How the World Ends Read Online Free

tension in the streets around me. Even though I have walked this route so many times before, its familiarity is stripped from me by the circumstances and the strange weather and its stranger connection to me.
    The traffic has halted to a snarl, and people have begun to exit their office buildings in a mass departure. Horns are blaring and many voices are yelling or calling out to each other in anger.
    As I hurry towards the train station I look behind me at the rooftop of the old brick building, where I have just been. Gabe is gone, just like Michael this morning. Heavy drops of rain begin to hit my upturned face.
    Have to hurry.
    Again, I am running. My legs now somewhat tired from all this exertion that I am not used to. The motor traffic in the streets is completely jammed, and even the sidewalks have begun to fill in with unusual crowds. Everywhere there are worried faces, groups of colleagues with heads leaned together in concealed conversation, planning their next move, trying to stay dry under a shared umbrella.
    The rain is my friend in my race against time. Checking the time on my cellphone, I see that the train departs in six minutes. I can still make it – probably with lots of time, assuming that the trains tend to run late when there are big crowds and bad weather.
    I take to the streets – the cars are no real danger – and I just ignore blare of angry horns behind me as I twist and turn along the lanes of traffic to cross street after street towards the station. I am completely drenched, but that, combined with my growing adrenaline-fed panic, only invigorates me.
    Once I arrive, I find the station concourse crowded to capacity. All the doorways into the building are jammed with people, but I know of a way onto the back of the track platforms that most people are not familiar with. I run as fast I can towards that. I feel that I am streak of movement in the storm – a blur unnoticed by the naked eye. The crowds are a blur to me, too, as I run past them.
    The doors to the rear platform are partially hidden by a dip in the road under a bridge over which the station platforms are located. Not as many people take that route, especially in bad weather, because it doesn’t link up directly with the subways or the underground walkways. It is fairly crowded now, but not so much that I can’t get through the doors, up the stairs and onto platform without any trouble.
    The train has not yet arrived, so I stand on the platform, packed with bodies, where I know a set of doors on the last car of the train normally stop.
    I try Rachel on the cellphone again: I still can’t get a signal. I re-dial a few more times and eventually manage to get a ring. Once, twice, three times. Five rings. Ten rings. “ The customer you are calling is not responding . Please try again.” Click.
    I begin to wonder, for the first time, what has really transpired this morning.
    I have met Michael, lost my job, taken Michael’s advice and gone to the church, which has somehow changed into another building, seen Gabe calling out from the roof, gone up there and been told to go home, and come back tomorrow. “ Look to your family’s safety,” he told me. He’d looked about ten years old, but sounded more like Michael, who looked about sixty.
    You’re losing it, Jonah. I think in my head. Totally wacko today, man.
    And then the call to Rachel with the strange news that the gasoline had been rationed; what did that mean?
    And had the church really been gone? Maybe it was a different street, and I had gotten turned around in the fog and mist?
    The train arrives on time a few minutes late. We all cram ourselves in, with only a little more overt pushing and shoving than normal. The amount of underhanded abuse that a person will deliver to another on a train has always amused and disturbed me. After so many years of it, I find myself noticing it only when it has increased to the point of real annoyance by a delay or, as in this case, shocking