The Apocalypse Seven

by Gene Doucette

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Take an arrow out.”

  “You want me to throw it at one of the pigs?”

  “Just do it.”

  He did. She stepped away again, looking for a safe space between the horse’s hindquarters and the pigs.

  “Okay, now what?” Touré asked.

  “Now stab Elton in the butt and hold on for dear life.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Very seriously. And keep your head down.”

  What happened next might have been funny if it didn’t involve everyone nearly dying at about the same time.

  As soon as Touré jabbed Elton in the rear with the tip of the arrow, the horse whinnied and reared up, nearly hitting his own head against the low entrance to the station. Touré failed to hold on with adequate sincerity; his arms flew back, along with his head and upper torso, and he lost the arrow, which clattered to the ground a few feet from Elton.

  Touré would have landed right next to it if he wasn’t tied down. As it was, he screamed in pain, because one of the things keeping him attached to the horse was his wounded leg.

  The next thing Elton did was charge down the stairs, his rider still bouncing along helplessly on his back, trying to sit up and grab ahold of the bridle.

  The lead boar seemed to recognize his prey was escaping into the city’s sublevel and charged. Win released the arrow she had nocked, and watched as it found a home in the beast’s right eye. The effect was dramatic and immediate; a two-hundred-pound unstrung marionette with a rhino’s momentum. That momentum carried it to within a few feet of Win.

  There was no time to appreciate what was a righteous kill, though, because while having their leader dropped caused all the pigs behind him to hesitate, another boar from her left didn’t care. It charged.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Win caught the movement at the last second and stepped back, kicking it in the head, narrowly avoiding being gored. Then she spun around, and ran down the steps.

  Elton and Touré had made it to the bottom in one piece, but neither of them was the slightest bit happy about the situation. When Win made it down, she found Elton pacing angrily in front of the turnstiles he couldn’t fit through, with Touré bouncing along on his back. It was all dark on the other side of the turnstiles.

  “Help, help, help,” Touré was saying, quietly.

  She didn’t have time to help, at least not right away. As soon as she reached the last step, she drew another arrow, turned, and waited.

  None of the boars had followed them.

  “They don’t like it down here,” she said.

  “Neither do we,” Touré said.

  3

  The way to get Elton past the turnstile was to take him through the handicap gate, but in order to do that, he had to agree to talk to Win again, which he seemed reluctant to do.

  Elton did allow her close enough to help Touré, who was still flopping about on the horse’s back. Touré had lost his grip on the rope at the top of the stairs, and—​as long as Elton was still moving around—​had given up even trying to sit up in the saddle.

  “Thanks,” Touré said, once he was upright. “I was thinking about just passing out, but this is much better.”

  Once Touré was settled, Win took out a couple of torches and got them lit.

  You have to be careful with fire around horses, for obvious reasons, but Elton had mostly gotten used to it by now. Win handed a torch to Touré and then walked around on the other side of the turnstile to show the horse that he had not been led into some kind of equine hell.

  The rats scurrying around at her feet probably didn’t help sell the story. They appeared to be the only animal interested in residing in the subway tunnels—​she wondered if this was why the pigs didn’t come down—​and there were a lot of them.

  They were also very, very large. It certainly made the underground look hellish.

  The rats didn’t appear interested in eating any of them, but the question of what they did eat was definitely on Win’s mind.

  “This is . . . disconcerting,” she said, kicking rats as she walked. She held open the gate for Elton, who looked like he felt the same about the scurrying rodents underfoot.

  “Yeah, I’m glad I’m up here, thanks,” Touré said. “We could probably put a saddle on one of the rats for you, if we had an extra one.”

  Win used the torch flame to clear the way as they walked, which made her feel slightly better about the overabundance of rats. Elton appreciated it too.

  Soon they reached the first set of tracks, which unfortunately were not the tracks they needed.

  “We’re looking for the red line,” Touré said. “Over there, down that next flight.”

  “More stairs?”

  “Yeah. You want me to stab him again?”

  “No, you lost my arrow the last time.”

  She got ahead of Elton, grabbed the lead rope from his neck and started pulling. He complained, a lot, and dragged her back a few feet, but eventually agreed to go.

  It was a good thing he didn’t charge down this flight like he had the last one, because the stairs ended at a landing to tracks that were underwater.

  “How deep do you think that is?” Win asked.

  “Three feet?”

  “I think it’s closer to five.”

  “Sure, okay. Hmm . . .” Touré studied the water. “We’re totally sure the power’s out, yeah?”

  “The whole city’s out,” Win said. “How much surer do you need to be?”

  “It’s just, there’s a third rail under that water—​you get me?”

  “I do.”

  Win kicked a rat into the water. It plopped in, surfaced, and started swimming in a way that clearly indicated it wasn’t being electrocuted.

  “Satisfied?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that works.”

  Elton lowered his head and sniffed the water, huffed, and tried to turn around.

  “No, no,” she said. “You were warned.”

  “You know he doesn’t understand you when you tell him things, right?” Touré asked.

  “Sure he does. He’s just being stubborn.”

  “I can’t believe I’m the crazy one in this relationship.”

  “You were having conversations with people who weren’t there,” she said. “I’m talking to a horse. It’s completely different.”

  “Right.”

  “Elton, look at me,” she said. “I’ll go first, okay?”

  Win handed her torch to Touré—​who held both of them in his right hand, opting to keep holding on to Elton with his left—​and secured her bow and quiver on the side of the saddle. Then she stepped in, going under entirely.

  “Whoa!” she said, on surfacing. “Yeah, five feet’s closer. It’s cold.”

  “You sure are making it sound appealing,” Touré said.

  “Come on, Elton. This is the way out, let’s go. Water’s great!”

  She reached up, grabbed the lead, and pulled.

  Reluctantly, the horse jumped in. Win went under again, and would have been crushed to death by Elton had he not angled his jump to land ahead of her. And the only reason she wasn’t swept in the wrong direction by his wake was that she held on to the rope.

  “Win, where are you?” Touré shouted.

  She breached behind him and spat out a mouthful of seawater.

  “Here,” she said. “Wow, this was a really bad idea.” Win looked north, then south. “Are we facing the right direction?”

  “Toward Alewife. Yes.”

  “Hand me a torch?”

  He leaned over and passed one to her.

  “So,” he said, “according to my wound, this is definitely salt water.”

  “That’s how it tastes. Does it sting?”

  “Yeah, I might faint, just so you know.”

  “That’s why you’re tied down, cowboy. Try to keep the torch dry.”

  4

  They continued ahead in the same basic forma
tion as before, with Win on Elton’s right. Instead of a weapon in her right hand, she held the torch, which Elton was being very cool about. She wished there was a way to reward him properly once they got out of the city.

  “Hey, so you and your buddies, with your bikes . . .” she said. “You and Noah, or whoever.”

  “Noah?” Touré asked. “Robbie, you mean. Where’d you get Noah?”

  “Whatever. Did you guys find any gardens?”

  “No, but we didn’t go very far. To be honest, we weren’t thinking real clear. We were just trying to figure out where everyone went, and we had the Noot bars, so we figured there was time. Carol was the only one keeping us straight. I think we’d all be dead without . . . Well, they might be dead now, actually.”

  “I’m sure they’re not,” she said. “What’s a Noot bar?”

  “You don’t want to know. Oh, hey, we made it to Park Street.”

  He held his light up against a sign that said exactly that.

  “Good, what does that . . . whoa.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Something just brushed past my leg.”

  “Something?”

  “Yeah, there’s fish or . . . I mean, I hope it’s a fish?”

  “Are the walls getting closer? I know this movie.”

  “Let’s just hope Elton—”

  Win didn’t finish the sentence, because whatever was in the water did indeed rub up against the horse’s legs. Elton, perhaps on his very last nerve, completely lost his shit.

  The horse bolted. Win, standing to his right with her left hand wrapped in his lead, nearly lost that hand and the shoulder it was attached to. She did lose the torch, but that wasn’t even close to her most pressing concern.

  Drowning was the big one. They were in water that was now less than five feet high, which was just enough to keep her from getting dragged on the tracks behind Elton—​although the level had been going down steadily, so if he didn’t calm down soon and she managed to not drown, getting dragged was definitely her next most pressing concern.

  Win got her right hand up to the bridle, swapped it with her left, then got her free hand up and out of the water.

  Touré discovered her grasping hand, locked in a grip, and pulled. Then she was up on the saddle behind him.

  She blinked seawater from her eyes and found she couldn’t see.

  “I’m blind,” she said.

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “I lost my torch too. Sorry.”

  “All right.”

  She got her arms around Touré and grabbed the makeshift reins.

  “We need to slow him down,” she said.

  “I agree, but I can’t find the brake pedal.”

  “Elton! It’s okay!” she shouted. “It’s okay, you’re okay! Tell him he’s okay.”

  “You’re okay, horse,” Touré shouted. “You’re awesome.”

  A light appeared ahead. Win’s first reaction to it was panic—​that it was a train heading their way.

  “Are we at the end already?” she asked.

  “Charles Street station’s aboveground.”

  “I thought you said this was an underground train.”

  “Yeah, but not the whole time,” he said. “Be happy the tracks go over the river instead of under it.”

  “What about the pigs?”

  “I think the runaway horse we’re attached to is a bigger problem right now, don’t you?”

  “He’ll calm down.”

  They reached the end of the tunnel. It was literally an uphill climb getting there, which took them out of the water entirely.

  One would think Elton might stop running then, because without water there was no threat that another mystery aquatic creature could brush past his leg. And he did, but not until after he passed the Charles Street station landing and got halfway across the bridge that led to Cambridge. He only stopped then because there was a large collapsed tower in his way.

  A reasonable argument could be made that he never did calm down; he just ran out of a track upon which to express his displeasure.

  “Okay,” Win said, dismounting, “now where are we?”

  “Great place to watch the fireworks,” Touré said. “And no pigs.”

  “What happened here?”

  “One of the towers came down,” Touré said. “I noticed this when I came in.”

  “On this bridge?”

  “No, no, on the Mass Ave. bridge, over there.” He pointed across the water to their left, at a bridge that looked like a much easier crossing.

  “There used to be four. The other ones must have fallen into the water.”

  Win climbed onto the brick pile and got a good look in every direction. Clouds had formed in the sky since she’d last looked at it, and the wind down the river—​which they were now standing over—​cut through her wet clothes like they weren’t even there. Yoga pants, she decided, had definitely been the wrong way to go.

  “We have to get off the tracks,” she said.

  “I agree.”

  The bridge was laid out with the train tracks down the middle, with roadways for car traffic on either side. There was a hard barrier running along both sides of the tracks, to keep cars and pedestrians from accidentally intersecting with the train.

  It was also an exceptional horse deterrent. She thought she could probably climb it, but Touré couldn’t.

  “So where do we go? I’m open to suggestions,” she said.

  “Do horses have an eight-foot vertical leap?” Touré asked.

  “They do not.”

  “I didn’t think so, but, you know. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. We’ll have to double back.”

  “Into the tunnel?”

  “No, no, not that far. Just to the station landing. He can get up there, right?”

  “I hope so. Then what?”

  “We go out the station, to the street, and then back onto the bridge the way a car would: up the on-ramp and down the car travel lane.”

  “There might be pigs on the street,” she said.

  “Or we can move all this rubble with our hands.”

  “All right,” Win said. She took a look at the roadway Touré was talking about. There were a half-dozen cars on it. They weren’t parked; just stopped. She thought back to the scene on the turnpike, and the jawbone in her bag.

  More graves, she thought.

  “We’ll hope for no pigs,” she said.

  5

  It had been a good plan, but unfortunately Elton couldn’t be coaxed into jumping up to the landing.

  Win thought it was probably within his abilities, but this was a stunt even a trained horse like Max might have balked at.

  It took some work, but she was able to find a steel plate hanging up against the wall. Its original function was to bridge the gap between the train and the platform, for wheelchairs, and was resting next to a hydraulic lift that was there for the same reason. The lift wasn’t of any use, but the ramp could be repurposed successfully for horse relocation.

  Elton balked again at a doorway that was neither wide nor tall enough for both him and Touré, so Touré had to climb down and hop to the other side. Win tied him back into the stirrups once they were out of the station.

  The road under the overpass was a foot deep with water, and thankfully had no pigs. Elton took one look at the water, shot an Are you kidding me? look at Win, but then stepped into it without a word from either of them. He seemed attitudinally prepared to write off humanity entirely. But given that Win and Touré might be the last two examples of the human race, it wasn’t as profound a statement as it would have been otherwise.

  They found the Longfellow Bridge on-ramp and headed back across again—​on the outbound side, which the collapsed tower wasn’t blocking. Elton stopped whining.

  The cloud cover, meanwhile, had become substantial.

  “Another storm’s coming,” Win said. She was shivering from the wind and looked forward to finding some cover. “Sure hope
Cambridge is the land of milk and honey like you’ve been saying.”

  “The wheat and corn just plant themselves,” he said. “You know I was delirious, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Did I mention the wolves, at least?”

  “You did, yes. You said they were as big as Elton. I assumed you were exaggerating.”

  “Only a little. Whoa, hey, did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  He was squinting at the horizon.

  “Straight ahead,” he said. “I saw a flash, I swear.”

  “Like lightning?”

  “Like lightning, but not lightning. Come up here.”

  She took his hand and climbed onto Elton. Touré directed her gaze to a not particularly interesting spot in the air above Cambridge.

  “Near Kendall,” he said.

  “I don’t know where that is.”

  “It’s straight ahead.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  Then there was a flash.

  “Huh,” she said. “Definitely not lightning.”

  “Definitely not,” he said. “Could be, someone in Cambridge has electrical power. Wanna go find out?”

  Ananda

  1

  A lot of information that had made no sense before suddenly made a whole lot of sense after Ananda discovered she’d lost a hundred years.

  There were still plenty of questions left over, though, along with a number of new ones, such as: How did I get here?

  Presupposing that this was currently unanswerable, Ananda spent more time looking at what her discovery did answer: the vegetation overgrowth, the general deterioration of the buildings and roads, the wildlife population explosion, the lack of power, and even the stubborn refusal of batteries to function.

  Of course, a lot of that depended upon precisely when all the people died.

  She hadn’t found any corpses, but such a find would have been of limited use, as she had no forensic experience; looking at remains and estimating how long a person had been dead wasn’t really something she could do with any confidence. Not to say examining a corpse would yield no information, exactly, because a corpse would provide clear proof that at least some of humanity had died at a point in the past as opposed to just vanished. Further, she might learn a little about what killed them based on what that hypothetical corpse was in the midst of doing when they died. Were they running, sitting, lying down, driving a car, defending themselves, etc.? Were there wounds, either on the body or inferred by the clothing?