The End Has Come

“I know who he is. Or was. But, c’mon, he was all about business and taking charge of your career. Not sure what we do qualifies as a ‘career.’ I mean, I could build a stronger case for this being all of us working off our sins in purgatory. If I believed in that sort of thing, which I don’t. Neither do you. So, tell me exactly how Tony Robbins’ books — or any empowerment books — are useful for anything except toilet paper?”

“You say stuff like that because you haven’t read them,” said Jingo. “Empowerment is what it’s all about. Look, history goes through good and bad moments. Transitional moments, you dig? Going from what was to what will be.”

“I understand the concept of transition,” said Moose, reaching for his reinforced cervical collar.

“Right, so that’s what this is.” Jingo gestured widely to include everything around them.

“A transitional period?”

“Sure.”

“That’s how you’re seeing this?” Moose asked.

“It’s what it is. The world as we knew it is gone. We know that. We all know that. The plague was too big and it spread too far. Too much of the systems we needed — what do you call that stuff? Hospitals and emergency services and shit? People we’re used to being able to call — ?”

“Infrastructure,” supplied Moose.

“Right. The infrastructure’s gone, and that means the world we knew is gone. And it’s so totally gone, so completely fucked in the bunghole that we can’t put it back together the way it was.”

“Is that a Tony Robbins quote?”

“You know what I mean.” Jingo picked up the two football helmets and handed one to Moose. “Everything that was is for shit. Right now things are for shit, too, but in a different way.”

Moose hooked the chinstrap in place and adjusted his helmet. The visor was scratched and stained, but he could see through it. “Not in any version of a good way.”

“No, but that’s what I mean by transitional.” He picked up the sledgehammer, grunting with its weight and handed it to Moose. “The world’s still changing.”

“Changing into what?”

Jingo pulled his machete from the tree stump where he’d chunked it before lunch. He slid it into the canvas scabbard on his belt.

“Into something better.”

“Better?” Moose snorted. “Look around, brother, ‘cause that’s setting the bar pretty low.”

“Sure, but that means that things can only keep getting better.”

“Jesus.”

The shift whistle blew and they began walking down the hill toward the gate.

-3-

Because neither of them had premium skills, they worked cleanup. Before the plague, Jingo — born James Go — had been a third-generation Chinese American who mostly fucked around on trust money left to him by his software developer dad. He had some school, even a degree, but not a lot of what he’d studied had stuck. It was only when the trust was beginning to dry up that Jingo had started reading self-help and empowerment books to try and grab the future by the horns. The apocalypse had mostly, but not entirely, short-circuited that process. He knew that he would never be a great man or a great doer of things, but he had plans.

Michael ‘Moose’ Peters was different. He’d been a high school football coach and health-ed teacher. A college graduate with a degree in education, a constant reader and small-scale social activist in his community. Unlike Jingo, Moose had been a family man, but his wife and two sons were long gone. Taken by the first wave of the plague as it swept through Bordentown, a narrow spot on the map in Western Pennsylvania. Bordentown was notable only for being next door to Stebbins, where the plague began. Some of the guys working the fence thought that was kind of cool, and it gave him low-wattage celebrity. A few of the men, though, seemed to hold it against him, as if proximity to the outbreak somehow made him part of the problem.

Neither of their skill sets were of prime use. They weren’t doctors, scientists, military, police, EMTs, or construction workers. Neither of them could cook, sew, hunt, or survey the landscape. Nobody was playing football anymore, and Moose didn’t think it would make a comeback. It was as extinct as accounting, software development, infomercials, TV producing, the real estate industry, reality show competitions, taxi service, pizza delivery, cosmetic surgery, valet parking, car detailing, investigative journalism, secret shoppers, and ten thousand other things Moose could name. Putting together a list of useful skills was easier and quicker. A lot of people, including movie actors, famous models, politicians, CPAs, advertising executives, pet therapists, comic book writers, professional athletes, lawyers, and many, many more were now part of a mass of unskilled labor. Some were so unsuited to the survival of the collective that they were quietly shoved out of the gate at night. Those who made the cut, like Jingo and Moose, survived because they had — if nothing else — muscle.