“Let’s go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.” - Shaun of the Dead

  At the end of the world, I went to the Cornerstone. This wasn’t going to blow over, and I didn’t go for a cold pint.

  I went because I wouldn’t have to drive. The streets were a nightmare—cars bumper-to-bumper trying to escape from the New Jersey side of the NYC metro area, and they’d only get worse. But I also went because I couldn’t wait alone in my third-floor apartment for the missiles to hit. It was where I ate and slept, but it wasn’t home.

  A few years back, the Cornerstone Bar hadn’t been anything special to me. I’d been trying to pay for college, and my options were pretty limited by my school schedule, so I became a bartender. Necessity is the mother of invention, but sometimes, it’s also the mother of enjoyment. It didn’t take long before I was spending more time learning to mix cocktails than learning to mix chemicals in the lab, and not too much longer before the dive bar downstairs was home.

  And at the end of the world, I just wanted to be home.

  I figured the regulars would, too.

  The TV wasn’t playing anything but news, and the news was all about the impending apocalypse, so I dug up a commemorative DVD from the Giants’ 2012 Super Bowl run and tossed it in the player instead.

  Screw Barry. He’d bitch about the Giants and talk about the Jets, but screw him. At least it was sports. I’d kill for a cartoon or something—anything to take my mind off things—but sports was close, and it was the last time a New York team had won anything unless you counted soccer. The regulars—meaning Barry—didn’t, so football it was.

  Then I walked to the squeaky front door, unlocked it, and the bell rang as I opened the Cornerstone for the last time.

  The Cornerstone could have been any dive bar anywhere.

  Neon beer signs on the wall, half burnt out. An old jukebox, kinda beat up and permanently playing ‘Closing Time’ any time it was plugged in. I’d unplugged it two weeks ago and never plugged it back in. No one had cared. Stale smells from spilled beer and even less pleasant ones from the technically clean but never spotless bathrooms. A few dozen bottles of hard liquor on the shelf behind the bar, and a dozen taps for beers like Budweiser and Miller Light.

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  You know the kind of place.

  I ducked behind a wooden counter that never got the varnish it desperately needed, stared out at the plexiglass-covered tables, and cleaned a few pint glasses out while I waited.

  There were only a couple of folks today. The barflies. The regulars. No one else was crazy enough to go to the Cornerstone while the world ended. Everyone else wanted out of the New York area or to be with their families or something—anywhere but at a dive bar. But they trickled in.

  Barry. Screw Barry. Kinda an asshole, in his fifties. Only talked about sports or the economy—never politics, and never anything outside the USA. I’d rather hear about sports than money—hence the Giants DVD. Whiskey on the rocks. He came in almost every night.

  Anette. She’d been a big shot somewhere. I had no idea how she’d found her way to the Cornerstone, but she was a fixture, too. Three or four times a week, she’d be at the corner seat. She hadn’t missed a Saturday since I started tending bar. Martini—occasionally, a negroni.

  And Randal. Big dude, mid-20s, jacked. I couldn’t tell you why he hung out at the Cornerstone when he should have been at the gym or a real club. He could have had any lady he wanted—trust me. Sex on the beach and mimosas. Way too many of them. I ID’d him every time. Every. Single. Time.

  Call it a running joke, flirting, or just doing my job. One of the three. Maybe two.

  He had his license ready, but I made a big show of it, even though I was a year or two younger than him. I had the apron on, and Randal didn’t. That made me in charge. Then I poured four beers—something light—and passed them out. “On the house.”

  The Cornerstone didn’t do free drinks. It was one of the boss’s rules. But…whatever. The Giants were playing the Washington Redskins on the TV, and they hadn’t been named that in a decade. The rules didn’t apply anymore, and I could give out all the free drinks I wanted.

  Barry didn’t waste any time, either. His drink was halfway gone before I could even start mine. Drinking on the job: another no-no. I was such a bad employee.

  I took a sip. Then another.

  That beer always hit me like a whiffle bat. It was a personal favorite because it was cheap, and I could drink more than one before I felt it. Usually. But today? Today, even though it was just the tiniest buzz, it was still a buzz. And with that feeling of tipsiness came a revelation. I’d seen Barry, Anette, and Randal almost every day, often for hours, and the only thing I knew about any of them was their drink of choice.

  Barry finished his beer and turned toward the game on the tube. The Giants were winning, but they’d lost a lot that year. More than a Super Bowl-winning team should. He snorted. “Lucky bastards.”

  It was stupid. The world was ending, and none of this would matter in forty minutes or so. But I had to know.

  I gathered my courage. Then, leaning on the bar counter, with my half-finished beer in my hand, I asked the most important question I’d asked in years. “What’s your story anyway, Barry?”