He would have expected looting, instead, when Peter visits the bottle shop in the evening, the owner interjects that everything he had to sell has been purchased, and well, there weren’t any more Italian beers left to import. Peter knew Dom’s dad brewed his own. He’d once made the mistake of inquiring, and ran himself into an extended monologue about the alkalinity of pilsners. Peter hops on a bus, he does not question TransPerth’s operation in the wake of the apocalypse— it wasn’t a Sunday after all— but rather considers it a minor consolation for the many injustices he believes they have committed against him. Behind him, a girl with electric blue streaks in her hair plays music on her phone, on the speaker rather than using headphones. The song is one of the miscellaneous chart hits which always leave Peter wondering just who the masses buying these songs were. Certainly, Peter and his circles made it a point of pride to avoid these songs altogether. And so behind him, blasting a song which rhymed the end of every line with ’booty,’ was a girl with a better sense of popular culture than Peter could hope to claim. Six songs played before Peter reached Dom’s stop, he wishes he could summon the indiscretion to thank her for soundtracking their bus ride together.

  "Moonshine," said Dom’s father, who’s name was something in the ballpark of Stan. "All the beers gone but there’s plenty of moonshine. Lasts forever, and gets you tipsy faster. I’ll be the one laughing— drunk and laughing, when it comes and they’ve all drank my beer at their silly parties. Want some chicken?" 
  Dom pulls Peter aside, leads him into her room, "Okay father, that’s enough drunk apocalypse talk for one guest." 
Peter’s arm still in tow, Dom takes two scotch fillets off a frying pan and onto a plate. "There’s pulled pork coming if you think steak isn’t pretentious enough, in two weeks we’ll be nothing but a walk-in fridge filled with tins. Our freezer is clearing out like a Doors Plus sale."

In her bedroom Dom pulls the steak apart delicately, confidently, Peter does not know if the second steak is for him, so he takes a seat at Dom’s bed, leaning back on his elbows. 
  "I heard about you and Jen. How’s it been going?" asks Dom.
  "Neither here nor there, thanks for having me, by the way, I was wondering if you were supposed to be on her side of the breakup or something."
  "We- well, her side of the breakup always figured you were just a for-now boyfriend anyway. So I don’t think anyone’s all too cut up about it." 
  "For now?"
  "Yeah like, bird in hand is worth two in the forest kind of deal." Dom reaches toward her desk for a half-empty bottle of Cordon Bleu, placing her wrist against the bottle and upending it, she rubs her wrists together and into the sides of her neck 
  "Come on, eat some steak." 
  "I’ve just lost my appetite."
  "Oh come on, you’ve gotta know you’re never the first pick, that’s the guys side of the deal. The girl’s side is you never get your first pick. You’d be better off getting upset at the world for coming to an end, which it totally isn’t." Dom picks up her plate and joins Peter at the side of the bed. She hands him a set of cutlery. Dom is left handed, and their elbows bump together occasionally. Peter wonders if her spiel could be construed as a confession of love, but can’t possibly work out how.
  "You don’t think the world’s coming to an end?"
  "Does it look like it? Big kerfuffle over nothing. It’ll probably get a passage about it in my novel, when I finally get around to writing it."
  "You’re writing a novel?" asks Peter.
  "I’d like to think so, it’ll probably just come out as a mess of theories."
  "What’s it called?"
  "At this point, Extra Large Condoms, and Other Contemporary Myths."

--

Evening comes and with it more of Dom’s friends, there are as many of them and they are burly enough to combine into a not unimpressive football team. They bring Dom’s father’s beer, and some of their own. Dom’s boyfriend arrives. Introduces himself as such. He is like Peter, but tanner, a myriad of other improvements both subtle and overt which Peter ignores- mostly tanner. What annoyed Peter more than any of this was that, try as he might, there was nothing he could find about Dom’s boyfriend which was dislikeable. Even to him. They speak shortly, about Peter of course, which makes Peter feel hopelessly disappointed with how little he had done with himself. Another of Dom’s friends burst into the room.

  "Jake’s gonna cart the hill." he exclaimed, this was important enough news that it set the entire room to their feet. Dom’s boyfriend tells Peter that Jake had painted his ’97 Commodore executive black with house paint last summer, but he’d been clever enough to paint over the yellow sticker while he was at it. 

Peter reaches the top of the hill and sits cross legged.
  "Okay Jake, you’ve proven your dicks big enough that you can give yourself head, now please come back inside," calls Dom.
  "He’ll be fine, he just needs to keep his centre of gravity low."
  "He’s in a shopping trolley, you cretin."
Two of Dom’s friends— ones Peter had met at parties before, and knew as Sharon, and Teeth, hold the cart still as Jake stumbles in.
  "Be sure you aim me straight, or I’ll spin out and flip," says Jake.
  "No worries," says Teeth.
  Teeth and Sharon count down in unison.

Five... Four... Three...

Dom sits besides Peter. "You right, buddy?" 
Peter realises he is in the Brace position, the one he found he had before, with Jennifer

Two... One...

A roar erupts from the group. Dom lives at the foot of an eleven degree hill. The cart screeches. Dom yells "Do a flip," Jake’s instruction to point straight appears to have been to little effect, as the trolley turns on axis but does not bank nor turn over, Jake nears the foot of the hill.

 Cheering blooms preemptively. Red and blue tear through the night, a fire truck blurs across the street adjacent. Gone. Soon as it came. It takes Jake with it. 

Silence.

  "Holy shit." whispers Teeth.
  "What the fuck," says Dom’s boyfriend.
   "That’s bullshit," says Teeth, clambering for his mobile phone. He presses it to his cheek, "Hello? Yeah, we’re on the corner of Hale Road and um.. Well Jake’s about two blocks East. Shit. Yeah, okay. I think that’s.. Ewen? Shit, I don’t fucking know, it’s your Fire Truck which fucking ran into him now isn’t it? Oh. Yeah, that one. Okay.. Um.. Thanks." 

  Wordlessly, they saunter back to Dom’s house. It really is the end of the world. Peter feels the earth’s hurtle in each scotch-soaked footstep.