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Armageddon (Part I)
Jun. 13th, 2007 04:47 pmPlease click here before reading post.
I am posting this in the hope that someone will find this - if anything remains of our society long after these events have passed. Perhaps someone will find them. Perhaps this whole thing will blow over. Perhaps... but I'm not so certain of anything anymore.
Everything was fine until after I got home from work. I had taught an unusually small class for summer school at the charter school I work at, but I thought nothing of it.
As I was eating lunch and had just finished posting a response to my horoscope on livejournal, I got a call from my Mom. She was panicked. I could hear gun fire in the background. She told me to stay in my house, lock my doors, and wait there until she, my father, and my siblings could get to me. I asked her what was going on, and she told me just to sit tight, and that she had to go. It was then that I noticed how quiet it was on the island.
Alameda is right under the flight path for the Oakland airport. Even during the witching hour, that magic time when even nocturnal animals are at rest, there is always some noise or another: the hum of machinery near the docks, the passing of an occasional car, the rustle of a light breeze. As I hung up the phone with my Mom, I noticed that Alameda was silent. Dead silent. The only sounds I could hear were the hum of my refrigerator and the whisper of my own breathing. I could feel the electricity in the air, and that heavy, foreboding feeling that proceeds disaster. I pulled out a black candle, lit it, and prayed that my friends and chosen family were doing o-kay.
A sharp knock on the door startled me out of my devotions. I grabbed my engagement ring and slid it on as I walked toward the door of my apartment. I peeked through the peep-hole in my door. It was my older next door neighbor. He was making sure I was all right and wanted to know if I'd seen the news. He was clutching a rolling-pin - possibly the only heavy object in his apartment. We both jumped as Jen, who used to be a coworker of mine, charged up the stairs calling, "Have you seen the news?!?"
Not too much later, the clustered residents of my apartment building sat in silent awe at the images that flooded the television in Jen's apartment. Riots in Los Angeles so violent it was hard to tell who was a zombie and who was just looting. A reporter and crew on the streets in Colma overwhelmed by decaying, shambling bodies. The cameras ran red with blood and we could hear their screams before ABC could cut away. Oh God! We could hear their screams and the wet sounds of tearing flesh. The newscasters sat in stunned silence, tears streaming down their faces, unable to continue their coverage. On CNN the reports were much the same - all over the world there was carnage and violence as the dead appeared to crawl out of their graves and attack the living. In Iraq the insurgents and the allied forces had called an unofficial truce to try and stave off the undead attacks. One pundit commented that this was God's wrath on the world for not following His laws. Maybe that's true, and if it is, God is an asshole. Armageddon. The newscasters, pundits, people being interviewed on the street, they all kept mentioning Armageddon. I honestly don't remember the Bible saying anything about zombies... No, nothing about zombies, although plenty about raising the righteous to live with God in heaven. I sincerely doubt this is what the author of Revelations meant.
We must have watched the images for an hour, too horrified to look away. I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ribbin, joshua_summit, and dearbhail, hoping to find out if they are still alive. I was sent directly to voice mail every time. Strangely, there was nothing about violence in Alameda, though we could hear the distant sirens of emergency crews in Oakland. It occurred to me that there were no cemeteries on the island, just the morgue and a hospital six blocks from our home...
That is when the emergency sirens went off.
I am posting this in the hope that someone will find this - if anything remains of our society long after these events have passed. Perhaps someone will find them. Perhaps this whole thing will blow over. Perhaps... but I'm not so certain of anything anymore.
Everything was fine until after I got home from work. I had taught an unusually small class for summer school at the charter school I work at, but I thought nothing of it.
As I was eating lunch and had just finished posting a response to my horoscope on livejournal, I got a call from my Mom. She was panicked. I could hear gun fire in the background. She told me to stay in my house, lock my doors, and wait there until she, my father, and my siblings could get to me. I asked her what was going on, and she told me just to sit tight, and that she had to go. It was then that I noticed how quiet it was on the island.
Alameda is right under the flight path for the Oakland airport. Even during the witching hour, that magic time when even nocturnal animals are at rest, there is always some noise or another: the hum of machinery near the docks, the passing of an occasional car, the rustle of a light breeze. As I hung up the phone with my Mom, I noticed that Alameda was silent. Dead silent. The only sounds I could hear were the hum of my refrigerator and the whisper of my own breathing. I could feel the electricity in the air, and that heavy, foreboding feeling that proceeds disaster. I pulled out a black candle, lit it, and prayed that my friends and chosen family were doing o-kay.
A sharp knock on the door startled me out of my devotions. I grabbed my engagement ring and slid it on as I walked toward the door of my apartment. I peeked through the peep-hole in my door. It was my older next door neighbor. He was making sure I was all right and wanted to know if I'd seen the news. He was clutching a rolling-pin - possibly the only heavy object in his apartment. We both jumped as Jen, who used to be a coworker of mine, charged up the stairs calling, "Have you seen the news?!?"
Not too much later, the clustered residents of my apartment building sat in silent awe at the images that flooded the television in Jen's apartment. Riots in Los Angeles so violent it was hard to tell who was a zombie and who was just looting. A reporter and crew on the streets in Colma overwhelmed by decaying, shambling bodies. The cameras ran red with blood and we could hear their screams before ABC could cut away. Oh God! We could hear their screams and the wet sounds of tearing flesh. The newscasters sat in stunned silence, tears streaming down their faces, unable to continue their coverage. On CNN the reports were much the same - all over the world there was carnage and violence as the dead appeared to crawl out of their graves and attack the living. In Iraq the insurgents and the allied forces had called an unofficial truce to try and stave off the undead attacks. One pundit commented that this was God's wrath on the world for not following His laws. Maybe that's true, and if it is, God is an asshole. Armageddon. The newscasters, pundits, people being interviewed on the street, they all kept mentioning Armageddon. I honestly don't remember the Bible saying anything about zombies... No, nothing about zombies, although plenty about raising the righteous to live with God in heaven. I sincerely doubt this is what the author of Revelations meant.
We must have watched the images for an hour, too horrified to look away. I called
ribbin, joshua_summit, and dearbhail, hoping to find out if they are still alive. I was sent directly to voice mail every time. Strangely, there was nothing about violence in Alameda, though we could hear the distant sirens of emergency crews in Oakland. It occurred to me that there were no cemeteries on the island, just the morgue and a hospital six blocks from our home...That is when the emergency sirens went off.
