“So,” I said, fiddling with my last empty shot glass, “the zombie apocalypse, the robot apocalypse, and a super volcano all happening at once…”
“Which one wins,” Laura said, leaning back on her barstool as she awaited my answer.
I paused a moment before grinning, “the zombie apocalypse loses right off the bat.”
“Bullshit!” Laura protested.
“Machines and pyroclastic flows are going to fuck up the zombies!” I retorted.
“The machines will die from the super volcano!” Laura said, leaning forward and pounding a first into her hand, “no solar power. All their shit gets fucked up. But zombies can live in that-”
“Zombies are dead.”
“Zombies are still walking around and fucking people up in that environment.”
“Then doesn’t the volcano win? It’s not like either one can stop the volcano or hold it back or anything.”
“Fine,” Laura said, waving a hand dismissively, “get rid of the goddamn volcano.”
“Robots still win,” I said.
“What about if the robots don’t start…apocalypsing, until after half of humanity is turned?”
“Robots still win,” I said, “easy.”
“How?”
“It’s an artificial intelligence,” I said, “even if it couldn’t just mow all the stupid zombies down with brute force, it could come up with some kind of disease or something that takes them down en masse.”
“Now you’re assuming things about the robots.”
“You never specified that the robots weren’t a super intelligent AI,” I said, “how else are robots going to rise up and…and apocalypse our asses?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Laura said, “But you have to admit, zombies coming after you would be a lot more terrifying than robots coming after you.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, “robots are real. I’ve had robots coming after me. But I’ve never seen a goddamn zombie.”
“What would you even do in a zombie apocalypse?” Laura said.
“I don’t know,” I said, “get a bunch of guns and find some place away from all the-”
“No,” Laura said, “I mean…what would you do during an apocalypse? You couldn’t take up bowling or something.”
I shrugged, “people are surprisingly adaptable. Some of the funniest jokes are said in some of the most miserable situations.”
“You think people were doing standup routines in Auschwitz?”
“I don’t imagine they were working on their tight five,” I said, “but people were definitely telling jokes. It happened in China during the Japanese occupation.”
“That’s crazy,” Laura said, “when I was still in school, they talked a lot about the holocaust. You know, to make us feel bad about what our fathers and grandfathers did. But it was always kind of…abstract.” She paused a moment, pondering this, her head lightly bobbing around with drunkenness, “you think people were masturbating in the camps?”
I burst out laughing, “I bet you they were.”
“I wonder what got them off in there,” she said, a grin spreading slowly over her lips, “it’s not like they had a Hustler lying around.”
“They might have used-”
“Oh, I know what it was,” she said, smacking a hand down on the bar, “they probably thought about food while playing the skin flute.”
I cringed.
“Too far?” she asked.
“Might want to keep that one to yourself in polite company,” I said, laughing, “especially while speaking in German.”
“You’re not polite company, you single malt scotch ordering geezer.”
“Now you’ve gone too far,” I said, putting a hand to my heart in feigned offense.
“You should know the answer.”
“The answer to what?”
“What did you get off to when you polished the pork sword back in the day?”
“Well, young fraulein,” I said, mimicking an old-man’s voice, “back in my day, we had to wax the salami up hill the whole way. In the snow. We lubricated our sinful organ with spit and horse shit, and we liked it,” I continued, shaking a finger at her, “nowadays you kids run around with your internet and your blow jobs and your dick pics and you put it all up on the social media. How’s an old man like me supposed to keep up with the hottest new trends?”
“Horse shit was your thing, yeah?” Laura said, still laughing.
“It helped build character.”
“Then maybe you should have done it a bit more often,” she said, poking a finger into my chest.
“I lack character now, is that it?”
“Let me guess,” she said, “you got off to thinking about getting to fuck without doing it through a hole in a thick, wool blanket?”
“For me it was always thinking about the firm handshake that followed efficient, strictly reproductive coitus that rocked my world.”
“Sex must have sucked back in the day,” Laura said, looking contemplative.
“It was a messy, hairy, awkward affair,” I said.
“Oh, my God,” Laura said, “I forgot that women back then didn’t shave anything.”
“Nope.”
“That must be why you guys married twelve-year olds and shit,” she said.
“It wasn’t my decision,” I said, “and I was the twelve-year-old girl sometimes.”
“That’s right,” she said, “I always forget that you’re sometimes a girl,” she pondered on this for a moment, “so your sexual fantasies must change all the time.”
“I’ve always been fine with any sex that was consensual,” I said, “and didn’t result in disease.”
“See, you have no character,” she said, “we need to find you some horse shit.”
“What can I say, I’m old fashion,” I shrugged, “my fantasies really are quite vanilla.”
“I like to dominate,” Laura said.
“You mean, German dominatrix style?”
She laughed, “not that much domination. But…I like to think about myself being on top. The one taking charge.”
“But you’ve never…”
Laura shook her head, “but that’s what I’ve always thought about when…when paddling the pink canoe.”
I grinned, “so, now you know what to do when the robot apocalypse destroys the zombie apocalypse.”
She smirked, “you’re so full of shit. You would be scared out of your immortal mind if you saw an army of fucking zombies coming at you.”
“That’s true,” I nodded, “I guess a bunch of zombies would look kind of like an army of shit-faced drunk people coming after you.”
“Now that I would like to see,” Laura grinned.
I shrugged, “not as uncommon as you’d think. People often got drunk before a battle. But I’m thinking people like…like black out fucking drunk. Lights on, but nobody’s home, kind of shit.”
Laura pursed her lips a moment. “My grandfather – my dad’s father – was supposed to have drank a lot,” she said, holding two fingers up to the bartender again.
“You…never met him?” I asked.
“No,” Laura said, “nobody…no one in my family actually did. He was a Russian soldier back in the war.”
I nodded without saying anything. Laura’s grandmother must have been raped near the end of the Second World War. That’s how her father must have been conceived.
“But that was always what they said,” Laura said, “that he was a goddamn drunk. A savage. An animal. My…my father said it polluted me.”
“Was he…?”
“No,” Laura said, “no, he wasn’t a drunk.”
“I mean, was he a, uh, a Nazi sympathizer?”
“No…”
“You know, because the Nazis often talked about people being polluted and shit,” I asked, seeing the bartender set down two more shot glasses, filling them with the disgusting cheap vodka.
Laura laughed, “no, it wasn’t like that. It was more…
I don’t know, spiritual for him. I think…I think he thought I was polluted by something more…metaphysical.” Laura picked up a shot glass, “to…to…our ancestors! Even if they polluted us.”
“To our ancestors,” I parroted, the same as I had to every one of her toasts before each shot.
Laura set the shot glass down, looking like she was about to order another, but I grabbed her hand.
“Let’s let this sit a while,” I said.
She shrugged.
I furrowed my brow. “Is…everything alright?”
Laura shrugged again.
“Seriously,” I said, “are you…alright? Remember, you stopped me from…”
“I’m not trying to kill myself,” she said, looking down at her hands resting on the bar, “but maybe if I drink until I pass out, I can wake up not feeling so tired.”
I sighed, “or you’ll just have to be awake for the entire hangover.”
Laura said nothing for a moment. The rest of the bar came back to my attention. It filled up in the hour that we were drinking, all The Crusader members coming to catch the game. The bartender was a lot busier, the clatter of people a lot louder, and the sky darkening outside.
“Let’s go do something,” Laura said, turning to me with a mischievous grin.
“Do what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I want to do something.”
“Fine,” I said, glad to at least be leaving before she drank even more.
Laura held up two fingers, “one for the road, as the Americans like to say?”
I sighed, “last one. Then we pay and go.”
Laura smiled. She was definitely drunk, which only seemed to make the drowsiness in her eyes worse. It took several minutes for the bartender to come back around and pour our final shots.
“To a long life,” Laura toasted.
“To a long life,” I reciprocated before choking the fiery liquid down – made somewhat easier by my level of inebriation.
Just as the last of it went down, Laura jumped off the stool and grabbed my arm, pulling me away from the bar. I was about to object, but Laura held a finger up to her lips. I looked over, seeing the bartender talking to someone a few seats down, not facing our way. I followed behind Laura, making our way past the wait staff and customers moving about, getting to the door. I took one look back, but the bartender didn’t seem to notice, so I exited into the street behind Laura.
The vendors were busy setting up as crowds swelled. My head spun as Laura led me down the wide sidewalk. Cool evening air felt good on my skin, soaked with sweat from booze and the heat of the bar.
“What do you wanna do?” I asked.
“Want to steal a car?” Laura asked, “we can go for a joy ride around town.”
“No,” I said, “let’s…let’s not do anything that will get people around here too pissed off at us. Plus, most of them are armed.”
“You’re such an old person,” Laura smirked.
“Well, there is something I’ve kinda wanted to try,” I said, “I actually saw a student of mine do it in my last lifetime.”
“What is it?” Laura asked eagerly.
“Well, he was a former student by that time,” I said, “but I was there when he-”
“Out with it, grandpa.”
“Get on the PA of a store,” I said.
“And do what?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “say something lude to all the customers?”
“Jesus,” Laura said, “you even sound like an old person talking about doing something ‘lude’.”
“I am an old person,” I said, “but I know exactly what store to hit.”
The two of us took off down the street, dodging between booths and pedestrians. The sun continued sinking on the western horizon, all the lights in the downtown area ensuring visibility remained high. As we neared the edge of downtown, approaching the Value Shop, Laura stopped a block early.
“The Value Shop?” Laura said, “hardly anyone will be in there at this time of night.”
“None of these small places have a PA system,” I said.
“Isn’t Value Shop owned by a Benecorp subsidiary?” Laura asked.
I shrugged, “maybe.”
Laura burst out laughing. I started laughing with her, the alcohol making it so much more contagious.
“Good,” Laura said, “then fuck them. And I got a better idea.”
Laura turned and trotted towards one of the booths where seven women in skimpy clothes were gathered. I immediately understood and jogged behind to catch up.
“What do you kids want?” the Hispanic woman, the name Gina showing up on my ARs, asked, “how old are you two?”
“We’re not here for sex,” I said before Laura tried her terrible English, “but we do have a proposition.”
“What is it?” she asked, looking skeptical.
“It won’t take long,” I said, “but we’ll pay for the whole hour.”
Chapter 14
“This store has its own security,” Laura said as she casually tossed items in her grocery basket.
The signs indicating that Benecorp secured its own store hung at each end of the aisle, warning that there may be audio and video surveillance. Laura strolled up and down aisles, not paying much attention to what she grabbed, waiting for our intrepid prostitute to gain access to the store’s PA system.
“Seems a bit paranoid,” I said, “what secrets could they be hiding in a goddamn supermarket.”
Laura laughed loud in her intoxication. “The Soylent Green is people.”
“That’s whose buying all the organs at the hospital,” I said.
Laura threw a bottle of lotion off the shelf into the basket, “and why you’re so popular. They don’t see much dark meat around here.”
“And why they hate you,” I said, “nobody likes a sour kraut.”
“That’s really fucking original,” she grinned.
I shrugged, “I’m old, what can I say?”
“You can reinvent yourself,” she said, turning to look at some of the hair dyes.
“Is that what that is?” I said, watching as she threw a bunch of them into the basket.
“I guess coloring my hair loses some of its impact when people have glowing germs swimming around in their skin,” Laura said as she started walking again, “but I’m old, too.”
The PA crackled before Gina’s voice came on.
“Because it’s halftime and The Crusaders are ahead, all Benecorp brand items are half off for the next ten minutes.”
Laura looked to me with a wide smirk before we both hurried toward the self-checkout machines. A few employees ran past us as she went up to the scanner, running the first container of hair dye over it.
“Vot ze fock,” Laura exclaimed in thickly accented English, “vare eez discownt?”
“Excuse me?” the woman overseeing the machines asked.
“Benecorp,” Laura said, holding the bottle up and pointing at the label, “hoff ohf.”
“Ma’am, I’m afraid that announcement was-”
“Fulse od-var-tize-eenk?” she said, “I git LoC Security. Zay sowrt zees owt.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry but-”
“So, it’s fake?” a customer with The Crusaders symbol asked, “what kind of bullshit you pullin’ here?”
“Bowl-sheet!” Laura shouted.
The woman looked very uncomfortable as a few more customers started murmuring to each other.
“I’ll have to call my manager,” the cashier said.
Laura looked to me.
“Bait and switch!” I said, “bait and switch!”
Several others voiced their agreement.
“Vee are nayver show-peenk heer ah-gayn!” Laura said as I grabbed her arm and started or the exit.
“Ya got that right,” the Crusader said.
“Sir, please-”
“What’s going on here,” another woman in the store’s uniform asked as she approached.
She turned around, grabbing a handful of products from the basket and stuffed them into her pocket. The Crusader member started arguing with the two employees. Laura and I made our way out the exit, leaving the rest of the stuff in the basket near the cashier machine.
The full result of our prank wasn’t the hysterical chaos I remembered seeing when my former student did something similar just before Christmas in my previous life. But there were still enough people to cause a commotion.
“That was kind of a disappoi-”
Gina ran out the front door, two underpaid store employees chasing behind her. Laura started laughing and I couldn’t help but join her.
“It was better last time,” I said, head buzzing with alcohol and excitement, “the store was full of Christmas shoppers. Nobody wanted to be the one missing out, so they ran around like-”
“Zombies,” Laura said, still grinning.
“Exactly,” I said, “the zombie apocalypse comes but once a year.”
“To celebrate the birth of the original zombie,” Laura said as we power walked through the parking lot, back towards the downtown crowds.
“That’s your people,” I said, looking over my shoulder at the store, “you and Jesus, the undead walking the earth.”
“Don’t be jealous,” Laura taunted, “just because Hell sends you to the back of the line every time you die.”
“So, you’re some kind of death VIP then?” I said, “then why did Satan kick your scrawny ass back to earth?”
“I had to come back for my encore,” Laura said, “the world couldn’t muddle through without me. Don’t worry. Mother Teresa, Josef Stalin, and that Scientology guy are keeping my seat warm in Hell for when I get back.”
“As much as I would love to spend eternity with Stalin,” I said, “I’m going to be so disappointed when I can’t say ‘I told you so’ about the robots winning at the apocalypse here on earth.”
“Not as disappointed as I am with that little PA stunt,” Laura yawned, “lets get out of here.”
“Sure,” I said, “anything else you wanted to do?”
“We can head back, maybe find something to do on the way,” Laura said, “I’m tired.”
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