The Man Who Watched the World End (2 page)

It’s not just the bears that aren’t afraid of
me, it’s all of them, every creature. The foxes, the raccoons, the wild dogs, the cats. They all laugh at my feeble attempts to reclaim my lawn. I’m constantly on alert when I go outside. A pack of wild dogs or a bear could catch my scent and see me as nothing more than simple prey. Maybe that’s all I am anymore.

The vast population of cute little kitties and puppies, the same ones that relied on people for food and water, slowly filtered out into the wild when their masters moved away. Labradors and
golden retrievers were left to fend for themselves. At first, these animals were easy food for the foxes and wolves, but it didn’t take long for their domestication to wear off. Dalmatian a winning lottery ticket sof s and Rottweilers united in an attempt to have power in numbers. Tabbies and Maine Coons teamed up to take over the Phei’s old backyard. Some of these animals couldn’t acclimate to the new anarchy. Poodles and wiener dogs weren’t suited for finding food on their own. Both are probably extinct by now. But other pets were able to adjust and created a new home in the woods as though they had been waiting patiently for man to leave. I laughed the first time I saw a pack of wild chow-chows until I saw them race down a new born fox and tear it to shreds. The baby fox cried until it was finally dead. Its mother howled from the edge of the woods, helpless.

The animals
, like the weeds and crab grass, have spread to every part of the once groomed community. A feral cat can have kittens up to four times a year. Beginning at three months of age, each of those kittens can start reproducing. The offspring of a single abandoned house cat could produce hundreds of cats in a single year. And none of these new cats knows what it’s like to rely on humans for food or to understand that humans aren’t to be attacked. Same with the dogs.

There may have been a single bear in the woods near our community back when people still played golf on the course. Now, there a
re probably a hundred bears surrounding the neighborhood. Hundreds of wolves have invaded the 18-hole community. And now, only Andrew and I remain to represent the old guard.

Every
evening, the packs of wild dogs fight with the wolves as soon as the sun goes down. I hear free-for-alls that sound unnatural, like the type of fireworks that make screaming noises. The dogs howl and screech and bark. The foxhound, treasured for its beautiful fur, now displays stripes of scarred flesh mixed in with grimy hair. Even the bears, the kings of the forest, are never free of battle wounds.

The animals aren’t to blame for this. In the three generations it has taken man to go from the planet’s dominant species to sparse packs of feeble senior citizens, there have been a hundred generations of
former house pets and forest animals, plenty of time for all of them to forget we were once their hunters and masters. They spy us from the edge of the woods, waiting for chances to sneak up and repay us for centuries" font-size:1.0rem; font-weight:b of servitude and fear. There was one time, I laughed until I pissed myself, when the Johnsons were chased back inside their house by a pack of feral tabby cats. The same kind of cute little kitten that would lap up milk and play with balls of string was throwing itself against the Johnsons’ screen door.

The smaller critters have also faired better without man. There were so many birds in the sky the other day that the sun was almost blotted out. The trees look like zoo exhibits, filled with cardinals, blue jays, little yellow birds that I’m not familiar with, robins, and crows. Vultures are everywhere
, laying claim to the remains of animals left by the dogs and wolves. of my driveway sof

The only animal that hasn’t fared well is the deer. They are vastly outnumbered by the carnivores and have gone into hiding. I see a family of deer every once in a while, but every time I do I find my jaw clenched because I expect a pack of dogs to come out of nowhere and slaughter them.

Back in middle school, I learned that nature regulates itself. The eco-system is supposed to ensure there are enough insects to feed the raccoons, enough raccoons to feed the foxes, and so on, but ever since man’s decline it’s almost as if nature doesn’t know how to control itself anymore. The herbivores are almost gone and yet the predators still grow in number. It defies everything I’ve been taught, but I’m seeing it with my own eyes so I know it’s really happening. It’s almost as if all the animals are in shock and don’t know what to do except overrun everything, even each other.

No topic
was discussed more during my dinners with the Johnsons than the animals lurking all around us. The three of us would sip glasses of wine, look out at the lines of abandoned houses, and discuss our plans as though all of our options still existed in the world. Sometimes, when we had too much to drink, we would joke about who would last the longest in the neighborhood and be the final person left in Camelot. We wouldn’t dare vocalize such things if we were sober because the implications were that two of the three of us would be dead and our siblings were either being neglected or had also died. Sober, we would have chosen instead to talk about the falling leaves or how the golf course had gone unattended for so long it looked like a pasture instead of eighteen holes of sport.

Y
ears ago, I would take Andrew with me when I went down to the Johnsons’ house. More recently, I was leaving him on the sofa with music playing. When the Johnsons came down to my house, they would also leave their younger sisters at home, a warm fire in the fireplace replacing the soft music I offered to Andrew. Everyone has their own ways of trying to make loved ones feel more comfortable. I praised the Johnsons as the only family that was happy to stay in their own home when every one else was leaving. That, combined with our intimate conversations all those nights, is why I was so shocked when they left a week ago. It’s why I’m still shocked.

There was no reason to get out of bed
that night, no reason to go to my bedroom window; it was almost as if treachery could be sensed in the air because I stayed at the window, not knowing what I was looking for or expecting to see. There was nothing to signify a momentous event was getting ready to unfold. As I watched the neighborhood, the night went from the sounds of animals to their actual presence. A pack of wolves made their way down the middle of the road, a group of varsity football players, letting everyone else know they weren’t to be messed with. Upon seeing them, a couple of house cats hid under the porch at the Wilkensons’ former home. A pair of golden retrievers appeared a minute later, a dead rabbit dangling from one’s mouth.Xgeother

And then it happened: the Johnson
s’ garage door opened, their SUV backed out, the garage door lowered again, and the over-sized vehicle pulled onto the street. It turned toward my house. Instead of stopping, though, it continued past my driveway and left the neighborhood. There were two figures in the front and two in the back. None of them turned and waved at me as they passed. The brake lights didn’t even flicker. And just like that they were gone.

I was left
as the final resident of Camelot.

Ideas about family, about the importance of always being there for
loved ones, changed when the Blocks started outnumbering the rest of us. My parents and the rest of the community were still adjusting, back when Andrew was born, to the concept that a living person could be exactly like you or me, except they didn’t move, didn’t talk, didn’t do anything. Being that Andrew was one of the first Blocks, it took everyone in our neighborhood some getting used to. The day before my parents brought him home from the hospital, my father sat me down and talked about how Andrew should be treated. “You know how much you love Bumper?” he asked, referring to the stuffed rabbit I carried everywhere. “Your brother also can’t move or talk, but I want you to love him even more than Bumper. But be careful. You can’t drag your brother around the house by his arm the way you do your stuffed animals. He won’t cry out, but you can still hurt him.”

It was an odd concept until you saw a Block and realized they really did look just like everyone else, they just didn’t smile or sigh or do anything at all. A month later
, another family on the street had a baby and that child was also a Block. The Stevenson’s new daughter was a Block too. I don’t remember another regular baby being born after that.

It would have been nice to be a little older when my brother was born so I could remember the details more clearly. I’m left with vague impressions, the accuracy of which I can’t verify. I remember having a babysitter for a couple
of days while my parents were at the hospital. The girl, barely qualified to be a temporary custodian of anything, popped her bubble gum as she asked, “So, is your brother going to be a Block? That’s gotta be weird.” There’s no telling what my answer had been. Shortly after that I remember my parents coming home with my new baby brother. They put him down on the sofa with all the normal love and care given to a baby, but I also remember, even at that age,">Star Wars
I asked my mother why she and my dad were always putting needles in Andrew’s arm—it was something they never had to do to me—and she explained that Andrew couldn’t eat food the same way I could, that he needed an IV to get food and water. So in the oversimplified view of my childhood mind, I remember feeling like I had a brother
who was sort of like me, he just didn’t move or make noise and he needed to have a tube coming out of his forearm.

The first cases of this new syndrome had only started emerging a
few months before my brother was born. Doctors in Chicago claimed to have found the first case, however, doctors in the Ukraine and Belgium reported identical findings at the same time, of newborn babies without any significant brain activity. Doctors weren’t sure at first if it was a new form of autism or something else completely. It was as if babies were being born comatose. They also weren’t sure what triggered it or why it started happening all across the globe simultaneously. It ended up being classified as a new disorder, something that was wholly and unquestionably its own state of being. Parents of those first children wanted to know if there would ever be a cure. Soon-to-be parents wondered if there might be a vaccine. They also wondered if there was something they could do—certain brands of food to buy, certain types of formula—that might keep their child from being born that way.

Everyone wondered exactly what the prognosis meant. What did
no significant brain activity
mean for these children? The best answer doctors were able to provide was that these newborns had healthy bodies, and their brains were functioning, they just weren’t developing the way normal brains should. The results were bodies that still developed enough to regulate breathing, go through puberty, and eventually have grey hair, but that didn’t develop motor neurons or sensory neurons. People began referring to these afflicted children as Blocks because it was as if their condition obstructed them from the world. More and more newborns began showing signs of this complete lack of acknowledgement of their surroundings.

Doctors were able to pinpoint the cause of the condition shortly after it appeared. A certain amino acid wasn’t forming; the brain wasn’t developing the way it was supposed to. But while they knew the cause, they were unable to find a cure. They replicated the amino acid, they manipulated every aspect of the birth process, but they couldn’t force the human brain to develop the way it once had. Every step of the baby’s development could be controlled, the correct amino acid introduced, but still the unborn child would reject the treatment and develop the same way as all the other Blocks. Doctors began creating new babies from test tubes. These infants also displayed stunted brains. No matter how human life was created in those years, it wasn’t life that could sustain itself. The entire human rac make me feel any better. aof e had evolved, or
mis-evolved as it were, and refused to go back to what it had been previously.

A generation of people, the final generation of people, grew up
just like the rest of us—healthy hearts, perfect circulatory systems, strong bones—they just couldn’t talk or move or do anything else that the previous generations could. So we, the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the afflicted, took care of them and raised them as the otherwise normal people they were, all the while realizing this new generation we were taking care of wouldn’t be able to produce offspring. And even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to raise them.

As a little boy
I didn’t understand why someone who couldn’t talk or move should be loved as much as someone who could do those things. It certainly wasn’t fun trying to play G.I. Joe with a little brother who couldn’t make exploding noises or act like our soldiers were killing each other. My parents did not share my reservations. When I was seven and Andrew was three, our parents took us to the beach. My mom and dad spent a week making sure they had thought of everything necessary for a long road trip involving Andrew. My mom checked his supply of child-sized nutrient bags in the kitchen while my dad made sure the child safety seat still fit.

I saw the amount of preparation involved and couldn’t help but
ask my mom, “Why do you even bother taking Andrew?”

Thinking back
to it, she could have crossed the short distance of the kitchen and smacked me across the face, but she was my mother and she gave a gentle laugh, as though my question was silly.