Sitting inside of the coffee house Danny was struggling to learn how to become a farmer. The Agriculture for Idiots book he had taken from the bookstore was making him feel even less capable than he had thought. He hadn’t known that soil even had nitrates and Ph, much less how to regulate them. Growing his own food was a need Danny had realized his life depended on now that there wasn’t anyone left to do it for him. For the moment he knew he wouldn’t have any trouble finding food, so he could afford to take his time with his self education, but it was one of the many new skills he needed to pick up.
He set the book down on the table in front of him and examined his wounded right forearm. He had panicked when he had cut it open on the glass from the broken window. From now on he would be sure to use a broom handle or something like it to clear the fragments left on window frames after he throws rocks through them. The cut was small, no longer than an inch and not very deep, but even those relatively minor lacerations could be serious for hemophiliacs. The superglue he had put on it to close and seal the wound was still holding it together nicely so his only worry now was infection. It scared him to think that after surviving the end of the world something as minor as failing to use disinfectant could take him out. His mother had taught him that no one with his condition should go anywhere without their first aid kits and so he never did. More likely it would be the loneliness that put him in the grave.
Sipping his hot drink, Danny stared out of the window and sang to himself “rain rain go away, come again some other day”. It had been raining for six months now with only the briefest of breaks. Hot and rainy seemed to be the forecast for the rest of time. Josh had told him that the rain was a result of the nuclear power plants out west going belly up. With no one there to man them anymore they melted down and caused a fallout which caused rain. Like Danny, Josh was no scientist but Danny was still compelled to believe him. His fear now was radiation, but Josh had said that the weather patterns now kept that from being a problem. No wind meant no pushing radioactive debris all the way to Oklahoma
Danny had met the brother and sister in the days just fallowing the catastrophe. He found them rummaging through a pharmacy for some supplies. Like him, they were both hemophiliacs. Together they surmised what had happened to the planet. When the asteroid smacked into the moon dust began falling to the earth within days. Mostly it came down in larger chunks that looked like a twenty four hour a day meteor shower. As that was happening the news media began broadcasting warnings from the Center For Disease Control that there was a possibility, however slim, that there could be a virus trapped inside of the dust similar to the one that had been released by a comet causing the Influenza outbreak of the early nineteen hundreds. The CDC was correct, but this time it wasn’t the flu.
On the sixth day of dust showers from space, people began to die. By the end of the seventh day every human, ape, pig, and boar were dead with the exception of a very small demographic who were immune to the virus. The survivors were all hemophiliacs. The virus acted directly on the hemoglobin in the blood that clots it when exposed to air. The virus caused it to clot everywhere at once. All the blood in almost all people turned into scab within seconds. Not everyone died in this way however. When the moon moved away releasing it’s grip on the oceans there were giant tsunamis that destroyed almost all coastal cities world wide. The shift in gravity also caused a shift in every fault line worldwide causing an earthquake that quaked the whole earth destroying buildings, setting fires, avalanches, mudslides, rockslides, bridge collapses, and the list goes on and on. It was never proven as to weather or not God created the heavens and the earth in seven days, but that is exactly how long it took for almost all life on the planet to die.
Throughout that week Danny pretty much hid in his basement. When people died from the clotting virus they went instantly. They had no time to go home and park their cars because they were feeling ill. Instead the would be just fine one second and then they were dead as quickly as if someone had turned off a switch. There were car and plane crashes, trains that wouldn’t stop until they ran out of juice or derailed, and boats were running ashore. No one had time to even think about a cure. They simply dropped dead as though they were the crew aboard the Ancient Mariners ship, and living through it made Danny feel like he were the Mariner with the albatross wrapped around his neck. The damage from the quakes was minor in the suburbs of Oklahoma City
After some time passed and all was quiet, Danny decided to emerge from his house. There was no movement on the street other than the rain falling from the sky and rolling into the sewers. He could see a few dark shapes on the ground up and down the street but no signs of life. As he approached the shape that was closest to him he saw it was a corps. It was his neighbor’s daughter home from college, purple, swollen, and barely recognizable. The smell was so strong that it was like a physical force reaching into him and squeezing is gag reflexes. As he watched in horror how the raindrops rolled off of her clouded over eyes he could hold off no more, he staggered a few steps, bent over, and vomited all over the sidewalk. As he walked throughout the neighborhood, he saw that the bodies were everywhere. Scared, depressed, wet, cold, and in shock Danny decided that the end of the world had come just as all of the religious nuts had been saying on the last days of broadcasting. He felt that the best place for him to go would be Saint Andrews Church
Danny quickly began to accept his circumstances. He decided that if he had survived unaffected then others may have as well. The hospital should be the first place to check Danny decided, if there were other survivors they may need some help, or at least some kind of medicine to prevent them selves from dropping dead at any time. Headed home first for some dry clothes and his car. Once ready he pulled his Kia out of his garage and slowly made his way into town. He was frightened to go above twenty five miles an hour not only because of the rain but because of the other vehicles that littered the roads in places. As he swerved around them Danny counted it as a blessing in a weird way that most of the deaths happened in the middle of the night. If it had been rush hour of a regular weekday morning, the streets would be impossible to navigate.
Danny didn’t have to enter the hospital to know that he wouldn’t find anyone there. He could see the bodies through the window of the emergency room and on the patio in from of it. Driving carefully he moved on to down town. He wasn’t worried about wrecking his car, he knew at this point that if he wrecked it or even ran out of gas all he had to do was to find a dealership and pick out a new ride. No money down and no payment for the first hundred years. His fear was the seat belt. A good impact and he would certainly have internal bleeding from the two straps of the restraint, and he obviously couldn’t go to the hospital for help. Instead he would die of blood loss without ever spilling a single drop. This thought made him decide to head to a pharmacy for bandages and super glue. Super glue was the greatest gift to hemophiliacs his doctor had told him. It did the job of stitches but with less possibility of seepage. It was true that the scaring could be far worse, but scars were better than transfusions or death.
When he got to the pharmacy he was pleased to find that the door was open. Being a store that was open all day every day no one had locked it up before they dropped dead. Danny grabbed a shopping basket as soon as he entered and made his way back to the pharmacy area to see what medications they may have for him. Just before he got to the desk he saw some light cutting through the darkness and heard voices that were full of stress.
“Where the hell is it?” fallowed by the crashing of pill bottles hitting the floor.
“He usually gets it from right around there!” came a woman’s voice that sounded much more scared than angry the mans out burst.
“Hello” Danny called out announcing himself, “I’m here for medical supplies, I’m not going to interfere with you.” As soon as the words left his mouth the shadowy figures stopped their rummaging and swung the flashlight towards him leaving nothing but a deafening silence in the store. Then finally, the woman made the first reply.
“Were here for meds to! My God, are you alone or are there more survivors with you?”
“Alone, I thought I may be the only server, I’m Danny, may I come back there with you?”
“Yea, come on back and help your self, were not finding anything we need anyway.” The man said as he swung his light to the floor to get it out of Danny’s eyes, then he added, “I’m Josh by the way, and this here is Alex.”
It being Alex’s turn to speak she told Danny, “Pleased, but you’ll have to excuse me because I’m in a bit of a crisis here.” The urgency was clear in her voice as she turned the flashlight back to the shelf and began rummaging again. Danny moved passed them to the next set of shelved over and began pulling a small specific group of boxes off the shelf as he inquired of Josh what it was that they needed so badly. His answer surprised and even amused Danny a little. It was liquid bandages they Alex was so desperate to find, the very product that Danny was loading into his basket that moment. He told him that he had them and the two jumped at him in such a hurry that he thought he might get mugged after all. Josh pulled a box out of Danny’s cart and immediately tore into it as he whispered ‘thank God’ over and over again to him self. Danny was even more surprised when he saw the blood soaked bandage for the first time. Alex’s hand was wrapped up tight and the amount of blood became more impressive with every layer she went through to het to her bare hand. The cut was jagged and about three inches long on the back of her slender hand. Josh had opened the box, removed three of the tubes and already cracked open and shaken the first one. Immediately upon handing it to her Alex began applying it to the cut as Josh prepped the second.
When the ordeal was over with and they had all three made it back to the front of the store where the dim light from outside lit the room well enough to see clearly. There they pulled three of the folding chairs off the sales rack and had a seat as Danny passed out the sodas he had gotten from the now room temperature refrigerators before they began telling each other their stories. Danny learned that Josh was a graduate student who had been studying physics, and the beautiful Alex was his sister and not his lover. She had been about to graduate with a degree in English that would now do her no good at all. Both siblings as it turned out were hemophiliacs like Danny. That was how Josh came up with the theory that the disability had spared their lives. The three were instantly friends.
Alex, Danny found out, had cut her hand when breaking into the local Ace Hardware to steal a gas generator. Like the flashlights, it had not occurred to Danny that he could really use such simple but useful thing. Together they went back to the store and salvaged the generator. From there they drove it in the truck Josh had taken from the Ford dealership to the giant house the siblings had staked claim to two days before. It was in that house that the trio decided to stay. Danny got a few of his belongings from his own home but left most things behind to help combat his since of loss. He and his new friends spent most days clearing the streets, going to the library and book stores, gathering any supplies they thought they may need, and looking for other survivors. Their nights were usually spent playing video board games or cards while drinking the best and most expensive wine that they never could have afforded when there was a society to place a price on it. Things went on like that for a few months As the time went by Danny and Josh had begun to think of each other as brothers, and Danny and Alex had become lovers. The understanding that the world would never go back to the way it had been before was something that they all now excepted and things were all in all going pretty well. It was during lunch outside of a supermarket that everything changed for them. Enough time had passed now that the rotting of the fruits, vegetables, breads, and meats had come and gone, so the smell was tolerable and the canned foods were always on the menu. Josh was having tuna from the can, Danny was enjoying some beef stew, and Alex had herself some tomato soup. Had Danny seen the can of soup he could have let her know that the swelling if the can was a bad sign. If Josh hadn’t been so wrapped up in his canned fish he may have noticed the funny texture and color of her lunch. Instead Alex died of Botulism within the hour.
Her death brought a new darkness upon the earth as far as the two men were concerned. They buried her that day in the back yard of the house and headed inside. They didn’t talk to each other more than was absolutely necessary and neither man was in any condition to offer even a little comfort to the other. Three short days after her death Danny woke to the sound of a gun shot from outside. Running to his window he saw the body of his last friend sprawled on the fresh grave with the rain pushing the blood and gore into the saturated soil. Danny was once more alone.
Now, sitting in the coffee shop Danny’s single tear was joined by another, then another and another. It didn’t take him long to break down into the sobs that had been his only sign of emotion for a long time. Slowly but with familiarity he reached down to his side, upholstered Joshes gun, and raised it to his head. Would he do it this time? Was today the day? No, maybe later he would have the nerve to fallow through. He holstered the weapon as he rose, and walked out the door into the rain with his book under his arm.
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