Grief: Five Stories of Apocalyptic Loss Read online

  Contents

  Grief

  Denial

  Anger

  Bargaining

  Depression

  Acceptance

  About the Author

  Grief

  Five Stories of Apocalyptic Loss

  Michael Coorlim

  © 2013 Michael Coorlim

  Pomoconsumption Press

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Synopsis: The world is ending, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. How does humanity stand its last hours? With the values we've developed over our reign on this Earth, or with the terrible freedom that comes with knowing that there won't be any consequences for our actions?

  A cop, a kidnapper, a doomsday cultist, a news anchor, and party-goers at the end of the world. Will they learn to cope, or succumb to the nihilistic madness around them?

  This collection of psychological drama fiction contains the stories "Denial," "Anger," "Bargaining," "Depression," and "Acceptance."

  Denial

  The riot swept through the city, organic, driven by the carnal urge to possess, to control, to destroy. This was its third day of existence, its third day of life, scouring streets with the hunger of an ant colony. Those who it swept over either fell to its fury or succumbed to the rising anxiety, the mounting dread, the directionless frustration that fueled it, becoming part of its strength, replacing the parts of it that had worn out or had been overcome by futility.

  Officer Lange braced herself against the mob, standing side-by-side, shield by shield with her fellow officers. Their high-impact polymer barriers held firm against the crush, the roiling beast buffing up against the wall created to channel it, to guide it. The police lacked the manpower to stop it, to even begin to contain it, so they did they best they could to send it where it could do the least amount of damage.

  Again and again the shield-wall shuddered, threatening to give. Lange found herself gritting and leaning into each impact even as her boots' traction started to give against the asphalt. For a terrifying moment she felt herself slipping. A firm hand from behind shored her up, gripping her by the elbows.

  The pressure against her shield abated, and she saw that Lieutenant Walker had been the one supporting her. She gave him a smile that faded as she took note of the fact that, overnight, their manpower had halved again. There was no second line, no one waiting and ready to step forward if she faltered, just a few officers walking behind their fellows, hoping to be in the right place at the right time.

  "Heard from the National Guard?" she asked.

  The lieutenant shook his head. "All I'm getting from dispatch are deployment orders. We've got to go reinforce the barrier at Renfroe and State."

  "What?" Lange turned and gestured towards the columned building behind them. "What about the courthouse?"

  "Guess it's not a priority anymore. We need to shore up defenses around W&P."

  Perez leaned against his shield, breathing heavily. "Guess the mayor thinks keeping the lights on is more important than an empty building."

  "I spent two days protecting this empty building." She glanced back at the courthouse, at the civic, state, and American flags high above it. It felt... wrong... to leave it behind, to leave it unguarded, to leave it to the mercy of the rioters. Like they were leaving behind more than just brick and mortar.

  "Trust me," Walker said. "You'll feel better about it when you're rotated out and can go home to a nice air-conditioned apartment."

  Lange glanced around at the other officers gathering up their riot gear. "When's that going to be? I've been on sixteen hours."

  "Think about all the overtime, Lange," Perez said with a humorless grin. "You'll be able to afford a first-class ticket to ground zero."

  ***

  Fourteen. Of the thirty officers that had been assigned to create a barrier in front of the courthouse two days ago, fourteen made their way down Renfroe. The street bore the scars of days of rioting. Storefronts had had their windows smashed out, their goods pillaged. Cars parked along the street were burnt-out wrecks. Postal boxes were tipped over. Even a few traffic signals had been toppled. Smoke in the distance and the wailing of sirens spoke of even worse damage further afield.

  They moved slowly, trudging, tired yet wary, alert for looters, for rioters, for the injured, for the opportunistic.

  "I saw SWAT helmets that last rush," Lange said quietly, glancing at the Lieutenant. "I hate to think about how they might have gotten a hold of them."

  "Casualty count is going to be high," Walker said.

  "I'm predicting somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred percent by the end of the month," Perez said in a shockingly casual voice, like it was nothing, like it was something you could just talk about.

  "Shut the fuck up, Perez," Lange snarled, a sudden heat of anger flushing through her fatigue.

  "Easy," Walker said. "How are you holding up."

  "Tired. I've been working dispatch since Academy, Bill. I'm not used to... I'm in shape, it's not the long shift, it's just... seeing people like this..."

  "Hey now," Walker said. "I've been patrol for ten years, some of the worst parts of the city. Trust me, I ain't any better prepared than you."

  "Those helmets, Bill. I can't stop seeing them. Thinking about the cops who dropped them. I'd die before I gave mine up. Before I let someone take mine away."

  "Makes you feel better, some of those shields you saw were still in the hands of the men they were issued to," Perez said.

  "What?" Lange cocked her head, trying to get his meaning. She'd been up too many hours for games.

  "We've been holding up pretty good. Glen took that brick to the face last night. Argyle had his leg chewed up by that dog. Murphy was shot. But that's it. Three injuries evac'd, twelve more gone in the morning."

  "We get it, Perez," Walker said quietly.

  "What, you think they evaporated?" Perez said. "Don't tell me you haven't been thinking about it. Like you haven't been wondering what the fucking point was, like you'd rather just go home or join in on the--"

  Walker broke ranks, rushing Perez, slamming his brother-officer up against the side of a junked car, baton across his throat. "That's enough, Perez. Shut the fuck up. We don't need your bullshit right now, okay?"

  Perez grunted, and Walker backed off.

  "Jesus, Bill. You be careful or I'm gonna have to talk to my union rep about this."

  "Shut the fuck up."

  Perez chuckled, lowered the face-plate of his helmet, and got back into line.

  ***

  Walker stopped, listening to his radio. The others still wore theirs, though over the last few days the batteries had run dry -- their few spares had been allotted to the highest ranking officer among them. The column stopped and waited in silence, some standing at disciplined attention, others taking the opportunity to sit or lean against a wall.

  "Copy that," he said.

  "We getting rotated out?" Perez asked, squatting against a dry fountain.

  "Negative." He paused, surveying his exhausted officers, weighing a heavy decision.

  "Lange. Perez. You're with me. Rest of you head on to Renfroe and State. Logan's in charge."

  "Where are we going?" Perez asked.

  Walker re-clipped his radio to his shoulder. "We got an officer in need of assistance at the Hyde Park bank."

  "What's going on?" Lange asked.


  "It's Eiberg. That's all I know."

  "Fucking great," Perez rose to his feet. "The fuck's he doing at a bank?"

  "Eiberg," Lange said. "I think he moonlights as a security guard."

  "And he's still at the fucking bank?" Perez said. "Why wasn't he called in?"

  "Eiberg's a few years from his pension. We're not so low on manpower that we need fifty-year-old men playing riot cop."

  Perez glanced up towards the slowly moving eleven-man column heading towards State Street. "Like hell we're not. Bank can't still be open. The fuck he doing still at work?"

  Walker didn't respond, turning and heading towards the nearest cross-street, Lange hurrying to keep up with his determined pace.

  ***

  The staccato cracks of gunfire had been a constant companion throughout the course of the riot, some close, some distant, but there hadn't been anything like the steady gun-play that the officers heard as they approached the bank. They moved slowly, cautiously, moving from cover to cover, first Walker, then Perez, then Lange, making their way closer. It sounded to Lange like small arms fire -- handguns -- but she hadn't had enough fieldwork to be sure.

  "Three of them." Perez had been SWAT. Lange didn't like him -- no one did -- but she trusted his expertise. "No, four."

  "One of them's gotta be Eiberg." Walker paused near the bank's corner.

  "Three hostiles, then," Lange said. "Can you get Eiberg on the radio?"

  "No. He made the call in on the bank's hotline."

  There was a momentary pause in the gunfire, and Walker moved, disappearing around the corner. Perez followed after him, and Lange took up the position they'd vacated. From there she could see that the bank's glass front had been blown out, probably in the rioting, and that the lobby had been trashed. Trash cans had been tipped, the desks set afire, charred deposit slips strewn about. The safety glass above the tellers had been riddled with gunfire and in some places removed.

  A man -- either a rioter or one of the men that had been harrying Eiberg -- was supine and spread-eagle in the middle of the lobby, haloed by an almost perfectly circular splatter of blood on the linoleum.

  She couldn't see any of the hostiles. Perez was standing with his back to one of the lobby's central columns, and Walker had crouched behind a desk.

  He caught her eye, held up three fingers, and pointed towards the door leading back to the teller's area. Perez moved to flank the doorway, followed by Walker, who waved her forward.

  Pistol in hand though she didn't even remember drawing it, Lange crossed the lobby to join them, skirting around the dead man in the center. Her heart was beating rapidly. She'd never been in a real exchange of gunfire, hadn't even drawn her pistol since the academy, and hadn't resented that in the slightest. She liked working dispatch. She liked being the comforting voice on the other end of the radio. She liked giving her officers support, sending them where they needed to be. That was her role, a cog in the machine, and that's the way she liked it.

  Everything here, since the riots had started, had felt so 'real'. Her senses seemed to strain for the slightest sound, the smallest flicker, as if starving for input.

  The door to the teller's area had been smashed open, its lock broken off, and a quick glance showed that the area behind their counter had been looted, drawers removed, machines smashed, a thin coating of purple die coating all surfaces. Footprints in the die clearly lead to a second, heavier door, a stairwell leading down to the bank's vault.

  Voices rose up from it, echoing with the acoustics of the room below.

  "What do you even want?" Lange recognized Eiberg. He sounded weary, frustrated, strung out. "Money? You'll be dead before you can spend it."

  "Why do you care?" The voice that retorted was young, arrogant, hungry, mocking. "If it doesn't matter, then why are you here? Why waste your life protecting money that nobody even cares about?"

  The answer came in the form of a fresh exchange of gunfire.

  Walker held up a hand and started creeping slowly down the stairs.

  There was a cry of pain from below. Lange hoped it wasn't Eiberg. Not when they'd just arrived. Not when they were so close.

  "It's not about the money," Eiberg said. "This is all I have left. Duty. Protecting this place from scum like you."

  "Fuck you!" A second voice. "I was all for leaving, but you shot Danny, you old fuck. You shot Danny!"

  Perez started down slowly after Walker.

  "Then go!" Eiberg shouted.

  "I hope your duty is worth dying for, old man."

  "It's the only thing worth dying for. Who we are is all we have left. It's all that matters. What we do now... it's our last chance, you know? The last thing we say to this bastard world before it's over. I was there. I mattered. And this is who I was."

  There was a gunshot from below.

  "Oh yeah, keep shooting at an old man, try to get money you can't even spend. That who you want to die as? I'm dying the way I lived, being a good cop. You at peace with dying as this person?"

  Lange listened to the exchange and slowly slunk down along the wall. Was this who she was? It hadn't been. A cozy life. A pair of cats. A loving boyfriend. Goofy friends. That was the measure of her life, not protecting a city gone mad from itself. She shouldn't be here, she should be home with her George.

  "Fuck you," the first voice below said. "You can sit here in the dark until the comet hits for all I care, old man. Me, I'm going to spend that time living. You ain't worth it."

  "What about Danny?" the second asked.

  "Fuck Danny." There was a pause. "Shit! Cops on the stairs!"

  There was a pair of deafening bangs as Walker fired, then stumbled back against the stairs as he was hit.

  "Fuck!" Perez said, backing up a step, shooting down through the doorway. "Fuck! Walker!"

  Lange snapped out of her fugue. "What? Walker?"

  Perez's head snapped around. "Those fuckers shot Walker!"

  Lange stared down the stairs at her friend's still form. "Walker."

  Perez turned back, both hands on his gun. "We can take 'em. Let's go."

  "Why?" Lange asked.

  "Why? They fucking shot Walker?"

  "Yeah," Lange said, holstering her pistol. "But... what's it matter? I loved Bill, but... he died being a cop, right? What more could he ask for? It's like you said earlier. What's the point?"

  "What's the point?" Perez's jaw dropped. "How about not being shot by some fucking skel in a bank vault?"

  Lange couldn't help but chuckle. "All talk, right up to the end Perez. You can't even do nihilism right."

  Perez stared at her, a look of disgust crossing his face. "Useless bitch. Fuck you then. The Blue Code still means something to me. Even if the rest of the world is going to shit, we watch out for our own, and that's what fucking matters."

  Lange walked back through the lobby, back to the street, largely oblivious to the sound of gunfire behind her. Did it matter? If Walker had survived, he'd have died like everyone else, cowering in the dark, starving when the skies went dark if he wasn't lucky enough to be near enough to the comet's impact. Let him die like this. A hero. A cop. It was who he was.

  She sat on the curb, watching the skies fill with smoke. Elsewhere in the city her brother officers were holding doomed lines against rioters and looters engaging in mindless violence and stealing things that they wouldn't have any use for. It wasn't futile. Not really. They were like Walker. Like Eiberg. Working for the chance at a good death, a clean death, the last pension they'd ever need.

  Anger

  Carson and Blake put their shoulders to the study's door, knocking it off of its hinges and tearing the security chain out of its casing. It was easy, almost surprisingly easy, even given how much they'd practiced, how much they'd planned for the moment. The timing was crucial.

  "Gun!" Carson sprinted across the living-room, cross-checking the apartment's inhabitant with his baseball bat before the old man could even begin to rise out of his chair, before he c
ould pick up the pistol in his lap.

  Blake was beside him in an instant, grabbing the gun, pulling it from the old man's reach. The old man was lucky that he hadn't gotten to him first; the normally staid and conservative IT manager had taken to their mission with a particular vicious enthusiasm. He had displayed a matter-of-fact attitude towards personal violence that gave Carson more than a little pause, but this was a new world now. People adapted to it in different ways, and who was he to judge?

  Carson took a few steps away to cast a glance into the kitchen. He was, he supposed, the "cautious" one, and that restraint had served them well. It was, he believed, a twisted reflection of the dynamics they'd played out back when office politics had seemed like the most important thing in the world. Blake had been objective but absolute in monitoring employee computer use, and took a certain savage glee in meting out disciplinary action.

  Carson hauled the old man up and into his chair, holding his arms against its back.

  The old man seemed dazed. "What do you want?"

  "Justice," Blake said, a wide grin on his face. "You're going to pay for what you've done, Representative Briar."

  "I haven't done anything!"

  Blake grabbed the man by the jaw, a curiously intimate gesture. "It's what you didn't do, you goddamn son of a bitch. What you didn't let anyone else do."

  "Help!" the representative cried. "Peterson! Lawson!"

  "Help! Help!" Blake backhanded the older man, the force wresting him from Carson's grip and sending him sprawling onto the floor. "It didn't take much to bribe your secret service agents to take the rest of the night off, Briar. Couple bottles of Patrón. Maybe they blame you, too. Maybe they just wanted to get drunk."

  "So hard to find good help these days," Carson said, crouching next to Briar, hauling him back to his feet. "Anyone else around?"

  "No." The old man sounded defeated. "No, it's just me now."