a twenty second story...'soda'

By now everybody wanted it to happen, and yet there were still those who doubted whether it would. 

McIlroy supped his soda through a long paper straw, his lips pursed, his vacant eyes apparently glued to the television set.  Surely, it was going to happen.  The newscaster had said as much before swiftly clearing his desk and heading into the control room to which it all unfold.

A horse fly settled on McIlroy’s knee and put down it’s labellum.  McIlroy was wearing white jogging shorts, far too big for his feeble legs, and a replica American Football jersey.  His socks were pulled up five or six inches above his ankles, his feet were clothed in a pair of dirty white, Velcro basketball trainers.

‘Heeereee weee go’, yawned McIlroy’s wife, propped up on one arm on the sunken sofa next to him, before plunging her greasy fingers back into the donut bag.  Her hanging gut was barely contained by an enormous, black, 8 ball T-shirt.  ‘This ees it’.

The dog whined, and the horse fly took off from McIlroy’s knee and droned toward the open window.  McIlroy had got to the ice and slush at the bottom of his soda and his continuous slurping made a loud rasping sound.  His wife reached for the remote and increased the volume on the television set.  The room smelled of dried sweat and deep fried food, with no breeze to clear the fetid air.

‘Have you ever considered double glazing for your home?’.  The news was followed, in perverse fashion by a string of commercials.  There was little sense in home improvements any more, besides all the people involved in the making of the advertisement, all the people who worked for the double glazing company, all the people in the world who yearned for double glazing were in front of their televisions.  The online retail forums, the placid acres of the planet's shopping mauls were deserted.

McIlroy blinked, and took the plastic straw away from his lips.  His gaze fell on his wife.  Icing sugar coated her mouth that opened and closed around yet another donut.  ‘How lowng do you think eets gonna be?’, his wife drawled.  The dog whined again.  McIlroy shrugged and pushed his slight frame up from his armchair and into a standing position.  Momentarily, he studied the detritus around them.  ‘Gettin’ another soda’, he said, and turned slowly to head toward the kitchen.  ‘You wont me to set the tape?’ his wife asked pointlessly as he loped past. 

In the kitchen there was a pile of dirty dishes stashed in the sink, a tower of cardboard pizza delivery boxes on the sideboard.  McIlroy picked up a leftover crust and held it to his nose.  He licked the crust with his tongue.  The crust was flavourless and stale so he put it back in the box and moved to the refrigerator.  He opened the door.  Inside there was a bag of donuts, a long gone off carton of milk and no soda.  McIlroy grimaced.

~

A plastic bag turned over in the breeze.  The streets, strewn with yesterdays news, were bereft.  McIlroy stepped off the pavement and crossed the road, taking care not to walk on the tramlines.  A giant billboard displayed the bloated face of a child holding a bottle of Cola.  McIlroy pursed his lips again and made a sucking noise.

A couple of blocks from his flat there was a convenience store.  Most of the shops on the way had dropped their corrugated iron fronts, or were boarded up.  Even the tramp among the trash cans on the corner of Frith Street was gone although his grimy blue sleeping bag remained.  Had McIlroy been a more observant and imaginative human being he might have been awed at the stillness, but the thought of another soda preoccupied him.  What there was of his imagination dreamed of the bubbles misting and fizzing on his tongue. 

He tried the door of the convenience store and found it locked.  He pushed again as if to make sure.  No luck.  He peered in through the glass, tainted yellow with age.  Most of the shelves were bare.  He craned his neck to see if the drinks cabinets were empty, but found he could not be sure.  A tin can rolled past his feet.  There was a bicycle without wheels leaning against a lamp post a few yards away.  McIlroy pushed the door a third time, with a little more force, but still it wouldn’t budge.

In spite of the circumstances McIlroy felt a sense of unease at what he was about to do.  The frame of the bicycle was heavier than he had anticipated but he reasoned this might give him a better chance of breaking the window.  He raised the bicycle to shoulder height and drove the sharp metal forks against the glass.  A small crack spread across the pane as McIlroy stumbled backwards.  He tried again with his eyes tightly closed and rammed the forks as hard as he could into the glass.  He heard the glass shatter and felt it splinter around him, but there was no alarm. 

The convenience store was run by a Bangladeshi.  McIlroy did not know his name.  Even at the best of times the place had a jaded appearance and now it looked positively drab.  All the alcohol behind the counter and cigarettes had been sold, on the shelves only tins of soup and shrivelled fruit and vegetables remained.  The lights were off in the drinks cabinets, McIlroy could see there were empty, but such was his desire for a soda this didn’t altogether put him off.  Under the cash register there was a pair of keys.

~

McIlroy switched on the lights in the cellar.  At the very same moment, fifty five nuclear devices were detonated across the globe.  From space the scene would have been astonishing as one by one great mushroom clouds billowed from the surface of the earth, and civilisation, in a first and final act of togetherness, committed suicide.  McIlroy’s wife was vapourised, his dog reduced to ash and the horse fly to a cinder; his flat became rubble in little over a nanosecond.  The cellar, meanwhile, was full of bottles of Cola, cocooned in cellophane pallets.  They survived.

About half an hour later McIlroy emerged into the nuclear haze.  As the last human alive, he put his bottle of Cola to his lips and took a swig.