You, the apocalypse and me! [YiZhan FF] Fantasy

Chapter 43 - The Snowplow

We spent most of the hours until nightfall looking around the building and wondering if this building could ever be used again as what it was. We discovered that many of the offices had apparently been in use until the apocalypse. Everything in many of the offices had been dusted, but documents, files, and any other items looked as if the employee would return to their workstation at any moment and continue working.

Somehow, that had been eerie. In one office, there was even a cup still on the table with a tea bag hanging in it. In another office, there were flowers that had dried up, with greeting cards from colleagues for her birthday and an unopened gift from a Suli for her very favorite colleague, Jen. How sad is that? I mean, this gift Jen will probably never open and she will never know what Suli gave her. We left everything as it was, by the way.

I said to Yibo that I often think about those apocalyptic movies and series and that I wish the apocalypse was just a movie or series with us too. Unlike "The Walking Dead" or "28 Days Later" where both main protagonists woke up after being in a coma in the apocalyptic world, I wish I would wake up in the morning and realize that everything we experienced in the now almost 16 months was just a nightmare.

On "The Walking Dead, Rick Grimes is shot in the line of duty and ends up in a coma. When he wakes up, he finds that he is alone in a hospital and that on a door is written "Don't open. Dead inside." In the hospital itself, there are already some traces of what went on there. But Rick doesn't understand, not yet. Not even when he saw all the bodies lying in the hospital's courtyard. He wants to go home to his wife and son, walks through the deserted streets, arrives home, the front door is open and no one is there. He spots a boy on the street, talks to him, gets knocked out and then learns about the zombie apocalypse from Morgan.

In "28 Days Later," Jim, who was a bike messenger and had an accident, wakes up from his coma and is also all alone in the hospital. He too wants to go home, in his case to his parents, and also finds the streets deserted. He screams his head off "Hello" which was really annoying and enters a church. In the church he sees people lying. Again he shouts "Hello?" and a few of the figures rise and immediately make their way to him. He realizes that something is wrong with them, runs away and gets help from two strangers who hide with him in a kiosk. There he learns from the two about the zombie apocalypse.

And I imagine waking up and the creature apocalypse never happened. So in the opposite sense. But what I don't wish for is to be married again. Wow, I just realized that the moment I write this, I thought about my ex wife for the first time in a very long time and I'm still glad she's my ex wife. I don't know how to say this, I want Yibo and I want a normal life with him where we don't have to be scared all the time, run away, fight or hide. A normal life! But will we ever have that?

Suppose the creatures disappear and we humans can come out of our hiding places again and live without worries. Then, nevertheless, nothing would ever be like it was once again. It would be as if we had to start all over again after a long war. I am sure of that. Millions of people died all over the world. Apartments, houses, factories, hospitals, much of it totally destroyed. Everything would have to be rebuilt. There would be a shortage of skilled workers.

Ah I don't know. This unopened gift made me very emotional and all these things went through my mind. When you see things like that and you have a lot of time to think, you think of thousands of things that make someone emotional. All it takes is a picture of a Coke or a hamburger and you get emotional. Because we may never have these things again.

Just like new books, new movies, new music. All of that will probably never exist again. Instead, should we humans survive the creatures be able to claim the world again, we will have to work hard to rebuild our cities and infrastructures. Or another example is our jobs. I wanted to be a special agent, worked hard for it, became one, and was proud of it. But I will never be a special agent again.