Make Like The Roaches And Survive

By M.G. Herron

People used to say that after the apocalypse, only the roaches would survive.

Well, there were roaches all right. But that was just the beginning of my problems.

While the world was ending, I was trapped in a basement with only the roaches and a feral cat to keep me company. 

It took me weeks to dig my way out. And THEN it got strange...

I guess that's what happens when you get buried alive during an alien invasion.

Make Like The Roaches And Survive is a story of scrappy survival in a post-apocalyptic Earth ravaged by mysterious alien invaders. A first contact story of a young man armed only with his wit—and the loyalty of one very fierce feline—in the face of mortal danger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.G. Herron
• Release date: Oct 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386294078

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Make Like The Roaches And Survive

Copyright © 2017 by M.G. Herron. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. This story may not be reproduced without express written consent.

MAKE LIKE THE ROACHES AND SURVIVE

M.G. HERRON

Chapter 1

People used to say that after the apocalypse, only the roaches would survive.

Well, there were roaches all right. Plenty of ‘em. They seethed like a chittering brown tide through the cracked foundation and broken waterpipes in the basement of St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center. But that’s not all that survived. The roaches had company—me.

Things would have been simpler if it was just the roaches. Whoever imagined that only the roaches would make it had been deceived by the simplicity of the notion. Life is never that simple, and, as I would later learn, the apocalypse left behind all sorts of violently shaken stragglers in its wake.

The basement storage room of St. Mary’s that saved my life was once lined with wire racks. Those racks had been stacked with cardboard boxes of medical supplies—alcohol swabs, cotton swabs, tongue depressors, and the like. Eventually, I turned the place into a sort of den slash bedroom by pushing the wire racks all to one side, and laying down cardboard boxes to serve as a sleeping pallet on the other. It wasn’t the best bed I’d ever slept in, but trust me, if you’re desperate enough, you can get used to anything.

Fortunately for the cockroaches and me, the storage room had originally been constructed with an alternate purpose in mind. In early 1959, the basement had been designed to serve double duty as a fallout shelter. In paranoid times, it seemed a sensible hedge against the possibility of a nuclear strike. I thanked God every day for that healthy dose of paranoia, especially in the first few weeks, when I could still hear the fighting happening outside.

I’d wager that none of the hospital’s Cold War architects had imagined the shelter in the basement of St. Mary’s would make it through the '60s unused except as a depository for plastic gloves and saline solution. I only knew it was a bomb shelter because, during the summer after my junior year of high school, I got a job at St. Mary’s as a janitor and spent a lot of time in that basement.

My