#tenderfoot

It’s one of those questions. Always cropping up at the worst times—parties, bars, dating apps. Always from some pedantic would-be philosopher who thinks asking it makes them deep. Like they’re probing the mysteries of life when really, they just want to see people squirm.

You’d roll your eyes. Offer something cheeky, or dodge it entirely.

But later—late at night, in bed, in the quiet—you’d think about it. Always alone.

Maybe that was the answer. Alone. Maybe you’d choke on dinner in your flat. Slip on a hike, disappear into a ravine or waterway. Vanish on a flight over the Atlantic, screaming into the void with strangers, with no one knowing your name. Or maybe you’d just fade in some hospital, old and unmarried, alone in a sterile room.

It’s a seductive line of thought. Morbid, but oddly clarifying. If you knew—would it change anything? Would you live harder, freer? Or worry more? Spend every checkup bracing for impact, marking your calendar with a red X. Let the dread eat you alive.

You never could come up with an answer. Not even for yourself.

And then, when every nation with a space program tried and failed to destroy the looming, 128-kilometer-wide asteroid dubbed Fenrir? 

Well, then everyone had an answer.

Date of death: September 22nd. Cause of death: Impact event.

Societal collapse was both instant, yet oddly and disproportionately staggered.

Plenty of people heard the broadcast that night, switched off the broadcast, and went right back to their dinners and digestifs. They set alarms, went to bed, woke up, and went to work. After all, bills still arrived in the post. The Tube still ran. The world hadn’t ended yet, and that was enough reason to pretend it might not.

It wasn’t quite denial, more like a timid refusal to look directly at the thing burning a hole in the sky.

At the other end of the spectrum were the zealots, the hedonists, the opportunists. Those who had been waiting for permission to unravel and let go. They treated the news like a starting pistol. Riots, arson, mass looting. Street preachers with knives and bleeding palms. Mass suicides. Teenagers with baseball bats in grocery stores. Mayhem.

Infrastructural collapse did not occur so quickly.

People tried to preserve the illusion of order. Systems leaned on other systems. Governments clung to decorum with tight knuckles and PR briefings. Parliament swore it would sit in continual session. The Crown, sealed somewhere deep underground, uttered meaningless words over the airwaves. Officials promised the water would run, the lights would burn, right up to the very end.

The machinery of modern life limped forward out of habit. 

It lasted two months.

Then someone blinked. Everyone panicked. And the whole thing went down headfirst, screaming.

In the middle of it all, there was a lottery you did not win.

Limited seats on boats and planes, final one-way passages bound elsewhere, including to the States. The first went to families, visiting students, adults with dependents waiting back home. You didn’t qualify. A singleton with two healthy parents an ocean away, you weren’t in the first wave. Or the second. Or the third. You weren’t here on diplomatic business. You had no connections or strings to pull. Just an expat, living and working abroad, trying to live a quiet and comfortable life.

Until the phones cut out, and then the Internet, you did your best to reassure your parents. They were tucked away in their house in upstate New York, worrying over the line. You told them it was fine. That you’d be okay. You cried and mourned together, yes, but you kept lying through your teeth:

I’m not alone. I’ve got friends. We’re going to make a party out of it. We’ll watch one last sunset together.

Of course it wasn’t true. But you couldn’t let them die knowing that.

That in all your years here—same flat, same job, same pub—you hadn’t made a single lasting connection. There were coworkers. Casual boyfriends. People who forgot your name after two pints if they asked for it at all. Nothing that stuck.

And when the shops shuttered, your supplies ran low, and the neighbors disappeared, scattering to the countryside, to family, to anywhere else—you watched your street empty out.

The taps went dry. The lights flickered out.

So you made a decision.

If you were going to die alone, you’d do it somewhere worth seeing.

You packed a backpack and a carry-on, filled with whatever still mattered.

Then, you left. On foot. Walked straight out of London.

Three days on the road, and you hate every minute of it. 

You miss your sofa. Your books. Scented candles. Face masks.

There’s dirt under your nails, a hole in your jeans, and your sleeping bag is a shitty thin, miserable barrier against the hard ground.

Makes the memories bubble up and resurface, and you have to laugh at yourself. All those photos from childhood through your teens: there you were, every summer vacation, wedged in the backseat of the old family sedan with your walkman’s headphones shoved over your ears, nose buried in a book or hunched over a Game Boy.

So many places your parents took you that you couldn’t spare an ounce of interest in at the time—Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Kalaloch, Arches. You tuned them all out in favor of fictional worlds, pixelated screens, and whatever mix tape a friend burned for you.

You hated the cold campground showers. The communal toilets. The mosquitoes that bled you dry while you slept. Wet socks, soaked jeans, mud squelching in your shoes. You used to count the days until you could go back to the city—back to pavement and delivery and indoor plumbing. You chose one of the biggest cities in the world, chock full of conveniences and comforts, to live in for a reason.

You used to whine when there was no cell service. Now you’d give anything just to hear a dial tone.

Funny how nostalgia hits hardest when you’re at your lowest. The backseat of that car had lousy air circulation and your parents constantly sang off-key, but it was, every summer, your whole world.

You didn’t know what it was like to be this exposed. This tired. You didn’t have to worry about where your next meal came from or whether someone was following you. Back then, all you had to worry about was boredom.

Now you worry about waking up at all. Dying before the big deadline.

The people you’ve met haven’t helped. Mostly weirdos and creeps. The decent ones peeled off weeks ago, chasing greener pastures, hunting for better places to wait out the end. You should’ve left then, too. Instead, you’re the last gazelle, trying to cross the river long after the herd stampeded ahead. The crocodiles circling in.

You’re late to the migration, and everything about you shows it.

One of the wheels on your suitcase gave out just outside city limits—snapped clean off. You’ve been dragging it, balancing it precariously on the single wheel or scraping it against the pavement. Carrying it is no better; it’s heavy and awkward, a constant reminder of how little you actually planned for this.

Now, you crouch behind the battered back door of a long-closed Greggs, clutching a brick tight in your palm. You fumble with the lock holding the chain looped through the handles, cursing whoever thought, Yeah, the world’s ending—better lock up tight. You crouch, lift and swing the brick at it. The impact rattles up your arm and stings. The lock doesn’t budge.

You look both directions down the lane, but no one emerges.

You grit your teeth, breath fogging in the cold, and seriously consider moving on. There’s probably an easier door to jimmy open somewhere, somewhere less obvious, but it’s not just about shelter now. You’re stuck on it. This place is here. Locked. Dry. Closed to you. And maybe there’s something left inside. Scraps of something edible. You’d take a handful of sugar sticks to bolster your supplies at this point. 

Mostly, it’s the roof you care about. Four solid walls between you and the elements and the road and people. Not so obvious a place one’s likely to check for a lone woman trying to survive the night.

You think about the motel you tried earlier—the ‘clerk,’ some older woman with smudged lipstick, asked if you were open to roommates, then waved to the orgy happening beside a very green pool. The whole place was ‘booked out’ until September. Not your scene.

Fingers trembling from frustration and exhaustion, you try the lock again. And again. And again. No luck. The brick chips, your palm rubs raw, and the rain picks up.

You raise the brick one last time, not to break in anymore but to just to beat something. You feel stupid. So damn stupid. Tomorrow, you think, you’ll join the first roadside cult or motel orgy you stumble on. At least there’s community there. Someone who might actually care. Someone—

“Think they’re closed.”

A voice cuts in over your shoulder.

You whip around, but you’re so in shock, you don’t have the presence of mind to be afraid. Not those first, breathless seconds.

The man who’s snuck up on you is a sight. Blood trickles from a jagged cut high on his forehead, near the hairline, splitting into thin tributaries that run down and tangle in the thick curls of his beard. Another streak, dark and wet, drips from the corner of his mouth, painting his lower lip red. 

And yet, the wounds aren’t what form your first impression.

It’s the fact he’s dressed like a man who knows exactly what he’s doing. An anorak and a brimmed hat shield him from the rain. The heavy-duty, military-surplus pack on his back.

Your gaze drops to the knife strapped to his belt, then to the handgun holstered on his hip.  Your eyes bounce back up, stomach plummeting when you spot the unmistakable length of a rifle barrel jutting just past his shoulder. 

It’s been a long time since you last saw a gun. Not since your last visit home, when you watched your father sit at the kitchen table, meticulously cleaning his faithful Remington. The steady rasp of the cleaning rod, the smell of oil. That memory feels like another life entirely.

It doesn’t stave off the fear that sets in.

The brick falls from your hand and splits at your feet.

You can’t move. Can’t speak. You only watch as he reaches over his shoulder and draws out a long pair of bolt cutters, the metal jaws catching what little light there is. Your body jerks like it’s bracing for impact.

This is it, you think. Not the asteroid. Not some divine, cosmic reckoning. Just you, alone, outside a fucking Greggs, about to meet your end at the hands of a stranger carrying a small arsenal.

“I–I don’t have—”

He cuts you off. “Mind if I…? No, don’t think you do.”

Without waiting for your answer, he gestures for you to step aside. Your eyes stay wide, your hands twitching like you’ve been shocked. He steps forward, clamps the bolt cutters onto the chain, and with a clean snap, it all gives way.

He shoulders the door open and steps just inside, casting a quick look back at you, then over your shoulder, scanning the empty street, and back again. 

Tired blue eyes squint down at you, then sweep over your body—taking inventory, the same way you did him.

“Christ, love,” he mutters. “Shouldn’t be makin’ that kind of racket at night. A bad character might’ve found you.”

The sting of the words catches you off guard. You swallow hard, blinking through the rain, too cold and worn out to argue.

He exhales through his nose like he’s already regretting getting involved. Then he pushes the door open wider, tilting his head toward the dark interior.