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| Chapter 1 Zach watched Korina climb back into bed, teeth now brushed. "Fish or cut bait,” she said. “Are you staying the night?" He wanted to stay. It had been a nice evening. Of course, he didn't have a change of clothes with him; and, however unlikely it was that anyone would notice, he didn't like the idea of wearing the same khakis and white dress shirt to work tomorrow. Unintentionally, as he considered whether to get out of bed and catch an el back home, he sighed. It was answer enough, and Korina turned over to face the other way. On the ride to his apartment, Zach continued debating whether he'd made the right call, or even if he'd decided at all. A beautiful woman got on the train and sat across from him, interrupting his thoughts. Zach noticed her briefly, then appropriately looked out the window over her shoulder before she noticed him noticing her. The next morning, Zach scrolled through a competitor's website, cutting and pasting JPEGs of houses, asking prices, numbers of rooms, and other stats into the appropriate fields of his spreadsheet. He appreciated the good ones, usually older, and those were hitting the market more often than they had when he 'd started a few years ago. Back then, the ugly ones were kind of funny; he enjoyed documenting an estate advertising a "good view of the rail line" or"antique wiring." Now he objected to subtler weaknesses, and did it less joyfully; he wanted to publish a book with pictures of all of the atrocious architecture that crossed his screen, but was pretty sure his contract with the realtor prohibited it. A phone across the room rang, and when the sound of sobbing came from the same place the room took silent notice. There was another ring, and another cry, several cubicles closer. Zach stood to look over the wall, but couldn't see who it was. Each additional ring and cry seemed closer, as though something unknown and terrible approached him. When his own phone rang, Zach jumped in his seat. He didn't answer it. It rang again, and he activated his headset. "Edna Realty, Zach Tenet." "Zach, it's Joni." She sounded like she was crying, or rather had been crying and only just composed herself. "Hey Joni. What do you want?" "Have you heard?" "I'm guessing that I haven't." And Zach's sister told him about the eminent and unavoidable end of the world. Ten minutes after hanging up and removing his headset, Zach stared at the ugly house on his monitor without seeing it. Many people, upon hearing the news, had left. Reactions among those who remained ranged from quiet tears to wailing to screaming and throwing whatever sat at hand. Zach noticed none of this. Fuck. And though he didn't swear much, even in his thoughts, he repeated it again. Fuck. He became one of those who were crying softly. Finally, Zach shut down his computer, stood, put on his jacket and walked towards the exit. The office felt empty, nearly was empty. He passed a few others who'd been, for a time, too dumbstruck to move, and walked onto Addison Avenue. The setting sun was just at the right level to all but blind Zach. He heard clearly the traffic, unmoving but aggressively honking. An SUV a little ways away tried, without much success, to push the car in front of it ahead. Everybody was outside. Each person either hurried to somewhere or stood dead still, unsure what to do; the former pushed the latter as they rushed by. A young woman in expensive business wear took the hand of a man, maybe a boyfriend or husband, and rushed up the street between the cars; others gave up on the somehow even more crowded sidewalks and followed. And then Zach fell, pain in his chest and foot. A scooter zigzagged away from him, knocking others over as well. He watched from the ground until it inevitably wiped out and looked at his foot. It felt injured, looked fine. Someone stepped on the outside of his leg. This time, he swore aloud. Zach stood, and nearly sat back down again; something had to be broken in his left foot. It was frustrating that it looked fine, absent of even tire tread. Even hurt, though, it was time to abandon the gawkers and join those who seemed to be fleeing. Zach headed east, not because he knew where he wanted to go but rather because that was, as much as there was movement, its direction. His foot hurt - a lot; but his limp didn't really slow him down. He'd never been in a crowd like this, not at concerts, not at New Year's in Times Square. People looked scared. He probably looked the same. Nothing was supposed to happen for a few years; but you wouldn't know it to look at Chicago today. Fighting broke out somewhere to the right, across the street. When he realized that he was walking, roughly, towards Korina's apartment, Zach tried her on his cell. His dial was met with silence, and he felt stupid for thinking that, today, his cell might work. Though virtually everybody had a phone out, it didn't look like anyone was talking into them. He tried to send a text message, "Are you okay? Are you home?" There was no indication whether or not it was delivered, which was strange, so it probably wasn't. He put his phone away and pressed east. Though, by and large, the crowd still pressed this way, it had grown more dense and slow. Chicago had grown louder too. Despite the horns, the late morning/early afternoon had felt kind of peaceful, maybe because everyone was so stunned, ala September 11th. Fighting seemed to be increasing now, though, as too many people tried to pass through too narrow streets. Most of the people, like Zach, were just pressing towards somewhere or another, but those who were freaking out were doing so loudly and violently. To the best of his ability, Zach tried to maneuver around the more aggravated pockets of the crowd. His foot still hurt. The angry flow of scared Chicagoans brought Zach nearly to the shore of Lake Michigan. A couple of blocks off of it, an equally strong crowd began pressing back. The flow stopped and took Zach with it. While people around him shoved, sometimes punched, screaming towards wherever they couldn't get, he simply stood still. Should he try to turn around and get home? Maybe Korina was at her apartment, which was nearer. Where was everyone else going? An elbow or something caught him painfully in the back of the neck. As he tried to turn around, someone stepped on his hurt foot. Zach called out in pain, swearing, and began to shove angrily and forcefully towards the shore. Soon the crowd pressing back was too strong, and Zach found himself pressed backwards. He fought his way to a bus shelter, which he managed to climb atop. Nothing he saw explained the effort so many people were making to get here, or why many were trying to get away. Small sailboats pressed and crashed into each other with the same determination and, it seemed to Zach, vanity as the people on shore. He watched a woman, dripping wet, kick a man in the knee and shove him off of a boat into the water. Was she protecting her own boat, or taking his? A huge ship, maybe an oil tanker Zach thought incorrectly, approached the marina. It looked slow, but Zach had never seen a ship that large so near shore, and it was coming nearer. Obviously it would crash eventually. As the people on the sailboats had decided that, at the end of the world, they wanted to get out of the city and onto the lake, the crew of the large ship desperately wanted to get to land. And suddenly everything shook. There was a crash, and Zach fell from the bus shelter onto a group of people. Waves crashed the sailboats together and splashed onto the first twenty feet of land. Now the crowd pressing from the shore, reinvigorated, made gains, taking Zach with them even before he was on his feet. The ship had crashed, of course; it had run aground a quarter mile out. Zach fought his way to Korina's. The building's door was open, broken. Inside it was quieter, but people still hurried around; they carried bags and boxes, necessities and televisions. On the third floor, he knocked on Korina's door, but there was no answer. He went back downstairs and tried the buzzer. When he returned, he found her door open. Inside an unfamiliar man filled a bag with DVDs from a shelf. "Hey! Who are you?" The man, in response, displayed a gun and returned to his work. Zach stepped out. A moment later, the man with the gun came out and proceeded to the next apartment, opening it with a crowbar. Zach returned to Korina's and, as completely as possible, closed the door. The apartment was trashed. He sat down and took off his shoe to look at his foot; it looked like a bruised, injured foot. "Like I know what a broken foot looks like," he said aloud. Sitting in this apartment for the second time felt uncomfortable; Zach supposed that, he'd broken in. Not that the police were going to do anything; they, if they still existed, were undoubtedly busy with bigger things. But he had no idea what Korina would think if she came home and found him, on this day, in her busted-into apartment. He looked out the window and saw from above the riots he'd just escaped and decided to stay. He turned on the television; the president was speaking. "...you're scared. You're saddened. I'm saddened too. But the world doesn't end today if we don't let it. The next three years will be good ones, in which Americans will work hard, together, to maintain the unparalleled quality of life that we enjoy. These will be years in which we demonstrate our commitment to our friends and families, to our neighbors and to ourselves not by looting but by giving; not by tuning out but by showing up for work, knowing that people count on us; not by cursing our misfortune but by thanking God that we're fortunate enough to be alive and well today." He intimated that there would be changes, but wasn't specific. Apparently, the speech had been given a couple of hours earlier and was being repeated. If many people had walked out on their jobs today, few of them were journalists. The station showed footage of violence around the country and world, interspersed with advice: stay in your home and make sure that you have enough food, clean water and medicine; contradictory messages. Zach checked the kitchen; the looter had opted for more traditional wares and left the food alone. "Good luck at the pawn shop today," Zach thought. He tried the tap and found it functional and went back to the TV. Reconsidering, he got ice for his foot and then returned to watching the news. Three years. He'd be twenty-nine then. Zach fell asleep on the couch, eventually, crying, thinking less about the years ahead that had been taken than the years behind that he'd misspent. | Links RSS Feed My First Book Memoirs of a Gaijin |
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