At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) by John Hennessy

skyscrapers emerged,
long, bright towers covered in green solar panels. The organic
compounds of the solar cells worked exactly like trees, but twenty
times more efficient, or something like that. They also didn’t
expel oxygen, not yet anyway. They probably never would.
    “Jacob is coming to,” Tortilla informed
us.
    Jacob grumbled about his head for a bit. “I
screwed up. I screwed up bad.”
    Tortilla smirked. “We’re alive. You didn’t
kill us, not yet anyway.”
    “How are you feeling?” I asked.
    “Like I’m going to puke my goddamn brains
out,” he answered. He loosened the strap across his stomach and
chest.
    “I bet,” Jelly said.
    “No, I mean it. Pull over.” But there wasn’t
time. He retched a pool of death by his feet.
    “Why? Oh, why!” Jelly shouted. We rolled
down the windows and opened the sunroof. All useless, in the end,
it was so bad; I almost added the granola bar I had eaten to the
putrid smell.
    “I’ll just go to the bus station, and we can
figure out something from there.” No one argued. They rarely did.
“There were people in that car.”
    “What?” Tortilla said, adjusting his
glasses.
    “In the car that drove us off the road,
there were people in it. We’re not the only ones left.”
    “I didn’t even think about that,” Jelly
reflected. “It’s so normal for people to drive cars . . . I didn’t
even think about that.”
    The conversation ended as we all
contemplated on the fact that other people did survive.
    It became harder to maneuver in the city,
much harder. Cars jammed streets everywhere. It was silent,
immobile chaos. The smell was getting to me, dizzying my head. I
pulled into a Little Old Food Mart parking lot a few blocks away
from the bus station. “We can walk the rest. I can’t be in this car
anymore.”
    Not a word from them, not one.
    “You think we should check the grocery?”
Jelly asked.
    I nodded. “Yeah, stock up. They might have
duffel bags that we can use.” The slider doors of the grocery store
opened as usual, a computerized bell rang when they did. We stood
there, gawking.
    “It’s empty. All the shelves, empty. How is
this possible?” Tortilla said. His words only earned shrugs. We
went down the aisles: the canned goods, the cereals, the produce,
meats, bakery, all of it was gone. All the consumables. The cooking
utensils, neo-plastic water bottles, aluminum foil—that stuff was
all left alone, barely touched.
    “It’s impossible. With all the people
missing the first day, the people left couldn’t have taken it
all.”
    Then it dawned on us: people didn’t take all
the food, not all of it.
    “So you think?” Jelly said.
    “Yep,” I responded. “I can’t think of a
better explanation, can you?” Of course he couldn’t, and if he did,
he didn’t say it. “Let’s get all the aluminum foil, fill some more
water bottles, some medications. You know, stuff we can use.”
    “Aluminum foil?” Jacob asked with a furrowed
brow. “Why do we need aluminum foil?” Then I think for the first
time he saw that Jelly and Tortilla were covered in it.
    “You just noticed that we’re wearing it?”
Jelly said. “Man, you must be melted. We’ve had it on this whole
time.”
    “I think I am melted. I can’t see straight,
I can’t think straight. Yeah, I think I am going crazy, or have
gone.” Jacob sat down on the tiled floor and drank some water.
“It’s certain, isn’t it? I’m gone.”
    “If you think you’re gone, then you’re
probably not all gone,” I said. “Probably.”
    He smiled. “Thanks.”
    While Jacob rested, the three of us split up
and searched the store, throwing valuables into duffel bags that we
had found at the front of the store. The bags had the Little Old
Food Mart logo on the sides, with the slogan: “Buy local, buy
local, buy local!” They really pushed buying local, but then almost
everyone did in Bellingham.
    When we finished, we met up at the
storefront. “What kind of medicines did