Ghost on Fire by Michael Weller

My name is Dan Rittman, I’m a teacher here in New York. Picture this: one morning we wake up to absolute devastation – buildings down, power out, crops dead on the stem, the Apocalypse, whatever. Overnight, we’ve been reduced to a savage world of kill or be killed, eat or be eaten…no diversions, no escape to the gym or to the movies, no more fancy problems. I have dreams about such a world , vivid dreams. I se my friends for the first time as they truly are: some cunning, some brave, some loyal and strong, others weak and treacherous, but always strikingly different from how they are in everyday waking life. And here’s what’s weird; sometimes I stop and catch myself longing for that world, like a great and welcome burning away of all the lies and evasions. It’s terrifying. I mean, why should I harbor such a deep desire to se the only world I know annihilated? I’m an ordinary person, like you, alive in this most pleasant of centuries—possibly the last --- and like you, I want nothing more than to get through each day without hassles, doing as little harm as possible, minding my own business. I have what I consider a highly civilized attitude toward life.