He'd never seen a day so dark as that morning, streets empty and littered with the sad shells of abandoned cars stuffed with belongings at six minutes to ten o'clock in the morning, sun jarringly loud in the sky. This doesn't bother him, doesn't seem the slightest bit odd. He's actually more surprised that people didn't simply give up and sit in their homes, bleary eyes focused on the flickering live feeds of weather forecasts on every channel. Huddled together in fear, maybe, but at least together.
More importantly, he had checked all the channels before leaving his own house, and it was really every single one. He wondered who had decided to shut down cellphone service, yet every cable provider still seemed to be up and running just fine. Apparently the ability to face fear head-on through your TV screen was better than sharing your last moments on the telephone with the family or friends you couldn't be with.
Priorities, people, remember your priorities.
And priorities were what led him to the 7-11 right across the street from the wide open gates of their pompous cul-de-sac - starving masses on the rich mans lawn. He would have hated it if he didn't love the irony and how much it infuriated his mother every morning when she drove him to school, ranting about consumerism and the ghettos she didn't know anything about. That was his mother, probably in some massage house on the beaches of Thailand, not even aware of her imminent death. Or maybe she was already dead. That would give him a lot less to worry about.
The 7-11 was blissfully deserted, the doors not even locked. A half hour to global destruction, and little to nothing was better than free slurpees - one for her, too, she'd appreciate that.
It's a ten minute walk to her house, and crossing streets without looking both ways is oddly liberating in between the moments of feeling pathetic as the slurpees sweat and melt and drip in his hands. He doesn't bother to ring the doorbell, just walks out back and looks up to find her perched on the top of the roof, as always, half a poptart in her hand. They've done this a million times, he purposefully wearing his hoodie with the extra large pockets to fit the drinks in but this time they're melted enough to slosh and spill. By the time he reaches her spot there are unfortunate orange splotches on his blue jeans that, in any other dimension, had the potential to be permanent. But here, right now, nothing was permanent; nothing was forever, not anymore. Apocalypse tends to destroy nice things like that - along with everything else.
He wonders vaguely, hands uncomfortable and slippery as he pulls himself up the rungs of the ladder set against the side of her house, where her parents are. They never use the ladder, almost never, because once on the roof there's no way to hide it and her parents had always cared, always made sure their baby girl wasn't in danger and the roof was dangerous. He can imagine them inside now, sitting close together on the couch, her mother's usually smooth voice tremulous for once. Maybe they didn't care now - simply said their I-love-you's and let her go. She wasn't one to sit inside blindly while the world changed around her, and they all knew it.
The slurpee hand-off is silent, comfortably so, and she only wrinkles her nose at how melted her cola-cherry-banana mix is, but says nothing, lifting those blue eyes to the horizon instead. Sitting down next to her, sudden nausea burns his throat as he catches a glimpse of what everyone's been talking about. They've been waiting for their death for a week, watching it consume the world around them for a week, and now it's eating up his town, buildings disappearing in a cacophonous rush under its pull of smiling liquid lips.
Huge waves, shit from movies, right? Giant tsunamis, giant blob monsters, giant asteroids. Everything has to be bigger - the easier with which to destroy you, my dear. He laughed then, watching those films, and laughs now, a sad disbelief of a noise.
Thailand was definitely gone. Those people who had tried to escape on the Interstate were definitely gone. In a situation where there is absolutely no reason at all for hope, does that make the people hopeless or simply brave enough, and willing, to accept their fate? Funny how it still felt pathetic and hopeless.
She's been watching it all day long, he already knows, and she doesn't pay attention to him until he swallows loudly enough for it to echo around the remainders of their neighborhood. Even then it takes him another long moment of staring at the rushing horizon for him to get his words out, and she waits, tucking pretty red hair behind her ear. His eyes are watering, but he tries his very hardest to keep it out of his voice, "We're pretty fucked, aren't we?"
"Yup. Pretty doomed." He notices the tear tracks down her cheeks as she leans against his shoulder, chewing on her straw, and he doesn't say a thing.