Soft Apocalypses (3 page)

Oh, God, please make this stop
. I have to lean against the wall to keep myself from tumbling backward.

Betty comes out of the bathroom, dressed in a spattered silk negligee. I think it used to be white. There’s gore in her wig. Her eyes go wide.

“I told you not to come here!” She grabs me by my arm, surprising me with her strength. In the distance, I can hear sirens. “They’ll be here any minute—get away from here, fast as you can!”

She presses a set of rental car keys into my palm, hauls me to the door and pushes me out into the hallway—

–and I’m stepping into the elevator at work.

Handsome blond Devin is in there. A look of surprised fear crosses his face, and I know the very sight of me repels him. His hand goes to his jeans pocket. I see the outline of something that’s probably a canister of pepper spray. It’s too small to be a Taser.

But then he pauses, smiles at me. “Hey, you going up to that training class?”

I nod mechanically, and try to say “Sure,” but my lungs spasm and suddenly I’m doubled over, coughing into my hands. When did simply breathing start hurting this much?

“You okay?” Devin asks.

I try to nod, but there’s bright blood on my palms. A long-forgotten Bible verse surfaces in the swamp of my memory:
Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.

I look up and see my reflection in the chromed elevator walls—my face is gaunt, but my body is grotesquely swollen. I’ve turned into some kind of hunchback. How long have I had the mass?

Instead of the pepper spray, Devin’s pulled his cell phone out. I can smell his mind. He’s torn between wanting to run away and wanting to help. “Should I call someone? Should I call 911?”

The elevator is filled with the scent of him. Despite my pain and sickness, the Want returns with a vengeance. Adrenaline rises along with my blood pressure. My tongue is twitching, and something in my back, too. I can feel it tearing my ribs away from my spine. It hurts more than I can remember anything ever hurting. Maybe childbirth would be like this.

Betty. I need Betty. How long has it been since I’ve seen her? Oh God.

“Call 911,” I try to say, but I can’t take a breath, can’t speak around the tongue writhing backward down my throat.

“What can I do?” Devin touches my shoulder.

And the feel of his hand against my bony flesh is far too much for me to bear.

I rise up under him, grab him by the sides of his head, kissing him. My tongue goes straight down his throat, choking him. He hits me, trying to shake me off, but as strong as he is, my Want is stronger.

When he’s unconscious, I let him fall and hit the emergency stop button. The Want has me wrapped tightly in its ardor, burning away all my human qualms. The alarm is an annoyance, and I know I don’t have as much time as I want. Still. As I lift his left eyelid, I take a moment to admire his perfect bluebonnet-iris.

And then I plunge my tongue into his eye. The ball squirts off to the side as my organ drills deeper, the tiny mouths rasping through the thin socket bone into his sweet frontal lobe. After the first wash of cerebral fluid I’m into the creamy white meat of him, and—

–Oh, God. This is more beautiful than I imagined.

I’m devouring his will. Devouring his memories. Living him, through and through. His first taste of wine. His first taste of a woman. The first time he stood onstage. He’s at the prime of his life, and oh, it’s been a wonderful life, and I am memorizing every second of it as I swallow down the contents of his lovely skull.

When he’s empty, I rise from his shell and feel my new wings break free from the cage of my back. As I spread them wide in the elevator, I realize I can hear the old gods whispering to me from their thrones in the dark spaces between the stars.

I smile at myself in the distorted chrome walls. Everything is clear to me now. I have been chosen. I have a purpose. Through the virus, the old gods tested me, and deemed me worthy of this holiest of duties. There are others like me; I can hear them gathering in the caves outside the city. Some died, yes, like the ragged man, but my Becoming is almost complete. Nothing as simple as a bullet will stop me then.

The Earth is ripe, human civilization at its peak. I and the other archivists will preserve the memories of the best and brightest as we devour them. We will use the blood of this world to write dark, beautiful poetry across the walls of the universe.

For the first time in my life, I don’t need faith. I know what I am supposed to do in every atom in every cell of my body. I will record thousands of souls before my masters allow me to join them in the star-shadows, and I will love every moment of my mission.

I can hear the SWAT team rush into the foyer three stories below. Angry ants. I can hear Betty and the others calling to me from the hollow hills. Smiling, I open the hatch in the top of the elevator and prepare to fly.

However ....
by Gary A. Braunbeck and Lucy A. Snyder

“The great epochs of our lives come when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil as our best.”

–Friedrich Nietzsche, “Fourth Article,”
Beyond Good and Evil

Of the three children it was the youngest, Penny, who was finally able to free herself from the manacles. So emaciated had her limbs become that she easily slipped her left hand through, but her right was still swollen at the base of the index finger and thumb where the bones had been broken. She did not cry out, even though it was obvious to the others that she was in terrible pain. Pausing only long enough to pull in a deep breath, Penny gripped her right wrist and bore down with what little strength remained in her body. Her face turned red from both the agony and the effort, but still she did not cry out.

“Hold on,” said Carl, who was older than Penny but not as old as Lewis. “I got an idea. But.…”

From his corner of the cramped holding area, Lewis said, “But
what?
”

“It’s kinda gross.”

“I don’t care!” said Penny, tears on her face but nowhere in her voice. “This h-h-h-
hurts!
”

“Do it,” said Lewis.

Carl blanched. “But—”

“I already
know
what you’re gonna do, okay? And Penny? He’s right, it
is
kinda gross.”

She pulled in a deep breath. “Will it hurt?”

“It might sting a little.”

Penny looked in Lewis’ eyes. Lewis—as he always did at times like this, times when the bad things were really, truly, terribly bad—leaned as far toward her as his chains and manacles would allow, smiled at her, and then stuck out his tongue. Penny laughed. On the periphery of his vision—and while he was still making faces at Penny—Lewis watched Carl rise to his feet and walk quietly toward Penny. Carl, though the second oldest of the children, was also the smallest, and the chains binding him to the damp stone walls were heavier.

However, they were also longer. Long enough, in fact, to allow him to get close enough to Penny to touch the back of her head, if he wanted.

Lewis made another face at Penny, who despite her obvious pain started giggling like crazy; he could always make her laugh, even under the worst circumstances. Carl unzipped the front of his pants and peed into his hands, then reached over and poured the warm liquid on Penny’s trapped hand. Penny, still giggling, closed her eyes and pulled down once again. Aided now by the lubricant of Carl’s urine, her broken hand squeaked through the rusty manacle and she fell back against the wall, whimpering quietly as she cradled her torn, swollen, and bleeding appendage.

Carl was already tearing away part of his shirt to make a bandage. Lewis untied the lace of his left tennis shoe, all the while saying things to Penny like, “That was super brave of you,” or “You
so
rock—I wish you were my little sister,” or “You’re such a great kid and you did
so good
,” things to comfort her, to ease her pain, to keep her fear—her terrible, terrible fear—at arm’s length.

Working quickly, they dried Penny’s hand, wrapped it, and used the shoelace to tie the bandage in place so that the pressure was more or less even. All of this they did in less than one minute; they’d had plenty of practice. Lewis had learned first aid in the Cub Scouts and taught everything he knew to the others; camping and school and his family seemed so long ago, so far away he sometimes wondered if his old life had just been a pleasant dream. His hands knew how to tie a bandage or make a sling, but if he tried to remember the first time he’d done these things, sometimes he was sitting under an oak tree with his scout troop, but sometimes he was sitting here in the basement. The hope that he could get that dream back was all that kept him alive some days. He’d told the other kids time and again that when this day came, they would have to move quickly, no matter how bad all of them felt, or how weak they were because the Cold Ones had taken to starving them for days at a time.

The Cold Ones. Carl had started calling them that because the man was always telling the woman he was going out for “a couple of cold ones”. Lewis thought the name fit. What the couple’s actual names were—Smith, Jones, Cleaver, Partridge?—none of the children knew, and the longer they were kept down here, the longer they were used as toys, as furniture, as ashtrays, as things to be abused in ways none of them had ever imagined and now would never forget, the longer this went on…the more power the Cold Ones gathered to them. Lewis could feel it. The ice behind their gazes, the frost in their fingertips, the chilly echoes of their voices that seemed to be coming from some dark pit buried deep in the wintry chamber where a human heart should have resided, all these things and more turned them, with every passing minute, into things beyond pain, beyond damage, beyond any Earthbound sensation that might, for a moment, stop them in their tracks.

Penny came over to Lewis and gave him a hug. “I’ll be good, you’ll see. I’ll remember everything you said, Lewis.”

“I know you will, Penny.” He kissed the top of her head. “But if they come back sooner than we—”

“—I drop everything and just get the box. I know.” She pulled away from Lewis, gave Carl a hug, and then limped toward the staircase that led up to the kitchen. She disappeared around the corner and soon they heard the old wooden stairs faintly creaking under her bare feet.

Carl leaned as close to Lewis as he could get and whispered, “What if you heard it wrong? What if the basement door’s locked?”

Lewis shook his head. “It didn’t make the second click when they closed it this morning. It only clicked once. All she has to do is push it open.”

“I can hear you guys,” Penny said. It sounded like she was near the top of the stairs. “I ain’t gonna touch the doorknob or nothing. I’ll push it open.”

“That’s my girl,” said Lewis. He fell silent, listened intently as the she pushed open the door. Both boys stared up as her footsteps moved across the ceiling; she was in the hall heading toward the kitchen. 

Lewis’ stomach growled. All of them knew where the refrigerator was; they got dragged past the kitchen whenever they were taken to the upstairs living room or bedrooms. Its low hum seemed to taunt him on the nights when his stomach had seemingly transformed into an angry demon inside him. Penny was supposed to get just a few pieces of whatever was there: a couple of slices of American cheese from the fat greasy block in the refrigerator, a couple of pieces of bread if the loaf was already started, a little bologna, a few grapes, maybe an apple if the Cold Ones had a whole bag of them. He’d told her not to touch their fancy gourmet food, that she mustn’t take anything obvious, nothing that would be missed. And whatever she did, she mustn’t spill anything, or leave any smudges behind to let their captors know she’d escaped from the basement.

“D’ya think she’ll do it right?” Carl asked, sounding anxious.

“She’s smart; she knows what to do,” Lewis replied. “I told her, not one crumb on the floor or the counter. She’ll do fine.”

“But what if they come back?” Carl was knocking his knees together like he had to pee again.

“They won’t,” Lewis said, making himself sound more confident than he actually felt. “It’s already been more than fifteen minutes.” He’d counted it down in his head:
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi ....

“But they
never
leave together, what if —”

“Carl,
chill
. They used to go out together all the time. But that was before they brought you and Penny down here. If they were gone for more than fifteen minutes, they’d be gone for
hours
. They’re going to a secret club or something like that. Meeting people like them and doing
stuff
.”

He tried to put enough emphasis on “stuff” to discourage Carl from asking more questions about where the Cold Ones went or what they did. Because Lewis didn’t actually know, and told himself he didn’t
want
to know, although his imagination got the better of him sometimes. Sometimes the Cold Ones videotaped what they did to him and Carl and Penny; maybe they sold the tapes, and that was how they got money. Or maybe
they
were the ones with the money, and today they were touring another basement in another isolated house. Lewis hoped they were selling the tapes they made, because then maybe the FBI or the sheriff would find one and figure out where they were.