“Oooh,” he said, interest peaked, looking around. “Was she cute? Where’d she go? Did she prefer soup over sandwiches?”
“I don’t know.”
“Forget it,” he said. “How’s the soup holding out?”
“Running low,” I said. “People just keep coming.”
“We’ve got sandwiches now,” he said, shoving a tray at me. “Start giving these out instead.”
“FYI,” I said. “I don’t want to do this forever. I was just trying to prove a point, so if you want to hire someone else—”
He looked out and surveyed the crowd, shaking his head. “Never thought I’d say this, but I miss the days of managing a Verizon store.” He turned to me. “I don’t give praise generously,” he said. “But it looks like you’re doing a good job. So you can have this job as long as you want.”
“Aww,” I said. “That’s first positive comment I’ve heard about my job performance in three years.”
He shrugged and walked away. I took a sandwich and dropped it into the bowl of the next person who was a guy who stared into space.
“What the hell is this?” he asked, coming to.
“It’s a sandwich,” I said.
“You put it in a soup bowl,” he said. “I was expecting soup.”
“We’re out of soup.”
“Is this bread gluten free, at least?”
The woman behind him took notice. “What kind of meat is on it?” she asked. “Because I’ve been trying to go back to my organic, non-hormone diet.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t ask. Does it matter?”
She was horrified. “Does it matter? Does it matter?” she yelled. “Does it matter what you put in your body?”
I turned back to the man in front of me. “If you don’t want your sandwich, then someone else will.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know. Are you going to have something else later?”
“I don’t know—”
A hand reached over and started grabbing sandwiches.
“Excuse me,” I said, turning to look, only to be face-to-face with a pale Jake, who had dark circles under his eyes. “What are you doing?”
“The officials say there’s a group heading for a quarantine that’s not friendly,” he said. “I’m going to bring them this nutritious and delicious food and everything will be fine.”
“Wait—”
He took off before I could do or say anything.
The man in front of me was getting more agitated. “What are my vegetarian options?” he asked.
I saw a middle-aged woman who looked very tired try to shove past me. Instead, I handed her the platter and patted her on the shoulder.
“You just got hired,” I said, then ran in the direction I saw Jake go.
By the time I reached the back exit of the quarantine, Jake was long gone. The door swung back and forth with lazy abandon, the lock rotated wildly.
I rushed to get there, but was stopped by a guy in a full-body security suit.
“Restricted area,” he said, his voice muffled by the shielded helmet he wore. “You’ll have to turn around.”
“What?”
The guard took off his helmet, revealing a very soft face bearded man. “You can’t be here,” he said. “Turn around.
“Sir,” I said. “My friend is making a very stupid mistake and I need to stop him.”
“Like you going out there isn’t a stupid mistake,” he said. “I’m going to have to ask you to go back inside.”
“Sir—” I started.
He shook his extremely large head. “Quit undermining my authority,” he said. “Doesn’t a protective body suit and helmet give you any indication that I’m in charge and know what I’m talking about?”
“He took a plate of sandwiches,” I said. “There’s a man who’s going to die on your watch.”
“There were sandwiches?” he asked incredulously. “Come on!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just over there—”
“I was waiting out the soup too,” he said. “Just my luck.”
I made another motion to go out the door, but he held me back with his hand. “That’s no reason to risk your life out there. You don’t know what’s out there.”
“He thinks everyone can be cured!” I said. “He needs to know he’s wrong!”
He tilted his head. “Sounds like there’s more of a personal problem here.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” I said. “And none of your business.”
He folded his thick arms. “Who’d he dump you for?”
I was speechless. “Sir,” I said. “That has nothing to do with anything.”
“Cry about it to the Twitter Board,” he said, steering me in its direction. The alarm bells sounded and the lights went down. His grip on me tightened. “We got to bunker down. The hordes are coming.”
People started to panic and rush in chaos, and the guard pushed me toward the crowd, which was terrifying. I tried to gain my footing, but the power of the group was too strong.
There was a low rumble that gained momentum. The hordes were on top the quarantine, banging away at its foundation, trying to break into its metal shell. A woman’s scream came from one corner of the room.
“Jake!” Destiny cried, frantically pushing through the crowd. “He didn’t come back! He didn’t come back!”
The banging was even louder, and I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard the sound of a man’s scream come out of their destruction. I stopped trying to fight against the crowd and let the flow carry me to the side of the room where I tightly gripped a pole and closed my eyes.
It wasn’t long before the tent walls were broken and a van drove through the barriers. Six hooded gang members jumped out and laid waste to everything in what was once our sanctuary. They set fires and set off gunshots while people screamed and hid behind anything they could. I ducked behind a pile of blankets and bags, then covered my head with my hands. I opened my eyes and peeked out long enough to see Jake’s head affixed to the horse of one of the riders. It was soaked in blood, the eyes rolled far deep back, but it was unmistakably him, down to the sad, weary look on his face. The rider threw a sandwich into one of the pipes and laughed.
I had never seen anything so gruesome, and I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the image would leave my brain forever.
“Attention, maggots!” one of them yelled with a female’s voice. “We are here on a divine mission from our leader. We are here to take more of your delicious sandwiches and draw your blood until he is happy.”
People shrieked as I let myself fall from the pole and slumped down, not sure what I had seen. When they were done, they drove off, breaking through the barriers on the other side and into the night. The tent collapsed on us like a dying dream.
In the aftermath, I couldn’t tell you a lot of what happened. I think maybe a day had gone by that I spent huddled in yet another corner, watching people clean up the mess that was left behind. I watched them try to put up the tent again, but I noticed the mood of the place had changed. People weren’t looking at me the same. Before it was just apathetic unrecognition and now there was a sort of layer of hatred I was working through.
It didn’t make any sense, but that was before I caught sight of the Twitter board. It seemed I was blowing up. Every card on there was about me and they were all mean. So incredibly mean.
“Real nice, guys!” I said loudly after taking it all in. “We got slaughtered and this is what we’re worried about?” I took one card off the board. “I do not have eyes close together,” I shouted after reading them. “And we all smell the same around here.” I grabbed another. “Hashtag Sandwich Whore? Real clever and mature, people. Also makes a whole lot of sense.”
I crumpled it up and threw it to the ground. I felt like I was being stared at, so I looked up and saw Destiny with a death glower. She was pale and had murder in her eyes.