The Day the Birds Left

      I was only thirty minutes into Philosophy of Human Rights when my Wifi cut off. I'm stammering and running to the modem for a hard reset, when I could hear the waking moments of my Dad groaning in the other room.

           "Goddamn piece of shit! Piece of crap! Never wants to work!"

           He barged into my room. "Eddy?! Where are you?! Eddy!"

           "I'm here." I said walking from the living room. I rolled my eyes before he shoved his phone into my face.

            "Can you fix it?"

           "Fix what?"

           "It's broken!"

           "It's not broken", I said. "The systems just down."

           He shrugged and made his way to the bathroom while I tried to figure out what was going on with our network. "Eddy, I need to -" He paused and managed a quick stutter of farts while he pissed in the toilet bowl. "I need to call the sous-chef about my work schedule today."

           "Ok, fine. Can you close the door though?" I said waving away the fart smell.

           Sometimes I felt like a victim being this man's son. It was generous to call him brutish, he was a man who got by in life stagnant in his thinking.

           I headed back into my room to test the internet again, but was left disappointed.

           There was indeed an internet outage, and the phone reception was also down.

           The modem lights had been blinking an ominous red light. My introduction to Aristotle would have to wait, my teacher would understand.

           My dad continued on pestering every other minute until I turned on the TV.

           I expected a talking head, but instead there was an emergency broadcast message set in front of a blue plain canvas. The words on screen moved so quickly, I was only able to read a few before it turned into static noise.

           What I conveyed from it was that there was a city-wide outage. No clue what caused it.

           "What's that god awful sound!" my Dad yelled.

           I was happy to see he had finally put on pants to begin his day.

           He tossed me the key to the family car and advised me to put shoes on.

           "Hurry, we're going to find out what's going on."

           "You're kidding? You think we can do something?"

           "No, I just want to see what's going on" he said in his grumbling old-man voice.    "What do you mean?"

           "Something's up, I can smell it."

           "You sure it's not your body odor, Dad?"

           He waited out in the front of the house for me. He usually has a comeback for that one. I locked up and headed over.

           "Look, I heard plenty of cars passing by, almost 70 miles per hour down the residential streets. The fucking punks aren't even afraid of getting a ticket."

           "You don't think it's some idiot who crashed into the utility poles somewhere?"

           "Bullshit. Doesn't explain the whole city going bad."

           We got in the car and I groaned.

            Paranoia was one of my Dads many unappealing personality traits.

           "Eddy." he said sternly.

           I sighed and turned to him.

           "Put your seatbelt on." he said with his focused to our surroundings.

           We drove outside of our neighborhood passing by a couple of neighbors that I had never seen before; they were mingling with one another.

           We drove a few miles out just scoping around the city per my Dads suggestion. There was a noticeable congestion on every street, especially towards the local grocery stores, gas stations and hardware stores.

           "Pull over."

            My dad wanted to get supplies. With his paranoid berating in the vehicle, he demanded we stock up on water and food before anyone else did.

           "What the hell are you on about, old man?"

           I waited for him in the car when he ran in, hauling a loaded cart full of bags of essentials, canned food and water bottles like those desperate over-consumers you read about during the pandemic. He packed things we didn't need in abundance.

           While I helped him place it all into the trunk, I had been ready to snap at him. But the look on his face stopped me. It was a look so serious, it was almost concerning.

           I sighed. "You okay? Can we go home now, Pop?"

           "Eddy. Look." he said.

           He pointed to a woman wearing a white robe. She headed from the direction of a tall extravagant building with a golden cross positioned overhead. I felt like I was getting to know bits of the city hidden amongst the few buildings, I usually traversed.

           I realized I had never really paid attention to those non-essential buildings until I wandered with my Dad. It was a strange seeing a new city within the existing one.

           We followed the woman driving slowly in the car to see where she rushed to. She was met with a few more people congregating in an empty parking lot. Someone in a suit had been standing on the roof of a limousine ranting into a loudspeaker.

           "That's a 1961 Cadillac Fleetwood limousine" Dad mumbled.

           "What? How do you know something so specific?"

           "It's what the Governor of California drives, fuck-nuts. Don't you watch the news at all? You really ought to be concerned about what's going on in your state, son."

           "You think knowing what some corporate puppet drives is something important? You know the news outlets are just a perpetual cycle of wealthy corporations profiting and manipulating on the fear of the people?"

           A couple of security officers were surrounding him.

            They all had dark sunglasses and earpieces, while he wore a brown coat over his suit.

            "Beloved people of Mountain View, let us not forget the holy Yoke of Jesus is in the strength of our community. And this is why we must more than ever stick together in these dire times."

           "What the hell is this shit"?

           One of them darted their eyes at me after I said that.

           "None-Believer!" she screeched. "We have a None-Believer here in our presence, people! He distrusts the word of the all-father. Look at him, all smug!"

           My dad quickly grabbed my arm and rushed me back to where we sloppily parked the car. "Just go."

           "What just happened."     

           "These people are bat-shit crazy." he whispered. "Keep walking."

           We got inside while a few more people in robes followed us, some of them passive-aggressively tapping our shoulders so we can turn around and hear them out.

           We quickly entered in and locked the door.

           "Hit the gas!" Dad demanded.

           I swerved and almost hit the side of a metal gate.

           "Watch it!"

           "Sorry!"

            When we were far enough from those strange people, he asked me to find a gas station. It was hard to focus as I was trying to understand who they were, and why they acted that way. They were a very aggressive community of people.

           The gas station was surprisingly full.

           There were people out of their cars arguing about who came to which pump first. Some of the commotions turned violent when some guy pulled out a torque wrench from his trunk and started banging it on the rear side of another vehicle.

           A woman drove erratically and almost hit someone trying to reverse into a pump.

           "It's too late" Dad said.

           "I don't know what the hell is going on with these people, why are they all going insane? All for what? The internet? The Phone lines?"

           "Eddy. It's bigger than that. This is the first day of Armageddon."

           "This isn't those shitty Nineties films, Dad."

           "I could see it. There's a cycle in the news, son. Something is happening in the world, tensions are boiling up. Seriously, kid you really ought to tune in more to the important shit on the news, not just your stupid Tube prank channels."

           "Ok, so what do we do now?"

           "We should probably get home right away, unless we want them to start looting. The most important thing is to be home now, it's where your Mother and sisters will be looking for us. "Look." Dad pointed to the sky above.

           "Look, even the animals know something's wrong. There are birds flying East."

           "You think some big Earthquake is going to happen?"

           "No it's a migration thing."

           His jaw dropped when he spotted the black birds had all turned right in an exact synchronization. Then he started to notice them. Their movements were alike, from every infinitesimal detail, they were all alike.

           "Those aren't birds..." He said. His mouth was left agape.

            I could feel the chill in his tone as Dad watched the dozens of black drones hover swiftly towards the direction of the airport.

           "L-Lets get home." he said.

           When we got home, I was eager to turn the TV on in hopes for some signal.

           This time there was a picture.

            There was a man on TV, but it wasn't our president or our governor or representatives there to demonstrate optimism. It was a different man, I hadn't recognized. He wore a dark navy-blue suit and kept a very relaxed expression on his face. He read in his distinctive accent from the manuscript on his teleprompter.

           "WE" he began sternly looking into the camera.

           The camera then cut to another group of people, several faceless men and women in a large dimly lit room surrounded by computers, including a much larger screen displaying the map of our country. California had been highlighted in a minacious crimson red.

           "By the eternal grace of the hallowed spirits of our Ancestors that guide us from the heavens. Today we declare war on the United..."

           Honk!

           My mother had pulled in front of the house, she called out for us with the ear-splitting sound blaring from her horn. 

           HONK! HONK! HONK!

           "SHUT UP!" my Dad's voice finally snapped trying to focus and gain composure.

           I placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, letting him know we were in it together to tackle whatever new reality was set in motion.