Chapter by Chapter 1

“What is Young’s Modulus?” A stiff silence stalked his question. Mr. Morris, a short, sharp-nosed man in his thirties, cast his eyes to the sea of adolescent faces each avoiding eye contact with him and his hopeful half-smile. It always played out like this. Seconds trickled by and someone shifted in their seat, letting out a sharp squeak as the stool’s black metal leg scraped along the floor. Light from the three large windows at the end of the room reflected across every metal surface it could find, guided seamlessly towards my eyes. Winter, after overstaying its welcome for one too many months, had finally made its exit and the days were getting longer. The sun’s rays actually had some heat to them lately but to me that day was unnaturally hot.

I’d had enough of waiting. “Stress over strain”, I called out. I was then immediately and acutely aware of two dozen eyes locked on me. Each of them held their own unique combination of gratitude and what seemed to me like quiet resentment. Then you should have said something yourselves, I remember thinking to myself. “But what does stress over strain mean?”, he ventured again, trying to draw blood from a rock. The room was silent once more.

The heat was creeping up my collar and turning the back of my neck into a swamp teeming with its own set of strange fauna and flora. I looked to a beige wall where the clock would be and remembered that the engineering room doesn’t have such a device for timekeeping. I sighed inwardly. “It’s a description of the relationship between the pressure placed on a material and how it changes accordingly.” Yeah, I was that guy.

That was a long time ago. Well to be precise, and I do like to be precise about these things, that was one year, seven months and thirteen days ago. It helps to keep track of those kinds of things during the Apocalypse. Keeps the ol’ noggin from going too soft. It just feels like a long time ago. For some reason that line just stuck with me.

I don’t know why I’m even thinking about that right now. I have other things on my mind. And on my chest. Namely the front half of a two hundred pound Irish wolfhound. The one with a vendetta against my neck still being attached to the rest of me. Now, the dog enthusiasts among you will already be clamouring and shaking your fists as you shout that wolfhounds are not aggressive at all, they just want to be friends! I will be ignoring such people. My neck is already friends with my body, BFFs in fact, and I would appreciate it if no one came between us.

The more astute observer will have noticed that the wolfhound is not normally a two hundred pound creature. Normally, wolfhounds also come with both halves firmly attached but here we are, defying the norm. Just my luck that I get stuck under the half that slobbers. I say ‘slobbers’ but I actually mean ‘drools menacingly’. Most of you will be wondering “How can something drool menacingly?” The rest of you are trying to calculate how much the front half weighs. Go on, I’ll wait. In the meantime, I’ll answer the first group’s question. You see, it’s not so much the drool that’s menacing, it’s the large, razor-filled maw separated from me by a two by four that seems awfully flimsy right now that scares the bejeezus out of me.

Who the heck leaves a perfectly good plank of wood on the street anyway? Oh right, end of times, panic and running. You’re bound to leave something behind. No one ever leaves a roll of toilet paper behind though, do they? I guess I should be grateful with what I have, considering that plank of wood is what’s keeping me on this plane of existence. I promise to honour the person who left it with a moment of silence later.

For now I could try calling for help. If I’m lucky there might still be someone living in the other boarded up houses along this street. I know it’s unlikely though; the local gangs already picked this place clean in the first few months. They came down like locusts, like-minded in their desire, swarming to feed themselves and destroying anything in their way. Then, just as they had arrived, they left leaving nothing but ruin in their wake. Now this place and many others like it looked like a bomb had gone off here. I’d be lucky to find even a tin of baked beans during these trying times. And I don’t even like baked beans.

The asphalt is cold against my back. The sun, high on its clear blue pedestal, keeps dutiful watch. Sweat pools under my armpits. And there’s something wet on my jeans. No, I didn’t piss myself. I believe the wetness is due to the hound, henceforth named Bobby, leaking his entrails onto me. Oh joy, I’m being leaked on. Bobby, for his part, seems to be enjoying himself. His eyes are yellowed and glazed over but I’m sure he’s smiling on the inside.

Little, lifeless buttercups as they are, they show what the world has truly come to these days. Bobby isn’t alive per se. Like a car with the keys left in the ignition; it may roll down the hill but there’s no little person in there making sure it doesn’t crash into a tree, or another person. Now imagine you’ve got a world full of them. Eventually you’re going to hit something.

“How did I get here?” I hear you asking. Well, when a man and woman love each other very much, or sometimes not at all, they- Oh I see, you meant how did I get to this particular juncture in space-time? Now that story starts off completely different. That story starts one year ago with one of the smallest creatures on God’s green earth. That story starts, like all great stories do, with a bottle of vodka and one white mouse. They say history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme. I say history writes really shitty poetry.