The Apocalypse Started Today, but I've Lived It for Ten Year

Stat Meta

I stopped dead in the middle of the cafe.

Ten years of apocalypse had taught me every voice a monster could make. Screeches, growls, the wet clicking of things that hunted by sound. None of them had ever used a human voice. Not once. Whatever was in that storeroom had learned mine in a single sentence.

Another thing that wasn't in my memory.

I filed the thought away for later. A lot of thoughts were piling up in that drawer, and I was starting to dislike how heavy it was getting.

"Dale." I kept my voice low, level. "Don't open the door."

"E-Ethan?" His voice cracked from behind the storeroom's steel door. "Ethan, is that really you?"

"Dale," the thing answered, in my voice, warm and patient. "It's me. Open the door."

A second later it spoke again, this time in Dale's voice, high and breathless. "Please. Please don't."

It wasn't talking to him. It was practicing.

I crept to the end of the counter and looked up. Perception 12 wasn't much, but it was enough to catch what my old eyes would have missed: a pale, thin shape clinging to the ceiling pipes above the storeroom door. Long limbs folded like a spider's. A narrow, hairless head, tilted at an angle that made my neck hurt to look at. Its mouth hung open, far too wide, and from it came my own voice, again and again, perfectly calm.

Dale was on the other side of that door, holding it shut with a mop handle jammed under the knob. A mop handle. It was the bravest, stupidest thing I had seen all day.

I had one chance before it learned to say anything.

I gripped the axe, reversed it, and let the pick end, the sharp iron spike opposite the blade, hang low. Then I spoke, clearly, in my own voice.

"Dale. Get away from the door."

The thing's head snapped toward me. Its mouth stretched. A half-second later, it repeated me, slightly off, like a bad recording. "Dale. Get away from the door."

There. That half-second.

It had to hear a word before it could say it back. When it echoed, it opened its mouth to the full, and the soft, unarmored throat behind those thin, wet teeth was exposed for just long enough.

"Dale," I said again, "get away from the door."

It lunged.

Long limbs unfolded in an instant. It crossed the cafe in a blur, claws gouging the ceiling tiles, mouth already stretching to echo me. I didn't dodge. I stepped in, planted my back foot on the wet tile, and drove the pick up into its open throat with everything Agility 15 could give.

The spike went in with a crunch.

Its scream was my scream. The one I'd held in for ten years. It came out of that ruined mouth in my own voice, raw and terrible, and for a moment my knees nearly gave.

Then it went limp, and the corpse slid off the spike and collapsed across a table. Grey motes began to rise from it.

[Unknown creature slain. Essence gained.]

[Hollow Crown: Essence Tithe applied.]

[Level 4 → Level 5.]

I stood there, breathing hard, the spike still dripping, watching the thing dissolve. Its voice was still echoing in my ears.

"Ethan?"

A mop handle clattered to the floor. The storeroom door opened a crack, and Dale's face appeared in the gap, grey, sweat-slick, one eye swollen shut where he'd hit the shelves. He looked at the dissolving corpse. He looked at the blood on my hands. He looked at the fire axe.

"You said," he whispered, "the phones would stop working."

"They did."

"You said to lock the door."

"I did."

He let out a laugh that turned halfway into a sob, and he slid down the doorframe until he was sitting on the floor, covering his face with both hands.

I had a list. Hardware store, pharmacy, supplies, a hundred things that needed doing before the first night fell. Every second I spent here was a second the other survivors used to get there first. A man with ten years of experience would have kept moving.

I crossed the room and crouched beside him.

"Dale. Look at me."

He did, slowly.

"You held that door against something that wanted you dead," I said, "with a mop. That was stupid. It was also the only reason you're still alive."

"I thought it was you," he said, voice breaking. "It sounded exactly like you. I almost opened it."

"But you didn't."

"I didn't." He wiped his face. "I knew you'd never say 'please open the door.' You'd just kick it in."

I almost smiled. It cracked something in my chest, a hairline fracture in a wall I'd spent a decade building, and for a moment I didn't know what to do with my face.

"Can you walk?" I asked.

"I think so."

"Good. We're not staying. This building isn't safe, and more of those are coming." I held out my hand, and after a second he took it. His grip was damp and shaky and absolutely real. I hauled him to his feet.

He stood there swaying, then looked past me through the shattered front window. The street beyond was chaos: a car on its side, a woman running, something that had once been the businessman crawling after her with a limp, too-long arm.

"What's happening?" he asked quietly. "Please. Just tell me what's happening."

"The world is ending," I said. "I know how this goes. If you stay close to me, you have a chance."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've seen it." It was the truest thing I'd said all day. "Not today. Before. I'll explain when we're somewhere safe."

He studied my face for a long moment, and whatever he saw there made him nod slowly.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. I'm in." Then he stopped. His hand dropped into the pocket of his apron, and I watched his expression change. "Oh. Wait. Wait, I almost forgot. This is going to sound crazy."

"Everything is crazy now."

He pulled out a small, folded envelope, cream-colored, the corners slightly damp from his sweat. My name was written on it in neat, slanted handwriting.

Ethan.

"A woman came in around nine this morning," Dale said slowly. "Before the, uh, purple sky and all that. She bought a black coffee, didn't drink it, and left this on the counter. She said you'd need it at noon." He swallowed. "She said, 'Give it to him after the first thing he kills.'"

The cafe went very quiet.

I stared at the envelope. At the handwriting. At my own name.

Nobody knew about noon. Nobody knew about the kill. I hadn't told a soul, and in the whole world, the only person who could have known what I was going to do today was me.

I tore it open.

Inside was a single card, and five short lines.

> Don't go to the hardware store on Eighth.

> Someone else got there first.

> You'll want to know who.

> I'll find you when it's safe.

> A friend who remembers.

My hands didn't shake. After ten years, they never did.

But for the first time since I woke up, I wasn't sure whether I was the only person who had come back.