Playlist for the Apocalypse

Chapter 2: Mad World

JONATHAN

With his record player faithfully relaying the song into the HAM radio, Jonathan turned his attention back to the planter box. It felt good to have the dirt between his fingers again after the long, cold winter. It was still February, so the planter box was a mess of organic debris, and the soil was still relatively frozen. He hadn't been able to garden for the last few months because the snow had been too heavy, but now he was happy to get back into the habit of spending his mornings up at Metrotown Tower in the green house. As long as he was in time for his shift in the archives, no one really cared where he spent the majority of his time. He doubted anyone would understand his desire to grow useless plants; whose only job was to "look pretty" rather than serve any medicinal or nutritional purpose, and there was no explanation for the broadcast. At least not one anyone would understand.

He spent the next few hours cleaning the planter boxes to ready the soil for planting season and prepping the bulbs he'd saved from last spring. He occasionally paused to change up the music and make selections from the stack of records he'd brought from his carefully curated collection.  It was nearly 11:00 when he finally gave in to the cold and journeyed the 30 flights of stairs back down to the mall. He'd always loathed that staircase, not only because it was such a trek, but the walls were dingy and somehow always smelled faintly of urine despite his attempts to clean it. The fluorescent lights flickered ominously like a horror movie. He'd boarded up the doors to the office floors as a precaution when he'd first started coming up to the greenhouse but as he made his way to the ground floor, he made a mental note to repair the barriers that had begun to deteriorate. It would be terrible to be trapped in here if the soulless managed to burst through. Finally, he reached the ground level and pushed away the shopping cart he'd used to barricade the fire exit and walked across the plaza to the mall.

He slowed as he approached the row of heavy glass doors at the entrance. It was generally not advisable to hang around highly populated locations from the old world due to its high soulless count, but he had done it so many times, the warnings scrawled across the doorways in faded graffiti didn't faze him. Entering the mall on the ground level he shuffled past a few sparse hordes of dazed shoppers. Jonathan had come to think there were about a hundred of them living there, shuffling around aimlessly, carrying out monotonous tasks that perhaps were their usual routine in life. They seemed to spend their time shuffling about all day, grunting and groaning, shrugging, nodding, occasionally uttering a single coherent word, and progressing through stages of decay until they just crumbled to dust. It's not that different from before they were dead. Jonathan thought. He slowly made his way across the mall, careful to keep his expression neutral as he'd been trained. He suppressed a smile, noticing that the escalators were moving. Occasionally the old emergency generators would kick in and the lights and screens would blink and flash as the machines stuttered back to life. Jonathan always enjoyed those moments, when motion and light returned to an otherwise darkened and still world. The soulless standing on the escalator seemed unstartled by the sudden movement. They merely stopped shambling up the steps to enjoy the ride. Jonathan watched them for a moment, he'd seen some of them spend their whole day doing that, riding the escalator up and down. A sad and meaningless existence, he thought, like those that spend all day standing in a queue. Jonathan figured that might just be the perfect metaphor for soullessness — a hollow life of never reaching your destination. He pushed the thoughts from his head and took the stairs to the next floor. Most old-world stores had been completely ransacked but the small record shop, that was out of date even when it was fully operational, was one of the few places that had been left relatively untouched. Jonathan supposed that most people wouldn't consider music, films, games, and pop culture items, "essential for survival" and worthy of looting. The store itself was reminiscent of a time even before his grandparents but like the green house, it had provided the perfect haven away from the tragedy and turmoil of reality.