An Escape

I was eighteen years old when it happened. Two point five million people worldwide...disappeared over night. Some called it a rapture. Others said it was alien abduction. Either way, the world would never be the same. Whether it was aliens, God or our government, the disappearances lead to unrest. Cities burned, riots overtook the streets. We couldn’t agree before Armageddon. We certainly weren’t going to agree now. Next to rebel was nature herself. Forest fires, earthquakes, you name it. Countries started blaming each other, which of course escalated to...nuclear war. Like Oedipus, we used everything in our power to avoid our doomed fate. Yet, those same means of prevention in turn sealed the very fate we tried to prevent.

It was a Saturday night, or at least I thought it was. It was damn near impossible to keep up with the days of the week in this Apocalyptic Wasteland. Most people wouldn’t even try, but I always felt that little things like that kept some sense of normalcy in this world. Therefore, I felt it was important to do my best to keep up with such things. Besides, this night was an important night. It was my fiftieth birthday.

Covered in my long duster and carrying a six shooter, I looked more like a character from a Sergio Corbucci Spaghetti Western than Mad Max. I traveled by day and always found a place to squat for the night. I had been traveling alone for fifteen years. Fifteen years since...she was taken from me. I carried her heart-shaped locket around my neck. Even that felt like a costume piece to a Spaghetti Western, like the harmonica Charles Bronson carries in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. I had very much turned into the heroes I watched on screen as the world went to shit.

I traveled through what used to be suburbs. There were abandoned buildings with weeds growing out of the walls and coyotes nested in old cars. It must have been eight or nine o’clock when I saw it: Working street lights. The lights were in a large parking lot with only one, giant building. The street lights were most likely a sign that the building had power. I fought the urge to run as fast as I could, instead, slowly and cautiously approaching the building.

As I arrived at the building it became clear that it was an old, abandoned movie theater. Remnants of posters hung on the outside walls. I shined the wall with my flashlight, trying to decipher each poster. It became clear this was an art house theater. A modern theater at the time of The Disappearance would have had remnants of The Avengers posters or a Judd Appatow comedy. Here, I found pieces of a poster for Robert Altman’s California Split and one of Monte Hellman’s many pictures starring Warren Oates. Old films at the time of The Disappearance. I knew this meant there might still be some actual film in the building. Major chains had gone digital years before the world ended, but a theater that shows old Lee Marvin films may still show 35mm prints. Film was flammable. Anything I could take with me to keep warm, I thought.

The theater had a box office in the front and four, surprisingly unbroken, glass doors. I didn’t want to be the first to break the glass, nor did I want to let any possible threats inside know I was coming, so I began picking the lock. Thirty-two years in Hell teaches a man a lot. The lock was easy. Before I knew it, I was inside, admiring the rotting building. More decaying movie posters lined the wall( Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai), but somehow, the concession stand was mostly intact. The popcorn kettle, soda machines and even a large neon CONCESSION sign all stood perfectly frozen in time. All they needed was power.

My first job...my only job… was at a movie theater. A movie theater like this. One that played old movies and showed everything on real 35mm film. I remembered all of our electrical breakers were in the projection booth, so I headed up stairs in search of them. To my delight, the first thing I found in the projection booth was a projector with a loaded platter of film ready to go. I inspected the film to discover it was a print of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Call it a love of the arts. Call it sentimental. Call it nostalgia. Call it stupid. Whatever you call it, I suddenly realized there was no way in hell I would ever burn this film for fire. I moved on to the breakers which were easy enough to find. Even easier was turning them on. Not since Genesis has light made such a grand entrance.

I returned downstairs to find the bright neon lights of the concession stand. Music played in the speakers on each side of the stand. I smiled, taking in the slice of a previous life. I looked down at the heart-shaped locket on my neck, remembering our first date to a theater much like this. I remember buying her a large popcorn and Peanut M&Ms. She liked to mix her M&Ms in the popcorn. “It’s salty and sweet”, she would always say. I even remember the movie we saw. Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. Her choice. Obviously.

After taking in the concession stand, I began searching the rest of the building. As I entered one auditorium, I stopped. Sitting in the front row, feet up on the chair eating, was a man. A dirty, scraggly man. The kind of guy who’d be a villain in a spaghetti western. He stopped eating and looked at me, smiling. “Been a long time since I seen ‘nother human”, he said.

I didn’t respond, partially out of intimidation, partially out of shock myself.

“You got ammo in that thing?” he said, pointing to my six shooter. “ You want some food?”

I slowly put my gun away and looked at the food.

“I only ask ‘cause I got some spare ammo. I could trade you for some water”, he said.

I stopped from grabbing the food when I got a good look at it. I stared at what looked like a cooked human hand. “What is that?” I asked.

“Monkey”, he said. My face must have given away that I didn’t believe him. “I swear. I gotta sniper’s nest up on the roof. They been comin’ from the trees”.

I stood there, unable to take the food and unable to answer him.

“That water?” he asked.

I pulled off my backpack and took out a jug of water and a small metal cup. I poured some water in the cup and handed it to him. He quickly reached for it, causing me to draw my gun.

“Woah, woah, woah. Sorry”, he said, holding his hands up.

I watched him, observed his demeanor. I decided he was not a threat and lowered my gun.

“What made you come here?” he asked.

“Lights are on in the parking lot. Seemed reasonable this place would have power,” I responded. “I’m curious...you clearly fiddled with the breakers and got the parking lot lights on...why was everything else still turned off?” I questioned.

“I uh...I didn’t mess with nothin’. I came here same reason you did. The street lights...thanks for the water”, he said.

I couldn’t sleep. Not after that encounter. I didn’t trust that guy. I set myself up in another room in the building and leaned against the wall, gun in hand. Hours went by, maybe more, as I drifted back and forth from awake to asleep. I suppose I was doing what they call “sleeping with one eye open”. I never felt like I was truly asleep, but I also never felt fully awake...until...I heard shooting. Shooting coming from the roof.

I took off running as fast as I could through the halls, back up to the projection booth and up a ladder to the roof. As I ran, I kept hearing more and more gunfire. I didn’t know what I was going to find, but I wasn’t surprised by what I did find when I got there. At the top of the roof, the man from earlier stood firing a rifle down at another man who was running between the working street lights.

“What the hell are you doing!?” I exclaimed.

“Oh! Uh...It was another ape!” he said, flustered.

“An ape?” I replied.

“Uh...yeah”, he said.

“.....how long have you been eating these apes?”, I pried.

“...I don’t know,” he said.

It became clear to me. He was using the street lights to lure in people as bait. That was no ape’s hand he was eating.

“One of those apes is staring right back at you...you gonna eat him?” I challenged.

He quickly pulled his gun, but I was quicker. Channeling Clint Eastwood or Franco Nero, I fired my gun, blowing his brains out all over the decaying roof we stood on. I turned towards the man below and waved both arms high up in the air along with my flashlight, signalling it was safe for him to come out.

When I finally saw the man up close, I discovered he was practically still a kid. Twenty five or thirty years my junior. His name was Kyle. His brothers had been killed by bandits two months ago. He didn’t carry a gun, not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t have a gun or supplies any longer. He was robbed, but luckily, they let him live. The world was shit for everyone these days, but I could still acknowledge Kyle had gotten a few too many bad beats recently. I took him into one of the auditoriums for him to rest, when I noticed the look of wonder on his face.

“You’ve never been in a theater?” I asked.

“I was born after The Disappearance”, he replied.

Suddenly, I had an idea.

‘Sit down, and hold on,” I said.

I ran up to the projector booth and tried to remember everything from back when I was a kid working projection. It took a bit, but before I knew it, the film was threaded and The Wild Bunch was playing on the screen below. I walked back down and saw Kyle’s face lit up, flickering with the film. His eyes looked like they were about to burst out of his head. It was as if he was seeing God come down from Heaven. Ah, the power of cinema. I smiled and sat down next to him.

“Sometimes you need an escape...even at the end of the world”.

THE END.