much to bare. I have found the small Planned Parenthood in Warren. There are four cars in the parking lot and someone had set the GM Tech Center across the street on fire a few days ago. Even now it smolders obnoxiously, releasing random plumes of smoke and crackles that have the hair on my neck standing. Everything around me points to signs that people are actively moving in the area. It has the looks of a stopping point on a mass exodus. I haven’t felt safe since the moment I stepped into Warren. I try the doors, but nothing will budge. I feel weaker with each passing hour. I need to stop. I need to take some time to rest and clean up this gash on my face. Grabbing my toolkit, I hurl it at the large central window in the side door. It smacks against the window, instantly forming a spiderweb of fractures. I stand motionless, paralyzed with fear, listening to the echo of the crash moving across the empty streets and parking lots. I listen, waiting for any signs that there are others near. The breath in my lungs grows stale and fights for release.
When there are no signs or sounds of activity, I pick up the toolkit again and hurl it at the window again. The fractures multiply, but still the window doesn’t burst. For a third time, I pick up the kit and hurl it with all my strength. It slams into the window and rattles loose out half a dozen tiny pieces of glass. I drop to my knees in the grassless lawn and stare at the window, my chest heaving as I try to catch my ragged breath. Behind the Planned Parenthood sits the back of the Tech Plaza Shopping Center. I look at the long building and wonder if anyone has set up camp inside of those shops and tiny stores. They are prime looting locations. It is strange that this has become my life. Instead of businesses, I now see treasure chests ripe for the plundering. Down the road running along the Planned Parenthood is a street of burned out houses. They have been long abandoned. Dead trees line the streets like skeletal fingers reaching up from the grave.
I take a drink of water and rise with one last determined chance. Scooping up the toolkit, I hurl it with my last vestiges of strength and watch the door’s window shatter in a waterfall of glass. I step through the glass and look at the forgotten counters. Most of the doors inside are locked, but I find a mirror and I currently have enough water to clean the gash on my cheek. Locating a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in one of the cabinets, I meticulously clean the wound with my teeth grinding against each other, biting back the pain and the urge to scream. How did this never become something I could take? I wince as much now as I did when I was a little boy. I endure the pain, cleaning until I am sufficiently pleased and quickly wrap a scavenged bandage over my cheek. I know that I should sew it up, but that isn’t something I think I can physically do. I decided to break into the next grocery store or gas station I come across. I will search for super glue. That will do the trick. I stuff more gauze and bandages in my pack, along with the peroxide, before I roll out my sleeping bag behind the counter. There is enough room under the counter to curl up and spend the night hidden, even if someone decides to randomly break into a Planned Parenthood for some reason. I wonder if this plague is the world’s attempt to abort us—its unwanted children. The irony is both amusing and sickening.
Sometime after midnight, I open my eyes to the sensation of my stomach sending rippling pains of hunger shooting through my body. I quickly realize that my meager meal earlier has worn thin and that it is time to start hunting for food again. I check my watch and upon realizing the hour, I quickly question whether it would be smarter to tough it out until dawn or take the risk and make a nocturnal move. I lie on my sleeping bag for a few minutes, listening to my rumbling stomach and trying to weather the small cramps before making a judgment. I