‘A Kinder World Awaits Us’: A Story of Pandemic and Apocalypse

A meaty story for a good cause.

The following story, ‘A Kinder World Awaits Us,’ is one of 20 stories from ‘LOCKDOWN: Stories of Crime, Terror, and Hope During a Pandemic,’ a charity anthology of horror, suspense, and crime stories. Coming June 16 from Polis Books:

Under ordinary circumstances, the offseason life is the slow life, and hopefully you’ve saved up enough money from the summer to see you through seven months of long nights and quiet days. I hadn’t. An unexpected medical bill in July, plus a big-bill car repair, meant I faced a harsh winter unless Jimbo’s needed another chef to work the line — and fat chance of that, given the emptiness of its dining room after Labor Day.

So imagine my surprise when Dennis Smith, Jimbo’s owner, called me on a cold morning in early October with a fat job offer: Five hundred dollars a week to flip burgers and fry potatoes for the few year-rounders who still drifted through his dining room every night.

“If you stick around, job’s good until April,” he said. “If Larry Johnson’s healed up, I gotta let you go then, unless something opens up on the line, in which case — ”

I interrupted him. “Wait, what happened to Larry? He sick?” For the past month, the news had buzzed…