One Adult Ticket to the Apocalypse

1. One Adult, Please

ONE ADULT, PLEASE

GRACE

The highway is a parking lot with ambitions.

I've been sitting in the same spot for twenty-two minutes, which I know because the emergency broadcast has looped exactly four times and each loop is five minutes and thirty seconds of a man with the vocal warmth of a stapler telling me to shelter in place.

Shelter where, stapler man? I'm in a Kia Soul between a Honda Civic with a cracked taillight and a semi truck hauling an entire warehouse of toilet paper.

Which feels prophetic in a way I'm choosing not to examine.

My phone has sent me nine emergency alerts. Nine. I didn't know phones could be that aggressive. Each one says the same thing in slightly different flavors of doom: STAY INDOORS. AVOID CONTACT. SEEK DESIGNATED SHELTER. DO NOT APPROACH INDIVIDUALS EXHIBITING UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR.

Define unusual. I once watched a man eat a rotisserie chicken in a Walgreens with his bare hands at two in the afternoon and nobody called the government about it.

The radio cuts to a new voice. This one has feelings. This one says words like "unprecedented" and "rapid transmission" and "if you're on the road, exit immediately and seek the nearest substantial structure."

I look at the four exits coming up on the highway sign.

The first three are for towns I've never heard of, which means they're the kind of places that have a gas station, a church, and maybe a diner that closes at six and considers that a full civilization.

The fourth exit has a logo next to it. A big, round, aggressively cheerful logo with a cartoon sphere wearing sunglasses.

WonderSphere.

As in the massive, gated, walled, fully enclosed theme park that I've driven past eleven times in my life and thought "I should go there someday" and then never did because tickets cost more than my electric bill and I have priorities.

The universe has apparently decided someday is today.

I put on my blinker. I don't know why. Nobody's moving. But my mother raised me with vehicle etiquette and I refuse to let societal collapse be my excuse for abandoning turn signals.

It takes another fourteen minutes to reach the exit because traffic is moving at the speed of grief, but eventually I'm off the highway and onto the access road and WonderSphere is rising out of the flat nothing ahead of me.

It's gaudy. The entrance arch has a waterfall feature that's still running, which means the power is still on, which means the lights are still on.

Most important is that it has walls.

Substantial.

The parking lot is maybe a third full. Whatever's happening out here already thinned the crowd. I pull into a spot near the entrance because I have the luxury of choice and I choose proximity.

I grab the half-eaten bag of peanut butter pretzels from the passenger floor and stuff them in my purse because I don't know what the snack situation is going to be in there and I refuse to face the apocalypse hungry.

The walk from my car to the entrance takes forty-five seconds and in that forty-five seconds I have the following thoughts in this order: I should've worn better shoes. I should've charged my phone more. I should have called my mom before I got off the highway.

Also I should have peed before I left the house.

The entrance gate is a wide, arching thing flanked by fake palm trees and real security cameras.

The entry gates are the old-fashioned kind, the metal rotating ones that hit you in the hip if you don't push through fast enough.

Beyond them, I can see the main plaza stretching out in glossy tile and decorative fountains, completely empty, eerily perfect.

There's one ticket booth still lit up. One man still sitting in his little glass box wearing his WonderSphere polo shirt and his WonderSphere lanyard and his WonderSphere name tag that says CRAIG in letters I can read from fifteen feet away.

Craig's on the phone. Craig looks like he's been on the phone for a while. Craig looks like he'd rather be literally anywhere else, which, same.

I walk up to the window. I wait politely for approximately three seconds, which is my maximum capacity for patience on a normal day and today isn't a normal day.

I knock on the glass. "One adult, please."

Craig looks at me like I've asked him to explain long division in a language he doesn't speak. "Ma'am, we're closed."

"I can see that. One adult."

"There's a shelter in place order. The whole county. We're not admitting guests, we're in lockdown protocol, all remaining staff are…"

"Right. Shelter in place. This is a place. I'm going to shelter in it. So if you could just scan me through or whatever."

"Ma'am." Craig pinches the bridge of his nose. "You've been on the road. You could be exposed. We have employees and guests inside who aren't exposed. I can't just let in someone potentially infected."

"Then take my temperature, make me lick a test strip, or spray me with whatever disinfectant you use when a toddler vomits on Wondie. I'm not dying in a Kia because your emergency protocol doesn't cover walk-ins."

Craig looks at me. I'm five foot four in shoes that were a mistake, I've got pretzel crumbs on my shirt, and I'm holding a purse shaped like a strawberry because I bought it at a craft fair and I stand by that choice.

"That's not really how infectious diseases work."

"I have a coupon."

Something behind Craig's eyes flatlines. "We don't have coupons."

"Craig, look at me." I put both hands on the counter and lean in with the authority of a woman who has absolutely none.

"The highway's a nightmare. The radio is telling me to find a substantial structure.

You have walls. You have a roof. You have, and I can't stress this enough, what appears to be a fully operational churro cart approximately two hundred yards behind you.

I'm coming in. We can do this the official way or the hip gate way. "

"The what way?"

"The..." I gesture at the gate. I know the word. I know the word. It's the spinning thing. The metal thing that goes at your hips. "The hip gate."

"The turnstile?"

"That's what I said."

Craig stares at me for a long moment. "Ma'am, I can't let you in."

I'm already walking toward the hip gate.

"MA'AM. Ma'am, you can't just… hey."

I get one leg over. The second leg doesn't follow with the same enthusiasm. My foot catches on the metal bar. My center of gravity shifts dramatically forward. And I go down on the other side of the hip gate with the grace and poise of a bag of laundry thrown from a moving vehicle.

Knees first. Then palms. Then a sort of sideways roll that I wish I could say was intentional but was actually just physics having its way with me.

I'm on the ground. I'm inside WonderSphere. My knees are bleeding, but all three of those things mean I won.

I stand up. Brush off my knees. Adjust my purse. Look back at Craig, who's now standing at his window with his mouth open and his phone in one hand and his walkie-talkie in the other.

"Thank you for choosing WonderSphere, Craig."

"I'm calling security."

"That seems fair."

I turn around and walk into the park. Behind me, I hear Craig's walkie crackle to life.

"Yeah, this is front gate. We have an unauthorized entry. Single female. She... she jumped the turnstile. No. No, she's not armed. She has a purse shaped like a fruit. I don't… I don't know what kind of fruit, Marcus, it's… it's a strawberry, it looks like a strawberry. Just send someone."

The park stretches out in front of me, vast and empty and strange. The speaker system is cycling through a loop of upbeat music and prerecorded announcements, and right on cue, a cheerful voice chirps through the nearest speaker.

"WonderSphere welcomes you to a day of magic and discovery! Don't forget to download the WonderSphere app for wait times, show schedules, and special offers. Wondie says: stay hydrated!"

My phone buzzes. It's my mom.

Where are you? Are you safe?

I text back: I'm at WonderSphere. I'm fine. Very normal.

Three dots. Then: Did you use the coupon?

I don't answer that. I put my phone in my purse and look at the empty park, the frozen rides, and the cheerful signage promising a day of wonder.

Ahead of me, the churro cart that isn't going to eat itself is waiting. Unattended. Fully stocked.

I start walking.

The ground is already plotting against me. I can feel it.