Read Online How the World Ends by Joel Varty - Free Book Online

granted. You must await further notice. You are not permitted in the streets overnight. Please return to your homes or place of work...” The message repeats with a slight pause in between cycles.
    A new crowd begins to gather outside the building – those of us who have come here hoping to find a way home – staring at the building as the stars above struggle against the dull glowing gloom of the city. We are all soaking wet and shivering from standing out in the rain, and I can guess that I am not alone in my desire for escape from the grey cement canyons of this place.
    I turn back from the station and walk towards the river – already a plan is forming in my mind for what to do. It is as if I know instinctively what I should do and where I should go. A few people notice me passing them as they approach the gathering crowd along the street in front of the station. They pay little attention to me, all eyes focused on the signs and the guards and the repeating message from the loudspeakers. I know what I have to do, and I know the exact progression of steps that will get me from here to home and the precise moments when to act and when to be still. It is not a feeling I have ever had before. Normally I tend to feel like this is precisely the kind of direction that I am lacking; however, in this particular case, it seems as if a voice in my brain, or perhaps deeper down, in my heart, has transcribed some wisdom for my understanding. It may be Michael’s voice – I am not sure, at the moment.
    Go to the river. Find the footbridge. Cross the river. Wait. Be Patient. Follow the tracks. Walk.
    I embrace the darkness as I escape the glow of the streetlamps along the edge of the river. The footbridge is there, unguarded, cloaked in darkness – left behind. I step onto the bridge and quickly make my way across. The night cradles me in her invisible folds of mist and ether. Strangely enough, although I know this is the only way for me to escape this place, I feel cowardly. I feel that I should be doing something of bold brevity against the oppression of the common folk like myself, but I don’t turn back. Not when the murmurs behind me turn to shouts and yells. Not when the shouting becomes screaming and gunshots and the gunshots became silence once again. I struggle not to be seen or heard.
    Once I cross the river, I sit on the wet ground beside a tree in a small park. The darkness here is nearly complete, as the place is shadowed by the newly blossomed leaves of the giant maple in a small enclave at the edge of the city, near the spot where the river falls away into the lake.
    I feel tears well up in my cold wet eyes. The loneliness of survival, so quickly come upon me, is overwhelming. I hate myself for my cowardice, and my ability to walk away from a crowd of people that I now despair of being dead, or in the process of becoming so. I have to get away, to escape, to stay alive, to find my family, and keep them safe. I have to find out what has happened – and why. At the moment, though, that seems as much a distraction as it is a purpose.
    The noise begins to die down a bit, the gunshots and screams becoming further apart as people, I presume, are pursued throughout the city. I hear them crying out as they are hounded back to the buildings that will hide them from the outside. I know that there is an answer to this but it doesn’t present itself to me, and I am too afraid to seek it out. I feel only the need to escape.
    My legs begin to cramp with the increasing coolness of the night, but I don’t move. Footsteps, boots on the bridge, alert me to a presence. I hear the sound of a radio squelch and intermittent voices reporting on crowd movements in other areas. It is a guardsmen’s personal radio – attached to his helmet, but still audible in the quiet of the night. I try not to breath, wishing that I had taken more care in finding my hiding spot. The guard stands at the edge of the bridge, hesitant. The voice on the