The Zombiepocalypse Was Upon Me At Penn Station
I was lucky to make it out alive.
It was early morning this past Saturday, way too early for a Saturday. The part of the morning one is normally entitled to sleep through. I was up, hat on head, bag on shoulder, waiting for my LIRR track assignment and to head east for the day. A quarter past six and I was glad to have gotten there in the first place after Friday’s steinhoist.
The fallen were all over. Straight ahead, one ravaged soul in a green buttondown lay fully on his back, arms straight back over his head, knees up. His sunglasses, with no more purpose, lay without meaning to his left. To my right, a young man with shoulder-length hair and a weak beard conserved his last scrap of energy leaning against one of the poles. His girlfriend, still reasonable, shouted unheard instructions. None of the ill could speak.
Two policemen were there. They raised, or roused, these afflicted, but only temporarily. A sharp smack on the knee from a cop got them to their feet, but only long enough to shuffle away to find some other resting place, out of eyesight.
A pair of Asian youths ushered each other by. One was laughing like a salesman, insane without instant cure from the effects of the evening.
These poor creatures were doomed to stumble around this Purgatory, deprived of their only necessity, sleep.
I, on the other hand, having rested, needed no more than a donut to pass the short time before my train arrived.
I walked over to the concourse – succeeding in not tripping over anyone – to the Dunkin’ Donuts where I’d picked up many cups of coffee and tea and pairs of donuts over the last decade.
A giant piece of paper failed to completely cover the abscess.
It was no more. The cases, the machinery, the counter. The sign. All gone, leaving only the dark residue of their memory caked into the grout.
The Starbucks several doors down was still there. May or may not have been open. Didn’t check. Mouth too agape at the vacancy before me.
It made no sense that they’d take out a brilliant little store, a half-store sharing a bedroom with its sibling. I felt the pang of loss. I was no longer a mainstay at any DD franchise but the Penn Station outpost was always ideal for getting me through the next hour plus until I got wherever I was going, which hopefully, invariably had a stockpile of better, heartier food.
I wondered all day, not upset but curious. What had happened? I planned to be at that concourse again, eventually, and would get my answer when I got it.
Monday morning, I got it.
I could only presume that the truth lay in the latest charge of the Canadian invasion. Tim Horton’s:
