The End Has Come

That was the trigger for a wave of discontent muttering. Amy let it come, allowing it to wash over her. It cleaned nothing, and left only more anxiety in its wake. “Citizens of Disneyland,” she said. There was a new snap to her voice, one that brought the crowd to abrupt silence. It was the tone she had once reserved for members of her staff, reminding them that they needed to worry more about creating magical moments for the guests, and less about who was surreptitiously texting who. “We are at the doorway of a crisis, and I need each of you to consider what you can do to help. Some things are simple. Turn off lights, conserve power whenever possible, do your part. Other things are more complicated.” She paused, allowing them to consider her relatively minor requests. They had survived the end of the world, they were living in Disneyland, and she wanted them to turn off lights when they left the room? There had to be a catch. Taking a deep breath, she continued:

“There is a hospital facility roughly four miles from here with a generator array of the size and type we need. A party will be leaving Town Square at dawn to cross the city, enter the hospital, and secure the necessary parts to make the repairs. I am assured by the engineering department that we can bring back enough material to keep us functional for the better part of a year.” A year was as far into the future as any of them dared to look. A year would take them through most of their water, and virtually all of their food. None of them were farmers. Even if they could convert the landscaped parts of the Park into gardens, it wasn’t going to be enough.

But Walt wouldn’t have given up. Walt would have fought tooth and nail for that year, for the chance that something might change, and the world might magically come alive again.

Amy looked out at the crowd of battered, weary survivors, trying to guess how many of them would be there in the morning. Come on, Anthony, she thought. They need a tipping point.

And Anthony rose to the occasion, as he had so many times before: “What about you, Madame Mayor?” he shouted. “Will you be sitting safely in City Hall, waiting for your delivery people to come back?”

“I’ll be leading the expedition,” said Amy. A low murmur spread through the crowd. She turned away, allowing herself the shadow of a smile. Maybe this would work out after all.

The next morning, fifteen people were waiting for her in Town Square: thirteen citizens, Anthony, and Clover. Tiffany and Skylar walked them to the gates of Disneyland. The sixteen raiders stepped outside. The sisters locked the gates behind them, and they were alone.

* * *

Most of the cars near the Parks had long since been scavenged for parts and fuel, but the Cast Member parking area was relatively untouched — in part, Amy admitted, because she had more respect for Cast Member property, but also because they had known, almost from the start, that one day raids like this would become necessary. Disneyland was designed to stay operational even during a blackout or other civic emergency. It was never intended to operate through an apocalypse.

They split into three teams, each of them taking the largest operational vehicle they could find. Amy wound up sitting with Anthony, Clover, and two others in a red SUV, wondering even as she fastened her seatbelt whether there was any good waiting for them in the silent city streets. Anthony glanced over at her as he turned the key in the ignition.

“It’ll be okay,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Amy, relieved that he’d drawn the wrong conclusion from her face. She turned in her seat, looking out the window, and tried to make her shoulders unknot as the car rumbled to life and Anthony drove them into the deserted streets of Anaheim.

The first thing any of them noticed was the silence. It was almost a physical thing, so heavy across the deserted city that it felt as if it should have been visible, an obstacle they could see and drive around. The engines of their borrowed cars were obscenely loud, and Amy couldn’t shake the feeling that they were violating something sacred by even being here.

They passed the first body when they were less than a block from the parking lot. It was — it had been — a woman in a flowered dress. She was slumped over on a bus stop bench, so dried out by the weather that she might as well have been mummified. The bodies came quickly after that, until everywhere that Amy looked there was another one sprawled in the street or sitting on a patch of sidewalk, their empty eye sockets turned up at the sky. Crows perched on the wires overhead, watching with casual fearlessness as the cars went rolling by.

“It was never about the meek inheriting the earth,” said Clover, sounding disgusted. “The whole thing went to the scavengers.”

Amy, who had been dealing with reports of coyotes skulking in the landscaped underbrush of the Jungle Cruise for weeks, said nothing, and they rolled on.