored her. I walked deeper into the
bunker, inspecting the supplies. Some were intact. Some were ruined. Some were
questionable. But the bunker was still usable. Still safe. Still ours.

Jake followed me like a puppy. “I knew
you’d come back,” he said softly.

I stopped. I turned. Jake wasn’t grinning
now. He wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t swinging the Nubber. He looked human.
Vulnerable. Lonely.

“I didn’t know if you were alive,” I said.

“I didn’t know if you were either,” he
said.

Cyndle whispered “I shouldn’t be here”

I ignored her again. I looked at Jake.
Really looked at him. The apocalypse had changed him. Hardened him. Broken him.
But he was still Jake. Still the chaotic, feral, unpredictable man I’d loved
for years but never allowed myself to be with.

And he had saved my bunker. Kind of. He still hadn’t told us how they got in here in the first place.

Jake cleared his throat. “So… you wanna
stay here? Sorry bout the mess I got shmammered last night must have left the
hatch open’? I can fight zombies naked anywhere.” He was beyond drunk and jumping around in the way he spoke,

Cyndle whispered “please put some fucking
pants on bro”

Jake grinned. “I’m not wearing pants.”

I sighed. “Jake. We’re staying.”

“Hell yeah,” he said.

“I hate this,” said Cyndle

 I smiled despite myself. “Welcome to the fall of the apocalypse,” I said.

Jake blinked. “What?”

“The apocalypse. The road trip. The
bunker. The zombies. The chaos. The bodies everywhere. The fall of the
apocalypse.”

Jake grinned. “I like it.”

“that’s a fucking dad joke you asshole
and you know it. We had a deal no dad jokes in the apocalypse” cracked Cyndle.

I stepped forward, grabbed the staff, and
held it up.

“Then let’s survive,” I said.

Jake whooped. Cyndle groaned. The bunker
hummed with lantern light. The fog curled outside. The world was broken. But we
weren’t.

Not yet.

Not together.

To be continued.