AT THE END OF THE WORLD

2010 BP Oil Spill

WE'D DONE OUR ZOMBIE BINGE DURING QUARANTINE. I'd never seen Shaun of the Dead. Casey'd never watched Zombieland. In The End, I wasn't remotely prepared.

It stood at a fork in the road, its dim green fringe dull and quiet. Black-out windows. Wet concrete. Pumps abandoned; a Chevy left with an open passenger door.

The BP on Flushing was seemingly untouched. Before Casey.

And a Crowbar.

(We'd all eventually choose our 'Weapons of Choice,' but back in The Beginning, Casey and I used anything.)

Casey had veered around a corner, and as I caught up, I found him flinging the metal hatch of an Ice Box open.

"Water," he said lowly, scrubbing an arm up his cheek, dirt-smeared sweaty. "Power's probably down all of Queens. Fires." He looked up. "It's really happening, Kir."

"Yeah. Yeah."

Behind BP, and Casey lit a joint. A billboard overhead, AUTO SALVAGE, a shingle ramshackle dented in and a faded sign hanging: USED AUTO PARTS. It had already crept in and cornered him. Looting BP.

I hadn't seen him grab anything in Sarah's apartment, but I was seeing double-Casey in a ruddy haze, all garish green and orange, smashing up BP with a Crowbar. Yeah. Like... okay. Why not?

Sometimes Case set his bottle of gin down. Sometimes he didn't. Windows broke so easily in Queens. I let my Golf Club go accidentally, hurtling and breaking something in BP. Then I whirled, blinking. Fuzzy. My head heavy. His gaze swept around. Nothing. Only a still-smoldering collision at the corner, a mangle of recently-vacated vehicles piled up on a curb.

Weird.

"Ay, I told you I'd get you a new pack," Casey ribbed, passing his joint back again, pushing in lazily. Glass crunched under his Vans. It was dark, clammy, empty, as far as I could tell.

Loot.

I lagged behind him, dragging, hitting slowly, sluggishly. Everything was foggy, din. Like I'd dunked myself in a murky ocean. Exhaling. Smoke billowed above silhouetted shelves, cramped aisles, jaggedly aglow, lit by a blaze across Flushing. Spaghetti Western?

When I tapped his shoulder, Casey reached back without looking: a practiced pass I'd perfected with him.

"Here, Kir, I'll grab your cigs." The joint hanging from his lips. Casey hopped a counter and ducked down; a handful of lighters spilled between us—before a steady lob of six packs of Marlboro Red 100's. "Here, all my IOU's," he snickered softly.

Yeah, I pocketed 'em. Hell yeah I did.

I did vandalize six Powerball papers with crudely-drawn dicks, yeah. I also 'stole' a pint of ice cream, a bag of Doritos, and a Kit Kate; ate it all inside BP while Casey and I... rifled, loitered, kinda hung around. I remember I heard him muttering to himself, found him wrist-deep in Nyquil. "Should hit a fucking pharmacy, Kir."

"Yeah, yeah," I snorted. I didn't really know what I was hitting yet. My iPhone was dead. No Yoona. A degree in a useless industry pre- and post-pandemic—

Where was I going? What was I hitting?

In a blind haze, I'd swung at a whole shelf of Pringles. A clenched scream, pissed off I had fucked up again; coffee a sticky sludge in a cold pot, days old, I guessed.

$200, I scored, but I didn't know if it held value anymore—when I could just grab a beer from a fridge and walk out of BP.

When I found Casey again, I found him in a smoky, broke-down corner, sinking a frayed rank of denim (?) into our bottle of New Amsterdam. Molotovs. Okay. "Seriously, Case?"

My BIC®. Tiny. Red. In his palm, being flicked blankly.

Wait.

When did I give it back again?

"Somebody's coming," he hissed, jerking his chin at a set of silhouettes ambling up Flushing. Machetes. Wait. Wait.

Déjà vu.

"Casey, no—

He lit it, leaned, aimed a gaping window, and flung—

—and shattering—

—and—

"Shit."

Everything jolted. Black. Pop. I went skidding, collapsing; shelves tumbling, ricocheting, squishiness, crushed pastries beneath my elbows, Casey coughing drily, raggedly. "Fuck. That was dumb."

"Ah, fuck," I snapped. That One, I felt. My whole body was sore, aching, crying. My head so far away I didn't know if I'd just seen a Silverado explode.

"Why would you—" I huffed, waving off heady, gasoline-soaked smoke as I staggered up. "Fuck, was probably— J.C. or— or..."

"Doesn't matter, Kir. It's gonna blow." Casey was dragging my sorry ass over knocked-down shelves in fiery darkness. A scorched Silverado, its bulky, charred skeleton. Flames licking up a... "Pumps. Those... Go. Go!"

Oh.

"Oh, fuck." Yeah. Run.

"Hey, Case!"

Somebody was...

Boom. It blasted, a deep, bruising sound across Queens. I knew. Boo-Boom. Boom.

The ground ripped away, and I bucked, flailing, hands and knees skinned on gritty asphalt. Heat searing across my back heavy. My head spun as I rolled over, gazing at its mushrooming arc against a flat, low-lying skyline of Queens. Everything was orange-y hot, sultry, chemically singed. Sooty.

I coughed as Casey yanked my forearm up, up, up. "Holy shit, you..."

BP had blown up. Vehicles strewn across a fork on Flushing. Fire spotty and growling. BP fizzing off, its burning roof cracking and caving in. USED AUTO PARTS catching, ignited—

Boom—

I flinched, yelped, backpedaling: fire spreading, devouring a salvage yard, lumps of bony metal and up ashy silhouettes, pop-pop-pop blistering violently.

"It's The Wild Wild West, Kira." I remember him saying. "Wild Wild City." Everything hazed by an awestruck high. "It's ours, Kira. Now."

Who? The People, Case?

Very Escape From New York of him—

"Casey!"

Suddenly. Sharply. His voice was hoarse, emerging from a smoggy dust. Alive.

"Aw shit J.C.," Case slurred.

"Dino didn't— Dino... but Derrick..."

Dino had been bitten back at Sarah's; Derrick had just been obliterated.

"Oh, uh, my bad," Casey said, only inches away. Unnerving, yeah. "That, uh, could've been avoided, I guess. Sorry."

Down Flushing: an echoing chamber of combustible darkness awaited when voyaging with Casey Kelly.

Maybe what John had meant about him hurting you, Kira. It would be accidental, impulsive, so stupid, Casey so apocalyptically high he'd unwittingly blow up a building, kill all of us, probably. Yeah.