Soft Apocalypses (17 page)

“Down the hatch.” I handed her the red one.

“Why mine diff’rent?”

“Because the infection didn’t make you sick.” I’d thought my lies out carefully on the walk back to our house. “Because you’re a carrier, and I’m not.”

“Oh. Okay.” She took the capsule from my hand and swallowed it down with a gulp of water.

After a quick, silent prayer to a god I no longer believed in, I swallowed mine down as well.

We settled down on the couch to watch her favorite cartoons, and she laid her head on my good shoulder. I waited to see what would happen. For the first hour, nothing was different. But then came a faint buzzy feeling in my head, an electric warmth, a melting sensation. I realized that I could feel how my own shoulder felt against her cheek.

Before I fully realized what was happening, she was in my lap, kissing me, pulling my jeans off. I couldn’t even summon the clarity to wonder where my will had gone. We fucked for hours in the blue light of the television; in the morning, we ate bitterly raw steaks straight from the refrigerator and stumbled out, hand-in-hand, to go see the Robichaud boys.

Hours melted into days melted into weeks. It was all dreamtime for me, an erotic nightmare from which there was no waking.

I came back to myself, briefly, in a room in a flooded mansion. I was alone, sitting on a rotting red velvet couch beneath a chandelier dripping with algae, but I could hear Lily moaning in the room above me. I could feel the webbed claws clutching her, the strange appendages slithering into her as she writhed, and I tried to stand, to stop what was happening, but the orgasm took her and my mind went with it, down, down into the murky water.

I didn’t surface again until months later in a flooded laboratory. I found myself blinking in a fluorescent glare, holding Adam Robichaud’s blond head under the water; I’d already drowned him. Lily was up on what looked like a dentist’s chair, naked, panting hard, her distended abdomen rippling. I realized my mind was no longer bound to hers, and the sudden absence filled me with cold loneliness. Doctor Freeman stood behind her, smoothing her hair away from her face, whispering encouragements to breathe.

Lily wailed as the baby began to squeeze through. First the head, then an arm that was jointed in too many places …

“Oh god,” I whispered when I got a good look at the infant.

“Oh, June, excellent, you’re back with us.” Doc Freeman caught the baby as it slithered out, deftly keeping her hands clear of the snapping mouth. “I am afraid I told you to take the wrong capsule. I just couldn’t have you interfering in my work any longer. But as you can see, everything has turned out well in your absence.”

“What …?” I began.

“I made a people!” Lily grinned at me, glowing with maternal pride. She looked happier than I had ever seen her.

“Yes you did!” Doc Freeman smiled back at her. “And this little fellow is quite hungry. Keep breathing, my dear!”

The doctor sloshed past me and set the newborn down on Adam’s floating corpse. The little creature latched onto his naked back with its sucker mouth and began to devour his flesh.

“Welcome to
Homo freeman
,” the doctor said. “The first of his kind, and certainly not the last.”

“Oh!” Lily gasped. Her belly rippled again.

“Three more to go!” the doctor called. “Keep breathing and pushing!”

I took a step toward them, and felt a sharp cramp and heavy pressure in my own belly. It was not a sympathy pain. Terror filled me as I looked down and saw my nine-month bump.

“Once your nephews are all born, I expect it’ll be time to induce you, dear June. Your child will not be as exotic, I’m sure, but she’ll come in handy just the same.”

I turned and tried to flee, but my nephews’ alien father rose up out of the water, looking like a cross between a frog god and the worst fever hallucination I’d ever had, and clutched me to its clammy torso.

“Save your strength,” Doctor Freeman called. “Believe me, you’ll be needing it soon enough …”

Diamante and Strass

The Queen of Montana stood regal before her icy throne as her guards hauled in the notorious man-eater Giorgia Diamante and her accomplice, Elvira Strass.

“Are these the gunslingers?” The Queen looked down her long, thin nose through her kaleidoscope monocle at the dusty duo.

“
She’s
a gunslinger. I’m a bomber,” said Strass.

Diamante gave her a sharp elbow in the ribs to shush her. The thickly furred floor beneath them twitched indolently and the zebra-striped walls breathed in afternoon slumber. The castle was far too familiar with the pheromones of murderers to be concerned about the girls.

“Yes, Mum, they are the ones you requested.” The captain of the Queen’s guard pulled a savage, snub-nosed machine pistol from beneath his sky-black cape. “We found this customized weapon on Miss Diamante’s person.”

“I call it the Dance.” Diamante tipped her woven steel Stetson toward the Queen. “St. Vitus style.”

“In the olden days,” the queen observed with an arched eyebrow, “dancing was like exploding.”

Diamante gave her a curt, knowing nod. “That piece’ll give ‘em all a decent overloading.”

“It connects to something in your hip?” The Queen peered at Diamante’s left side.

Diamante touched the lumpy scars on her tanned flesh above her low-slung leather ammo belt. “Neuromilitary implant. The Dance links to my optic lobe and fires in perfect synch with the diastole of my heart. I just have to
think
about it and the whole room’s dead.”

“What a soft bounce!” the Queen marveled.

“She’s a hot machine.” Strass impatiently pushed back her thick golden hair. “But surely you didn’t bring us here to jawbone hardware. What can we do for your Majesty?”

The Queen pulled a digital wand from the folds of her shimmering robes and pointed it at the fuzzy floor in front of the duo. She flicked it on, and a bust hologram of a skinny man with a wild, dirty-blond mane and an equally unkempt beard spilling over a priest’s collar appeared before them. The pupils of his blue eyes were mismatched: the right was as small as the point of a dagger and the left was as big and dark as a Stimjim tablet.

“Bring me the head of this preacher,” the Queen ordered.

“That’s Reverend Dr. Johnny Swarovski.” Diamante squinted at the flickering holo of the thin white man. “He used to be your Duke, didn’t he? Before he invented his secret formula.”

The Queen acted as if Diamante hadn’t spoken. “Johnny’s an American, but he’s fled across the border. My signet ring will guarantee his extradition should local knights intervene.”

She slipped the signet off her pinkie finger and flipped it to Diamante. “The spy in my cab told me Johnny’s holed up in the desert outside Medicine Hat with his … acolytes.”

“Acolytes? How many?” Diamante frowned as she wiggled the ring into the tight front pocket of her jeans.

The Queen smiled at her. “Surely you’re not afraid of Americans?”

Diamante frowned. “I’m not afraid of the world. What’s in this deal for us?”

“A clean slate,” the Queen replied. “We’ll drop the bass, murder, cannibalism, corpse defilement, and public intoxication charges from the rave in Anaconda.”

“Ezekiel,” spat Strass. “That dirty jerk.”

“He got what was coming. They
all
did.” Diamante’s eyes glittered. “You’d have done the same.”

“Maybe I would.” The Queen gave the daintiest of smiles and shrugs. “But do my bidding, and there shall be no cell block tangos for you girls in my domain. And of course there’s more.”

The Queen snapped her fingers, and two of her guards brought forth a bulletproof tortoiseshell case and popped the horny locks. In amongst the pulsing guts of the tortoise were dazzling pounds of glittering pale gems.

“My best friends, and soon yours,” the Queen said. “Provided you bring me the good Reverend’s head.”

“Did you want the rest of him past his neck?” Strass asked.

“Not necessary.” The Queen pursed her lips. “But I do want the head brought back intact.
Alive
. And … unmolested.”

So Diamante and Strass kitted themselves out in the finest rhinestone body armor the queen’s arsenal could supply, packed up their weapons and a good medical stasis unit, fueled their biogas Harleys and rode north up the ruins of I-15.

They stopped at the Coutts border crossing like regular citizens; this was the first time in years that they hadn’t jumped the wall. The rest of the traffic was mostly cargo beasts, NAFTACorp assault dinosaurs, and a few hand-painted vans full of various doomsday cultists headed to the North Pole. It was a nervous half-hour wait; Diamante’s hand kept straying toward the St. Vitus Dance, and Strass fingered the lumpy outlines of the white phosphorous grenades she had stashed in her bra.

But the strolling Death Mounties in their humming red power armor gave neither the gunslinger nor the mad bombshell a second glance.

“Where you gals headed?” The border agent pressed his sizzling brand into the fleshy page of the gunslinger’s passport. The booklet quivered and squeaked in his hand.

“Medicine Hat,” Diamante replied.

“Oh, be careful out there.” He gave her a smile that was two parts grandpa concern and one part raptor leer. “Take the northern route through Vauxhall; the highway through the Glassy Desert ain’t safe.”

“Why?” Strass handed over her own struggling passport.

“Why, there be monsters!” He branded a page, and her booklet urinated on his wrist; he didn’t seem to notice. “Goths and rockabillies. Transpsychic bandits. And other creatures that ain’t fit for Thor’s clean earth!”

They passed the Taber Starship Impact Memorial and turned onto the highway that transected the endless shimmering craze of green glass like a dark laser burn. Suddenly, Diamante’s motor began to rattle. Soon the whole Harley was shaking like a junkie. A few moments later, Strass’ motorcycle started jerking, too.

They pulled off to the side of the highway. Diamante got out her flashlight and inspected their machines. Tiny blue silicon worms, hatched from eggs carried on the dusty winds, had invaded the engines. The wrigglers were devouring the metal, leaving behind sticky trails of epoxy; the cylinders were nearly clogged with the acidic purple goo.

“Damn shitburners!” Diamante kicked a tire. “I
knew
we should have sprung for ceramic Vincents!”

“Well, this ain’t good.” Strass shaded her eyes and squinted out across the glaring barrens. “This place is still full of radium … if we have to walk the rest of the way, our bones’ll be glowing by the time we get there.”

Overhead, they heard a tiny sonic boom. A rocket-powered swallow dove straight down from the sky and landed on a spar of broken glass. When the cyborg scissor-tail opened its beak, the Queen of Montana’s voice came out, thin and sing-song.

“Don’t dilly or dally,” the Queen told them sternly. “I have word that the Duchess of Minneapolis wants Johnny dead. No head. She’s sent her Raspberry Berets to jam him.”

Diamante swore and kicked the tire again. The swallow gulped and rocketed away.

“Well, that’s a fine kettle of cocks.” Strass shaded her eyes again and resumed scanning the dazzling plain.

“We’ll have to hitchhike,” Diamante said. “We’ve got to get out of this place.”

“I think I just spotted our rides,” Strass replied. She dug her noise bomb kit out of her saddlebag, extracted the amplifier and set it up on the pavement. She plugged in her microphone and started beatboxing, hissing and spitting rhymes and grunts out at whatever she’d seen in the bright distance.

Diamante heard Strass’ beats echoed back, faintly at first, but then louder and louder, the harmonics shifting and multiplying as dark shapes rose on the garish horizon and moved closer and closer.

Soon, the shimmering glass mirage cleared enough to reveal huge cybersonic lizards, each the size of a tour bus. All were the descendants of feral iguanas who’d been impregnated and mutated by eldritch technologies from the starship crash that glassed the desert. Each iridescent scale on their saurine bodies acted as a tiny speaker pounding back the sounds that Strass sent forth. The cybersonic lizards bobbed their heads and flicked their blue tongues in time with the beat.

The lizards circled Strass and Diamante, fascinated by the music, but unwilling to let themselves be touched.

“Let me try,” whispered Diamante. She got into her own saddlebag and unfolded her air guitar, brushed her fingers through the virtual strings for a quick tune-up, and began to play “Purple Haze.” Strass switched up her beat to back Diamante’s music, and the lizards made the glass quake as they writhed in appreciation.

As Diamante hit the climax, one opalescent lizard was entirely overcome by her hot licks. He fell forward onto the pavement, scales buzzing and crackling with feedback, rolled over and offered his pink neck and belly to the girls. While Strass scratched the lizard under his massive chin and sang “Suffragette City” to keep him still, Diamante fashioned a halter and reins out of her spool of carbon fiber rope.

Once they harnessed the scaly beast, the girls climbed atop his ridged back and urged him up the highway. He lumbered slow and steady for miles, until the wind shifted and his scales began to vibrate in sympathy with a cacophony in the distance. They heard voices, yes, and music, but it was all too chaotic to be a concert, too profane to be religion, too apocalyptic to be just another party.