Is this "The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)" (1984) by John Varley...?
The story -- including the following introduction from Bangs and Whimpers: Stories About the End of the World (1999) -- is about six pages in length:
At the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s science fiction went through a period of depression. Some of the most famous writers— Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov—weren’t writing anything, and what was being written tended to be extremely downbeat.
You couldn't blame writers for seeing the dark side of things. The turbulence of the ‘60s was extremely unsettling to the entire nation, and many SF writers felt the need to respond to the serious issues of the day with piercing tales that explored such problems as pollution, overpopulation, and war.
Then this dark mood began to lift, and by 1975 writers were once again writing upbeat stories. John Varley was especially prolific, turning out about twenty stories within just a couple of years, each seemingly more imaginative than the previous one.
The following story is one of Varley’s rather less optimistic stories. First published in 1984, “The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)” puts a human face on mass destruction. Perhaps all soldiers should have to read this story before they go to war.
An extract from the story itself:
This story is brought to you courtesy of The Phone Company. Copies of the story can be found near every telephone in Manhattan, and thousands of stories just like it have been compiled for every community in the United States. They make interesting reading. I urge you to read a few pages every night. Don’t forget that many wives are listed only under their husband’s name. And there are the children to consider: very few have their own phone. Many people—such as single women—pay extra for an unlisted number. And there are the very poor, the transients, the street people, and folks who were unable to pay the last bill. Don’t forget any of them as you read the story. Read as much or as little as you can stand, and ask yourself if this is what you want to pay your taxes for. Maybe you'll stop.
Aw, c’mon, I hear you protest. Somebody will survive.
Perhaps. Possibly. Probably.
But that’s not the point. We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn’t, why would there be so many of them? There’s something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defending one’s family from marauders. Sure, it’s horrible, sure we weep for all those dead people. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive, to start over.
All those after-the-bomb stories were lies. Lies, lies, lies.
This is the only true after-the-bomb story you will ever read.
Everybody dies. Your father and mother are decapitated and crushed by a falling building. Rats eat their severed heads. Your husband is disemboweled. Your wife is blinded, flashburned, and gropes along a street of cinders until fear-crazed dogs eat her alive. Your brother and sister are incinerated in their homes, their bodies turned into fine powdery ash by firestorms. Your children . . . ah, I’m sorry. I hate to tell you this, but your children live a long time. Three eternal days. They spend those days puking their guts out, watching the flesh fall from their bodies, smelling the gangrene in their lacerated feet, and asking you why it happened. But you aren’t there to tell them. I already told you how you died.
It’s what you pay your taxes for.
You can read the full story at the Internet Archive.
