Apotheosis: Stories of Human Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods (21 page)

by Jonathan Woodrow

My eyes are bloodshot and stingy and my head pounds like someone jammed a fist into my skull. Tension balls up in the back of my neck and sits there, static. I feel worse than I’ve felt in a long time and I need to push past it. My wife is still asleep, but the kids are up already. I can hear them leaping around and throwing their toys at the dog just like they always do.

When I get downstairs, I catch the older one holding a busted game controller over his head and he jumps out of his skin when he feels my hand close around his wrist. He thrashes a little before he wises up and looks down at his feet. The old dog hobbles back to her crate. The boy starts struggling again and I realize I've drawn blood with my thumb nail. I let him go and he sinks down to the floor, nursing his wrist like a wounded animal. Serves him right.

Then the younger one speaks. "Breakfast?"

I shake my head. A house full of idiots. "No breakfast, genius. Me go out... have to make some money... buy food... bring back here..." I rub my belly. "Then we eat, mmm."

The older one looks up at me and I can see the question in his face before he asks it.

"Are you doing a transfusion?"

"What's it to you?"

He says nothing.

"I've got too many kids anyway, why not kill two pups with one stone and make some money out of it?"

The boy turns pale and I can't contain myself any longer. I give him a full-on belly laugh and he looks away. I can see his anger return but he's too chicken-shit to say or do anything.

"Relax, little girl. I'm not after you."

He's quiet for a moment, then he opens his mouth with another question. "Well, who's left?"

"What's that, boy?"

"Who else is there? You already got everyone and you’re tapped out. Aunt Franny, Uncle Dane, Papa... There
is
no one else. They're all gone. So who's next?"

I frown, a little unsure how to react to this outright defiance. I consider showing him what my fist tastes like when I hear a car horn out front.

"You let me worry about that, boy. Mind your damned business."

I make it to the front door when the boy speaks again.

"Please, dad," he says. All the confrontation's gone. "Don't."

I walk out without another word.

*
            
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*

"I appreciate you helping me out with this, Bud."

I climb into the passenger side of my friend's pickup and he puts the truck in drive and pulls away. "Where am I taking you?”

"Just head towards downtown for now. I'll direct you once we get closer."

Bud nods and keeps his eyes on the road. We drive in silence for the first twenty minutes. The radio is on, tuned to an AM talk station, and I hear some lady from down east getting all riled up about upcoming legislation in the transfusion industry. I wince at the mention of the word—the elephant in the car—and change the station. Out of the corner of my eye I see Bud shake his head.

There are so many things I want to explain to Bud, but I don't know how. I want him to understand that I have my reasons for doing what I'm doing—damn good reasons, too—and that for a man in my position there are very few alternatives. With no money, we are facing even bigger problems. The undeniable fact that worse things can happen if I don't do this.

I think of the puppies again.

But no matter how necessary this all is, no matter how good my reasons are, it still doesn't seem right. Not even to me. "But that's life, isn't it?" I say out loud. Bud continues to drive the car and I keep my mouth shut and smile. I'm pretty sure he understands on some level. Life
is
different now. It demands these sorts of bad decisions. It's not like it was before. We were all having too much fun to notice what was happening around us, and then Mom and Dad arrived home early and the party was over.

*
            
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*

There had been no fireballs or floods or famine or pestilence. None of that. They had arrived quietly, unnoticed at first until word got around, and by then business was booming. Four Gods in our Metropolitan area alone, and who knows how many more across the globe.

And they look just like us, too. I know that's not so strange in itself, especially since we were always taught that they—or He—would resemble our form, with stories of Him creating us in His own image. But to see one crossing the street or sitting across from you is another thing entirely. Weren't you supposed to feel something more? The divine architect, the Alpha and the Omega, love and forgiveness. Weren't you supposed to sense that you were in the presence of something great? Well, that's not really how it is with these guys. Firstly, they're all men, so the whole “love” thing, at least for me, is a little weird. The only aura they give off is one of complete and utter indifference. None of this should come as a surprise, when you think about it. I mean, why should He or They or whatever give a shit about each and every one of us? How could they? We can't possibly expect them to know us all individually. Even now, the question of whether they had a hand in our creation remains unanswered.

This is all moot anyway, since the reason they came back wasn't out of love or concern, but something closer to cleaning house.

The first time I met one in the flesh was about a year ago. The Gods had recently landed and, naturally, there was a lot of talk. Some good, some bad, but overall, people were mostly curious. One of the first transfusions was given to a guy I knew from across town, and this had caused quite a bit of panic among the other residents of our community. In an effort to calm things down, our friend Bud had decided to throw a party at his place. The turnout was huge, and I always figured this was because people were expecting something...I don't know, out of the ordinary. What they got instead was a run of the mill garden party. Barbecue, beer, play area for the kids. But that was exactly what the doctor ordered. Bud knew that plain-old ordinary was what everyone needed, and it worked, at least for a while. For a couple of hours, we were all able to forget about our worries, the changing times, and remained frozen in an earlier time when our problems were… I guess, better. I mean, sure, we
had
problems, but they were pissy little problems nobody would give a shit about today. Isn't that how it always works? You're not happy with what you have until something new comes along and shuffles everything around, making what you had seem fucking peaches, and then you wonder why you ever complained about it in the first place.

So there we were, sitting on deck chairs on the grass, simultaneously sunburned and eaten alive by mosquitoes, sipping at cheap beer from plastic cups, munching on hotdogs, listening to one of the other neighbors complain about immigrants (because, really, that's the sort of thing I
want
to be worrying about again), and life was pretty fucking pristine. Until that prick Dane showed up and had to go and start spouting conspiracy theories and getting everyone all riled up. That was when the party ended.

I spent the next day bitching to the wife about her jackass brother and what an asshole he was for ruining the party, and she agreed with me, at least that's what I thought. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, but I'm pretty sure she was angry with him, too. And that was when she said it, the words that would change my life from then on: "He's your best friend, there must be something you like about him."

As soon as she said that I shut the hell up. I had to. With the few beers I had in me, I knew that if I kept talking I would let on what I was thinking, and the whole thing would be blown. She'd find some way to talk me out of it. No, this required a lot of focus on my part. A lot of solitary contemplation. And so, the next day, I drove to see the God in his office on the top floor of the one hundred and fifty story tower downtown. No appointment required, just show up and get it done before you lose your nerve.

The transfusion part was meant to be straight-forward, from what I'd read. Basically, you go there, you offer up someone’s life, and the God gives you money for doing it. Piece of cake. There's a little more to it, but that's the gist. So you might ask, what's to stop the nastiest meth-head street scum low-life motherfucker from going back again and again, not a care in the world, killing one person after another after another and making a mint? Well, there's the catch. The financial remuneration is commensurate with the amount of guilt and sadness and mourning the seller experiences in connection with what they're doing. So if you don't give a shit, you don't get paid.

I had my questions, naturally.

"So, what kind of person do you get coming in here, then?"

The God smiled. There was no warmth to the smile, only a certain glee at the opportunity to explain to me what assholes we humans all are.

"The desperate kind, the kind on the edge of their humanity, just about to be pushed over by their own greed."

And my response to this: "Cool."

The God laughed a humorless laugh and tossed a pen across the length of the wide desk onto my lap. The pen moved in between my fingers, warm and alive, convulsing like living tissue, beating through the platinum casing and up through my fingers into my arms and neck.

"You're familiar with the concept of actual cash value, I'm sure," he said. "What I pay is the monetary equivalent to what the victim is worth to you."

It had to be someone close, someone I cared about losing.

"Well, can I get a quote?"

The God sneered and tossed something else into my lap. It was a piece of slate, maybe eight inches by eight inches, and carved into it was the contract. "Sign or get the hell out of here. Your choice."

I nodded and closed my eyes. What did I know about Dane? Well, he was my brother-in-law, and the best man at my wedding. I thought of the good times we'd had together, and asked myself what he was really worth to me. He'd been my best buddy since we were in diapers. We'd battled school bullies, braved the harsh reprimands from our fathers, built forts in the woods, and talked to girls. As adults, we’d got drunk together, worked together, picked up girls together. And best of all, he’d been totally fine when I hooked up with his kid sister. The guy had always been there for me, through thick and thin, and although we'd drifted apart, I had no doubt that ours was a friendship we could pick up again in a heartbeat if it came to it.

Yeah, it was worth a fair price, I'd say.

My hesitation grew, and quickly turned into panic. A part of me wanted to throw down the pen and leave, find some other way to handle things. The God seemed to sense this and he smiled. A real smile this time, genuine hunger. I glanced down and saw that the pen was still in my hand and the dotted line was right there in front of me, so I emptied my head of any further consideration and signed my name. When it was done, I looked up. I was in sort of a daze, and not really sure what was going to happen next or how it would work. But then I saw it.

Dane was standing right there across the table, beside the God, an expression of bemusement on his unshaven face. He looked over at me, at my contract, then raised his hands and ran them over his buzzed head. It was a gesture I'd seen dozens of times before, and it meant he was scared or confused. The God smiled, and I felt my right hand shiver around the pen. It was as though the pen had sprouted nerve endings of its own and was connecting with my whole body. Then, it rose into the air. The nib swelled into a bulging head and pointed in the direction of my best friend.

Dane gave me one final look of desperation. The only words I could squeeze out were, "I'm sorry," before a bright light gushed from my hand and slammed into Dane's chest, hurling him across the room and out through the open window. His cries drifted down and down, fading out gradually until they were simply no longer audible.

I choked, suddenly unsure how to breathe or function as my chest leapt up and down like a fucking jackrabbit. What the hell just happened? I had expected some sort of a bang as he hit the ground; something to mark the significance. But instead Dane got a quiet, meaningless passage, like someone turned down the dials until he was nothing.

Tears filled my eyes and the God stood and walked over to me with a canvas sack in his right hand. The pen was still red hot in my hand as he took it away from me.

"Payment," he said, and dropped the sack onto the desk with a thud. "Pretty good turnout, as it happens. That's just as well, really. There's always a risk of miscarriage, though it's rare on a first try."

As bad as I felt, my attention was caught and I was unable to resist opening the bag to peek inside.

"It's all there. Forty-thousand dollars and change," he said. "That ought to tide you over for a few months. Then, I suppose, I'll be seeing you back here again."

I wanted to tell him that wasn't going to happen, that this was one big dumb mistake that I would never make again, but I wasn't so sure that was true. Instead, I walked out with my loot and drove home.