The Daily Schedule of a Post Apocalyptic Survivor

It was 7.45 am although the concept of time no longer existed, all watches having stopped as a result of the radiation in the air. However Cecil had spent the vast majority of his 37 years abiding by the tradition of waking up at this exact time and saw no reason to cease, even if Nuclear Holocaust had ravaged the planet rendering it near uninhabited, society having long since crumbled away. Of course it would be selfish for him to think that he could completely go about his daily routine after such a catastrophic event, no doubt adjustments had to be made. For one thing he now had to have tap water in lieu of milk with his morning cornflakes, having no refrigeration to keep the milk sufficiently cooled. This didn’t bother him too much, adjustments always had to be made, though the water coming from his tap was considerably less clean than what he had grown used to before the disaster.

As he got up for his morning walk he marvelled at how it had been barely six months since a rampaging virus had hit the majority of the population, causing them to turn into flesh eating zombies. He remembered watching it on the news thinking that it was all a bit overblown. As he walked through the desolate block of flats outside of his house he remembered his landlord before he had turned into a zombie, he’d been slightly more lenient back then.

Cecil wandered across the main streets of the city, barren, completely bare save for the ocassional rust-worn car abandoned at the corner of the street. He still waited what he considered an appropriate amount of time before crossing the road despite the lights not working and there being no traffic for at least several miles. Still, “Better safe than sorry,” he thought, as he looked both ways before finally deciding to cross. His mother had taught him that, he sighed, it had broken his heart having the staff at her nursing home euthanize her as the intermediate stages of mutation spread.

He went about his usual walk through the city, sticking closely to his regular route. He could have quite comfortably taken an alternate passage, knowing every street in the city having been a courier before the Nuclear Holocaust. However he stuck closely to the route, not once thinking of taking a right turn at the pond where the last of the duck bones littered the banks or bypassing the blood-soaked Zoo, ridden with mutilated animal carcasses after the epidemic had begun to spread out of control. Then he would stop and gaze across the road to the bus shelter, hoping against hope that this would be the day.

Each time he thought he saw her he would cry out, “Marianne, I’m here! We can be safe together, the three of us!” And sure enough as he’d run towards her she’d continually drift further away.

He couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge it. As the hysteria spread about the virus, his wife had panicked and left him, pregnant with his child. He’d refused to believe the notification by the police days later that she’d been found dead in her car from an intentional overdose on prescription pills, maintaining the blind conjecture that she was still out there. This mundane routine was all that kept him going, day by day.