The world had shrunk to the size of a screen. That's how it was for people like Jake, for most people now. You wake up, you take a shit, you look at the screen. You go to work, you come home, you look at the screen. The screen tells you what to think, what to buy, who to hate. The screen is your friend, your lover, your god. And Jake, he was a faithful worshipper.
He trudged down the curb like a man walking in his sleep, his neck bent at that unnatural angle, the kind you see on people who've forgotten there's a sky above them.Through his earphones, some autotuned voice was singing about money and bitches, the beat a tinny, repetitive pulse that had long ago replaced his own heartbeat.
His thumb moved. Up, up, up. An automaton. A flesh-and-blood robot with no other purpose than to feed the endless, mindless scroll. The YouTube Shorts feed today was a special kind of garbage fire. A relentless cascade of bullshit, one after the other, each one dumber than the last. First, some asshole with too much time and too few brain cells thought it was funny to pretend to punch strangers. Jake's lip curled. Fuckin' moron. Then, a recipe for a fucking cake. A cake. Like he gave a solitary shit about layers of frosting when he could barely afford a fucking sandwich.
And then—bam.
His thumb stopped. For a second, maybe two, it actually stopped.
Some grainy, shaky-cam footage filled the screen. Must have been a leaked security tape, or maybe some lucky idiot with a phone who didn't get his head ripped off. It was the top ten supes. Going at it. Really going at it.
The battle bled into the next video—some chick putting on makeup—and then the next—a dog doing a trick.
He then watched Homelander, that walking, preening American flag, go toe-to-toe with Soldier Boy, Butcher, and that little twerp Hughie. The screen lit up with a blast of concussive force, and Jake's thumb, a creature of pure habit, flicked up for the next hit of dopamine.
He didn't even register what he was watching anymore. The battle just bled into the next video, and the next. But a sour, acidic thought curdled in the back of his mind. Fuckin' hell. All that power, all that laser-vision and shockwave shit, and not one of the cunts actually dies? He squinted at the screen, a silent, venomous commentary playing behind his eyes. At least pop one fuckin' skull, man. Paint the fuckin' room. What are you holdin' at your ass? A couple of daisies? Fuckin' pussies, the lot of 'em. All flash, no gash.
He was so deep in his digital stupor, so wrapped up in his contempt for the capes, that he was deaf and blind to the real-world apocalypse bearing down on him. He didn't hear the frantic, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of bass from a different source. He didn't hear the hysterical, high-pitched squeal of rubber fighting for grip on the hot asphalt.
The truck driver saw him.
His name was Delroy. Forty-seven years old, two kids, a wife who packed him sandwiches that he ate alone in rest stops. He'd been driving this route for fifteen years. He'd seen it all: deer, drunk drivers, blown tires. But he'd never seen this. A kid, maybe early twenties, earbuds in, head down, practically fucking sleepwalking into the intersection.
Delroy's face went from bored—that flat, tired look of a man who's been on the road since 4 a.m.—to blood-drained white in a split second. His heart, which had been chugging along at a steady sixty beats a minute, slammed into overdrive. It felt like it was trying to punch its way out of his chest.
His right foot moved. It stomped on that brake pedal with the force of a man trying to drive it through the floorboards, through the chassis, and into the fucking road.
Nothing.
Just a sickening, soft shush-shush of pressure. A ghost of resistance where the solid, reassuring clunk of a working brake should have been. The pedal went to the floor like a dead fish. Like stepping on a sponge. Like stepping on nothing.
"Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck. Oh, no."
The words tumbled out of his mouth, not a prayer, just a reflex. His hands, thick and calloused from years of gripping the wheel, were suddenly slick with sweat. He yanked the steering wheel to the left, a desperate, Hail Mary move. The big rig lurched, the trailer behind it jackknifing with a groan of tortured metal that sounded like the world was being ripped in half.
It was useless.
The truck was a missile now. A forty-ton guided bomb with failed brakes, aimed right at the oblivious kid who was still staring at his fucking phone. Delroy could see the top of his head. The way his shoulders were slumped. The way his thumb was still moving. Still fucking scrolling.
He leaned on the air horn. Not a tap, not a polite beep-beep to say "excuse me." He put his whole body into it, his weight pressing down, his face turning red. The sound that came out was a massive, world-shaking BAAAAAARP. A roar. A scream of metal and air. It tore through the afternoon air like a physical force, making pigeons explode from rooftops in a panic of feathers, making pedestrians on the far side of the street flinch and cover their ears.
On the sidewalk, people froze.
A woman in a yellow dress, her hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes went wide, impossibly wide, and a silent scream was caught behind her fingers, trapped there, unable to get out. A guy in a business suit, phone pressed to his ear, dropped his coffee. The cup hit the ground, bursting, splashing brown liquid over his polished shoes, and he didn't even notice. He just stared.
They were statues. A gallery of horror, watching the inevitable unfold in slow motion.
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY! KID! KID! YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH, LOOK UP! FUCKING LOOK UP! MOVE YOUR FUCKING ASS! MOVE! YOU BRAINDEAD CUNT, I'M GONNA HIT YOU! I'M GONNA FUCKING HIT YOU! OH GOD, OH FUCK, SOMEBODY HELP! SOMEBODY FUCKING HELP ME!"The driver's scream was a raw, desperate thing, lost in the roar of the engine and the shriek of the horn. He was just a passenger now, a spectator in his own cab.
The horn finally pierced Jake's bubble. It wasn't a sound that fit with the music. It was an intrusion, a blade of reality slicing through his digital cocoon. Annoyed, his precious feed interrupted, he looked up, his face already set in a scowl.
And the world stopped.
The chrome grille of the truck was a wall of steel, fifty feet away and closing like a freight train in a nightmare. It filled his entire field of vision. The driver was a frantic, gesticulating puppet behind the glass. The horn was a continuous, blaring scream in his ears now, drowning out his music, drowning out everything.
His brain, flooded with a tsunami of adrenaline, short-circuited. All higher thought ceased. There was no time for a life to flash before his eyes, no time for regret or prayer. There was only the pure, animalistic essence of terror. His mouth opened, and what came out was a primal, wordless shriek that formed the only two syllables his lizard brain could muster.
"FUCK! FUUUUUCK!"
It wasn't even a word anymore. It was a curse, a goodbye, all wrapped into one wet, gurgling sound that was cut off with sickening abruptness.
The impact was a heavy thud that vibrated through the chassis of the truck. A sound like a bag of wet cement hitting a wall at sixty miles an hour.
The truck, its brakes still useless, plowed through the space he'd occupied and slammed into the brick facade of a Laundromat. The wall cratered, glass exploded in a shimmering curtain, and the truck finally, mercifully, ground to a halt.
For a moment, there was just the tinkling of falling glass and the hiss of the ruptured radiator. Then, the silence was broken by a woman's hysterical, keening wail.
Where Jake had been standing, there was nothing but a dark, wet smear on the road. A single sneaker, its laces undone, lay in the gutter, still gently rocking from the displaced air. A fine, crimson mist hung in the air for a second, catching the afternoon sun, before slowly beginning to settle. It painted the street, the shattered shopfront, and the horrified faces of the onlookers in a fine, obscene, arterial spray. It rained blood on the road, just another piece of collateral damage in a world that had already gone completely, utterly fucking insane. His phone, miraculously intact, lay in a small puddle of gore a few feet away. It was still lit. The screen, smeared with red, was paused on a close-up of Homelander's smug, smiling face. The cape was billowing in the background. The teeth were perfect and white. And the eyes, those crazy eyes, seemed to be looking right at the mess that used to be Jake.
Smiling. Always fucking smiling.