POPULATION ZERO COLLECTION I
by Kevin R. Bridges
BARNEY'S GRAND FINALE
“The scientists are still trying to cure it. Well, they’re not getting my support. Honestly, I’m going to be kind of pissed if they cure it.
Barney Wilson, in the space of two weeks, had become the most famous comedian in the world. He didn’t have an agent, he didn’t have a catch phrase that people would repeat to each other over lunch, and he didn’t get any money for his performances. By the time they were translating his routine into Spanish, German, French, and Chinese, he was dead.
“I mean, if they cure it, then they are paying these credit card bills.” This receives wild applause from the audience. “The first time I picked up the newspaper and saw the report, I didn’t call my mom or watch a sunset. I got online and signed up for every major credit card I could find. If you go into my house, there’s two plasma TVs, a huge stereo, a supercomputer. It looks like the bat cave. I even got bats. I love bats.”
Barney wasn’t necessarily edgy, but in a way his whole routine was the edgiest thing out there. He was amazed that the stand-up comedy heavy-hitters had chosen to follow the “too soon” rule regarding the Itch. “You hear that your species doesn't have six months to live, but choose not to mention it for a year, right?”
Barney is lit by floodlights that had been designed for nighttime football games, and he’s squinting. “Another thing I like-and tell me if I’m wrong-I love end-of-the-world sex.” This receives thunderous applause. Wilson isn’t a seasoned comedian, and he waits, awkward, for another chance to speak. “You call up some girl, ‘Hey, Sheila! Yeah, this is Barney. Yeah, we went to the same high school? Well, do you remember… Oh! You’re already here. And you’re straddling me. That’s amazing. One sec, let me hang up my phone.’”
He wasn’t the funniest comedian. He didn’t have his timing perfect and he stuttered words now and then. He was obviously nervous to be in front of crowds. His “Okay, Panic” tour never took him to a venue more extravagant than the stadium where it was videotaped, but the low-quality recording exploded on the Internet like the Itch itself and ended up getting frequent play on HBO. The five-dollar DVD was available anywhere anything was sold, and People for a Dignified End were handing it out free in the streets.
“So, if they cure this thing,” he itches his arm, and flashes his eyebrows at the audience, “what have I got? I’ve got herpes. I’ve probably got AIDS. AIDS is not really that threatening any more. Have you noticed that? I think I have Chlamydia, which is a really pretty word. Chlamydia. I have genital warts, which is not as bad as it sounds. I wish I had some time to enjoy that one. My punch card’s full. If any of you need one of these… I even have tennis elbow. I don’t know who I got that one from.”
Barney Wilson’s attitude was somehow perfect. The Internet was a soup of rumors and false hope. The news channels had enough fuel to keep their gloom and doom factories running up until the End. Every other piece of media, though, acted like nothing had happened, and nothing was going to. Most shows were filmed months in advance, and only showed that old ignorant world that had no idea it was drifting toward a waterfall. How I Met Your Mother, House, The Office. People’s worlds were changing, but their little electric windows into the world weren’t, and it was eerie. Families were gathering in hometowns, crowding together, not knowing what to do, being told by their televisions shows that everything was okay. Barney Wilson helped make things concrete.
“You know that Tim McGraw song? That, Live Like You Were Dyin’ song? Yeah, that one got really popular really quick. I finally sat down and downloaded this song, right? And it’s great. It moved me. And I decided, ‘I’m going to go mountain climbing! I’m going to live like I’m dyin’.”
“This is an FYI. Mountain climbing is hard. I started climbing this cliff, and in fifteen minutes I’m sore, I’m sweating, and I’m cussing. Then it started raining. But I was twenty-five feet off of the ground! So, I don’t know how I’m going to get down without breaking my legs, and there’s rain falling on me, and I’m wearing a white t-shirt, so everyone can see my nipples...”
He had worked at Office Depot, as a cashier, and that was, as urban legend had it, where he had died. As the story went, he’d thrown his hands up and slumped over the counter, knocking a stack of binders onto the floor. As with everyone else, his arms had been covered in scratches.
“I wonder who the last person’s going to be. I bet it’s going to be a politician.”
Nearing the End, Barney Wilson was a household name. The man who’d heard the news but didn’t plug his ears. The man who'd taken his old amp and speakers and had said what he'd had to say for whoever would hear him. He was someone who was afraid of death, and afraid of the End, but who was at least courageous enough to face it, eye to eye, and say, “Yes, I know you’re there.”
People wanted to believe that the human race could end with dignity, and with steady hands, and Barney Wilson wasn’t only an example of that, he was a symbol of it. As the face of Che Guevera had once become the symbol of revolution, the face of Barney Wilson, the entry-level Office Depot cashier, became a symbol of courage in the face of death.
“Do you ever watch the news any more? They give you a hundred stories, but it’s really the one story. And we already know it. Don’t make any plans for next spring, folks. That’s all I have to say.”
Barney looks into the sky over the open stadium, and the people who are there, live, think that his set is over, and their applause comes on like an avalanche. But the people who are sitting in their parents’ or grandparents’ dens, watching the video or broadcast for the dozenth time, know better. It’s at this point that they’re shushing the kids, closing the door to the laundry room, and the volume bars on the TV screen creep a couple of inches to the right.
“When you watch the news now,” he says, voice distant, still looking at the sky, oblivious to the applause, “they’ve got the rolling obituaries up the left side of the screen. Shit, it’s not just the news. I was watching a rerun of Croc Hunter-I’m glad Steve missed all this-and there were the rolling obits, scrolling right up from the bottom of the screen. Whose idea was that?” He looks at the audience, like maybe it was their idea. He smiles. “I didn’t get it at first. Is this how we remember people? But I finally got it.” He bites his lower lip, and pauses for as long as he had before, but nobody thinks, this time, that the act is over.
“It’s not obituaries. It’s the credits, folks. It’s the ending credits. They’re saying, ‘Thanks for attending life. We hope you enjoyed it. And these… are the people that made it possible.'” His face creases, and he sobs once into the microphone. He squats and weeps on the stage, his hair clamped in his two fists, face red and running with tears. The stadium is so quiet that you can hear him clearly without the microphone. For about thirty seconds, Wilson expresses not only his own sorrow, but the sorrow of all of his viewers. In the stadium that night, and eventually in living rooms, dens and theaters, people watch him and feel the release of his mourning.
Eventually he shakes his head, wipes his face on his shirt, and stands up, taking two deep breaths that are sharply visible in the cold air. When he turns back to the microphone, one can pick out the frame they used, blown-up, for the cover of the DVD, and eventually on shirts, posters and spray painted on buildings and sidewalks. Barney Wilson, an average looking middle-aged man, eyes puffy from tears, hair up in two clumps on the front of his head, but-so subtle it was hard to prove that it was there-the shadow of a smile.
He opens his mouth again, as if to say something, but it’s a mystery what. The cell phone or digital camera that has been recording his performance has run out of batteries, or memory, or the wrong button has been hit. A frame with Wilson’s mouth open, ready to speak, is followed only by a black screen.
Whether or not his set is complete, whether or not he is ready to finish, the video has run out, and the show is over.
TIFFANY'S MASK
The New York Times headline for January 24th read, "Mysterious Deaths Afflict the Wealthy and Famous,” and, for nearly a year, that headline would be looked back upon as a testament to our nearsightedness as a people.
Chris Baker, of the Seattle Seahawks, drove off of a bridge. Comedian Eddie Izzard slipped in the shower, striking his head on the faucet. Miley Cyrus fell down stairs. Every fatality was, at its root, unexplained. Sitting on a couch, swimming, walking, and then—and every account was virtually the same—they threw their hands up, crumpled to the floor, and never stood again. What was underreported, though, was they were all scratched.
While "Deaths Afflicting the Wealthy and Famous," was chilling, it was nothing compared to the headline three days later.
It wasn't just celebrities dying. It was everyone.
Nobody knew how it had been missed, but it had been missed. On each of those three days, more people had died, worldwide, than on any day in history. These deaths were spread across Hollywood proportionally, but a Hollywood death was never treated proportionally to a death in the working class, and the numerous high-profile deaths, while being only a small fraction of the problem, had completely eclipsed it.
Humanity had suffered a change that it would not recover from. The mysterious deaths continued, at a brisk and steady pace. There was no scientific salvation forthcoming. No miracle cure.
The population count was fast-changing, always an estimate. A steady linear dropoff, spread evenly, per capita, through all population centers. Without mercy, without fanfare, and over the space of less than ten months, the human race quietly died down like a fire untended. Practically none would live through it, but those that lived during it, within the top lobe of the hourglass, would define the species and the world's memory of it.
During its final breaths, the human race found a tranquility that it, as a whole, hadn't demonstrated for thousands of years.
Quietly, almost restfully, it returned to the soil.
Headline + 3 Weeks
John came home with a headache, and when he saw what was sitting on the counter, it got worse. The object was obviously Tiffany's. The loud, eye-jabbing pink of it was as good as a fingerprint, and that little Tommy Hilfiger logo was on everything in her bedroom.
It was a gas mask. He groaned, and left the kitchen.
Johnathan's stepfather was sitting on the couch. John had once calculated that Mike spent sixty hours a week on that couch cushion. It was shocking to ever see it empty. "'Swrong John?"
“Gas mask.”
Mike smiled. "That's Tiffany's toy. She's going to look like a recruit in Barbie's army."
John decided to grab a spot on the other couch. "Why does she waste her money?"
"It isn't any different than the purses and the shoes. Girl's just trying to fit in, same as you were at her age."
"She's a sheep. She's been watching the news."
"Maybe they know something we don't?"
John let his head fall back onto the couch cushion. "They know how to get people to watch. They were telling us a week ago that it's not airborne, and it's obviously not. What good is a gas mask if it's not airborne?"
Mike shrugged. "Better safe than sorry?”
John got back up. "I don't buy it."
At four in the afternoon, John had his car parked in front of the old theater, a bag of Taco Bell sitting shotgun. His seat back, his feet on the steering wheel, he was running out the last half-hour of his iPod's battery listening to old Nirvana. Of course, all Nirvana was old Nirvana. Once you died, you stopped producing.
He'd come to the theater thinking he might watch a movie, by himself, as a jaded twenty-year-old man may be prone to do. Looking for a spot, though, he had seen a middle-aged woman sobbing into her phone, and decided that a movie didn't sound good any more.
He had seen something similar at the hardware store. An older man, gristled and weather-beaten, crying into his phone. Twice in a week was officially too often for that kind of thing.
Elizabeth had died on Sunday. It was The Usual Prognosis. Pangala Syndrome. The Itch.
He finished the Taco Bell food, and it was already causing painful gas. Kurt Cobain had stopped singing. John put the seat back up, put the car in gear, and left the parking lot.
When he got onto the freeway, leaving the worthless old town behind for a few hours, he dialed his phone. When it touched his face, the image of the woman at the theater flashed into his mind.
Sarah answered. "Hey, John. What's up?"
"I'm on the freeway."
"Where are you going?"
He didn't answer. "Guess who got a gas mask?"
She giggled. "Of course, it was Tiffany."
"It's not that funny."
"Of course it is. Tiffany being herself? That's always funny."
"The Itch isn't airborne, right? So what's a gas mask for? It's stupid."
"Hey, know what?"
John waited a while, wondering if she would continue without prompting. "What is it?"
"It's not catching."
Completely unexpected, a little firework went off in John's chest. It felt like hope. "It's stopped?"
"No, no. That's not what I mean. They were saying on the news, people aren't even catching it from each other. Not in the air, or in blood, or anything."
"Then how are they catching it?"
"They're not. The scientists are saying that it's not technically an infectious disease. It didn't start somewhere and spread. It just... I mean, tribes in the Congo, or whatever, they got hit. On the same day as everyplace else. People as remote as anything." She was talking at the same speed that John was driving.
"So it's more like... cancer?"
"Yeah. No. It's not like anything."
"I guess not."
"Isn't that weird?"
He kept driving, losing himself quickly in thought. His mouth was shut, teeth together, his body making the decision not to speak. Sarah eventually spoke again, confirming that the phone, its battery indicator flashing, had not gone dead. "Are you okay?"
"Elizabeth died." The words came out flat.
"Oh," she said, slow, like a slashed tire. "God. Goddamn, John, was it the... of course. Jesus." A moment passed. "Do you want to come over? Do you want to talk?" Sarah's boyfriend had died three weeks past.
"We're talking, right?"
"Fuck, John..."
"Hey, I gotta go. I'll see you around."
"John, hey..."
"Bye, Sar."
Week 5
John was staring at the ceiling. He was waiting for one of two things. Waiting was so hard during the day. He had to go to work, had to stay occupied, and it was all distracting enough to be annoying. Life itself had become the mosquito buzzing by his ear, distracting him from the waiting.