Survival/Apocalypse12 min read
Lucky and Locked: How We Survived the Fall
ButterPicks18 views
I have always been a lucky person.
"I mean, ridiculously lucky," I told Gillian as we shoved another box into the spare room. "Like college-by-a-hair lucky."
Gillian laughed and tripped over a stack of canned soup. "You and your luck. You sure you didn't buy a rabbit's foot on Taobao?"
"I bought a lot of rabbit's-foot-shaped things," I said. "But nothing worked as well as timing."
"Then don't mess with timing now," she said, sliding lids into a crate. "If the world cracks, your timing better hold."
We had been stockpiling for fun, for content, for the long bored nights of livestreaming. Gillian is a unboxing streamer with an audience that feels like family. I used to be a software engineer; then I didn't. A layoff came like a rude break in a comedy act, and I came knocking on her oversized apartment door with nothing but a duffel and bad jokes. We filled her shelves the way people fill a silence with music: impulsively and with more snacks than sense.
"This will be enough," Gillian said, with the fierce, strange faith of someone who organized giveaways for a living. "Three years if we ration. Four if we stop bingeing shows."
I smiled. "We'll definitely stop bingeing the shows."
"Promise?" she asked, looking suddenly like a child.
"Promise," I said, and we both laughed. We thought a storm of coupons and boxes and a handful of replacement batteries would keep us warm.
Three days before the city fell, I drove out with her to fetch an absurd order of mineral water and probiotics. By the end of that shopping trip, her apartment looked like a mini-warehouse. There were bags of rice stacked like bricks, bags of flour, shelves lined with what the courier called "festival boxes"—the kind of goods manufacturers send to influencers. There were also five fish tanks in a corner, ridiculous and empty, left over from a sponsorship that came with more glass than fish. I joked we'd open an aquarium-themed cafe when this was over.
"We could keep koi," Gillian said. "Imagine the streams."
"Impossible," I said. "You couldn't even keep a cactus alive."
"You're the one who let three plants die in your office," she shot back. "That's a biased assessment."
We fitted high-grade locks and a new door, me splurging on a door because when you have no job, emotional purchases feel like investments. We also installed thick curtains and the solar tiles the manufacturer had sent her—Gillian loved the idea of independence even when it was about electricity.
On the fourth day, the message came in: stories of strange, violent crowds in the market. Then a video: pale faces, eyes unfocused, moving wrong like puppets with a bad cord.
"Probably a prank," Gillian said.
"Or a fever spike," I said.
We left the apartment only to collect a final set of parcels. Of course we saw the first ones; of course we thought they were just drunk or sick. The man across the parking lot moved wrong and walked like a puppet. When he lurched toward the street, blood on his sleeve, and the courier barricaded the shop door with his own body weight, we knew prank was the wrong word.
"Get in," Gillian snapped, and I did. A swarm was moving, and a child's scream cut the air like a blade. The courier slammed the shutter, and when we hit the elevator button, we realized how thin the veneer was: people screamed not to be left, then to be left, then to be quiet.
We sealed windows, dragged water barrels to block the door, and pulled the curtains closed. The apartment on the twenty-third floor felt like a fragile ark. The solar array hummed now like a secret engine of life.
"They said wait for the army," Gillian said, voice small. "They said they'll come."
"They said a lot of things," I answered, and opened a stale pack of hand-pulled bread.
For the first week, we stayed busy. We sorted cans by expiry dates like priests of conservation, moved a chest of extra blankets into the living room, and mounted a small makeshift garden in the rooftop patch that had once been for "biotech demos" and was now mostly gravel and hope.
"Dirty water, clean water, water for plants," Martha told us from her armchair. "Do not waste the purest until you must. Save the purest for the throat."
Martha Blackwell was in her sixties and had lived in this building longer than anyone. She had a history as a nurse in the county clinic and a stubbornness that felt like shelter. She sent Gillian warm pies and little packages when Gillian was sick; Gillian called them motherly bribes. We invited her to live with us not because we thought she needed us, but because we needed her. That night she fed us and lectured us about boiling and tied our shoelaces with the care of someone who'd tied the napkins of a thousand sealed meals.
"You two are not silly," she would say. "But be sensible. The world does not owe our foolishness protection."
On the third day, we took the elevator down to check on the building. We moved like making plans for apocalypse had always been a meeting video in our calendars: step one, be quiet; step two, do not answer every cry. Downstairs the package guy had filmed a clip of people screaming, and a shell-shocked neighbor reported a few of the lower floors had been breached.
That night a livestream popped up. "Help me, I am at x-block," a voice cried; a bright young streamer with too much makeup and a shaky camera sobbed into the phone. Gillian and I exchanged a glance. "Do not use your account to lure," Martha said, and her eyes were hard as coins.
A new pattern emerged in the city, and the pattern was as cold as metal: some people had turned into killers; some killers set up flags and uniforms and gave speeches. Uniforms in crisis are a language people understand; they hand people what they feel they have lost. Within a week, a group of armed strangers showed up across from our courtyard. They sat by a fire, ate meat off skewers, and waved to the crowd.
"Soldiers," the neighbor below whispered, "they promised food."
"They're not soldiers," Martha said without looking up.
"They're wearing uniforms," Gillian countered.
"Then they are very good at costumes," Martha said, and laughed without a sound.
The crowd gathered. Children were coaxed forward by cookies and fake solemn promises. One evening, a man with a cheap suit and an expensive voice promised help.
"We will distribute food at dawn," he told the crowd. "We will protect. Stand by the open gate."
People who had been too tired to hope got up and walked toward the gate.
"They're leading them out," I said, and the room closed like a fist.
We argued late into the night, and the argument was a prayer.
"If you go, you might die," Martha said. "If you stay, you might die later."
"Then what do we do?" I demanded.
"Stay," she said. "Block the door. Keep the curtains closed. Use the solar in the day and seal the vents."
We stayed. Outside, the gunshot that split morning like bread came from the road and then another, and suddenly the fake soldiers pulled a man out and set a gun to his head.
"They're executing him," someone recorded, and the video spread like oil.
We watched, and then we could not unsee how fast people who believed could become the exploited.
The band in the courtyard soon turned savage. They hit people, they stole keys, and they would sometimes play "rescue" and then lock someone into a truck. One night, a local man tried to thank them by bringing food, and they shot him.
"They are monsters," Martha said.
"They are men with guns," I said, and the difference felt small.
The group grew brazen, and their leader—Beau Gibson—sat smug like an emperor on donated blankets.
"We should leave," Gillian whispered. "But where? The roads are full."
"We can’t," I said. "Besides, our building is secure. We have water, and if the army comes, we'll be right here."
Then the bargaining stage began. A drone came, and a small basket dangled beneath it. A note: "We mean peace. We can trade. Down with food, up with security." The note smelled like strategy.
Martha scowled. "They gave us bait," she said. "This is a test."
We played along. We sent a tiny pack of noodles via our own drone and watched the other rooftop as it took the packet and left. Days of such exchanges taught us one truth: men with guns will always try to reposition themselves as saviors until the moment they need to be shot.
By day thirty there were patterns in how humans rotted. The city was a web of warnings and rules and rituals: do not answer the doorbell after dark; do not hang bright clothing out; keep trash covered and burn what you must, because smell draws more than memory.
On day fifty-two, the group in the courtyard grew bold enough to enter the building. They were not careful. They smashed half a stair and shoved. A scream echoed. Later we learned they had taken a man with a pregnant wife and used him to show power. He came to the gathering and praised them, begging for protection. They replied with a gun, because power is birth without mercy.
"Why did he trust them?" Gillian asked softly, eyes rimmed with red.
"Because people are starved for order," Martha said. "Because someone will always believe a voice again."
We watched them turn on one of their own when he flinched at an order. They shot him in the snow: the sound like a closed fist. In the puddled melting frost, the blood cooled and then the city moved on. That moment planted a heavy seed in us: we would not be bait.
Weeks passed. The weather turned cruel: snow then rain, the kind that came down like punishment. The undead outside—these were not the monsters of movies—staggered, learned, and sometimes grouped. A spray of white dust later seemed to make them slow. Planes flew high and scattered substances that painted the pavement. The first time it happened, we watched through a pinhole in the curtain as a ribbon of white fell and a crowd of pale bodies stopped moving like a mallet had rendered them dumb.
"Is this the army?" Gillian whispered as if the word itself might make something break.
"Maybe," I answered. "Or it's someone trying to clean the clock."
On the eighty-third day, we watched the courtyard for movement and saw a car wobble back and forth. A family had parked, then got out and rescued a child who became bitten while the family was trying to save an old man. All of them turned later that day because they attempted to treat their bitten with compassion instead of quick sense. Their bodies came back as the gestured specters movies warned us of.
"We can't save everyone," I told Gillian. The words were like spit in my mouth. "Not everyone can be saved."
"Then we survive," she said, and there was no drama in it, only plan.
The turning point came in a small courtyard that once hosted seasonal festivals. A convoy arrived—the real army this time. They trailed flags and badges and a noise of order, and for a long moment I thought I would cry to hear the drums of manual rifles. They cleared block after block in a way that made the chronic ache in my chest loosen.
The band of men with a camp in the courtyard tried to claim they were liberated by soldiers. Instead, they were a threat. When the real soldiers took the area back, they did not simply shoot; they arrested. They cuffed Beau Gibson with hands that had once flexed for the parade, and they brought him to a public clearing. I will never forget the clearing: a temporary command square between two buildings, the snow half-melted, a line of survivors watching from windows and doorways.
The punishment they gave Beau and his lieutenants was not brief. It was a ritual of exposure. It began with the commander reading charges aloud, voice steady and human.
"You are charged with larceny, with murder, with coercion," he said. "You will answer for each count." His words were a hammer. Beau grinned like he did not believe it. He had believed in the armor of his reputation. In the crowd were the manches who had bowed, the ones who were silent when the gun went off. Mothers with children, neighbors, the package guy who had filmed the first panic. Some wept. Some clapped.
"Why are you doing this to us?" Beau barked, trying to provoke, trying to make them flinch.
A woman in the crowd, whose husband had been shot for bringing food, stepped forward. "You told us you would save us," she said, voice breaking. "You stole our keys, you took our doors, you took our children to the trucks with promises. You made us give for your comfort."
Beau tried to laugh. He shrugged like a man offered anything all his life and now asked to pay. "Survival's messy," he spat. "You would have done the same."
"That's not true," said a young man who had been on the receiving end of his tyranny—shaking, hands deep into his pockets like he couldn't decide whether to punch or pray. "I dug through trash for my sister. I stood by the stairs and kept the plank closed. I didn't shoot people in the street for the hell of it."
They brought forward a tableau of evidence: videos Beau had recorded of himself boasting, recordings of phone calls bargaining away another family's keys, testimonies of people forced to hand over ration cards. We listened; the air seemed to freeze. The soldiers had set a wooden bench and the accused were made to stand on it, each in turn. Beau's smile shriveled when the soldier turned the crowd's attention to the footage of him tossing a small child onto the back of a truck with a grin.
"No," Beau said. He tried to cover his eyes, then laughed, then barked at the crowd. "You don't know what it is to lead."
"You led people to death," the woman said. "You led my sister to the truck."
"That's not—" Beau's voice faltered.
The punishment was not simply a series of words. It was a stripping: not of clothes but of pretense. They had the men stand in the snow while their faces were described. The soldiers narrated each victim's story in a cadence that translated numbers into people.
"This is Lyle," said a soldier, a clipped name. "His wife was pregnant. He trusted them. He is dead because of their choices." A mother in the crowd snapped and spat; she had cut her palms on the fence to keep from racing forward. A child tugged at his father, eyes shining with something like justice.
The accused tried denials. "We had a plan," one said. "We were trying to keep order."
"Order?" Martha shouted from a window above them, voice small and cold. "Order is when you hang people's coats on hooks that actually hold. Order is not a gun to the head."
Beau's mask finally broke when another witness—someone he had rehired to carry his food—stepped up and recounted the evening he had promised to return with bread and instead came back with only a smile. "The bread was in his pocket," the witness said. "He was eating it as we bled."
The crowd's mood shifted as witnesses kept telling stories. For each answer the accused offered, a dozen small, practical tragedies unfolded: a locked door that had been opened to a scream, a baby who never cried again, a grandmother who had been traded for a blanket. The men with Beau began to crumble. One of them—small-shouldered, pale—sat down in the snow and covered his face with his hands. He panted and finally began to sob.
"Please," he said, voice cracking. "I didn't know. We only wanted a place."
"You made choices," said the commander. "And we will judge them."
There was a moment when Beau begged. It was a comic, savage thing: he got down to his knees, pleading as if someone would see him as they had seen his smiling face on the videos. Some in the crowd filmed it, and the videos would haunt him for months.
"We do not kill in anger," the commander told the assembly later, stern and tired. "We do not celebrate suffering. But we will not let people use fear to traffic in our lives."
Punishment for them took a legal route: confinement, public shaming, and then trial in the new provisional court the soldiers had set. There was no bloodthirsty display, only a long, slow unmasking. The crowd that had once cheered now crossed the street to leave them with no food and no shelter. Each man who had looted found the new doors of the buildings shut to him. Former allies turned away. They found that in a world where every favor counts, being trusted was currency; having it vanish impoverished them in a new way.
"That's what they feared," Martha said to me when it was all done. "People will watch. People will remember."
Gillian and I watched the men escorted away on trucks with soldiered bars. The humiliation was public. The men had once thought cruelty concealed them; instead, it isolated.
"We did this," Gillian whispered. "We watched."
"You did good," Martha said. "Remember the names who speak. Remember the faces. Do not let them vanish."
Months tumbled like dice. The rain and the planes and the brave oddities of the world rearranged us. The city cleaned itself, slowly. Scientists in white coats moved through the ruined institute, and Martha eventually went to help in a clinic because she could not keep her hands at home. Gillian resumed streaming in the small way you can stream when the world is not quite finished—she traded snack unboxings for updates on soup and gardening. I learned to sew a tear into a sleeping bag and to partition rooms into safe havens.
We never forgot the fish tanks. In the end, after the soldiers left flags fluttering like nation-shaped breath, we filled one of the tanks with a small quiet—water, filtered by makeshift charcoal, a tiny piece of pond weed that had survived because someone had tied it to a brick. We kept it on the windowsill as proof that some things remained gentle.
"Do you miss your old life?" Gillian asked once, after a delivery of actual, sensibly vacuumed rice.
"Mostly the office bathrooms," I said. "And coffee that's not boiled."
"Low standards," Gillian said, and she smiled in that way that used to get more views than her unboxings. "You still have luck."
"I do," I said. "And we have each other."
The last thing I saw before the army's convoy moved on and the city breathed out was a small drone dropping a packet of clean seeds into our courtyard. A little scroll of paper said: "Plant and remember."
We planted. Martha read the seed packets and nodded like they were hymns, and we dug into the thin rooftop patch and put tiny lives into the soil.
When we finally stepped out into a city less frightened, less hungry, the signs of the old life were small: a bakery that had survived and a grandfatherly man who recognized us from the time we left him a loaf of stale bread. He gave us two new loaves.
At the end, Martha left to help rebuild more than the city—she left to help people reassemble the parts of themselves that fear had shaken loose. Gillian kept streaming, but now she found pockets of hope to show: seedlings, a woman in block ten who taught them how to can fish, a boy who laughed at a snowball without flinching.
One night, when the lights in the building were steady and the city hum replaced the silence that used to be, I stood at the window and looked at the solar panels catching a modest slice of sun.
"Do you remember the fish tanks?" I asked.
Gillian nodded. "We almost made an aquarium cafe."
"Maybe someday," I said.
"Maybe," she said. "For now, plant the seeds."
I turned away from the window and listened to Martha crooning some old song under her breath.
"Plant the seeds," she said, more to herself than to us. "We feed the earth, and the earth feeds us back."
We fed the earth, watered the small green things, and kept the door locked.
The End
— Thank you for reading —