Everyone Dies in the End #4
Todd
Todd Bretford studied the flaming city below. Charlotte had been spared the nuclear missiles, but not their aftermath. The cityscape was dotted with tens of lazy smoke trails drifting skyward, beneath several burned flames bright enough to see in the mid-morning light. Todd wondered if anyone was still fighting fires. He doubted it, and not for the first time that morning, that day, or that month, yearned for the convenience of CNN. There was no television, at least no cable or satellite. Kill Dog, a ganger turned sadistic warlord, was broadcasting from a local station, but how long would that last? There was no power grid. Yep, the station’s portable generators still functioned, and would continue to do as long as Kill Dog’s minions could find gas to steal, but Bretford figured no one would be making any more fuel for quite a while, maybe never again.
It was really simple; no world meant no debt, and no Jimmy.
The world as he had known it had some good stuff. There was Madonna, yellow cake with chocolate icing, and the Philadelphia Phillies. He had been a fan since Mike Schmidt’s rookie season. The Phillies were a team of characters. Steve Carlton’s overpowering fast ball, Mike Schmidt’s overpowering power, and Tug McGraw’s overpowering heart. The thought of the reliever patting his chest after a tough out brought a smile to Todd’s face. But the memory quickly spoiled. It was a memory fueled by nights, many nights, too many nights of watching the Phillies alone—with the stress on alone—in front of his television. He had never made it to Veteran’s Stadium. It was one of his great regrets, but his loneliness was his greatest.
He salved the regret with a HoHo from the stack next to the large, oak desk. He leaned back in the leather office chair and surveyed the scene below. From his vantage in the corner office—the corner office he never earned in the previous world, the world before nuclear missiles flew—the scene looked much like any other Sunday morning. Then again 27 floors of space—the height of the Charlotte Plaza—tended to blur the rough edges. No cars moved along South College Street. Not so much different from any other Sunday morning, nor were there any pedestrians. People had learned to stay inside, at least the people who had survived the residual radiation from the Fort Brag missile strikes, the gang battles, anarchy, and flu pandemic. In July over one-half of a million people lived in the city. Three months later Todd doubted one percent of that number remained alive. He wondered how bad it was in the cities nearer the nukes.
The last cable news, BBC news it was, CNN and Atlanta had disappeared in the first wave, claimed Philadelphia was untouched, but plagued by radiation sickness. After all, it was less than a hundred miles from New York, Madonna’s home town. It wasn’t anyone’s hometown now, and no one would ever hear her Madonna sing Like a Virgin again. He sighed, and toasted black bustiers with the remaining bite of his HoHo.
At least he could still make yellow cake with chocolate icing. He stood, walking to the pallet of food in the corner of the office. Stacked there were no less than three cases of Betty Crocker cake mix, and an equal number of icing. Gathering the food hadn’t been easy. It had nearly cost him his life more than once. The first time had been the Albemarle Road Food Line. There he argued with a woman over a case of SpaghettiOs. That was two weeks after the missiles. Before civilization’s complete collapse, before the social rules regarding hitting a woman had been filled away with quaint niceties like electricity, clean water, and a sixty-year life expectancy. He had argued stridently, but not physically. Maybe it was because the lady was sort of cute. She had blond hair, and a slightly too-tight T-shirt. She didn’t, however, share his feeling of attraction, or his aversion to violence. The 9mm Glock she pulled from her purse stopped the argument cold. He shrugged and gave her the little “Os” swimming in a cheesy tomato sauce.
A week later he had a run in with two teenagers at the corner 7-11. By then it was dangerous to go out during daylight, and he had abandoned his one-room apartment in the eastern suburbs. A fuel truck, on the run from gangers, had rammed the complex, exploding violently and burning most of the chic, yet cheaply-built, apartments to the ground. Todd moved into the largely abandoned Charlotte Plaza, and it was there, from the east window, he discovered the 7-11. Early in the city’s deterioration, a Merita bread delivery truck had crashed into the 7-11 store front, blocking access to all but the most industrious. Todd was one of the more industrious, his bulk belied his agility, and he used the store as his personal provisioning source.
One night he was in the dark store, looking for food by the light of his penlight. He had colored the lens with a red Magic Marker, and it made the light less obvious to anyone who might be looking for just such a thing.
The youths surprised him. One second he was reading the back of a box of Count Chocula, the next second they were there. Tall, lanky, hair spiked, knives glinting in their hands. The closest spoke.
“What’s up, man?”
Todd knew they didn’t care what was up. Everyone knew what was up, and it was nothing. They didn’t want to know what was up; they wanted to know what he had, what they could take before they killed him. Before civilization’s collapse he might have spoken, might have offered a wallet, tried to reason. Now, however, there was no reason, and that was too bad for the teenagers. He wasn’t a murderer, but he wasn’t a victim either. Todd didn’t answer them.
He pulled the Smith and Wesson from under his shirt and pumped three bullets into the nearest and two into his friend before they could move. The sight of them laying in their own blood and urine still haunted him, but he had nevertheless brought all the cereal he could hold back to his refuge in the Charlotte Plaza. It was then he realized that not only had the world changed, but it was never going to be right again, and the truth freed him.
Todd had been a financial consultant before the collapse. A very successful financial consultant with a fat paycheck every Friday made even fatter with royalties from his constituents. But neither the pay check, nor the royalties equaled Todd’s appetite for spending the money he made. He owned a Porsche 911 SC, a nice boat that he kept at Lake Norman, and the best clothes and woman money could buy, and he was in debt, big debt, and not only legal debt. He was in over his legal-debt head well over two years ago. That’s when he started borrowing from his bookie, and then five thousand turned to ten, and ten to fifty. Now—at least in the now that existed before the collapse—Todd was bankrupt. That was okay, he declared it to the court and got the collectors off his ass, but there was no declaring it to the bookie. Jimmy he was called. Jimmy wanted his money. He didn’t care how he got it, Jimmy wanted what Todd owed him, or Jimmy would have his life in payment. But that was in that other world, the world where people could find you, the world where people were still alive. No one was finding him know. Yes, he grinned, civilization had collapsed and Todd Bretford couldn’t have been happier.
He looked at the bustier-clad Madonna framed in the picture on the desk. It did, however, get lonely in this new world.
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