The Apocalypse Exchange: I Can Trade Anything

Chapter 4: Fifty Days

If he lost this standoff, one pack of ramen would buy him another day the exact value of one Survival Point.

There was no version of this where Ryan let that happen.

"Fine hold on, I'll open it. I'm trusting you'll actually keep your word."

"Don't overthink it. Play nice and you'll get fed."

Ryan shut his eyes and took a slow breath. He needed a second to steady himself.

He was about to kill someone.

He checked the pistol, thumbed off the safety, and told the crowd outside to back up before he cracked the door.

The second it opened, their faces lit up right up until they registered the barrel pointed straight at them.

"Ha! You think a toy gun's gonna scare us? Where would a guy like you even get a real"

BANG.

The firing pin answered for him.

That gun was real. And so was the man now bleeding out on the hallway tile.

The ones who'd surged forward scrambled back, ducking behind each other.

Ryan swung the muzzle toward the big guy who'd been running his mouth the whole time.

"Go ahead. Explain that 'survival of the fittest' line to me again."

"Whoa hey, let's talk this through."

"Your neighbor and I work together. He's the one who told me you had a stockpile."

"We came over from the building across the street specifically for this."

"Look, from here on out, you call the shots. You're the boss."

"Just feed us. That's it. We don't want to starve."

"You want me to feed you? Have you lost your mind, or have I?"

"We're not asking for it free."

"Think about it no matter how much you've got, it's not infinite. Eventually you'll need to leave this building too. When that happens, we could bring you with us. Strength in numbers."

He would need to leave eventually sure. Just never with a crew like this one.

Ryan aimed the gun down at the body cooling on the floor.

"Enough talk. Take him and get out."

The group exchanged glances. Their leader shot a venomous look at Ryan's neighbor the guy who'd led them here in the first place, clearly blaming him for not mentioning the gun.

Not only had the plan collapsed, they'd lost a man and lost face in front of everyone. Worse, Ryan had just publicly confirmed he'd already given this family food once. Everyone there now knew exactly what kind of neighbor he'd been repaying with an ambush.

The neighbor stepped forward anyway.

"Come on, think this through. There's still more of us than there is of you."

"Besides you've got one gun. Point it east, we go east. That how this works?"

BANG.

The words were barely out of his mouth.

The first shot had been a warning. This one was Ryan proving something to himself.

The world had ended. If he wanted to survive it, he needed to be hard enough and cold enough to do this.

Without the Exchange, without the gun in his hand, he had no illusions about which one of them would be on the floor right now.

"Danny! Danny!"

While the group was still frozen in shock, an old man dragged himself out of the apartment behind them gaunt, clearly starving, barely able to crawl.

He hauled himself across the floor to the young man dying in a spreading pool of blood.

No screaming. No curses hurled at Ryan. He didn't even glance in Ryan's direction.

He just cradled his son and spoke softly.

"It's okay, son. Mom's I mean, I'm right here. I've got you."

"Dad... it hurts. I'm so cold."

"Don't be scared. I've got you."

Within moments, both of them had gone still.

Ryan stepped through the doorway the old man had crawled out of.

Across the hall, the woman was slumped against her own doorframe, staring hollowly at her husband and father-in-law's bodies. The baby was cradled against her chest.

She didn't look at Ryan either.

Something in his chest tightened, a suffocating pressure settling over him.

Did he regret it? No. Not even slightly.

Whatever else was true, Ryan hadn't started this. He was defending what was his. He'd simply had the resources the luck to survive the encounter. Without the Exchange, he might be the one bleeding out on the floor right now, or worse.

For a long moment, the hallway went dead silent. Grief hung in the air like smoke.

Every person here had once lived an ordinary life. Worked. Paid rent. Tried their best. Then the infected showed up and tore all of that away. Isolation and starvation had done the rest erasing the line between right and wrong for everyone still breathing.

Waaah waaah

The baby's cry, thin and exhausted, cut through the silence.

It was enough to snap everyone back into motion.

"Take them and go. I don't want to see any of you again."

Ryan kept the gun raised as he gave the order. This time, nobody argued. They dragged the bodies out by the ankles and hauled them down the stairwell, leaving nothing behind but a dark smear across the hallway floor.

The woman across the hall didn't try to stop them. She just stared, unseeing.

Ryan retreated into his apartment, walked straight to the bathroom, and scrubbed his face hard under the tap.

That's when he heard movement at the door again.

He grabbed the gun off the sink and moved to check the peephole.

The ringleader from earlier was outside again, talking quietly with the woman. A moment later, he helped her to her feet and led her inside her apartment.

Not long after, she emerged again bag over one shoulder, baby in her arms and left with him for good.

Ryan let out a slow breath. Some impossible decision he'd been dreading had just resolved itself without him having to make it.

Twenty uneventful days passed. His savings climbed to 30 Survival Points.

Through those three weeks, Ryan's only real physical activity was stretching to keep his joints from seizing up. Total isolation, he was discovering, was its own quiet form of torture.

At least the power still held. When boredom became unbearable, he'd open his laptop first hunting down bugs in old projects, then rewriting them cleaner and tighter.

It was the last thing he'd have chosen to do for fun before all this. Now it passed the time, and more than that, it kept his mind sharp instead of letting it rot.

Sunset became the highlight of every day the one hour he let himself sit in the window seat and eat that day's ramen ration slowly, savoring every bite instead of just refueling.

"Twenty days down. Almost there. Hang in."

"...There seem to be more of them out there every day."

"Wait why would anyone go outside and risk turning, instead of just starving quietly at home?"

"...Why the hell would that thought even occur to me?"

"Am I losing it?"

"God, I should've downloaded some movies before all this happened."

"...Wait. Didn't I already say that yesterday?"

Hunger had a way of wearing a person down to something rawer, something less steady.

And that was how Ryan Cole made it through another twenty days alone, starving, and counting.