There are many ways to die.
The Sunshine State was known for many things, it’s oranges, golf courses, old people, Disney World. It was perhaps less known for how it maintained those things, the constant pumping of groundwater, leaving the porous limestone shelf Florida sat so precariously on to crumble away and swallow houses whole.
Ryan Frey had never thought about dying much, but he had seen pictures of the two thousand foot, perfectly round sinkhole in China. When he was a kid, he had passed by Lake Rose every day on his way to school knowing how many houses it had swallowed. The earth suddenly opening up beneath him into a great, Stygian abyss was the only thing to ever make his skin go cold.
Now, he stood at the edge of the biggest sinkhole he had ever seen.
The lake next to him splashed down, down into the limestone mazes below, making the expanse of darkness in front of him infinitely more daunting.
Shuddering, Ryan steeled himself to begin walking around the rim of the sinkhole and focusing on the pristine fast food place inches within his grasp. It was hard to not look back at his greatest nightmare but he did it anyway as he approached the front door.
There were better ways he could die.
The door shrieked open and Ryan winced, hoping he hadn’t advertised his position. People had been few and far between but he had been able to avoid them thus far. When he didn’t hear anything he shut the door behind him, looking around the dirty floor and abandoned counters.
The sick stench of rotten food hit him and he pulled a bandana over his nose and mouth, closing his eyes as if blinking would get rid of it. Food was still strewn across the counter tops, forgotten in everyone’s haste to evacuate. He hit the fridge with the butt of his hand and sighed. Every single place he’d been to was empty. Was everyone gone?
While the people had been few, Ryan had yet to see a police car, ambulance, the National Guard, a fire truck, a goddamn golf cart with a police light on it to mark the world’s passing. On a whim, he strode to the back of the kitchen and to the office, only to see the door on its hinges and a dead body slumped against the wall. The hole in its head was near impossible to tear his eyes away from.
Desperate to get away from the stench, he flew through the back door and into the harsh sunlight, spotting a large delivery truck with the lock undone. It was tough opening the hatch but he managed and was thrown back by a wave of decaying food. When he could stand again he noticed the cases of water stacked up along the walls.
He must have wasted a lot of daylight but Ryan managed to move all fifty cases to the front of the store and rummaged around in the front of the truck for a sharpie and piece of paper, which he scribbled on and stuck to the pallets of water.
With as many bottles as he could stick in his bag, he set off east again down Highway 414, east into the heart of Florida.
His crude sign read “GODSPEED Y’ALL” and he needed the pick me up as much as whatever other unlucky souls who came wandering in search of shelter, water, hope.
On the morning of December 21st, 2012, Florida was thrown into darkness, its streets and cities crumbled, the caverns beneath it finally giving way. With no way to check on his friends or the rest of the world, Ryan had packed his small amount of things and entered a scene of chaos. The deeper he ventured into Central Florida, the more he saw of the hideous sinkholes, cropping up in the middle of streets, neighborhoods, and cities. They didn’t seem too picky. Every so often he would feel the ground shuddering beneath his feet as he walked, could hear the distant groans getting closer.
Time was a mystery these days since Ryan had no idea how to survive outdoors longer than ten minutes, but when the sun was rather low in the sky he saw a couple figures milling about up the road. He took a gamble and stopped to hold up a hand and wave.
A gunshot pinged off the car next to him.
Before he could register, his body had thrown him behind a truck and pulled out a worn machete, the only thing close to a weapon he had in his apartment. There was silence for a few moments as his breathing caught up to him and his mind reeled. Perhaps they were as exhausted and scared as he was, maybe Ryan could talk to them.
Footsteps approached and Ryan slid around the truck as the person slowed their pace and passed by his hiding spot. When they had their back to him, Ryan emerged and stood slowly, machete drawn. It was clear the man had no intention of talking things out with Ryan as he brought a worn gun up to shoot him directly in the face.
In a single motion Ryan swung the blade, catching him by the throat and slapping the gun from his hand. The gun clattered to the ground as the man’s hands flew to the dark river now flowing from his neck. Ryan let his machete fall and he kneeled down next to him, holding his hands out as if his regretful gestures would fix it.
More footfalls reached his ears as light left the man’s eyes. This time it was a woman, who took one look at her companion and screamed. She found Ryan and lunged towards him, pulling out a small knife as she did. He dodged clumsily, losing his balance and falling to the asphalt next to the dead man’s gun. The woman had already spun around and had her arm poised to plunge the knife into Ryan’s chest.
One, two shots, and the woman jerked as bullets ripped through her chest and neck. The knife fell from her hand and she crumpled, the front of her shirt growing red.
The two people lay there motionless, bleeding and making Ryan’s gut feel heavy. He stood up and leaned against a car, wiping sweat from his forehead.
He turned and threw up. Head between his knees, he tried to make himself cry but couldn’t, finding only a dullness around the edges of his thoughts and an odd lack of emotion. He stood up straight and turned around, forcing himself to look at the bodies.
Several uncomfortable moments passed before he was able to move again.
They were both wearing bags and he went to remove them. More blood poured out of the man as Ryan turned him over and he stopped to puke again. He carefully opened the bag and pulled out a bottle of beer and a pack of beef jerky. Nothing worth killing someone over. He performed the same process with the woman, puking and all, opening her pack and pulling out a photo album.
He didn’t search further.
Dragging a body wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be but he pulled them down the hill off the side of the road, lining them up against the treeline. He piled their bags on top of them, clambered up the hill, and began searching through cars.
The first car had nothing, the second was bare, but the third had what he wanted, a large blanket now folded up under his arm as he stuttered down the hill again to the bodies.
It whipped through the air as Ryan spread it out and let it cover the pair. He shook his head, still unable to feel anything. No use dwelling on it.
He grabbed his bag and the dead man’s gun at the top of the hill and looked back up the road where the people had come from.
There was only a gas station and Ryan assumed it was where they had been holed up. He limped his way towards it, holding the gun out and not bothering with the stupid machete anymore. If he killed anyone again it would be quick and clean.
Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
As he approached, he saw the end of a fire at the pumps and a miraculously good looking storefront save for a broken window near the ice machine. His eyes swept the area until he saw a body sitting near the door. Ryan approached cautiously since there was no obvious sign of an entry wound and the man didn’t stir.
Ryan knelt next to him and saw his chest rise and fall shallowly. Ryan put a finger to his throat and felt a pulse, his own quickening. Laying a hand on the man’s shoulder, he shook lightly.
“Hey, buddy, wake up.”
The sound of his voice startled him, Ryan hadn’t spoken in several days. It came out as a truck full of rocks and he coughed, but the man did not stir.
“Come on, just-”
He continued shaking for a moment before stopping and sitting back on his heels.
“Fuck.”
The sun was sinking fast and he debated for a moment. He couldn’t leave the guy out here to his own devices, he might be seriously hurt. Ryan scratched his too-long beard and tapped his chin.
Decisions, decisions.
Ryan flew through the door backwards, dragging the man into the store by his armpits and setting him up against the soda machine then rushed to pile whatever he could find in front of the door. He turned around and shouldn’t have been surprised at the gun in his face.
Ryan held up his hands slowly and tried to make himself look as non-threatening as possible while trying to ignore the heat the man’s eyes were burning into him. They made a dramatic tableau for a moment until the man dropped his arm and his hands flew to his leg.
“Since you haven’t killed me yet,” he grumbled, “hi.”
Pleasantries aside, Ryan moved to the man’s side quickly, assessing the long, ragged wound beneath shreds of denim, which his newfound friend was trying to rip apart. He raised an eyebrow to the man and received permission to begin operating. Ryan dug through his bag and brought out a few pieces of gauze and medical tape, sitting down next to his patient and getting to work.
“What happened?” Ryan asked, pouring some peroxide on the wound and dabbing it away with a cloth.
“Couple of folks out there I thought were trying to help,” his patient shrugged, “shot at me and got distracted by something.”
“That may have been my fault,” Ryan muttered, secretly hoping he wouldn’t press further.
“Whatever you did, I appreciate it,” the man said, shifting his weight. Ryan winced but said no more and the lead in his stomach seemed to release its grip.
Ryan finished his patching and sat back, nodding at his work. The man held out a hand and Ryan took it gingerly.
“Alexander Tran,” he introduced, shaking firmly, “you can call me Joey.”
“Ryan Frey.”
They sat in silence for a bit, not knowing what to say after several days of talking to themselves or the road or whatever animal scared them in the middle of the night.
“You a nurse?” Joey arranged himself in a more comfortable position against the case he was leaning against, reaching for his water.
“Call center admin,” Ryan smiled wryly.
“You should think about switching jobs,” Joey laughed, “the end of the world is a hell of a resume builder.” It felt as if the guy hadn’t laughed in so long, even before the world ended, he was stiff and looked out of practice. Ryan’s smile softened and he tapped at a chip case with a foot.
The thrill of being around another human being who was willing to listen and converse was too much. “You know last week I was wearing an ugly Christmas sweater at a company party?” Ryan blurted out.
“Yeah?”
“Me and a couple friends from the floor hung out at a table the whole time,” Ryan squinted at the fading sunlight, another day gone. How many more did he have? “It was one of those fancy parties the higher ups put on to show you how good you could have it if you worked hard and put your mind to it.”
Joey chuckled and nodded solemnly.
“Our manager, not the brightest,” he continued, “gets absolutely sloshed and totters on over to our regional director, the regional director, mind you. Starts blathering on about how his sales are the best, he has the best people on his team, toss me a soda from back there, will you?”
Joey complied, settling on his backpack and grabbing one for himself.
Ryan snapped his drink open and smiled a little at Joey’s bemused expression, “So this guy gets his sweaty hands all over this poor woman’s drink, grabs it from her and sets it down, like this stream of garbage he’s about to vomit onto the table is the most important thing in her life at the moment.” Joey scoffed and shook his head.
“She spots us and gives us a look as if to say, please throw me a gun or a life raft and help me and I will promote you to this guy’s job for fuck’s sake,” Ryan said, the sun outside hanging onto its last rays as if waiting with bated breath for the end of Ryan’s story, “so my friend takes pity, walks over to her table and before she can say anything-” he holds his drink up and Joey leans forward expectantly, “-this overgrown bunion of a man pushes her away and says ‘do you know who the hell you’re talking to?’”
“So what’d she do?” Joey asked, “she go home with the guy? Shoot him?”
“She finally stood up and downed her drink,” he snorted, “pointed at him and said, ‘we could be the last people on earth and I wouldn’t want anything to do with you.’ And stormed off.”
They both sobered a little.
“What did he do after that?” Joey took another sip.
“I think he just died.”
They both laughed, this time Joey sounded a little looser, a little calmer, than the wound up man Ryan had met a mere thirty minutes ago.
“What about you?” Ryan asked, “any fancy holiday parties?”
“I think we had one at our office,” Joey mused, “didn’t go.”
“Not a party guy?”
“No I…,” Joey played with the top of his water bottle, “stayed home. Didn’t do anything.” He frowned at his drink.
“I don’t think any of us got in what we wanted, man,” Ryan’s voice was softer, more pronounced.
“You included?” Joey pressed.
“It wasn’t my dream to answer phone calls for eight hours a day.”
“Not one of the live-for-the-moment kind of guys?”
Ryan scoffed.
“That shit’s for white girls with Pinterest accounts,” he said, flicking the tab off his drink and watching it sail into the darkness. He pulled out a small lantern from his pack and set it up as the last of the light faded from the store. “I had bills to pay. Sure, I would have loved to pack up my shit and book it to some other country but it’s not like I had some rich husband to help me on the plane or let me stay in his house while I found a job. Did you have your dream job?”
“I designed software,” Joey said slowly, “I… I wanted to make games. And I did during my free time, but there’s a lot more that goes into game creation than I thought. I guess I could have moved to a bigger city.”
“But?”
“I was comfortable,” he shifted nervously, “I had a stable paycheck. Felt like it’d be a stupid move to risk it all for something I might end up hating.”
A moment of silence passed for their respective futures if they had been braver or end of the world hadn’t happened.
“Where were you heading, anyways?” Ryan asked.
“The Keys,” Joey replied.
“This route?”
“Had a friend out here.”
“Did you find him?”
“Found a big ass hole where his neighborhood used to be.”
“Was he that bad?” Ryan cocked his head.
“Was he..” Joey started, then laughed, “no, I meant a big hole, like a sinkhole, not a big asshole.”
Ryan laughed heartily. He had been so caught up in a world where they were the last people on earth talking about their lost dreams in the lantern light he had completely forgotten about the sinkholes cropping up everywhere. When they finally settled down, Ryan pondered the state of the rest of their state.
“You still want to go to the Keys?” Ryan raised an eyebrow at him, “they’re not really known for their sinkholes.”
“Are they not?” Joey asked incredulously.
“Jesus have you ever been to the Keys, man?” Ryan asked as if it was the most painfully obvious thing in the world.
“Have you?” Joey laughed.
“Once,” came Ryan’s reply, “an old man tried to sell me a Palmetto hat for five dollars. I left promptly.”
“I don’t know,” Joey was somehow still laughing at his dumb ass, “I think I’d look good in a Palmetto hat drinking some fine rum by the seaside.”
And there they were, staring out into the sea at sunset, drinking Florida’s finest rum.
“Hey,” Ryan paused, he was nervous for the first time since their meeting, “you want to tag along with me for a while?”
Christ, when were the save the dates going out?
“Probably a good idea,” Joey said after a moment, looking up at him.
“See if you still want to book it south once you’ve seen the finer things Orlando has to offer.”
Joey snorted again.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Ryan tried to make himself comfortable between some shelving and pulled his pack under his head, “we can wake up and run downstairs to see what Santa brought us. It’ll look better in the morning.”
He flicked the lantern light out and heard Joey grumble a goodnight, fidgeting to get his pillows right on the hard, concrete floor.
After four days of silence, Ryan was elated to have someone to talk to and wanted nothing more than to wake his new friend up and talk all night like kids at a slumber party. After half an hour, he heard soft snoring coming from Joey, and the sound of it lulled him to sleep.
* * *
Ryan awoke to sunlight angling down on his face, its harsh glow too much for the end of December. The store was quiet and he craned his neck to look outside, clear blue sky, boring grayish clouds. Joey towered above him, lanky bastard, and crunched on a bag of dill pickle chips. He held out a bag for Ryan.
“It don’t look no better.”
Ryan snorted, taking Joey’s word for it and grabbed the chips from him. He tore them open and crunched thoughtfully, waking up on his own terms.
“Yeah well, Merry Christmas to you too,” he grumbled and pulled a hand across his face.
“It is Christmas, isn’t it,” Joey mused, walking slowly towards the door and peering out of it as if he would see snow falling.
“Sure is.”
Joey hummed to himself and walked back, picking his pack up off the floor and shoving several drinks in there for good measure. Ryan followed suit, groaning as his back screamed at him. He hadn’t had a peaceful sleep. It was interrupted every hour with pangs of fear the ground below him would open up, filling his lungs, his bones, with salt water, getting lost in the limestone catacombs stretching out in every direction beneath them.
“Can you walk on that stump of a leg of yours?” Ryan asked, shaking his head to get rid of the dreams from the night before. He stood up, his body complaining at the unfortunate situation.
“Thanks to you,” Joey shot him a soft, lingering smile Ryan had the suspicion wasn’t let out often.
They stood at the door for several minutes, neither of them wanting to go out into the baking sun.
“Why is it so hot out there?” Ryan whined. Joey shrugged.
“Ain’t a scientist.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure you could give an educated guess,” Ryan shot back.
“Do I look like the kind of guy who could give you one?” Joey scoffed.
“Well you got those glasses.”
Joey took said glasses off and wiped them clean before shoving them back on his face and sighing.
“Massive pole switch?” he threw out.
“That would have caused the whole earth to burn up, wouldn’t it?”
“Hey, I’m just shooting theories here,” Joey protested, pushing the door open into an oven, “let’s get going before it gets too bad and we stay in this gas station forever.”
Ryan grumbled but followed him, trudging forever east down Highway 441 into the heart of Orlando.
“So what do you think it was?” Ryan asked after a while, “poles switching, sinkholes everywhere. And that…” he made a vague gesture Joey could only assume meant what happened several days previous.
“What, this?” Joey made an even vaguer gesture to the crumbling, sad landscape around them, “probably time. Time for us to move on and make room for the next sentient species on Earth.”
“So, bees, right?”
“They jumped off this sinking ship a long time ago,” Joey chuckled then sighed, “she was so tired of watching us die slowly she did it for us.”
Large fields passed by them and were dotted with tinier sinkholes, the grass around them swaying without a care. A large sign stood in one such field, “LIBTARDS REPENT, OBAMA ANT-CHRIST”. Joey looked at it sadly.
“Hell, maybe we did it.”
Joey’s words rattled around in Ryan’s mind like a bullet, did we really do this? The earthquake or shock wave or whatever the hell it was? The morning was so clear in his head, the sudden shock, the darkness, the eventual rising of the sun onto a new hellscape. The image was apparently clear in Joey’s head too, since they found themselves suddenly flanked by two men, knives at the ready.
For some reason, Ryan’s arm flew out to push his new friend back from danger but Joey had other ideas, whipping a pistol out from nowhere and training it on one man, the advancing one with the silly hat. He immediately held his hands up, flipping the knife blade between two fingers in a gesture of surrender.
Joey made to move away but the knife went flying past his head as the man flung it forward, making Joey retrain his gun and fire.
The knife flinger’s hat flew away into the ditch behind him. The two men turned tail and ran off down a side road.
“Fair enough,” Ryan said after he deemed them safe from knives and bandits. Joey grinned smugly and stowed his pistol away, starting off down the road again.
“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Ryan asked as they passed a sign for Highway 441 east, he looked at it and sighed. The road didn’t seem to end.
“My dad,” Joey hitched his backpack up some, “stockpiled a whole mess of shit out in Titusville during my formative years.”
“Sorry, where?”
“Titusville?” Joey asked, throwing a sideways look at him, “never heard of it?”
“I’ve lived in this state my whole life and I’ve never heard of it,” Ryan said.
“Probably for the best,” Joey shrugged, “anyways, he was a real end of the world nut and taught me how to shoot and scavenge.”
“Seems oddly useful now.”
“I guess it would be,” Joey sighed, “if I remembered any of it. The shooting is really the only thing that stuck.”
“Thank god,” Ryan chortled, “so is Titusville on the east coast?”
Joey pulled a face. “Yeah.”
“So why were you heading to the Keys?”
Joey frowned and Ryan half-wished he hadn’t said anything, it was clear he didn’t want to have this conversation.
“Didn’t really feel the need to go home,” was all he would say.
“You’re not worried?” Ryan asked, kicking himself for pushing. Fortunately, Joey didn’t seem to mind, visibly relaxing as the conversation went on.
“I think my parents are fine,” he finally said, “we… weren’t the best of friends in my childhood. Things got better but we never really fixed it.”
“Sorry, man,” Ryan offered, wincing at its obvious callousness.
“No big deal,” Joey waved and offered another smile, “I turned out alright, didn’t I?”
“Seems so.”
A moment passed while the cicadas chirped around them. Ryan could hear how hot it was.
“Never really had any friends, though,” Joey went on. So this was happening.
“Can’t see why not,” Ryan adjusted his pack, staring resolutely down the road, “you seem like a swell enough guy.” He thought he was saying words to say them, but found himself meaning it. Twelve hours seemed like enough time to meet someone and get to know all their inner demons and slowly form some kind of attachment to someone, right?
“I don’t think I learned how to talk to people without sounding like a self centered asshole,” Joey said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he continued thoughtfully, “you know, my first instinct when someone tells me a story is to tell one about something similar that happened to me.”
“I think it’s just the human condition, man,” Ryan breathed a sigh of relief as the conversation didn’t turn too dark, “we all see ourselves in other people’s catastrophes and want to offer sympathy in the form of shared scars.”
“Well it stopped me from talking to people at all,” Joey said, “hell, I almost didn’t accept your offer to go to Orlando. Figured it’d be bad manners to decline.”
“It’s the end of the world, friend,” Ryan laughed, “manners don’t matter all too much anymore.”
“I have to disagree,” Joey shook his head, “I think they matter more now. And I’d like you to think of me as someone you can rely on in these troubling times.” There was a pause before Joey stole a glance sideways, “please, stop me if I’m coming on too strong.”
“I think these times call for accelerated friendships.”
Ryan tried to study Joey as as nonchalantly as he could while they walked down melting asphalt. Of course, he was good looking and all, but he was the first person Ryan had met in a long time who looked out for other people despite their own situation. Shouldn’t have been a strange thing.
Several minutes had passed before they noticed the far off hum of a car growing louder and louder. They exchanged confused glances and turned around to see one, possibly the last one in the entire state. As it came closer they saw it was an old, turquoise hatchback, puttering away down the road towards them.
Ryan and Joey stepped back to the curb as it whizzed by them and the two men were thankful they didn’t have to deal with this particular situation until the car stopped some ways ahead of them. It stalled for a moment like it was making a big decision before it went into park, then drive, lurched forward, and finally went silent.
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