I heard planes flying overhead yesterday. Sailing right over my head, flying at cruising altitude. Could you believe it? Planes. I yelled and waved my hands and spraypainted my roof red, telling them there was someone alive, someone's out here and someone has to know. My heart sailed. Raised right out of my chest. Raptured, even. So I went to the airport. If there's flights, there has to be places the flights are taking off from. I'm writing this from the backseat of my car in an air field. You know there's really nobody around when you can drive right on an Air Force base and sleep in the middle of their runways. At least it'll get someone's attention if they're still alive.

The first airport I searched, I found the flights, but no people. Bags still half loaded and unloaded. People's backpacks sitting around, like they'd gone to the bathroom and trusted unseen family members to look after them. Computers were still on, awaiting input, blinking terminals full of data ready for picking. My bag went off while walking through TSA. I thought it was kind of courteous to do that; maybe the cameras are on, and after, I'll get prosecuted for trespassing when they come back. I figured it's the least I could do to maintain some civility.

The stores are museums now. Iced coffee orders leave puddles of water on to-go counters. Hot breakfasts turn cold and sour under the fluorescent light of 24/7 cafes. Ovens beep, safety mechanisms preventing them from burning up the entire place lest some poor employee fall asleep on the job. I'm standing staring at exhibitions of our movement, entirely still. Pictures I can walk through. I'm not even really sure I can eat the food. How long will all of it be good for? How long will all of this last? I look for the placards and there's none there. There should be plaques, maybe, in front of each coffee shop and restaurant, describing what these things did and who they were for; what they were supposed to taste like, who made them, how to operate them. Plastic knobs and buttons and levers to simulate making a plastic cup of coffee in a plastic cup, like those toy kitchens moms buy kids. If you think about it, all airports are stuck in 2000, before everything went to shit. There are still vending machines from our time, a touch of modernity, but the entire airport process is almost endearingly slow; inefficient. I poured myself a beer from behind the counter and left $10, just in case.

I should've maybe slept in the airport, but I don't want to drive back now. Actually, now that I think about it, it would have been awful to sleep there. The lights were always on. The air conditioning was still running. No announcements. No sounds. Airplanes, taxing onto the runway. Airplanes, loaded and unloaded. Boeing, Comacs… I’m not a plane guy.

… I tried to be one, one day. Because the area I used to live in is tiny, the big guys at the top would hook our recruiters up with sweet deals, because we were too poor to say no to free college and room and board. He took me to a museum, and at the museum they had a flight simulator, and he told me to climb in and he’d fly. We went up in the air, or it felt like it, at least. I couldn’t tell the difference between simulation and reality, and if I could at some point, I had long passed it. At some point, I started screaming. I was truly weightless, and something about it terrified me. Every time I think about it, I want to enjoy it, but I know I wouldn’t. I think about flying almost all of the time, when I’m not thinking about something else. It’s a low buzz in my head, bothering me, and I swear I’m back, hearing myself scream. I’d like to think, if given the opportunity now, 10 years later, I would’ve taken advantage of it and maybe had a nice fun time and enjoyed myself. I know that’s impossible. I’m fucking terrified of heights.

My working theory right now is that the planes up in the air were already flying on autopilot. I looked up a couple of articles about it. The pilots just let the machine do everything for them, and sit back and eat their lobster dinner or something. Maybe fish, like that one movie, Airplane. Wasn't the fish what was making everyone sick? I don't really remember, but I thought that was a great movie. So, anyway, when the people disappeared, the planes just kept flying. They'll come down once they're out of fuel, but for now, they haven't hit that mark. In a couple days, they'll probably drop right out of the sky. Flaming comets streaking towards Earth, holding everyone's suitcases and passports, holding their shitty powder airplane food. Hurtling towards the surface of the Earth, completely ignorant there's a ground below it that doesn't offer the mercy of catching it. For a moment, the grass cradles the industrial sheet metal, each screw and bolt that holds the plane together rattling perfectly together in harmony. And then, the thing turns into a crumpled tin foil ball and disappears below the surface of the Earth, rotting and returning to nothing.

That's not really a comforting thought. I kind of like everything as it is now. I hope the planes don't hit my house, because I put too much work into preparing it as it is. I need my bathtubs of drinking water to remain relatively unblemished in case the water supply goes out. After, I should look into relocating near a lake.

There's no animals, either. Or, at least, I don't deliberately seek them out, so I haven't seen one. Not really a big fauna person. I wonder if there's insects. I haven't had to slap any mosquitoes away. If there's no animals, there's probably no insects. Does the apocalypse care much about our taxonomy? Our petty differences? What's the difference between a bug and a bird? Between a worm and us? Probably nothing.

I saw a bee on my door, nevermind. There's insects. Okay. Goodnight.