It's the Apocalypse, Dave. Try to Have Fun.

by A.R. Wise

  * * *

  As it turned out, I’d been knocked out for several minutes. When I came to, I was staring up at a bright blue sky dotted with wispy, white clouds, and my face was pulsing with pain.

  “You up?” asked Tony when I started to groan. He was staring down at me, the bright blue sky and my impaired vision turning him into a familiar, blurry silhouette.

  “Tony? What’s wrong with my face?”

  “All sorts of stuff, you ugly bastard. Can you sit up?”

  “I think so,” I said as I tried to come to grips with my surroundings. Everything was a little fuzzy. I came to a realization about my face. “Oh, I fell and hit my head. Right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  I started to try and stand up, but Tony put his hand on my shoulder and told me to just sit instead of standing. “Why?” I asked, but then I saw blood all around me and recalled how Jerry had taken a whack at me with a katana.

  I was in the courtyard between Mimi and Tony’s apartments. I was in the brown grass, surrounded by bloody towels and people with concerned looks on their faces. Well, most of them looked concerned. Mimi still looked mad at me, and I wondered if she’d been trying to convince the others to leave me here to rot because I’d dumped her out of her chair. She’s the type to carry a grudge. That’s where Gabby gets it.

  “Did you cut off my foot?” I asked while looking at Jerry.

  “No,” said Gabby, answering for her little brother. “You’re going to be fine.” Her hands, arms, and shirt were splattered with my blood, and I realized she’d been the one who dressed the wound. Gabby had spent a year studying to be a nurse before we dated, but dropped out when they raised tuition.

  Otis was standing beside Gabby with his back to me. Tony tapped him on the arm and said, “Help me carry him.”

  “It’s okay,” I said as I started to stand up. “I think I can hop along.” My foot was wrapped with my hoodie. Gabby had tied it on with string, and I could also feel a tight bandage on my skin that was keeping the wound closed. It stung, but I’d survive. I still had on my ‘Mother Fucker’ t-shirt, but it was getting as crusty as a gym sock in a single guy’s computer room.

  “Well then hop along, Cassidy, and let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Otis, eager to leave.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, still trying to get my bearings.

  “Far away from here,” said Otis.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” I asked as Tony helped me to my feet, or more accurately to my foot. I kept my right foot elevated and leaned on Tony’s shoulder for support.

  “To the woods,” said Jerry, his katana in one hand and his Ghostbuster’s wand in the other.

  “Here’s an idea,” I said while staring at Jerry’s sword. “How about someone take that sword away from him? Samurai Jerry needs some practice before he goes to war again.”

  Otis tried to take the sword, but Jerry pulled away as if being attacked. His sister had to ease his nerves and promise that he’d get his sword back. Jerry reluctantly handed his weapon over while glaring at Otis.

  “We need to get away from here,” said Tony.

  “From here?” I asked and looked around at the apartments surrounding us. “Are those things all over the complex?”

  “Yeah, they’re in the walls. And not just here, man,” said Tony. “They’re everywhere. We need to get out of town, and as far from civilization as we can.”

  “He’s right,” said Otis. “We need to leave, now.”

  “Why? What’d I miss?” I still didn’t have a clue about how widespread this event was. In my mind, we needed to seek out the police or the military for protection.

  “This is going on all over the place,” said Otis. “Gabby and I were watching the news while you were over there trying to get your foot chopped off. These jellyfish things are popping out of people all over the place.”

  “All over the world,” said Gabby, and her subdued, concerned tone brought the extent of this apocalypse into focus for me. Gabby wasn’t the sort of person who got caught off guard very often. She was whip smart, and a born leader who made decisive, concrete decisions. She rarely strayed from whatever path she got set on. Yet here she was, afraid and uncertain what to do. I looked into her glassy eyes and saw doubt and unease. It was an expression I’d only seen from her once, on the day we broke up.

  Jerry continued to mumble, “Out of the cities. Out of the towns.” We ignored him as he fidgeted with his fingers, tapping their tips against one another as if performing calculations we weren’t privy to.

  “They’re coming out of people all over the place,” said Tony. “They can control people for a while too, but then they, like, bust out. No one knows why. No one knows what the hell they are.”

  “Gotta get in the light and stay in the light,” said Jerry. “Out of the cities. Out of the towns.”

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  “He’s just repeating what he heard on TV,” said Gabby. “Otis and I heard the same thing, at least about the light.”

  “Stay in the light?” I asked.

  Gabby nodded. “They said the squid-things don’t like sunlight.”

  I looked at the sun, and the clouds around it.

  “To the woods,” said Jerry. “Go to the woods.”

  “Maybe he’s right about that to,” I said. “Maybe we should get out of town and away from people.”

  “Except it ain’t just people that’ve got squids in them,” said Otis. “Remember the birds?”

  “Yeah, he’s right,” said Tony. “There were birds dropping like bombs on our way here, with tentacles coming out of them.”

  “Bird on a wire,” said Jerry. “Pop.” He shook his head and used his hands to mime an explosion. Then he continued to tap his fingers against one another. “Still to the woods. Go to the woods.”

  “Imagine if we get out in the woods and find a pack of squid bears,” said Tony. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Then where do we go?” I asked. “Where’s safe?”

  Gabby pointed west. “The mountains. As high up as we can get.”

  “That’s a long way, Gabby,” said Tony. “And you can bet the roads are a parking lot by now.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” asked Gabby.

  I knew they were about to launch into a war of words, so I interrupted with a pertinent question, “Do they know why some people are infected and others aren’t?”

  “Not that I heard,” said Otis.

  “From what they said on the radio, no one knows much of anything about what the hell’s going on,” said Tony.

  Gabby got her cell phone out and said, “Give me a minute. Maybe I can stream the news.”

  Jerry tried to take her phone away, but both Tony and Gabby were used to dealing with their brother. They kindly, but forcefully, told him to stop. He was perturbed. He took out his wand and held it over Gabby’s head as if trying to act like an antenna.

  As we waited for her to find a working feed on her phone, I glanced around at the complex. The two-story apartments formed an enclosed square around the courtyard. The only entrances were through covered arches on the north and south side. The apartments had entrances facing the courtyard, with another door on the opposite side that exited onto the parking lot. The design reminded me of a square version of a Roman colosseum, with us in the gladiator’s arena waiting for the lions to come devour us.

  Right now it felt awfully vacant.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

  “You’re in Little Mexico,” said Tony. “Folks here got work. If they aren’t at a job, then they’re out looking for work.”

  “Everyone?” I asked, unconvinced. I remembered hearing other people when we arrived. Where were they now?

  My unease began to affect Tony as well, and he glanced around at all of the closed apartment doors. “I guess so,” he said, but all conviction had left his voice.

  “Here we go,” said Gabby as sh
e found a site that was streaming live coverage of what was happening in Chicago.

  “Can’t you find anything local?” asked Tony, but his sister hushed him as the newscaster spoke.

  The others crowded around the phone to listen, but I continued staring at the disconcertingly quiet apartments.

  “…within city limits,” said the newscaster, her trembling voice revealing her terror. “We’ve seen multiple attacks all throughout the… all throughout the world. I… We… There’s no one telling us what to do.” She took a breath in an attempt to calm down. I admire her desire to push on with her duty and relay the news, but it was clear she didn’t have any idea what to say. “The military made contact with local officials to ask that they get the word out to stay indoors, but then they rescinded that advice. Now they’re saying to get outside. Early word from nations in the Middle East is that the Terrameds are coming out at night.”

  “What did she call them?” asked Tony. “Terror meds?”

  Gabby hushed him.

  “They’re recommending you stay in the light, although we’re not certain if that means only sunlight or if…”

  The lights in the studio dimmed, and there was a crackle of energy before everything returned to normal there. The newscaster stared at the camera, her mouth slightly agape. She didn’t move. Someone off camera asked, “Gloria?”

  Gloria just stared straight ahead, and then her eye twitched as she let out a gurgle. I watched along with the others as the bizarre scene played out.

  The newscaster’s eye bulged, and then returned to its socket before rolling upward.

  “What’s going on?” asked Mimi from her chair. The rest of us were standing, huddled around Gabby as she held her phone, but Mimi couldn’t see. “What’s happening? Let me see.”

  A tentacle pushed its way out of the newscaster’s skull, popping the eyeball from its socket and leaving it dangling on the woman’s cheek as the other people in the newsroom screamed in shock and horror.

  The feed went dead.

  6 – Bye, Bye Technology