No Quarter (Excerpt)

I wish I knew what was going on outside of this bathroom.

More importantly I’d like to figure out how the Hell these toilets keep flushing. The sinks don’t work at all but the toilets keep flushing. Where’s all the Goddamn water keep coming from? Probably better I don’t know and just be thankful they are; damn things are the only thing keeping us alive.

Lemme bring you up to speed. My names Damien Gordon, but I’ve been tellin’ everyone its just Barstow. Yup, the name’s Barstow. Thats the last place I remember being before all this happened. Nobody really believes its my name anyway, but i really don’t give a rat’s ass cause it ain’t none of their business.

When I say “them” I mean the three other fools I’m stuck here waiting on hand-and-foot for in this Godforsaken suburbian mall basement we call home.

There’s the two chicks from Santa Rosa; Kirsten and Anna, who wound up here en route to Hysteria looking for a cure for Anna’s stomach cancer or something. They stopped here to do some shopping on the way through Bakersfield but ended up in this shit-storm instead. Don’t really know why you’d need clothes in a damn cancer ward but whatever. The guy sleepin’ under the sink with a busted ass head is Patrick Kennedy. Or just Kennedy. I don’t believe his name any more than the bullshit one I’m giving, but what the Hell; name’s probably ain’t real important now anyways.

As for myself, I was on a damn-fool mission of a roadtrip with my two best friends for what was ’sposed to be the time of our young lives. One of these friends Ryan, died as we crashed in through the atrium and into an elevator shaft of this place trying to avoid the blast wave. The other, Desmond; went off with some chick the night before and i haven’t seen him since. He was most likely ate up by whatever nuke or comet hit us, and I'll never see his annoyingly smug ass again. At least it was more than likely painless.

There’s this emergency broadcast radio jam thats been playing pretty much since we got here. It claims that if we are hearing this to stay bunkered down for at least a month if possible. It mentions fallout, and insects, and some babble about a Speiwak Industries and then recycles, and plays again.

We decided to listen to it and have been down here now for 26 days, barely alive and drowning in boredom. But we’re almost ready to leave. We’ve got our things packed and ready to see what’s out there.

July 21st

The overwhelming silence that filled the lavatory was disturbing, but peaceful Damien thought. He filled the room with graceful plumes of foul smoke as he lit cigarette after cigarette; he was always a chain-smoker, but now his habit had become an obsession with lack of a better hobby. Either way it had pleased him a bit more knowing it bothered everyone else. “What the hell, everyone’s dead. Girls already got cancer, and ain’t much else to do.” He’d tell them. “Unless you wanna get frisky in the stalls?” He aimed at Kirsten.

She was not impressed. In fact she actually felt that he disgusted her. His broken English, his uncleanliness; even in this situation was repulsive, his attitude and disrespectful nature. His constant profanity, his incessant bitching and snoring. She decided she wanted him dead at times if it weren’t for the fact that he was actually working feverishly every day, busting ass to get them out of the bereavement the worthless tomb of a mall had brought upon them. He was someone that outside of this predicament, she would never had even glanced at in passing, not even giving him a friendly nod, lest he was a valet or server grabbing her coat. Regardless she also decided she would for now use him until something better came along. She needed to for her sister…for herself.