Why is it always like this? When you’ve got to rush to work, you can barely peel your eyes open. But when you finally get a rare day off and have the chance to sleep in, you’re wide awake before the crack of dawn. You toss and turn in bed, but sleep just won’t come.
It’s annoying, honestly. Especially when your day off isn’t on a Sunday like normal people, but smack in the middle of the week on a Wednesday.
After flipping from his “work” side—left to right—eight or ten times in bed, Max realized sleep was a lost cause. He could’ve stayed there a bit longer, but his mind was already racing with everything he needed to get done on his day off. He had to swing by the repair shop to pick up his cell phone. He needed to stop by the city office for some paperwork. He had to hit the market for groceries… And it wouldn’t hurt to tidy up the apartment either.
Reluctantly, Max dragged himself out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen. He flipped on the electric kettle, only to remember that he’d run out of tea three days ago. He always seemed to think about it only when he wanted a cup and completely forgot when he was at the store.
He rummaged through the kitchen cabinets and found just one pack of green tea, left behind by his ex-girlfriend. He wasn’t a fan of green tea, but there were no other options.
“Guess we’re drinking diet tea today,” he muttered to himself, eyeing the pack. “Why not? Gotta start living healthy sometime.”
His thoughts quickly veered in that direction.
Like every self-respecting twenty-seven-year-old city dweller, Max had been planning to start a healthier lifestyle… Eat natural foods, get into sports, the whole nine yards. Of course, he’d start on Monday… Or maybe tomorrow. Just in time to get in shape for summer, but definitely not today.
“Actually, why not start today?” Max decided. “I’ll walk to the repair shop to grab my phone. It’s not far at all… And tonight, I’ll hit the outdoor gym for some pull-ups and dips.”
The green tea lasted all of two sips. The rest went down the sink. But the plan to work out was still on.
Max took a shower, got dressed, and stepped outside. Immediately, a sneaky thought crept in to just take the bus and not overdo it. His day off was short, time was tight… But Max summoned some serious willpower and forced himself to walk. The weather was perfect—mid-May, how could it not be? And the repair shop wasn’t far: just through the park, over the bridge across the river, and one more block.
On the bridge, Max paused to gaze at the water for a bit. He was pretty proud of himself for turning this errand into a little adventure.
“There’s so much beauty around us, and we don’t even notice it,” he thought. We’re always caught up solving problems that seem world-shaking in the moment. We bury ourselves in daily chores, dreaming that soon—real soon—we’ll finally take a break. And then it’s the same cycle all over again.
Max remembered how many years he’d been meaning to get out into nature. Four years, probably. He had a tent sitting in storage, along with everything he needed for fishing, a campfire, and some good old stew… But there was never time. Next week. Next month. Then summer ends—next year.
He made up his mind to stop here again on his way back, to stand a little longer, watch the spring sun dance on the river’s waves, and let himself believe that this year, things would finally be different. He’d also plan when to actually get out into the wilderness.
On the bridge, there wasn’t a single other person around. But on the road, an endless stream of cars flowed by.
Taking a deep breath of fresh spring air, Max turned to continue his walk, but he didn’t make it two steps.
A strange sensation hit him, like an itch inside his skull. A wild, unbearable itch exploded into searing pain. The agony was so intense that Max blacked out instantly. His body, mid-step, collapsed forward like a sack of potatoes. Miraculously, he didn’t smash his head on the asphalt walkway and… just as suddenly, came to.
“What the hell?” he managed to think before there was no time to think at all.
A deafening roar slammed into his ears, followed by the screech of metal and the shatter of glass.
Something dark hurtled toward him from the road, looking like a car. Max barely rolled out of the way to avoid being crushed as a motorcycle slammed into the railing right in front of him. The rider’s body flew over Max and plunged into the river. The protective helmet was torn off in the impact, bouncing twice like a ball on the walkway before rolling to a stop near Max. He tried to stand, but collapsed to his knees as his eyes locked on the helmet. Through the cracked visor, bloodied eyes stared back at him. Long hair spilled out from under the helmet. Not a rider—a female rider.
Nausea hit Max hard. He retched violently, spasms forcing him to double over again and again.
When the spasms finally eased, Max propped himself against the door of a black Chevy that had nearly flattened him and managed to stand.
Through the side window, he saw a man behind the wheel. The airbag had deployed, and there were no visible injuries on the man’s body or face. Max yanked the door open and grabbed his wrist. No pulse. He turned the man’s head toward him and instinctively recoiled. The man’s eyes were wide open and red with blood. It looked like the vessels in his eyes had burst. A stroke, maybe?
Max glanced around. The entire bridge was clogged with wrecked cars.
What could’ve happened? A massive pileup? But how was that possible? Many cars were barely touching each other, and some weren’t even in contact. Smoke rose from several vehicles. At the far end of the bridge, a semi-truck had started to burn.
He needed to call the police, an ambulance, the fire department—now. Max reached for his pocket, then remembered he didn’t have his phone. He approached the nearest car. A young woman sat behind the wheel, and a boy, maybe four or five years old, lay in the back seat. Their car was completely intact, but neither showed any signs of life. Max opened the door and took the woman’s hand, though he already knew it was pointless. Her eyes told him everything. No pulse. He let go of her hand, opened the back door, and turned the boy toward him. The same glassy, bloodied stare looked up at him. Max released the boy and stumbled back a few steps. He didn’t dare climb into the car to search for a phone and moved to the next one. In a Toyota Corolla, a middle-aged man sat behind the wheel. A smartphone lay on the passenger seat. Max went around to the right side and grabbed it. He tried to turn it on, but the device was dead. In the next car, belonging to an elderly couple, an old-school flip phone sat on the dashboard. Max snatched it up, but it wouldn’t work either.
Suddenly, an explosion rocked the air. Max ducked behind an old beat-up sedan in panic… and realized what was wrong.
Not a single car alarm was blaring. Not a single engine was running. Not a single headlight was on.
The burning semi-truck had exploded. Flames began spreading to other vehicles. He had to get off the bridge. More than that, Max felt he couldn’t stay here, surrounded by so many dead. He felt sick.
“To the park,” he decided. “I’ll head back to the park.”
More than anything, he wanted to see a living person.
The park was just a short distance from the bridge, right along the river. Just a few dozen yards. In spring, it was always full of people. He’d find someone, he had to.
Max started walking, weaving between cars. Then he couldn’t hold back and broke into a run.
******************************************************************
Sure enough, there were plenty of people in the park.
Dead people.
Some lay sprawled across the paths, others slumped on benches, and some had fallen off the benches entirely. Max knew that no matter who he approached, he’d see the same thing—that glassy, bloodied stare.
He trudged along the cobblestone path, avoiding the bodies, and stopped only at one bench. A young woman sat there, her hand resting on a stroller in front of her.
A DEAD HAND.
ON A STROLLER WITH A DEAD BABY.
Max stood there, staring at the woman’s hand. For several minutes, he just stared blankly at that hand. Then he realized his mind was refusing to process what was happening around him, frantically searching for an escape. It found one in the usual way—it shut down.
When he came to, he was sitting on a bench across from the woman.
It had gotten darker outside, but it wasn’t evening yet. The colors around him had lost their vibrancy. The sun still hung overhead where it had been before he passed out, but the sky was covered in some kind of dirty film.
Once, as a kid, Max had cut his palm.
He was seven or eight at the time. In the grass near the apartment building where they lived, he’d found a green shard of glass from a broken bottle. At that age, anything shiny sparked wild curiosity. At first, he imagined himself as a treasure hunter who’d discovered a magical emerald. Then his childish imagination spun an incredible adventure with pirates trying to steal his treasure, complete with a shootout (of course), from which little Max naturally emerged victorious. Next came negotiations with smugglers who helped him get the treasure home. He didn’t know the word “smuggler” back then and couldn’t remember what he called them, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were incredibly dangerous, and he’d outsmarted them. Then Max discovered that if he looked through the glass shard, the world seemed completely different. Instantly, a new theory was born: there were actually two worlds. One, the ordinary one, you saw with your eyes. The other, a magical one, you saw through the enchanted glass…
And then he tripped, fell, and sliced his palm open. The scar was still visible to this day. That’s where the fairy tale ended.
Now, Max felt like he was looking at the world through a shard of glass again. Only this glass was gray, and the fairy tale it showed was dark and sinister. The colors in this tale had faded with time, and the sounds had grown too tired to echo. People lay dead, and time twisted however it pleased, because Max couldn’t feel its flow at all—he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, how many minutes, hours, or even days he’d sat on this bench…
He felt an urge to walk over to the woman across from him and look into the stroller. What if the baby was alive? He barely believed it, but the thought gnawed at him—I have to do this.
He struggled to his feet, took a few shaky steps, stopped near the stroller, and reached out to peek inside.
Suddenly, the woman jerked and grabbed his arm. She lifted her head, and her glassy eyes locked onto his. He could clearly see the burst blood vessels forming a red web around her dark pupils. Black hair hung in strands over her eyes.
“Don’t touch it,” she screamed. “You’ve got your own battery.”
Max recoiled in horror. The woman easily let go of his arm, watched him for a moment, then her dead head dropped back down, chin to chest.
Max stumbled back a few steps on wobbly legs. His mind rang with emptiness…
When he woke up again, he was lying down.
“Thank God, it was just a dream. Just a dream,” he thought immediately. “I must’ve slept funny, my neck’s stiff, that’s why I had such a nightmare…” Relief washed over him.
His neck was indeed stiff. But he wasn’t lying in bed—he was on the cobblestone in the park. And all of this, unfortunately, wasn’t a dream. He realized it the moment he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a pair of women’s legs in jeans and sneakers, and the wheels of a stroller.
Max tried to crawl away and stand up at the same time. It would’ve looked comical if it weren’t so terrifying. He only managed to get on all fours.
No. This wasn’t a dream. He glanced around. Nothing had changed. Dead bodies everywhere. He nearly broke down in tears. With effort, he stood, his knees trembling.
His gaze fell on the young mother again.
“You’ve got your own battery.”
What was that? Max desperately hoped it was a hallucination.
But what the hell did a battery have to do with anything?
What now? Where should he go?
Home. Go home and try to calmly figure out what was happening. Max took a few steps, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. He sat down on the nearest empty bench.
“You’ve got your own battery.” What depths of his subconscious had dredged up that nonsense?
Max remembered what happened on the bridge. Every car engine shutting down at once. No alarms. No headlights.
You’ve got your own battery.
“I don’t have one,” Max whispered, looking around again. But this time, he wasn’t looking at the dead bodies.
Under a transformer box lay a dead cat. Farther down the path, a mutt of some kind ran by with a half-eaten hot dog in its mouth.
Birds circled in the sky. But under a power line, a pile of dead bird carcasses had fallen from the wires.
Max forced himself to stand and trudged toward the nearest store. Along the way, he picked up and checked several phones that had fallen from the hands of the dead. None of them worked.
He avoided the supermarket—too many bodies inside.
“Line’s too long,” he muttered, a hysterical chuckle escaping his lips.
The next small store was almost empty.
Behind the counter was the body of a young male cashier.
Max headed to the shelves and quickly found what he needed—flashlights and batteries. He grabbed a small flashlight first, tore open the plastic wrap on the batteries, and tried to insert them. His hands shook, and the batteries wouldn’t go in, as if they’d swollen up. Somehow, he managed and switched on the flashlight. The bulb didn’t even flicker. He grabbed a larger flashlight, one that took four big batteries. Same result. The flashlight flew to the floor, its glass shattering, but what did it matter now?
“I don’t have a battery,” he said to himself again. “Not a single one.”
Nothing electrical worked in the city. Not from the grid, not from batteries, not from anything. All the devices had been functional at the time of the disaster. Most animals were still alive—Max had seen another dog and a few cats on his way to the store. But the ones near electrical devices or power lines had died. And so had all the people—at least, he hadn’t seen a single living person yet.
Why was Max still here?
Because he hadn’t had any device on him. Others did—smartphones, tablets, pacemakers, music players…
Max remembered he’d thought about bringing his MP3 player today. But he’d changed his mind, wanting to hear the live sounds of the city and nature instead… If he hadn’t changed his mind, he’d be lying on the asphalt walkway right now with bloodied eyes. Or crushed under a car. The thought made his legs go weak again.
“Maybe that would’ve been better,” he whispered. “What am I supposed to do now?”