The Apocalypse Isn't Too Bad

The thing I miss the most about the world before things went to shit is New York style pepperoni pizza with a dewy can of Coca-Cola. I think about all the times I grabbed a napkin to soak the pooled oil from a slice. I wouldn’t bother with that now. Give me all the pepperoni flavored oil you got. I would drink it from a cup just to get close to the flavor.

I’ve been living in this pent house apartment for just about three months. It’s everything I ever dreamt of. Everything inside is exquisitely made, no IKEA bookshelves in sight. It’s modern and tasteful but alarmingly cozy. The beds are made with million thread count sheets and the pillows are plump little clouds that cradle my head each night. I can almost pretend things are normal from the embrace of my memory foam California King. Under the circumstances, I know I’m lucky to have landed such a posh situation during what looks to be an apocalypse.

The open living room boasts a wall of north facing windows that look out over a sweeping park, with it’s man-made pond and mature maple trees, all turned vibrant oranges and yellows in preparation for their inevitable fall. I can see the most ideal running path as it hugs the outskirts of the park and then meanders in towards the pond and loops around it. I think if things were different, I would take up running. Such an easy thing to commit to when there’s is no chance of it actually happening.

Most days, I sit in a plush armchair and look out those big windows; there isn’t much else to do. If I squint my eyes while looking down at the once bustling landscape, I can almost pretend the women walking along the pathways aren’t there. They started showing up a few days after the air changed. It was just one woman at first. She seemed to only be wearing an oversized white tee-shirt from where I stood fifteen stories up, not even shoes. I looked through the expensive looking telescope to get a better look. She was dressed as I thought and she had empty holes where her eyes should of been. It wasn’t gory, they were just dark spots from what I could see, but it was creepy as hell and quite a shock. I had to look away. Once I steeled myself I resumed watching. She walked as if she had just suffered a back injury, stiff and lacking fluidity and she kept distinctly to the trail. Never once veering off the path which seemed quite the feat considering she had no eyeballs. Eventually, other women started showing up. All the same. Barely clothed. No eyes. Robotic. Now, 87 days later, there are hundreds of them and over time their skin has taken on a sheen, like luminous scales. Curiously their shirts always look clean. They show up at daybreak and then filter back out as the sun sets. I have no idea where they go. I haven’t seen any men or children out there, only women. Maybe the men and kids have different parks they like to go to.

In what seems like a lifetime ago I was a 23 year-old struggling actress making ends meet as a bike courier, delivering anything from meatball subs slathered in marinara and mozzarella to divorce papers. People either loved me or hated me. The last thing I delivered was to this very apartment. It was clear from the Tiffany blue gift bag that I had been entrusted with a pricey bauble. I had a whole story worked out about a mistress and a lover’s quarrel so was surprised when a girl of about sixteen opened the door. It was clear she’d been crying. Even with puffy, red rimmed eyes she was striking and my first instinct was to be annoyed with her. How could someone so stunning and obviously bloody rich ever experience feelings other than absolute contentment? I may or may not have been projecting on this sad beautiful creature, so I chose empathy over envy and we struck up a conversation. Her name was Hannah and she eventually invited me in. She opened her gift, a gold plated heart shaped locket, and immediately cast it aside as if disgusted by it. We ended up making nachos and drinking a six-pack of her father’s craft beer stash while she told me about her blessed but lonely life. She was friendless in this big city, having been sent to live with her dad for the summer who made promises he seldom kept and bought her off with excessive gifts. I showed up in her time of need after her dad had called and cancelled on their weekend plans, hence the gift. I was at a stage in life where alcohol soothed my biggest emotions, so I suggested we do a bit of day drinking to get her mind off things. Thankfully for me, my moral compass had lapsed that day as I became a corrupter of America’s youth. My immorality saved my life.

As we sat there that afternoon, two things happened. First, I learned that this wasn’t Hannah’s first rodeo with the alcohol. She was not as sloppy as I’d expected after her third beer, and I wasn’t going to mention this as it makes me look pretty bad, the Grey Goose shots we’d started throwing back. One might call my behavior irresponsible being that she was a minor and I was a seasoned adult, but I’d long ago settled on calling it divine intervention. Secondly, and this one is a doozy, the world as we once knew it was about to go right to hell.

At first we didn’t think much of the storm that rolled in. I took note of it, but only because as a courier I am pretty aware of the forecast on any particular day and that day was supposed to be endless blue skies. I didn’t mind a little impromptu rain, I was just glad I was safely indoors and not cruising the traffic clogged streets on my ten speed.

We were playing a game Gin when the dark, imposing clouds rolled in and obscured the sun and our light source, as if out of nowhere. We went to the windows to get a better view. The clouds looked bloated and barely able to contain the impending downpour, but instead, a fine mist began to fill the air, but as if from the ground up, which was admittedly pretty bizarre. However, could I really trust my peepers after having spent the past several hours imbibing with my new teenaged buddy? Looking out those giant plates of glass, what I saw I can only describe as ethereal. There was a pink glow to the air, a feeling that we had just stepped into a fairy tale and everything seemed muted somehow, calm, which was hard to come by in a city of millions. Hannah and I were just about to step out onto the veranda when the skies suddenly cleared and it was as if the mist was never there. Endless blue skies.

Fairly unbothered by the random event, we hurried back to boozin’ and playing cards while reruns of Keeping up with the Kardashians played in the background. Knowing now what was going on outside while we cluelessly continued our afternoon party of two gives me goose bumps. That sudden storm hadn’t only taken place in New York, but had socked Earth in entirely. No one could have known the devastation that eery storm would bring, but anyone who was unlucky enough to have been outside when the storm cleared, or has since stepped out in the hours between sunrise and sunset, would certainly suffer a stranger than fiction fate, one that we still don’t really have a clear picture of.

We know now that it’s safe to go out after the sun goes down. Whatever that mist is is activated by sunlight and is detrimental to those exposed to it. We know that millions of people have been infected but nobody knows much about their condition because we can’t get close to them during the day and they are gone by sundown. There has been speculation of an alien invasion creating a human army to kill off the rest of us, but it could just as easily be a virus. We just don’t know. We aren’t getting any information from the government, we don’t even know if there is a government.

The first two months we took in stride. It was like the year Covid-19 hit and we were on lockdown. We had plenty of food and water, and while many comforts were eventually taken, like electricity, internet and the ability to make phone calls, we made do. We started meeting with the other people in the building and worked together to build up our supplies from the apartments whose residents never made it home. We all hoped this too would pass, but we often went days, even weeks without hearing anything from the outside, and the women in the park just kept multiplying.

I couldn’t help but think early on that this was nothing like The Walking Dead made the apocalypse out to be. We were all friendly and helpful, Hannah and I even hosted a weekly game night. But as time went on and answers were few and far between, people started getting edgy, depressed and less friendly. Hannah and I started staying in our apartment more and more. We had grown close through this experience, as one can probably imagine.

In the past month we’ve started getting more nervous about staying here. Our supplies are dwindling and we know that as people get more desperate things will get more dangerous, we need to get out of the city. Two girls with virtually no street smarts would probably not fare well here long term, so we’ve made the decision to drive to her mom and step-dad’s house in Iowa. We haven’t heard from her dad since this all began and assume he’s dead, or in a trance somewhere without his eyes. Hannah was able to get a hold of her mom early on before the lines cut out and we are hopeful they are still alive. Hope is all we have. I have no family to go home to so the decision on where to go was pretty easy.

For the past week we’ve been gathering supplies at night. Gas. Water. Food. A car. We know we are taking a big risk, we’ve heard that the activated mist can get through a cars vent system, so we’ll need to find a safe place to hide during the day. If all goes well the drive itself should only take sixteen hours, but we have no idea what the roads are like or what anything is like outside the little bubble we’ve created for ourselves. Neither of us has ever followed a paper map, but we’ve marked our intended route on one we found in her dad’s office.

It’s now the night before we are set to leave and I’m only getting little snippets of sleep. When I do drift off I dream of the shiny, eyeless women. They are no longer in a trance-like state and they are no longer what I would consider human. They swarm us like flies at a picnic when we leave the apartment and block our path to our car, they also block our way back into the building. Our only option is to run, but they prove to be fast. Faster than us. I wake up right when they have us surrounded, drenched in sweat, heart battering against my ribs. I’m scared.

That is all for now, I hope I can pick this story up again once we reach Iowa. If not, good luck and godspeed.

Sydney Kullrich

9/19/2025