Jake stood in aisle four, staring at a dented can of peaches like it held the secrets of the universe.
Outside, the world was screaming. It was a high-pitched, rhythmic sound that reminded him of a tea kettle, if that tea kettle was the size of a city block and fueled by collective panic.
He looked down at the floor and saw a ripped, muddy page from his own book. It was Chapter 1, the part where he talked about maintaining a calm psychological profile during the initial shock phase.
"Well," he thought, looking at a woman currently trying to bite the ear off a security guard, "so much for the calm psychological profile."
He felt a weird, buzzing numbness in his chest. It wasn't exactly fear. It was more like the feeling of being a fraud who finally got caught.
For three years, he had toured talk shows and written blog posts about the inevitable systemic collapse of modern infrastructure. He had warned them about the grid, the supply lines, and the fragile nature of social contracts.
People called him a doomsday prophet, a cynic, and occasionally a visionary.
Now, as he watched a teenager use a stack of The End Times Manual to prop open a fire exit that was clearly labeled as a death trap in his own diagrams, Jake realized he was just a guy with a laptop and a really bad sense of timing.
"Seriously?" He muttered to himself. "The fire exit? Did nobody read the part about bottlenecking?"
He shifted his backpack. He had entered the store for water and batteries, but the shelves were stripped bare.
It had happened faster than even he predicted. He'd written that the transition from order to chaos would take about seventy-two hours. It had actually taken about forty-five minutes.
"Jake, you idiot," he thought. "You're the guy who wrote the manual. You should have been in the mountains three days ago. Instead, you're in a suburban grocery store wondering if the generic brand crackers are worth a fistfight."
A loud crash from the front of the store snapped him out of his internal monologue. The glass doors had finally given way.
The sound of the crowd changed from frantic shouting to something much more primal. Jake turned toward the back of the store, his heart finally deciding to hammer against his ribs.
He knew this layout. He'd studied store blueprints for the research phase of his third book. There was a loading dock behind the deli counter.
He started moving, keeping low. He passed the pharmacy section, where the chaos was at its peak. People were grabbing anything with a child-proof cap.
He saw a man look at him, eyes wide and bloodshot. The man held up a copy of Jake's book.
"It says the meds are the new currency! The man shouted, waving the book like a holy relic. "Is it true? Tell me it's true!"
Jake didn't stop. He didn't have the heart to tell the guy that currency didn't matter if you got trampled in the next five minutes.
He just kept shuffling toward the back, his sneakers squeaking on spilled soda.
He reached the deli counter and vaulted over it, landing in a pile of discarded plastic wrap. He scrambled toward the heavy steel door that led to the warehouse area.
He pushed, but it didn't budge. He pushed again, harder this time, feeling a cold sweat break out across his neck. It was locked from the other side.
"Check secondary exits," he whispered, reciting his own advice. "Always check the secondary exits before the primary ones become compromised."
He hadn't done that. He had walked right into the front door like a tourist.
He felt a sudden, sharp urge to find a mirror just so he could punch himself in the face. He was going to die in a grocery store because he failed his own pop quiz.
He looked around frantically. To his left, there was a small service elevator used for bringing up pallets from the basement storage. It was open.
He dived inside and hit the button for the lower level just as a group of looters rounded the corner of the deli. The doors slid shut with a mechanical groan that sounded far too loud in the cramped space.
The elevator descended with a jerk. Jake slumped against the padded wall, sliding down until his butt hit the floor. He put his head in his hands.
"Nice job, Morrison," he thought. "Real professional. Page forty-two, remember? Avoid basement levels unless they have at least two points of egress. You're literally in a box underground now. If the power goes out, this is your coffin."
He stayed there for a minute, listening to the muffled sounds of the world ending above him. It sounded like a storm, a literal hurricane of human desperation.
He wondered if his parents had made it out of the city. He wondered if his ex-girlfriend was currently laughing at the irony of his situation.
She always said his obsession with the apocalypse was just a way to avoid dealing with real life. It turned out that real life and the apocalypse were now the same thing, and he was failing at both.
The elevator hissed as it reached the basement. The doors opened to a dim, concrete room filled with crates of canned goods and industrial cleaning supplies. It was quiet down here. Eerie.
He stepped out, his footsteps echoing. He needed to find the stairs that led to the alleyway.
He moved through the aisles of crates, his mind racing. If he could get to his car, he could still make it to the safe house in the woods.
He had enough fuel in the trunk to get halfway across the state. He just had to get out of the building.
He saw the exit sign glowing red at the far end of the room. He hurried toward it, his boots clicking on the concrete. He reached the door and gripped the handle, ready to burst out into the fresh, chaotic air.
The door swung open before he could turn the knob.
Jake froze. Standing in the doorway were three men. They weren't the frantic, wide-eyed looters from upstairs.
These men were wearing matte black tactical vests, grey combat pants, and headsets. They held carbines with the casual ease of people who used them every day.
They didn't look like police, and they definitely didn't look like the National Guard. There were no patches, no flags, just professional-grade gear and very cold eyes.
The man in the center stepped forward. He reached into a side pocket and pulled out a crumpled book. He flipped it over to the back cover and held it up next to Jake's face.
The photo on the back showed a younger, more confident Jake Morrison wearing a flannel shirt and a knowing smirk.
"Found him," the man said into his headset. His voice was flat, devoid of any emotion.
Jake felt the blood drain from his face. He looked at the guns, then at the man, then back at the guns.
"Uh, hey guys," Jake said, his voice cracking slightly. "If this is about the advice in Chapter 4 regarding the water filtration, look, I know it was a bit controversial, but there's no need for—"
The man didn't smile. He didn't even blink. He grabbed Jake by the front of his jacket and slammed him against the concrete wall.
Jake felt the air leave his lungs in a sharp wheeze.
"Wait," Jake gasped. "I don't have any supplies. I'm just a writer. I'm nobody."
The man leaned in close. "You're not nobody, Morrison. You're the guy who knows where the bodies are buried before they're even dead. Our employer has been looking for you for six months."
"Employer?" Jake thought, his mind spinning. "Who hires a private army the day the world stops spinning?"
He tried to squirm, but the man's grip was like an iron vice. The other two soldiers moved into the basement, their weapons raised, checking the corners with practiced efficiency.
"We're not here for your canned peaches," the soldier said, pulling a pair of zip-ties from his belt. "We're here because you're the only one who knows how this ends."
"Actually," Jake managed to say, trying to regain some shred of his dignity, "I only wrote the first half. The second half was mostly educated guesses."
The soldier didn't respond. He spun Jake around and yanked his hands behind his back. The plastic zip-tie bit into Jake's wrists with a sharp, stinging snap.
"This is bad," Jake thought. "This is very, very bad. I didn't write a chapter for this."
He was hauled toward the exit, his feet barely touching the ground. As they stepped out into the alley, he saw a black SUV idling with its lights off.
The city was burning in the distance, orange light flickering against the clouds.
"Is there a Chapter 12?" He wondered as they tossed him into the back of the vehicle. "Is there a chapter on what to do when your fans turn out to be mercenaries?"
The door slammed shut, plunging him into darkness. The engine roared to life, and as the SUV sped away from the ruins of the grocery store, Jake realized that for the first time in his life, he had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. The manual was officially useless.