Neverending

9

The wind is a nightmare. Despite the sheer volume of post-apocalyptic movies I've seen, I am still completely unprepared for this end-of-days bullshit. How on hell am I supposed to even recharge my car? I stagger around the forecourt, desperately lunging at the port until, unbelievably, I get lucky. I shield my eyes so that I can watch the charging circles illuminate, one by one. I am itching to get out of here, not just because the wind is battering my face and whipping my trousers angrily against my legs. Every second I spend not moving is another unknown percentage increase in how long it will take to get to Terrafirme. It could be the difference between making it there and not making it there, should a fallen tree block the road, converging traffic making the exit I need unreachable or any number of disasters waiting to unfold.  Take your 2020's Netflix Archive pick.  Relativity comes to mind as my car charges at the slowest rate known to man. It's 2018 and I'm essentially my great grandmother, waiting for her hybrid (ha) to charge.

By the time the charging circles pulse blue, I'm halfway along the slip road. As I rejoin the highway, Delta warns me that my funding is low. 'Would it help if I shared your worst spending moments this month, Tinder?' she asks.

'Really, Delta?' I raise my eyebrows at the orange halo on my dashboard. Regaining a modicum of emotional intelligence, Delta clears her throat, then her lights fade as she goes into coast. Jesus. As if I need reminding that, alongside losing my girlfriend and the end of the world as I know it, I am also borderline bankrupt after a summer of essentially bumming around Lincoln drinking zero-mids (extra cream, because life's too flipping short) and wooing my woman with grilled cheese and kouign-amann.

I sideline it. I've got credit coming in on Thursday – only two days. A tiny part of my subconscious starts on a 'but what if currency becomes meaningless?' train of thought. Now is not the time for economical theorising. And there's certainly nothing I can do about such an unwinding of societal bedrocks. It took some practice but I learned some time ago how to release my anxiety by releasing the thoughts that create it. Meditation 101.

My eyes dart to the side of the road where a husky is galloping along the opposite side of the road. Cars weave past, sounding their horns as it barely glances at them, so focussed is the dog on reaching its destination. I keep one eye on the road and one on the husky, wondering where it thinks it's going. I can't help but marvel at its strikingness, white fur tipped with smoke, built for snow and ice, not the suburban East. Its fur is being blown in a hundred different directions but it doesn't seem to be slowing it down. As I notice this, a torrent of wind batters my car, forcing it to swerve dangerously to the left, breaking me out of my wonder. I glance down at the dash. 88km to Terrafirme. I long for its soaring arches and weather-controlled climes. I've never actually been there (see: bankruptcy) but it's like Disneyland – you don't have to have been to know what to expect. It's always struck me as a little bit dull, if I'm being honest. The sort of place you'd holiday of if you were that guy who liked growing his own vegetables. You probably had to bring your own home-grown vegetables to get in. I'm suddenly aware of the irony of a middle-aged holiday destination full of the very vegetable-growing men that I can't relate to probably being the very thing that is about to – hopefully – allow for my continued survival on our doomed little rock.

Delta pulses back to life, telling me to prepare to take the next exit. I risk another look for the husky. He's gone. And then I see him. He's raced to the top of a grassy hill and he's howling toward the sky. I can't help but watch in half-awe, half-horror as ten, twenty, then about a hundred dogs run to the summit to join him. They noses point upwards, barking at some unseen presence. Even above the extraordinary wind, their baying penetrates my car's glass windows. The sounds chills me.  Not because the dogs' barking is preternatural but because every single one of them was focused on something in the sky. 

 Something that, with my pathetic human eyes, I couldn't yet see.