Free Earth's Survivors Apocalypse by Unknown Page A

bedroom, in bed in his own house on Linden Street, talking to a priest that was sitting on the edge of the bed. He remembered telling the priest that he just wanted to go back to sleep. That had apparently satisfied the priest, as he had shaken his head and seemed to float away.
    Mike shook his head, recalling the dream as he entered the bathroom. He picked up his toothbrush from the small plastic cup that held it, squinted into the mirror, and turned on the cold water tap.
    Nothing happened. No rattle of the old pipes in the wall. Nothing.
    “What the hell,” Mike said aloud, “frigging water out too?” He dropped the brush back into the cup and headed into the kitchen to start the coffee.
    “Shit,” he said as he entered the kitchen and remembered the power was off, and that there was no water with which to make the coffee. “Now what?” He walked back into the bedroom and tugged on the pair of jeans and shirt he had worn the day before; he walked through the house to the front door, shoving his feet into his sneakers as he went, and opened it to retrieve the paper that he knew would be there. The ends of the untied laces clicked and bounced against the old hardwood floors as he walked. At least he could read the paper, maybe even find out what the hell was going on.
    The sun was just beginning to climb into the sky as the door swung open. He bent down.
    “No damn paper either?” he muttered as he stood back up and began to search the lawn.
    His eyes rose from the lawn and fell on the Hubert house across the Street.
    Something seemed oddly out of place, and he puzzled over it for a few seconds before his mind told him what it was. The entire house was leaning to one side. That wasn't all though, the street in between dipped and rose in places, and the lawn over there had large patches of brown dirt. The snow that had been everywhere the night before was nearly gone. His eyes had skipped over it, lending an illusion of straight lines until he had looked closely. His eyes rose to the Hubert house once more and he realized what else was wrong, the lot looked too big: He could see more of the Hubert house because the houses on either side were gone. No trace. Jumbled dirt and clumps of grass filled those lots. A leaning Oak that had been in  front of the Schuyler house for two hundred years: Uprooted and on the verge of toppling onto the fresh soil.
    As he left his doorway and started across the street to get a better look, his eyes took in the devastation that had changed most of the street overnight.
    Broken cobbles from the old streets poked through the pavement in places, and the broken pipes below street level bought him the sound of running water somewhere deep below. The reality of it hit him and he stopped and turned to look back at his own house. His mouth fell open wide as he stared. The entire house was leaning from foundation to roof, the gutters had detached and snaked down to meet the ground. Almost seeming as though they were holding the house upright. Small sparrows where pecking through the debris that had fallen from the gutters, and singing in the warming morning air. Mike's mouth snapped shut as he stumbled back into the street and sat down hard.
    “What the hell is this?” he asked aloud to the street.
    “What the hell is going on?”
    Mike believed in the tangible. If it could be touched it must be real, and so believing, he reached down to feel one of the cracks beside him in the road. The road tipped, tilted, had separated, and the other surface had dropped lower. His fingers came away with small chunks of asphalt.
    “Feels real,” he declared aloud, as he stared at the road. He pulled at it and a small piece of the asphalt he held snapped off into his hand. He bought it up to his face to examine it closely; threw it back to the ground, and got up from the street.
    He looked slowly off in both directions down the length of Linden Street. As far as he could see in either direction the roads