He pulled his head back in the window, and that’s when henoticed that the most beautiful woman he had ever seen had a gun pointed athim.
“You can leave now.”
Rudy’s experience with talking to women was confined toarguing with his own foster mothers and giving female professors a hard time.He wanted to talk to this woman; he wanted to get to know her. But it was goingto be hard to do that with a gun pointed at his head.
“I have nowhere to go,” he whined.
“Not my problem,” she shot back. Clearly she had a heart,or else she wouldn’t have saved him, but it was also apparent that she wasscared out of her mind.
“Listen, I can’t go back to my apartment. The door isbroken down. If I get trapped in there, there’s no way to escape.” Her onlyreply was to cock the gun.
He put his hands up and backed away as a reply. “Can I atleast know your name?”
Rudy didn’t think she was going to say anything, but thenshe cocked her head, as if to “Say what could it hurt?” With a voice like sweetapple pie she said, “My name is Chloe.”
Rudy smiled his best disarming smile and said “My name isRudy, Rudy Lincoln.”
“Nice to meet you Rudy. Now get the hell out of myapartment.” She gestured at the door with her gun.
He turned to go. Undoing the chain and throwing thedeadbolts open, he pulled the door open and stepped into the hallway of theapartment complex. As he shut the door behind him, her heard Chloe’s sweetvoice say, “Stay safe, Rudy.”
When he shut the door, he heard the chain rattle againstthe door and the deadbolts slide home. He wanted to be inside that apartmentwith Chloe. He wanted to protect her, or be protected; he didn’t quite knowwhich.
With his head sunk between his shoulders, he moped up tohis apartment. The door hung on one brass hinge. The wood of the doorjamb wasbroken. He tried to close the door, but the wood was damaged beyond repair.
Rudy sat in his La-Z-Boy, and watched the sun rise. Heopened his last Mountain Dew Code Red and turned on his Xbox.
“Well, I might as well get in a few more games before theend of the world.”
Chapter 39: As Day Breaks
As the day broke across the city, and even across thecountry, thousands of scenes of horror like the following played out, tragicdeaths of those that had no idea that something was going on, somethingapocalyptic.
****
Nina Gonzalez-Santiago slept with earplugs in. That’swhat you had to do when you lived in an apartment complex where ranchero musicblasted until three in the morning. It’s not that her neighbors were rude. Itwas just normal. Your cousin got married? Time to drink until 3 in the morning,singing songs drunkenly with all your family members. Your daughter turnedfifteen? Time to have a quinceañera, and thendrink until 3 in the morning, singing drunken songs with your family members.Hey! Someone had a baby! You know what that means… drinking until 3 in themorning… singing loudly… while loud ranchero music makes the walls shake.
Nina had learned long ago, from her own family’sexperiences, that one does not simply go over to the apartment of someone whohas been drinking for the whole day and ask them to turn the music down. That’snot how it works. Even if they did turn it down, they would likely only do sountil you had climbed the stairs back to your own apartment and crawled in bed.Then it would come on, most likely louder than it was before. That’s how herdad had always done it.
So it was with earplugs that Nina slumbered at night. Shecould still feel the bass from time to time, but feeling bass wasn’t nearly asirritating as actually having to listen to it. When Nina raised her head offthe pillow that morning to greet the sunshine, she had slept through thegunfire, the explosions, and the screaming. As far as Nina knew, today was justa regular day.
She wasn’t looking forward to going to her secretary job,but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. She yawned as she padded barefootthrough her apartment, showering, and putting her clothes on. She brewedherself a cup of coffee, threw it in a cup to go, and walked down the flight ofstairs to her car. She marveled at the amount of garbage on the landing. Sparebottles littered the stairs, a garbage bag sat ripped and ownerless at the topof the landing, and what was that? Bullet casings? Once again, Nina thanked thelord for whoever had invented earplugs.
The windshield of her car was still wet from the night’srain. She unlocked the door, swung it open, and tossed her briefcase in thepassenger seat. Nina started the engine of her Toyota Prius, unaware that theengine, which was considered quiet for a car, was more than enough to bring thedead out of the woodwork.
From a third-floor landing, a body tumbled through thesky to land on her windshield, shattering it. Nina flinched and screamed. Asshe extricated herself from the Prius, she kept expecting people to run andhelp her. That’s how it worked in the movies. A woman screamed, and theneveryone scrambled to help her. Only this time, no one came to her aid.
Instead, she watched in horror as the man who hadshattered her windshield reached out to her with a gray arm. His face wasshattered and misshapen, but the man could still see her for what she was.Food.
From other places, she could finally see help in the formof her neighbors… only they weren’t her neighbors, not anymore. There was thepatriarch of the noisy family downstairs. His button-up western t-shirt wastorn at the abdomen, and blood caked his brown skin. His face was blank andexpressionless. But the most revolting sight was when Nina saw two of
