Ending the Age of Aluminum

I slung the chain around my bike and locked it without looking. My eyes were glued to my phone which showed metrics of my social media. All crap. My last three posts had gone nowhere, getting just a few k views and a couple of bot responses. The “aluminum bug” was trending, but even my video commentary on that didn’t do anything much. Maybe I could do a dance parody or something.

First, mamma-to-be needed her snack. Happy wife, happy life, they tell me. As rough as this last trimester had been, happy didn’t come too often. It was worth it biking ten blocks face-first into a pounding south wind just to have a break from her groaning.

Things are gonna be even rougher once the baby comes. Sleepless nights for, what, two or three years? Four? Why did people even want to have kids? I guess ‘cause they’re cute. That kid dang better be cute. If he’s not, another missed shot at being an influencer. That’s the dream: just talk and promote all day long. No more catching the bus to heft boxes into trucks to be delivered to someone else’s door.

The bell to the gas station door dinged as I came in. I had to blink my eyes against the bright fluorescent lights. The city night outside wasn’t that dark with the streetlights and headlights and people’s phone flashlights, but it was brighter than daytime inside.

Cal was behind the counter, tapping two pens with big plastic flowers taped to them like drumsticks and bobbing along to his own beat.

“Hey, Cal! I thought Lydie was working tonight.”

“Sup, bud!” Cal called over his song. “Nah, she gone up to the mountains with her family.”

“Mountains?”

“Yeah, they spooked about the whole aluminum bug thing, so she said they were all going up to a cabin up there.”

“Must be nice.”

“Can’t imagine!”

I moved past a big pile of 24-pack beers to the grill for my queen’s craving: two sausage rolls with jalapeno nacho cheese dipping sauce. Except, she said it was the baby craving it. Whoever it was, I’m the one who had to get it.

The air at the little grill on one the side of the shop was filled with every delectable odor known to man from bubbling cheese to fried taquitos under a red hot lamp so they’d be crispy any hour of the day, not to mention fresh hotdogs turning and turning and burning to perfection. I should do a video on it.

At the little table between the grill and the soda dispensers, there was a guy in a work shirt leaning over a plate with a microwave burrito on it. He had both elbows propped, one hand holding his head and the other the burrito. He’d lift it slowly to take a bite, like it was an eighty-pound dumbbell at the gym that some dumbbell was hefting to show off. Rest of us have to work doubles while people with cabins boogie out of town.

The TV was going in the corner of the ceiling above him, talking heads about the aluminum bug. Some map of the United States above them showed a big red blotch along the southern part and a big yellow arrow pointed north. Meh.

I whipped the plastic-coated cardboard box from the rack and loaded up my lady’s delight. I wanted to grab a 72 ounce something or other, but mamma-to-be said baby didn’t like it when she drank soda, even the decaffeinated stuff, and she wasn’t going to watch me drink it without having any. Sacrifices.

Back over to the counter, where Cal was still at his drum solo. His head swirled now, throwing his long hair in a big loop that eclipsed the bold stripes on his oversized button-up uniform. He ramped it up for a crescendo on the register, and then he bowed.

“You know, we could probably do a pretty good video of—”

A loud thud interrupted me, followed by the guy who had been eating his burrito roaring, “Aw, hell!”

I looked back. The tired guy was on the floor rubbing his hip.

Cal was already around the corner of the counter, tugging on his uniform shirt to straighten out the wrinkles from drumming. “You all right, man? What happened?”

“The dang chair bent right under me!” the guy shouted. “What kind of junk is this?”

I walked back toward them. I’m not sure why. I wasn’t that curious, and there wasn’t anything I could do if he were actually hurt.

Cal slumped. “I’m gonna have to report it.” Then he looked straight at the guy. “But are you okay, man?”

The guy slowly picked himself up. “Yeah, I’m all right, maybe a bruise. I just—” He lifted up the polished metal chair, one leg leaning at a weird angle from the other three, straight as arrows. He could move the bent leg without flexing.

“This chair’s aluminum, right?” the guy asked.

We all looked up at the TV hanging on the wall.

“Evacuation is pointless,” a guy in the white coat said. “This thing is everywhere and inside everything. We might as well have people at home where they have a roof over their heads while we try to figure out how to cope with losing an entire element…”

He kept going, but I stopped listening. I’d already heard about it: some microbe that had mutated to digest aluminum at lower temperatures. They’d been blah-blah-blahing about it interrupting trade in Latin America or wherever, and weather patterns carrying who-knows-where. I didn’t care except on my reaction videos, but the bugs were here now, smaller than I could see, and all around. They’d been chowing down for hours after riding that south wind. The apocalypse had been happening all day, and I hadn’t even noticed.

The power went out with a whump. Appliances started clicking and whining. Then everything went quiet and dark. Even the emergency lighting. Worse than a blackout. Bit by bit, it was all dead.

At first, there wasn’t any difference opening or closing my eyes. Eventually my eyes adjusted.

My ears started ringing, desperate to pick up any sound. It must’ve been my own blood surging through them.

Then came a loud fwoosh!

We all jumped and huddled close together, like we were cavemen hearing a saber-tooth tiger hissing in the night.

Fwoosh! It came again.

Then another: fwoosh!

I started to smell beer, warm and hoppy. I sniffed to make sure. There it was: every aluminum can in the place getting chewed on until they popped themselves open.

“Hot dang and a kite,” Cal said, hustling back to the counter.

The guy who’d fallen dropped the chair and ran. I could hear his boots squishing through the growing puddle. Then he pushed through the doors with a loud crunch.

Doorbell didn’t ring. That made me twitch. Even with the power off, there should’ve been the safety ding. That little bit of normal life was gone, maybe for good.

I grabbed my phone from my pocket to call home. The screen wouldn’t light up. I tapped it a few times and held the buttons on the side. It was dead. Some little part I didn’t even know existed had been chewed through by the little bugs.

Mamma-to-be was home alone. I had to get back. I ran to the counter to grab my box and looked up at Cal trying to decide how to check out.

He shrugged and slapped the dark register. “Yo, bud, take it. Thing’s a paperweight now!”

I nodded. I wanted to say something else, but there weren’t any words, so I just body-checked my way through the doors.

It was louder outside with the wind blowing in my ears, but not city sounds. Most of the traffic noise had died down. I heard people yelling but not what they yelled.

The streetlights and headlights were mostly gone, leaving only a bit of the moon that peeked around the clouds.

The guy who had fallen was in a truck in the parking lot, hitting his hand against the steering wheel. His other arm twisted, probably trying to start the thing, but it was dead.

Several cars sat dead in the street, too. A few people were wandering around, not sure where to go. Others sat frozen in their cars, like someone was going to come rescue them. There were a few cars still moving, all going around the ones that had stopped. A few people waved at them, trying to get them to pull over, but they kept going. While I watched, one went dark and rolled to a stop. The guy inside just laid down on the dash.

On my bike, the chain sagged under its own weight. I didn’t have to unlock it. The metal pulled loose in my hand. As soon as I sat on the seat, the aluminum frame beneath folded like it was made out of cooked pasta.

“Crud,” I mumbled at it.

It’d taken me fifteen minutes to bike down here in the wind. I’d be lucky to make it back in an hour.

Back to what? I wondered. A dark apartment, everything with the least bit of aluminum in it now a broken piece of junk, and a pregnant girl probably going out of her mind.

It felt like a switch flipped in my brain. She needs me. She was going to need me more now than ever before. It was like I could see her face in front of my eyes, crying, calling out for me.

I threw my U-shaped bike away and ran back into the gas station.

Cal was leaning against the checkout counter, sucking on a vape that wouldn’t blow. “Sorry, we’re closed—what’re you doing back?”

“You still got those canvas bags?”

Cal pointed behind me.

I grabbed two. Then I went down the medicine aisle, grabbing cardboard boxes and plastic bottles. I didn’t know what a newborn and a momma needed, but I knew we were up a creek, and I was grasping for any paddle I could find. We’d read the labels later.

“Yo, you looting?” Cal called.

“Nah, I’m surviving!” I shouted back. “You need to write me a receipt for all this, every single thing, and I’ll pay you back whenever the card reader’s working again!”

Cal snorted. “Yeah, like it’ll ever…” Then he leaned back and laughed hard. “Sure, man, you got it!”

While he pulled out a long roll of paper and started doodling with a pen, I grabbed two plastic coolers with wheels on them and loaded up all the bottled water I could find. Then boxes of crackers, candy, jerky, everything. I tossed my dead phone from my pocket to make room for another package of mini-donuts. A cooler handle in each hand, bags over my shoulders, I lumbered back to the doors.

Cal held out a piece of paper to me with a big, goofy grin.

“And here is your copy of the receipt, sir,” he said in a posh accent. “Have a good night!”

I laughed and took the paper and tucked it into my shirt pocket with the donuts, adding a box of wooden matches I’d grabbed. The metal heads on the plastic Bic lighters were already leaking.

“Good luck, man,” Cal said, his voice low. “No, yeah, seriously, take care of yourself.”

“You, too,” I told him. We prayed together, silently.

Then I headed out into the wind, pushing at my back as I marched with supplies toward home. Suddenly I was my great-grandfather hauling provisions from the general store. Except I had mamma-to-be’s sausage rolls, too, wedged in between water bottles and boxes of crackers.

I should’ve grabbed some bacon so I could say I brought home the bacon. She probably could use the laugh. We all would.