New Beginnings - Après l’Apocalypse

"Après moi le deluge," "After me, the flood," Louis XVI

I saw her struggling up the hill that I was sitting on.

I had really been sitting here peacefully contemplating the skeleton and ruined flesh of what had been, until very recently, one of the great cities on earth. Just imagine how foreign it is to me, thinking of Los Angeles that way. Most of the time the only thought I had given the place was cursing the bad traffic and wondering why they didn't just build some more damn freeways!

Now, like a bad horror/sci-fi post-apocalypse movie, I was regretting my lack of gratitude for all of the things that civilization had made available to us all. Theaters. Restaurants. Grocery stores. Museums. Even the opera down at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that I only attended under protest to please my wife. Well, ex-wife. Damn. I'd actually grown rather fond of 'Nessun dorma.'

I picked up my water bottle (lots of bottled waters left at every 7-11 store) and took a swig.

Initially I had been hitting the liquor stores and drinking up the really expensive stuff. You know you can get a really bad hangover, even from some of the best single malt Scotch? I really liked the smoky tasting stuff from Isla, but the super light Scapa from the Orkneys also appealed to me. And don't let me get started on what Tequila does to you. The Casamigos and the Herradura were my favorites for 'sippin' tequilas, but Patron silver and gold were good too, in a pinch.

I figured it would be a long time -- like forever, before any new production would start. Unless I started gathering grapes to make wine. Now that was a thought.

Oddly enough, although the people who ran the machinery weren't alive anymore, a lot of things were still running, as it were, on autopilot. I suspected everything would begin gradually winding down as fuel ran out and parts broke with no one to replace them. The second law of thermodynamics would guarantee that order would deteriorate into chaos without energy added to the system. I had been living by looting the now unprotected stores full of goods but empty of customers. I was finally able to dress in the exquisite clothes that I'd envied in my old life, but couldn't afford. But now, there was no one who cared how well I dressed. Oh well. You can't win them all.

After the first month, when I had been completely out of my head about the situation, I just wandered from place to place in L.A. Plenty of gas; a new car every day if I wanted. The last month or so I realized that I should probably start planning how to survive long term. Eventually, even the buildings would start collapsing and anything I wanted or needed from them would be buried in the rubble. So I started putting together lists of things that would last that I should collect. Use the auto gas now while it was still good; gather all of the full propane tanks. Hit Home Depot for tools and a multi-fuel generator. I figured that the L.A. Main Library would last for a long time. It was sturdy.

The other thing was loneliness. I had been a coder my whole career and thought I could get along pretty well by myself. I mean, my job was sitting alone at home at my desk on my computer all day, usually communicating via text/chat/or email. It was one of the things that my ex-wife complained about. Working by myself I would never 'go up' in this world. Honestly, I didn't WANT to go up in this world.

But it was different not talking to people because there weren't any other people to talk to, as opposed to only talking to people when I wanted to.

Maybe some of my loneliness problem could be solved. That was about an hour ago, when I first saw someone in the distance walking towards me. They must have seen me in the distance, too. I wish I had brought a pair of binocs with me.

As she got closer, the woman — at least I assumed she was a woman from her long locks and the dress that she was wearing — was close enough now that I could start to discern her features. She seemed, even at this distance, somewhat familiar. Maybe it was the way that she walked. She was the first other living person that I had seen in the two months since the great collapse.

The woman was getting really close now and I was truly becoming nervous. It was most likely an illusion; my mind was playing tricks on me desperate to escape from reality. But the figure kept coming towards me. I could feel the panic setting in already. She stopped about 20 feet in front of me. She looked and rubbed her eyes and then looked again, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Neither could I, if that gave her any comfort. I blinked twice and she was still there.

"Chris?" she asked, her voice was weak and sounding much less aggressive than the last time we spoken in Court when our divorce was granted.

"Hello, Martha. I'd ask how you were doing, but I think I already know. It's good to see you. I'm glad you survived. I mean REALLY glad."

She nodded and sat down next to me. I offered her my water and she took a sip.

"I guess that divorcing me because I wasn't ambitious enough seems a bit trivial now, doesn't it."

She nodded in agreement. "Yeah, Chris," she paused before she spoke again, "And I guess when I started shouting at you and told you I wouldn't sleep with you again if you were the last man on earth has kind of gone out the window too. It's okay. I was lying just to hurt you anyway."

I just nodded and took her hand in mine. I didn't even bother to gloat. After all, we were going to have to make it together, or we wouldn't make it at all.

"Chris?" she started to ask something.

"No. This is a new beginning for us. We're starting over from scratch. I'm not Chris anymore. Call me Adam. I'll call you Eve."

We smiled at each other and sealed it with a kiss.

The plan just changed for the better.