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It had taken less than a day after the news broke for Andy to decide that if he had any say in the matter, he was going to die drunk.
It was easy enough in theory; while other people were running around in the city trying to stock up on supplies or escape to wherever they thought they would be safe, he would stay locked up in the house and consult the great prophet known as Jack Daniels for tips on coming to terms with his own mortality. Maybe if he felt up to it, he'd see what Jose Cuervo had to say on the matter as well. And hey, if you could achieve a blackout strong enough to keep you from knowing that you were getting nuked (Or bio-weapon'ed, as he'd last heard on the news before he stopped paying attention. There were only so many ways you could dress up your own doom before it stopped meaning anything.) then at least you could die with the satisfaction that you successfully went on the most epic bender of all time.
And as far as Andy knew when the day finally did come, it worked. He didn't feel a thing.
Until he woke up.
---
It took a few minutes to realize that he was, in fact, awake. It took a bit longer to get his eyes to properly focus and longer than that to identify what he was looking at as the pattern of his couch. It had been overturned, apparently with him on it since he was now stuck on the floor underneath. Had he been on the couch when he blacked out? He couldn't remember.
He didn't push the couch off of himself so much as slowly drag out from underneath it, because the world's most epic bender had left him with an equally-proportioned hangover. Or maybe he was getting a cold or something; he didn't usually feel this weak. Standing up took a ridiculous amount of effort, even when using the upended couch as support. A quick survey of the room confirmed shattered windows and more overturned furniture. Looters. Evidently one of the downsides of the world's most epic bender was that it also left you unaware that you and your furniture were being unceremoniously dumped on the floor while people raided your house.
Andy stumbled to the kitchen. When he was good and alert and less hungover, he was sure that he'd be pretty upset about his stuff getting stolen, but right now he was just hoping that they had at least left him some bottled water and painkillers.
He at least managed to locate the water and sipped slowly, leaning heavily on the kitchen counter. Everything perishable had been left behind, if the smell from the fridge was any indication. Just how long had he been out, anyway? It was starting to seem like days had passed. He had no way of checking because the looters had oh-so-thoughtfully lifted his cell phone along with just about everything else that wasn't nailed down.
And he was hungry as hell.
---
The front door of Andy's house was standing wide open, which really just served to irritate him over the fact that whoever had broken in had broken more than one window. And it looked like someone had siphoned all the gas out of his car. The windshield and all of the windows had been smashed out as well, and Andy's CD's were littered in the driveway, presumably just to add insult to injury. He grumbled and gathered them up, checking to see if any were broken. One of the cases was cracked, like someone had stepped on it, but the disc inside was unharmed. Andy grimaced and deposited them all in the driver's seat to do something with later.
The walk to the nearest supermarket was long to begin with, and the uncomfortable silence outside and the sun beating down on him made it feel about ten times longer. Los Angeles was a noisy city; having it so quiet felt weird and wrong. Occasionally, he heard noises in the distance, or thought he did, but he could never clearly make them out. It stank too, like garbage that had been left out in the sun. Andy told himself that it was the smell of garbage, at least. Until he saw evidence to the contrary, he was going to continue telling himself that. His stomach growled occasionally, in spite of the smell.
The supermarket was as deserted as the streets had been, and smelled far worse thanks to the rotting remains of the frozen meat section. Andy tucked his face into the crook of his arm whenever he passed by it in his search for whatever canned food remained, but he still nearly retched a few times. The sooner he gathered up what he could and got out of here, the better; nausea aside, he was only getting hungrier. His final results were just a few cans of soup and ravioli and a case of some off-brand soda, but he'd have eaten just about anything by that point. He ended up taking the shopping cart home because why not.
---
The sun was starting to set by the time Andy got back home - how late in the day had he woken up? As he'd more or less expected, there was no electricity in the house, so he had to pry one of the cans of ravioli open with a kitchen knife and haphazardly heat the bowl he poured it into over his lighter. He lit a few candles and a cigarette while he was at it, watching the thin trails of smoke mingle as they drifted up towards the ceiling. The rush of nicotine made him feel a little better but couldn't eclipse the lingering headache from his hangover and the churning of his stomach. When he judged that the food was adequately heated - and really, at this point he didn't much care if it was cold - he wolfed it straight down.
And not even a full minute later, because apparently the universe wasn't quite through with kicking him around, his stomach rebelled and he had to rush to the trash can to throw it all back up. He stumbled around with one of the candles to find a towel to wipe his face with, and then sat down heavily at the kitchen table again. The ravioli must have been expired, he decided. It was too dark now to check the dates on the other cans, and he didn't really feel like trying to open one in the dark for a trial-and-error test of what was safe to eat. Andy eventually just trudged off to his bedroom, kicking debris out of the way and tumbling into bed. Much better than sleeping on the floor, even if he was going to bed hungry.
He woke again sometime in the middle of the night to a gnawing feeling in his stomach. He groaned, and then nearly pissed himself when there was an answering groan from the street outside, followed by what sounded like approaching footsteps. There wasn't anything nearby that he could grab to defend himself - good old looters had taken his bedside lamp - so he just huddled under the sheets more and prepared to kick out at anyone (or anything) who tried to come in.
The footsteps continued closer, before stopping at what sounded like the ground right underneath the window. Andy held his breath and willed his stomach to stop making noise. After what felt like an eternity, the footsteps started again, this time heading away from the house. Andy let out a slow breath and wrapped the sheets tighter around himself.
When he got up the next morning, he made sure to keep the kitchen knife close at hand.
---
None of the other cans of food that he'd picked up were a success. None of them appeared to be too far past their expiration date - assuming that he'd been unconscious for a few days at the most, most of them were still in-date. Even so, he couldn't keep anything solid down for more than a few minutes. Maybe whatever doomsday device had been dropped on them had ruined the food. All Andy knew was that he wasn't getting any less hungry. Eventually, he worked up the motivation to go searching for a different supermarket. He'd probably gone and gotten himself sick by trying to drink himself to death and not eating properly; maybe he could find some kind of cold or flu medicine or something and something dry that he'd be able to keep down.
That walk was worse. There were clouds today, but they just served to make it humid and muggy outside, and every so often Andy came across a cloud of flies that were unreasonably interested in him the way annoying insects always were when you didn't want them. He had a headache again, this time from the heat and lack of food rather than the hangover, and the flies' buzzing certainly didn't help. The kitchen knife was tucked into his belt. There'd been no sign of whatever weirdo had been outside his window the night before, but he still felt uneasy walking around the city unarmed. He still hadn't seen anyone else; there were still the occasional signs that someone had passed through, like broken windows in shops and discarded food wrappers, but there was no way of telling how recent any of it was. Los Angeles might as well have been the world's largest ghost town from what Andy saw of it.
He found a convenience store on a street corner and ducked inside, taking a minute to lean against the counter and catch his breath. No air conditioning inside, but he was somewhat out of the heat, at least. Anything that looked the least bit appetizing to eat had been cleared out, leaving a few scattered packages of candy and chips that were probably stale. There was quite a bit of medicine left on the shelves, however, and Andy swept most of it into a plastic sack that he dug out from behind the counter. After a moment of debate, he grabbed a few bags of chips as well. Not quite Saltines, but close enough.
When he stepped back out of the store, something moved in the corner of his vision. He tried to spin to face it, reaching for his knife, but the sudden movement caused a wave of dizziness to wash over him and made gray spots pop in his vision. He stumbled, dropping to one knee and half-expecting someone or something to barrel him over while he was down. Instead, whoever or whatever it was rapidly fled in the opposite direction, leaving Andy on the sidewalk. He stayed there for a few minutes, breathing hard and waiting for his head to clear and his heart to stop pounding. It took a while; he was acutely aware that if whoever it was had been inclined towards violence, he'd have been completely vulnerable. The thought left him feeling shaken even after he managed to stand up again and start down the road.
The walk back to his house felt substantially longer, and he kept glancing back over his shoulder the entire way. Once, he thought he saw a figure in the distance, back in the direction of the convenience store. He walked a little faster the rest of the way back.
---
The chips were just as much of a failure as the soup had been. Initially, it had seemed like he'd be fine, but as soon as he started to relax his stomach began acting up again. Sometime later, probably not longer than an hour, he'd had to rush outside to throw up in the grass. Worry was beginning to nag at him, asking just how long it had been since he'd actually had anything to eat, if maybe all of the food left that he could get to was ruined, what would happen if he couldn't find anything that he could actually stomach. Starvation sounded way less fun than just dying in a drunken stupor. And assume that all of the food left in LA actually was ruined for whatever reason - what option did that leave him? Try to leave the city on foot or see if he could figure out how to hotwire a car or something? By that point he'd be lucky to have enough energy left to even try.
He was able to stomach the drinks, at least, and while the NyQuil that he downed before huddling up in his bedroom again didn't really sit well, it didn't make him throw up again. Maybe he just had some kind of bug, and it would pass. Hopefully.
He slept fitfully, waking up again in the middle of the night as if he'd heard something. He strained his ears but the sound didn't come again, if there had ever even been one in the first place. Try as he might, he couldn't get back to sleep. By the time the sun rose again, he'd started shaking.
---
The shaking continued throughout the day. It was getting harder to think clearly, between how tired he was and the now-constant hunger pains. He might have passed out at some point. It was hard to tell.
Another supermarket, or maybe the same one as the first day. More rotting meat, more hunger pains. Andy opened up the packages and cans right in the middle of the store and tried them all. Nothing worked. Everything made him sick.
Movement. Behind him. It was hard to keep a grip on the knife with how badly his hands were shaking, and part of him worried that he'd have an episode again and fall on it or something. Someone was crouched behind a shelf. Eating? Maybe being sick. Maybe all of the food in LA really was ruined, and Andy and every other poor fucker still stuck there really was going to starve.
"Hey." His own voice sounded alien to him. How long had it been since he had actually talked out loud? He swallowed thickly. "H-hey. You." He took a few shaky steps towards the shelf.
The person on the other side was most definitely eating.
Or rather, the thing on the other side was eating. The person was currently getting eaten.
Andy thought he might have blacked out then.
He must have, because when he came to he was on his hands and knees in the street, vomiting and then dry-heaving until all that came up was bile that might have been spotted with blood. He'd lost the knife somewhere. There was blood under his fingernails. Everything was silent except for a weird, shaky noise that Andy eventually realized was his own sobbing.
He was too dizzy to stand. An abandoned car sat a few feet away, doors standing open. He dragged himself to it and crawled into the back seat. He stayed there until he passed out again.
---
When he came to again, it might have been the middle of the night. He was still shaking. He curled up on his side the best he could, sniffling. Moving too much made his head spin.
He'd gone and slept through the apocalypse only to probably die from some some kind of god damned superflu or something. Fucking beautiful. If he hadn't been so hungry and miserable and still reeling from whatever it was he'd seen in the supermarket, he could have laughed.
He was sick, and apparently the only other people left alive here were also sick, and way more fucked up than he currently was. He wished he hadn't lost his knife.
His thoughts were getting more disjointed, from fear or confusion or the constantly-growing hunger or god knew what. He'd never imagined anyone could ever be this hungry without dying. Probably safe to blame that on the bio-nukes or whatever it was the news had said. The word stuck in his brain.
Bio-weapons, he thought as he slipped into blackness again. Bio-weapons.
---
Sunlight. It hurt his eyes.
Moving hurt. His head hurt. Sliding out of the car and onto the ground hurt.
His mouth and throat were bone-dry, and they hurt. His stomach hurt.
Trying to think straight hurt. The dizziness when he actually managed to stand hurt. Seeing a face with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes in the car window and dimly realizing that it was his own reflection hurt.
Bio-weapons, he thought. And then, who the hell were we at war with again?
Don't they know how much this hurts?
I'm hungry.
I'm hungry.
I'm hungry.
It hurts.
---
Supermarket. Rotting meat. Hunger pains. Some part of him, on the brink of understanding.
The person, and the thing. There's the knife, stuck in the thing's head. Good knife. Didn't let him down.
Hunger pains. It hurt.
Teeth marks on the person. Blood on the thing's mouth.
Bio-weapons.
He understood.
It hurt.
Andy laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed until he fell down and he kept laughing until he started dry-heaving again.
It was hard to pull the knife out of the thing's head with how weak and shaky he was, but he managed eventually. He didn't want to use his bare hands.
He looked at the person. Sorry, person. Blame the bio-weapons. Gnawing in his stomach.
"Bio-weapons," he said out loud, softly, almost like a prayer.
And then he ate.