The Apocalypse Seven

by Gene Doucette

  “Turn me,” he said. “Counterclockwise, slowly.”

  She did. He got a good look at the area, albeit sideways. They were only a couple of blocks from the mall.

  “Was that another gang of boars?” he asked, once the full circuit was completed.

  “Yeah, or the same one as before. It’s really impossible to tell. They don’t wear matching outfits. They’ve been behind us since we left.”

  “Maybe we should move faster.”

  “I agree, but a destination would be helpful.”

  “Okay. Okay, do you see that glass-enclosed staircase up there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That leads to a third-floor gym. I’ve been there; it’s nice. Big bathrooms, lots of floor space for Elton. If we hurry, maybe the boars won’t get to us first.”

  “Oh, they won’t. They’re afraid.”

  “Of you?”

  “Of Elton. There aren’t enough of them to take him on yet. We need to be off the street before the rest arrive.”

  8

  They had to break in through the doors on the ground floor and then deal with the challenge of persuading a horse to climb two flights of stairs. Win coaxed him up to the first landing with an apple—​Touré was never a big fruit eater, but he would have eaten the hell out of that apple himself—​and then pointed out to Elton that the stairwell wasn’t wide enough for him to turn around, and he’d probably fall if he tried to walk backwards, so he may as well keep going.

  Elton wasn’t at all happy about being tricked. He expressed this first by pooping on the stairs, and later by refusing to talk to Win for the rest of the evening.

  The gym was more or less as Touré remembered it, the one time he visited. He wasn’t a visit-a-gym kind of guy, except for the two or three occasions in his life when he tried to become that kind of guy. He got a cheap gym membership with a fitness chain that turned into an expensive membership after about three months.

  He went to the one in Central Square a couple of times, decided again that exercise wasn’t his deal, and never went back. The visit to the Boston location they were now inside of was just to use the bathroom.

  Win untied him and helped him onto the rubberized floor, while the aggravated Elton walked over to the other side of the room to see if any of the free weights were edible.

  “I was supposed to be collecting all this stuff,” Touré said. “For the others. Parkas and more blankets and . . . hats and gloves and all that, for winter. We were prepping for winter.”

  “You think that’s going to happen soon?” Win asked.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the other end of the mat, chewing on a piece of meat and holding eye contact for an unsettling length of time.

  “Pretty soon, yeah,” he said.

  “You’re probably right. How many are there? Your friends.”

  “Counting me, there are four. Well, five. We saw this kid running around, but he took off.”

  Win nodded.

  “I was hoping for more,” she said.

  “Me too. We kept taking the bikes out farther, to find more survivors. Might have to wait until the spring now, but we’ll figure it out.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “Where all the people went.”

  Win started laughing,

  “All the people are dead,” she said.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I know you’re looking in the wrong place if you’re heading out of the city to figure that out. Where do you think I came from?”

  “I dunno, a Renaissance faire?”

  “I saw the dead. They’re everywhere. You’ve probably seen them too.”

  “Do you . . . see them right now?”

  She gave him a sour look, then got up and started pacing around the mat. She still had that big knife on her hip, and was coming off as a little unbalanced. He hoped he was wrong about being the expendable character.

  “Piles of dust in stacks of clothes,” she said. “That’s all they are. Something turned all the people into piles of dust. Even the bones. Most of the bones. All except for you and me. And the others, I guess, if they’re real.”

  “Of course they’re real. Why would I make that up?”

  “I didn’t say you made them up. Sorry. I’ve been . . . sorry. I’m sure they’re real. I don’t know when you’ll see them again, but sure, they’re real.”

  “We can go see them tomorrow. I just need my bike.”

  “Tomorrow, you stay right here while I go looking for something to help with that wound. Or you’ll die.”

  “I asked you to stop talking like that.”

  “I’m just telling you, you’re going nowhere right now. The pigs are all over the parts of the city that aren’t underwater. You’ll never make it.”

  “Underwater? Literally?”

  “Yes, literally. I can’t have you limping around behind me or you’ll get both of us killed. You know you can’t ride a bike on that, right?”

  “I can use a crutch.”

  “No.” Win stopped pacing and sat back down. “Maybe you should tell me what happened here,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what happened? What did this to everyone? That’s why I came into town. Here, maybe this will help.”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out a bone, tossing it on the mat between them.

  “Less than two weeks ago,” she said, “the owner of that jawbone was sitting in a car, in traffic, trying to run away from Boston. That’s all that’s left now. Well, and a couple of loose teeth. I didn’t take those.”

  “He was in his car?”

  “Her car. I think. Based on the shoes. What does that to a person?”

  “Maybe the same thing crumbling all the streets and the buildings,” Touré said, as his everything gets old at the same time apocalypse scenario gained new prominence on his list. “What makes you say she was trying to get away from here?”

  “They all were. That’s what I’m trying to explain. You said you were heading out of town to work out what happened, but this is the epicenter. I came here to find you so you could tell me why everyone else in the world is dead.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I’m as in the dark as you. I woke up and it was like this. We all did.”

  She looked him in the eyes for an uncomfortably long time, without saying anything, before breaking off.

  “I mean, obviously, right?” he said. “Why would we be riding around looking for answers if we had answers ourselves?”

  “Okay,” she said, climbing back to her feet again, nodding, and making him nervous. “Okay.”

  “We’re all in the dark here,” Touré said.

  “I understand. Yeah. I’m going to . . . I’m going to see about cleaning us up and then maybe get some sleep.”

  “Yes, sure. I understand.”

  She disappeared into the bathroom. A minute later, he could hear her crying.

  He felt like he should go comfort her somehow, even though he had no real comfort to give.

  If she was right about the leg wound becoming infected, he probably wasn’t going to survive the winter. Meanwhile, without him to help collect gear, and do whatever else, the others might not make it through the winter either.

  If Win was right, they were the last remnants of the entire human race . . . and they were about to go extinct.

  There was nothing comforting about that whatsoever. The longer he thought about it, the more crying in the bathroom seemed like the only sane response. A hug certainly wouldn’t make it all better.

  So instead of getting up and hopping to the bathroom to see if Win was going to be okay—​or to see if he was—​he curled up in a ball under the blanket and tried to sleep.

  Eight

  Robbie

  1

  The emotional consequence of Touré’s failure to return didn’t hit them all at once, because there was precedent for this already.

  Back when
they’d first met, Robbie and Carol ended up in the dormitory, while Touré was at the supermarket, assuming the others were dead. Now he was the one who failed to show up when and where he was supposed to, but they weren’t prepared to think the worst.

  Surely all that happened, they reasoned, was that it got dark early and so he holed up somewhere safe until morning.

  It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, especially since the days were getting noticeably shorter. Robbie almost had to do the same thing.

  Robbie’s trip to the malls in Watertown was fruitful enough that he had to go back and forth three times to bring it all to the dorm: blankets, winter gear, more matches, even something called a “starter log” for the fireplace.

  It was getting dark by the end of the fourth round trip. Robbie knew his way around New England weather, and thought himself up to date on the speed in which the daytime turned to nighttime in the winter, but on this day, he seemed to lose his feel for it. He was pedaling back in almost total darkness.

  The rational choice would have been to stop over somewhere, but he was biking along the river and there was no place to stop over. He’d have to head away from the riverbank and into neighborhoods he wasn’t familiar with, in the dark. That seemed like a worse idea than to just keep pedaling.

  None of the wildlife knew quite what to do with the bike, and the wolves—​he could hear them howling—​were off hunting somewhere else, so it ended up being uneventful. When he made it back to hear that Touré hadn’t returned, he was hardly surprised.

  They kept busy the following day; they couldn’t afford not to. And surely, they thought, Touré would turn up at any minute.

  Bethany took Robbie’s bike into Harvard Square to pick up more of the things “the menfolk” wouldn’t have thought of. It turned out she did know how to ride a bike and just didn’t want to. Or something. Robbie thought her reluctance to do so was directly influenced by her insistence on being contrary to Touré in all matters, but verifying that with her was probably going to end up being not worth the trouble.

  Robbie, meanwhile, attempted to chop down a tree.

  They had plenty of live trees to choose from. There were dead ones too, but they looked a lot like the one Robbie saw in the quad back on the first day: collapsed, and overtaken by some kind of invasive mossy ground covering. This same moss was fighting the grass in several places around the city. It was hard to tell who was winning, but the animals didn’t eat the moss, which was a bad sign for the grass.

  Robbie’s attempts to scrape enough moss from one of the fallen trees to get at the wood underneath ended in frustration. If they wanted wood, it would have to be some combination of fallen branches and a live tree.

  He decided on one of the trees near the river rather than near the dorm, reasoning that since he couldn’t predict how a tree might fall, it would be better if when the tree did fall it didn’t land on anything they liked.

  The point was moot, because the tree never fell. He whacked at it for half of the afternoon, succeeding only in the creation of several blisters.

  “We can take lumberjack off my list of possible professions,” he said to Carol. She was on a bench a safe distance from the tree.

  “But how will you feed your family of ten?” Carol asked.

  “I’ll have to go to the mines, like my papa and his papa before him.”

  She laughed.

  He took two more whacks at the tree, then put the axe back down again. If a blister popped, he was done for, and all he’d managed to accomplish was a modest gash in the side of the trunk. It was nothing the tree couldn’t abide.

  “This is way harder than I expected,” he said.

  “It’s a living thing,” Carol said. “It’s bound to fight back.”

  “Yeah. And it’s winning.”

  “So. What did you want to do?”

  “Today? I dunno, maybe grab a drink, see a movie.”

  “I meant, with your life. Now that we’ve excluded lumberjack.”

  He nearly said Live to at least age thirty, but thought pithy gallows humor was perhaps uncalled for under the current circumstances.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “I don’t know what I wanted to do. I was heading toward CPA, but that would’ve been just to pay bills, I think. Maybe lawyer. My dad wanted me to look at law school after graduation. He didn’t seem to think it was premature to drop those suggestions when I was still figuring out how to be a freshman, but that was how he rolled, so . . .”

  “So not CPA.”

  “I didn’t want to be an accountant. I kind of wanted to be a writer. I don’t know if I’m any good at it, but if it turned out I was . . . that’s the problem, though, right? I’m talking about all of it in past tense. I never wanted it to be my job to just survive. But here I am, hitting a tree with the sharp side of an axe and listening to the tree laugh at me. This is all I’m ever going to be now: someone who survives, or doesn’t.”

  “Survival is important,” she said. “And we need you to keep us alive.”

  “No pressure there.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “I know. That just makes it worse. There are a lot of things I definitely don’t want to be, and CPA is just one of them. I also don’t want to be the one making important decisions with life-or-death consequences. I’d rather be in the back of the room, thanks.”

  “I know,” she said. “But there’s nobody else in the room.”

  “That’s only true until we can find more people. Then I’ll retire.”

  He swung the axe extra hard. It didn’t help.

  “Well . . .” Carol said. “You can still write. Nobody’s stopping you. Get a pen and some paper and some candles so you don’t ignite your work with a misplaced torch.”

  “I’ve thought about it. But for who? I want to succeed in a community that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “I suppose,” Carol said. “But think of it this way: If you do decide to write, you’ll be the world’s greatest living author.”

  He laughed. “Sure,” he said. “But the world’s greatest lumberjack is calling it quits. I don’t think the wood in this tree will burn anytime soon anyway. Firewood needs to dry out, right? We should have done this six months ago.”

  “You’re probably right. Perhaps there’s a better solution. Was there wood at the mall?”

  2

  Touré didn’t come back the second night, either.

  Bethany did, with a haul of products from some shop in Harvard Square. They were mostly hygiene-related: powders, perfumes, soaps, and two-ply toilet paper. She also brought a wide assortment of undergarments, clearly intended for her and Carol. And she had a gift for Robbie: a razor and shaving cream.

  “Dude, you do not look like you’re gonna pull off a beard,” she said.

  The next morning—​after a cold-water shave that cut his face in two places—​Robbie made another three trips to and from the massive hardware store at one of the Arsenal Street malls, this time for construction wood that looked like it might burn.

  What he found was short enough to fit into the cart he was dragging, but too long to fit into a fireplace, so he also picked up a saw while he was there, thinking it was probably more appropriate for the task than the axe.

  “I should search for him,” he said that night, once it became clear Touré wouldn’t be walking through the door.

  “You can’t,” Carol said.

  They were in the common room, sitting around the fireplace. There was no fire, as they hadn’t worked up the courage yet, but the chairs around it were assembled in a way that was advantageous to conversation. They were each wrapped up in blankets, because as the winds picked up, it became clear exactly how drafty the building was.

  “But he could be hurt,” Robbie said. “If I can find him, and help him back here . . .”

  “You not coming back sentences all three of us to die,” Carol said. “That’s the situation, Robbie, and I’m sorry to put it
that way, but it’s true. I’m worried about him, and I hope he’s okay, but going into the same environment that appears to have waylaid him . . .”

  “All three of us may die either way. Look, we might be the last four people on the planet, so I’m willing to value his life a little higher here.”

  What he didn’t say was how much easier all of this was with Touré around. Not from a division-of-labor perspective, although that had merit. Touré made the end of the world bearable somehow, because he was the only one who seemed—​oddly, Robbie would have to admit—​excited by the idea. That was off-putting at first; now Robbie wasn’t sure how to get through the day without it.

  “It’s too great a risk,” Carol said.

  “Once everything here is set, though . . .”

  “He doesn’t even want you to save him,” Bethany said.

  “What are you talking about?” Robbie asked.

  “It’s who he is, man. He wants to be the guy who saves everyone. He’d rather go down thinking he was a hero.”

  “I don’t know where that’s coming from,” Robbie said, “but if it was me out there, he’d try and find me.”

  “Of course he would! Then he’d be the hero. That’s what I’m saying!”

  “We all need rescuing,” Carol said. “We save one another.”

  “Yeah, Touré missed that memo,” Bethany said.

  “Right,” Robbie said, standing. “Well, I think I’d rather get out there and ask him myself, thanks. Excuse me—​I need some sleep.”

  3

  Robbie didn’t leave the dorm the next day, to look for Touré or for anything else. Nobody did, because that was when the snow came.

  It was a tremendous storm, magnificent and beautiful as long as one was looking at it from the inside. It came with high winds and granular bits of snow that everyone familiar with this kind of weather recognized as the very worst. It was the sort of snow that piled up upon itself, buried entire landscapes, and either suffocated or froze living things, and it was carried in on the kind of storm that was supposed to come with a name.