<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
…It arrived at 8:14, on a clear Tuesday morning. We’d known for months it was coming, but nothing could have prepared us.<\/p>\n
…We took turns on night watch while the other tried to claim a few minutes of much-needed rest.<\/p>\n
…It was time to face facts: The friends we once laughed and celebrated with, they wouldn’t be stopping by for a cocktail or a late-night conversation anymore. That was the past. Another time. Another life. No. Those friends were gone.<\/p>\n
…In the early days, we’d pass the time watching the emergency vehicles rushing past, wondering where they might be headed.<\/p>\n
…We measured survival in terms of months and weeks – days even. The thought of making it to year one seemed too much to hope for.<\/p>\n
…After a while, we simply became numb to the smell of human excrement, the bile-covered clothes… the screams.<\/p>\n
…Cautiously, we approached the building. What was once the setting for leisurely dinners and quiet conversation had been transformed into a desolate scene fraught with the potential for catastrophe. The only thing I could think of was how quickly we could get in, grab whatever food we absolutely needed, and get out without drawing too much attention to ourselves.<\/p>\n
…A pile of overturned cars was blocking my path. Animals from the zoo were lying everywhere. A lion. A zebra. A giraffe. “What on Earth could have happened here?” I wondered, as\u00a0I stepped cautiously through the chaos.<\/p>\n
…On the rare occasion that we ventured beyond the walls of our battle-worn domicile, we encountered small, weary groups of others who shared our situation. We would gather together in the schoolyard, desperate for companionship, eager to ask questions like: “Where were you when it happened?”, “What are you doing for food?”, “Do you know anything about the new strain of the sickness that’s going around?”<\/p>\n
…Were we really crying and fighting over a stale cracker that had fallen in the dirt? Was this all that was left? Was this what we had become?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Inspired by a Twitter Conversation<\/a> started by Matthew Baldwin<\/a> (@matthewbaldwin).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Excerpts from either a memoir by a first-time parent or a post-apocalyptic novel.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,105],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-2331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-personal","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4122,"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions\/4122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshworth.com\/jpw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}