Everything Feels Like the End of the World by Else Fitzgerald

Author:Else Fitzgerald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

IT’S MIDNIGHT, BITCH

Man’s voice, breathless: Are you recording this? Aliss? Is it on? Okay. So. I’m just telling it how it … Look, I had foresight, that’s what it was. Got in at the ground floor. Or below it, ha-ha! Things were always going to go sideways. When the shit hits the fan, only the prepared survive! The question you shoulda been asking yourself is which group you were going to be in when it all went down. We were the prepared. We had plans, me and Jacky. We threw everything into this place. Gonna ride it out.

Summer’s come again, it’s warm in here … The temp gauge is up at fifty-one out there, though. Hotter than shit. The landscape on the monitors shimmering. Those bones bleaching outside the fences. In the crack-up of civilisation, it’s every man for himself. Dog eat dog.

Beeping can be heard in background …

Do you hear that? Aliss! Won’t stop … Tried to fix it, but … anyway, whatever. You get used to it. Safe as houses. Doors closed, check, check!

Yeah … I was reading the writing on the wall, and I was going to do whatever it took to be saved when the whole thing went tits-up. Those people thinking the government was going to save them? Good fucking luck. They didn’t want to face reality. And, sure, at the time there was always the possibility we wouldn’t need saving—most of the time you won’t need the thing that saves you. But that one time you really do and you haven’t got it … ? That’s when it’s too late. And I didn’t want to be one of them out there, trying to get in. They all thought I was a crazy in a tinfoil hat, but who’s laughing now?

I’ll tell you what’s crazy. It’s crazy to take it on faith that things will keep working. It was only a matter of time before somebody pulled the pin. This place cost a damn mint, I tell you. Safe. Secure. Isolated. Private. Defensible. Off-grid. The works. Automatic airlocks and blast doors. Fallout filtration. The most sophisticated artificially intelligent Automated Life Support System money could buy. She keeps it all running smooth. Won’t shut up now though, will you, Aliss? Beep, beep, beep fucking beep. Enough to drive you spare.

Anyway, yeah, the weapons system I was totally on board for. Lock and fucking load. Now, don’t get me wrong, I respect the law as much as any man, but this here’s different. There’s no rule of law out there no more. Gotta protect yourself, right? Gotta ride it out.

Bloody Jacky was the one said we should put in all the bells and whistles, said it’d be good for ‘mental health’ or whatever. Didn’t help him much in the end, did it? Me, I never needed this place to be the Ritz or anything. I mean, Jesus wept, a bloody pool? But, whatever, that architect had all these fancy suggestions to make it a ‘psychologically and socially tolerable environment’.

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