The End - Visions of Apocalypse

I leave, not bothering to follow decontamination protocol. No point. I’m the most sterile thing in there. I throw the suit in an overflowing trash-can.

I place the sample on a counter-top, lean over and take a deep breath. The smell is repulsive, a toxic blend of mould, yeast and rancid meat, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except it has a taste, it is alive and doing what it was born to do.

I shovel each mouthful at speed. In an enclosed environment like the bunker, the phage is more concentrated, so the bacteria won’t last as long as they do outside.

It’s possible I’m a little crazy, too.

* * *

Lunchtime meeting. Everyone sits in a conference room, nineteen of us last time I counted. Doctor John Geere, the closest thing we have to a leader, presides.

I stare at his sideburns, which have grown to giant proportions. They sprout out the side of his head like an Orangutan’s cheek flanges.

“We’ll start with Doctor Chung’s atmospheric data,” he says. “I’m afraid it’s not good. Go ahead, Vanessa.”

When we first met, I was struck by Vanessa’s friendly smile and envious of her good looks. Today I notice she has shaved her head completely. Even her eyebrows.

She does not waste time. “The samples from the last twelve-week period show atmospheric oxygen content is currently averaging eighteen point seven percent, down from the norm of twenty point eight. From the current trend, all oxygen will be depleted in six hundred and thirty days, plus or minus fifty.”

She puts her hands on her lap and stares ahead. A man speaks, one of the army chemists who led us here. Matthew something.

“What’s the minimum we need to breathe?”

Vanessa doesn’t check her papers. “Concentrations below nine percent are typically fatal. That level will be reached in four hundred and eighty days, plus or minus thirty.”

A chair scrapes on the floor. Matthew runs a hand through his hair, a luxuriant brown thatch. “That’s less than a year and a half! Is there any—”

“In two hundred days it will be below fifteen percent,” Vanessa says. “At that point we will experience shortness of breath and increased heart rate. Mental judgement and physical coordination will noticeably suffer, and serious scientific work will be almost impossible from then on.”

She closes her eyes. I watch her lips, which are painted a brilliant red.

“Three hundred days from now, at twelve percent, fatigue is permanent and mental performance severely impaired. In less than a year it will be ten percent, constant vomiting and fainting. Any of us still alive by then will probably die of dehydration.”

John breaks the silence. “Thank you, Vanessa.” He grimaces, crosses his legs. “There we have it, ladies and gentlemen. Does anyone have any ideas?”

Diana, the only other girl my age, raises her hand. The show of classroom etiquette makes me want to slap her.

“This is an army bunker, right? Doesn’t it have its own air supply?”

Matthew answers. “It had a bio-reactor to recycle air and water. But of course, it relied on a microbial ecosystem…”

And so it is dead. As dead as we will be, in a year at most. As dead as the oceans, where the bacteria that made half our oxygen used to live. As dead as the plants that made the other half, because they needed the nitrogen that only bacteria make in sufficient quantity. All this we must fix inside two hundred days for the slightest chance of survival. I want to scream.

Diana turns and fixes her shiny eyes on me. “Julia, you’ve been outside recently. There must still be some pockets of life, a few patches of moss or algae clinging on. We could use them as a starting point for the strongest organisms, breed something that has some kind of resistance, can’t we?”

“It’s possible,” I say. The lie is easy.

“That’s a great idea, Diana,” John says. “Why don’t you go out with Julia on her next field trip? Two sets of eyes are better than one, and safer.”

My cheek twitches. Diana mistakes it for a smile and flashes a nervous grin at me. I glare at Angela, who sits with arms folded tight, head down. She is rocking herself.

* * *

We get out at a wooded area near the playground. It’s a mistake to visit the same location again so soon, but I’m past caring. It’s a good spot for our side-mission, I tell myself. There is — used to be — lots of vegetation on the edge of the city.

From here I can see skyscrapers, still pristine and gleaming. No creepers will drag them down. Wind and rain will be their only enemies for the next few thousand years, give or take an earthquake.

Diana slams the car door, making me jump.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she says.

“Sure.”

“I’m not a real Doctor.” She grins like it’s a joke. “I mean, I am, really, I did all the studying and wrote my thesis. But when it happened, it was just before I could get things straight with my supervisor, and the paperwork kind of got lost.”

“That’s too bad.”

She hands me the carry-all. “Mind if I take a walk around? I can check out the undergrowth while you do your test.”

“Better if we stick together.”