Cry Havoc — William Todd Rose

Outside, the city is embroiled in violent chaos: street fights rage with the ferocity of urban warfare, buildings burn unchecked, and blood flows along the sidewalks and drips into the depths of the hungry gutters. The entire country, it seems, has gone collectively insane. But all that seems so far away. Despite the fact that they can see the anarchy through their apartment window, two young couples struggle to maintain a sense of normality and civility within the confines of their four walls. They listen to the helicopters clatter overhead. They watch as news reports roll in, trying to ignore the explosions that rock the very foundations of their home. They sip coffee and debate the finer points of the collapse of civilization, never dreaming that the shadow of death has already begun to fall across their little refuge. Never dreaming of the lengths some of them will go to just to stay alive in this violent, new world. It's time to evolve or die . . . and the end is just the beginning.