Surveying the Damage
Having got no response from the emergency services… or my houseguests for that matter, I decide to go outside and see what’s up with the traffic.
I need only go as far as the pavement outside my building to see the hold up.
Bloody hell!
Looking to my right, about 100 metres up the road, there’s a semi trailer lying on its side, completely blocking the road. In front of it is a severely banged up Corolla flipped on to its roof.
I walk up to the Corolla and peer inside. The driver is still strapped into her seat. She has some cuts to her face but her skin feels warm. So that’s good news then.
Taking her weight I release the seat belt then slowly lower her on to the headlining of the car roof. At least she’ll be comfortable when she wakes up.
If she wakes up.
Oh shit. This thought hadn’t occurred to me until now. My friends are up in my flat, seemingly in a deep sleep. What if they never wake up?
To shake this disturbing thought I continue to check out the rest of the scene of destruction on my street. I walk around the truck toward the cab. The front windscreen has popped out; the driver is slumped against the door. He’s not wearing a seat belt so he must have tumbled around in the cab when it rolled over. His face is badly cut up and he’s got bruises all over him, he’s alive, but like everyone else I’ve seen today, asleep.
Standing up I survey the road away from my flat. There’s traffic banked up behind the calamity of overturned truck and its cargo of various sized boxes now scattered all over the road. All the cars have their headlights on but there’s no movement.
The people in the cars closest to me all seem to be asleep.
In the distance I can hear a car horn tooting endlessly so I start to walk in the direction of the sound. A hundred metres up the road I find the culprit. A chubby bloke has passed out on to the steering wheel, his large man-boobs pushing on the horn. I push him back into his seat and as I do I notice that his skin is warm to touch.
I must have passed twenty cars and not one of them contained a conscious person.
This is very much a fucked up situation.
It’s like a nightmare…
Ah! That’s it! This is a nightmare.
I’m dreaming. Of course, why didn’t I think of it earlier?
So I do what people always do in the movies when they think they’re dreaming and pinch the skin on my arm and… Ouch! That hurts.
OK, so it’s not a dream. What the hell’s going on?
“What the hell’s going on?” I scream at the top of my voice.
“Hello! Can anybody hear me? H-E-L-L-O!” I yell repeatedly as I walk up the road.
There’s no response of any kind.
After wandering around aimlessly for an hour I find myself back at my flat. Nothing has changed. Everyone’s still lying exactly where I left them.
I’m feeling quite hungry so I go to the kitchen. In the fridge there’s a big plastic bag of sausages that I’d bought in anticipation of a barbeque for the post-party recovery-party. I grab a bunch and look around the kitchen; it’s a mess. The usual party flotsam-jetsam is spread over the benches; bottles and glasses in various stages of emptiness (or fullness if you’re that kind of thinker), crisps, nuts, those horrible rice snacks that come in pink and green and other unappetising colours.
Basically if I want to cook these sausages I’m going to have to clear away some of this crap. Or…
Fire up the barbie!
I head out on to the balcony and light the barbeque. While that heats up I go back to the kitchen and I’m reminded of the eggplant dip all over Mikey and Jules. I grab a clean dishcloth from the cupboard under the sink and clean them up. Well, I do my best but the dip is really tough to get out of hair once it’s hardened. Yuk, I mean who eats eggplant dip anyway? What happened to the days where party food consisted of crisps and nuts? And if you wanted to be a little more elaborate, you would just throw some kind of frozen snack into the oven, then forget about them until they’re burnt to a cinder and the smoke-alarms going off.
I grab some tongs from the drawer, a loaf of bread and the tomato sauce and retreat to the balcony. The hotplate’s smoking so I throw the sausages on, watching as they sizzle and curl.
Looking out from the balcony I can’t see a single thing moving. No cars, people, helicopters, aeroplanes, etc, etc. All the things that make a city seem alive are… well… not moving today.
I take my snags inside and turn on the telly. Every station is showing nothing but test patterns. I try the radio, some stations have pre-recorded announcements about technical issues but most are just dead air.
Guess I’ll check the Internet then. I wake the computer from its slumber, open the browser and select one of the local news sites. There’s news but nothing about the big crash up the road or the multitude of unconscious people in
I check the BBC and CNN. Nothing of note there either.
I need something that will show me what’s happening here right now and around the World. I know! Traffic cameras.
I go to the Traffic Authority website and click on the link for the traffic cams. A dozen little views from cameras at various locations around
Shit! The whole city has fallen asleep. And from the number of cars that have rammed into the one in front, I’d say pretty much all at the same time. I guess the flock of birds means that not all living things are affected.
I spend the next couple of hours searching the net for live traffic cameras and come to the horrifying conclusion that every person, in every city, in every country is asleep – unconscious – comatose – whatever you want to call it.
How in the hell does the population of a planet suddenly go to sleep?
And why the hell am I still conscious?
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