Playlist for the Apocalypse

Preface: The End of the World

It's impossible to know where, when or why it all went wrong. The sad thing is I don't think anyone was really all that shocked when the world ended (I know I wasn't). We always thought it might happen, and then one day it just did. One day things were the same as they'd always been and the next there were the zombies.—Of course, the Politically Correct term for them is the Soulless (for those long afflicted) or Lost Souls (for the newly infected)— However when seemingly overnight half the population woke up in a sluggish state where they no longer slept, ate, felt or acted with any direction or purpose whatsoever, "zombie" seemed like a pretty appropriate term... especially when we learned they had developed a nasty habit of attacking anyone that came into range... yeah that was a very upsetting development for everyone... well maybe not everyone... the soulless were beyond feeling upset about anything anymore by that point.

So, people did what people do best, we brought out our guns and our missiles and searched for someone to blame. When we noticed that zombies had an affinity for scrolling the internet for hours on end, we blew up the satellites and tore down the cell towers. Yeah... in hindsight, not such a bright idea... not only did that not stop the apocalypse but that effectively ended the digital era and sent us into a new dark age. (Good job, humanity, you've done it again.)

By the time we realized that these new Soulless individuals were triggered by witnessing human emotion, 95% of the world's population had already been wiped out... I'm sure there's some fancy biological reason for their interest but all I know is ... the world as we knew it is gone forever.

– Jonathan Johnson (Radio Broadcast)

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EVELYN

The end of the world started for Evelyn Li when the lights went out. She'd been in General Biology when it happened. Panic had flooded the aisles as every laptop and cellphone blinked out and the lecture hall plunged into darkness and confusion. She'd hear rumors later about the EMP blasts that had knocked out digital and cell signals around the globe and the bombs that leveled city blocks and destroyed major power grids. Two years after the incident, those in the bunker would call it the "Blackout". Her brother had been texting her something silly on their family group chat. A movie trailer, a meme, or some other thing. It seemed so insignificant now. She remembered she'd been annoyed because she was in class and sent back a message to tell him just as much but then everything had gone dark. Looking back, she wished she'd said something else because that had been her last words with her family. What started as panic quickly dissolved into downright terror as the infected emerged from among the crowd of university students. Even at that point, Evelyn had heard about Sigma, a variant of the infectious disease from a distant continent that had been spreading at an alarming pace. Along with the recent uptick in random acts of atrocious physical violence, the news mentioned it at least twice every night. But before that day, it had all felt so far away from Evelyn's life of struggling to stay afloat of readings, papers, mid-terms, and finals but as the lecture hall transformed into a battleground of pure chaos, it was all too real. She always imagined fear would be like a wildfire, suffocating and intense leaving one drenched in sweat and with a hammering heart. Instead, she learned that real fear was cold, an icy paralysis where everything was numb. She'd frozen and, in the commotion, she could barely remember being ushered down into the caverns of Simon Fraser University's depths. She'd never been thankful before that her university was built like a concrete fortress, but it was what kept her alive.