The Apocalypse Seven

by Gene Doucette

  Then she thought she heard someone call her name.

  “What? I’m awake,” she said, with a start.

  She looked around, but there still wasn’t anything to see. She could make out the house in front of her, and the tree she was leaning on, and the street and sidewalk. Not much else. There could be a boa constrictor on the lawn and she’d miss it.

  Then she saw a flash from somewhere up the driveway. A light, or the reflection of a light, or maybe just her eyeballs malfunctioning. Or she was still dreaming.

  She got up anyway, made sure the gun was still in her hand, and headed for the flash.

  What she found . . . was a wheelbarrow.

  It was on the side of the house, just sitting there, right-side up, waiting to be discovered. It had a plastic wheel that was intact and in no need of being inflated.

  It seemed like a highly improbable discovery.

  “You were caught in a downpour, Mr. Barrow,” she said. “How come you’re not full of water?”

  She tipped it onto its side to confirm that there wasn’t a gallon of rainwater in it, set it back upright, and considered whether this was also a dream, or if the universe was just choosing this moment to show a little charity.

  Gift horse or not, this was really, really weird.

  There was a shift in the wind, which carried a familiar smell.

  Piss, she thought. Same as the dorm room.

  He’s here.

  Carol’s apparition was in the yard with her, somewhere, somehow. And at a moment when Bethany was just as blind as Carol.

  But maybe not as defenseless.

  “Hello?” she said. “I know you’re there.”

  He was there. He didn’t respond, but he was there, and he was right behind her. She was positive.

  He was reaching for her, out of the darkness.

  He was real.

  She screamed, spun around.

  And fired the gun.

  Robbie

  1

  The library fire didn’t show any signs of letting up, even when the roof collapsed.

  Robbie kept expecting to hear sirens, but there weren’t going to be any. Not even from the fire station two blocks away. What really would have helped was another torrential downpour. It seemed this was the day when everything happened out of order.

  “Where’s the boy who knocked me over?” Carol asked. “I thought I heard him screaming. Did he get out?”

  “No, he definitely didn’t,” Robbie said. “But he was . . . he was in rough shape.”

  “Bethany called him a vampire.”

  “Yeah, he looked like one. Half dead from starvation. And there’s this guy. He looks like he fought every animal in the state to make it here.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “It’s pretty bad. I’m wondering if this is the kind of survivor we should expect from now on. Dying because of a lack of something: food, water, someone to watch his back.”

  Carol smiled. “Humans are pack animals,” she said. “That’s why we’re still here. And why we get along so well with other pack animals.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry he scared off your new wolf friend. Or new coyote friend, I guess. Assuming we can believe a guy who’s probably delirious from blood loss.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll find him again.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope not.”

  She nodded and fell silent as they listened to the fire crackle and distant howling. The hunt was still on.

  “Robbie, before we set the library on fire . . . what you were saying about what year it was—​that wasn’t a joke, was it? Or a typo in the copyright? It was . . . it was real, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Carol sighed. “I’m starting to run out of things I can count on to be true,” she said.

  “I think it actually explains some stuff,” he said. “Other than us, I mean.”

  A gunshot interrupted their conversation.

  “Crap,” he said. “I was afraid of this.”

  “Was that Bethany?”

  “She’s the only one we sent into that neighborhood with a loaded weapon, so probably.”

  He grabbed the shotgun and started fiddling with it. The owner of the gun had fired off one round and said there was another barrel. Robbie hoped that meant it didn’t need reloading.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Carol asked.

  “Not a clue. I’ve used a shotgun in a couple of video games, that’s about it. He’s got a bag full of ammo here, so I think if I need to reload it, I’m supposed to shove some kind of canister into the back of the barrel.”

  “I mean, what are you planning to do with that?”

  “Go after her, I guess. What else can I do?”

  “You can stay here and hope she comes back.”

  “She could be in trouble.”

  “You’re going to run into an unfamiliar landscape with a shotgun you don’t know how to use, to rescue a thirteen-year-old who is running around that same neighborhood with a loaded handgun and who may not be in any need of rescuing?”

  “Well, yeah, I was, before you put it that way.”

  “I’m okay!” Bethany shouted from a good distance away.

  Robbie couldn’t see her, but he could hear her coming down the street, along with the sound of something loud and wheeled.

  “We heard the gun,” Carol said. “You’re really okay?”

  Bethany came into view, pushing an actual wheelbarrow.

  “I got spooked,” she said. “Lost the gun and hurt my wrist. Man, firing a gun sucks. Don’t ever try it. But hey, look what I found.”

  2

  Getting an unconscious adult human into a wheelbarrow ended up being the hardest task any of them did that day.

  Or maybe it just seemed like it given it was the last hard task at the end of a very long day. It was accomplished, eventually, after multiple one-two-three-go’s, and a possible concussion for Father Guns-A-Lot (Bethany’s nickname for him). Then there was the problem of seeing in the dark well enough to find the house again, which was resolved when Robbie excavated the edge of the library fire until he found something both still on fire and portable. It looked like it used to be part of an armchair.

  After all that, with Bethany using the makeshift torch to guide them home and Robbie struggling to keep the wheelbarrow from tipping over, they had no actual plan to move the unconscious man up the stairs and into the house.

  “Maybe we should have picked a place with a handicap ramp,” Bethany suggested.

  “It’s not too late to look for one,” Robbie said.

  “It’s a little too late tonight,” Carol said.

  “All right. We got this far—​why don’t we just carry him up to the porch, like before.”

  Before was attempt number seven of their efforts to get him into the wheelbarrow. It involved Robbie holding one of his arms and one of his legs at the knee, with Bethany holding the other arm and Carol holding the other leg.

  It worked—​until it didn’t. Carol missed a step, since nobody was paying attention to the blind woman, and anyway, they could barely see themselves. They stumbled, and dropped him on the porch, rather than placing him there gently.

  He grunted. “Oof,” the preacher said. “How about if I take it from here?”

  Eleven

  Paul

  Pastor Paul woke up in an overstuffed bed under several blankets with the smell of a fire in his nostrils and a sense of ease he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  It was so jarring that for a few seconds he wondered if he’d been forgiven—​for what transgression he still did not know—​and accepted into the bosom of the Lord.

  Then he tried to move his left arm.

  “Are you all right?”

  The speaker was a young Asian woman in a rocking chair a few feet away, staring out the window with eyes that couldn’t see.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Yo
u cried out just now. Are you all right?”

  “Did I? I apologize.”

  “Don’t apologize for being in pain.”

  She got up and found her way to the side of the bed with the help of her cane, and put her hand on his forehead.

  “We don’t think you have a fever,” she said, “but we can’t find a working thermometer. How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been chewed up, spit out, and run over by a stampede.”

  “Mm. I’m told that’s how you look as well.”

  “You’re blind.”

  “Yes, I am. I have been since birth.”

  “I didn’t mean any offense,” he said.

  “I’m not offended. I know I’m blind.”

  She held out her hand, which he took.

  “I’m Carol,” she said. “The others are Robbie and Bethany. They aren’t here right now.”

  “I’m Paul,” he said.

  “And you’re a priest?”

  “I’m a nondenominational preacher, ma’am. Or I was. I guess I can claim to be whatever, the way the world is now. Are you a doctor?”

  “No, unfortunately we don’t have a doctor. We found some bandages for your wounds and made do. What happened to you?”

  “Depends on which part of me we’re talking about, I guess.”

  “The shoulder, then.”

  “A bear bit me.”

  “A . . . bear?”

  “Yep. Big one. They’re all big now—​have you noticed that? Those coyotes you stared down last night . . . Wait, was it last night? Or have I been out for a while?”

  “It was last night, but I don’t blame you for asking. We’re all missing time around here.”

  He didn’t know what that meant exactly, but let it pass.

  “Eastern coyotes are a hybrid breed, but they’ve always been mostly coyote and coyotes don’t grow that large,” he said. “That’s what I mean. Everything’s larger than it should be.”

  “So, a larger-than-average bear bit you,” she said.

  “Yup. He should have had me. I put the double-barrel under his chin and pulled and that was that. I wore his pelt for warmth for a few days. Did you get that snowstorm up here too, or did the Lord send that just for me?”

  “We got it, although . . . if you don’t mind my saying, if I did believe in a god at one time, I wouldn’t now.”

  He laughed. It made his whole body hurt, so he stopped right away.

  “I don’t mind at all, Carol,” he said. “To be honest, it’s been so long since I spoke face-to-face with another person, you could curse my mother all afternoon and it would be the sweetest sound I heard in my life.”

  She smiled.

  “Are you sure you’re a man of the cloth, pastor?” she asked.

  “Got a chapel in New Hampshire to prove it.”

  “I think you’re too charming to be a religious man.”

  “Sometimes that’s all we have going for us,” he said.

  She felt around behind her until she located the chair, which she sat back down in.

  “All right,” she said. “A bear. What about the face?”

  “Mountain lion. Came at me from the trees. My own fault for not sticking to the highway, but I needed shelter. I shot him too, with the pistol. Knife would’ve been faster, but I couldn’t get to it.”

  “And when you say ‘sticking to the highway’ . . . how far did you walk to make it here? Not all the way from New Hampshire?”

  “No, I didn’t walk all of it. I had my truck running for a bit. Did you get a hailstorm?”

  “We did. We appreciated it from indoors.”

  “That’s the way to do it, yes ma’am. That was me being punished for pride, I think.”

  She laughed.

  “I think you should be punished for your pride,” she said. “Especially the part where you believe regional meteorological events are meant for you specifically.”

  “Yeah, I can hear how it sounds. Same time, there aren’t a lot of other folks around for the Lord to direct His wrath at.”

  He wanted to tell her about the angel that manifested before him and sent hailstones to destroy his truck. It seemed like this was a bad time to have that conversation, though, so he kept it to himself.

  “Anyway,” he said, “that storm wrecked all I had except for the guns and the Bible in my pocket. I’ve been walking here since.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked. “What made you decide to come here?”

  “Here is where the Lord wants me. He had too many opportunities to claim my life on the way, and He didn’t take any of ’em. On that, at least, you’ve gotta agree. If not, I’ll tell you where the boar stabbed me, and the snake bit me, and we can just keep on going.”

  “Well, as I said, we don’t have a doctor, but I do agree it’s surprising that you’re still alive after all of that. I suspect few would be.”

  “You folks seem to be doing okay.”

  “We’ve been very lucky. And even so, one of us has been missing since before the snowstorm.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Hey, you were the one petting the coyote, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, that was me.”

  “That was a little foolish, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  She smiled. “That would be the majority opinion, yes. It seemed a reasonable choice, from my perspective.”

  “I’m sure it sounded like a dog and felt like one, but those animals aren’t tame. They could have killed you.”

  “Again, you’re not the only one to have said so. But if anyone was going to . . . I mean, if one of us were to go . . . No, never mind. I don’t think you would understand.”

  “Go on and say what you were going to say,” Paul said. “I’ll keep it to myself. You want to check my neck? It’s a real collar.”

  She nodded and carried on an internal debate for a while before answering.

  “It would be easier for everyone if they had killed me,” she said. “Don’t you think? Robbie and Bethany would have gotten away and that would have been for the best.”

  “Best for who?”

  She nodded. “For everyone else,” she said. “Before the world turned into this, there were systems in place to make it possible for someone like me to live independently. There were bells and alarms, and I had a trained dog. I wasn’t a burden. The others won’t say it, but I know: I’m a burden. Touré . . . he might have said it, eventually. He was rude, but honest.”

  “Is that the one who’s missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I think you’re wrong, Carol. And I think if you told the others that, they’d say the same thing.”

  “Of course they would. That doesn’t mean it’s what they think. You haven’t been here. The choices they’ve had to make . . .”

  “You’re right, I haven’t been here. But looking at this from the outside, you’re the best evidence I’ve seen so far that there’s hope for all of us. I don’t know Rob, or . . . What’d you say the girl’s name was?”

  “Bethany.”

  “Bethany. I don’t know them yet. Other than a few seconds last night, we haven’t been introduced. But I’m betting it didn’t once occur to them that what you’re talking about is even a possibility. Animals eat their wounded, and we don’t; you understand what I’m saying? The Lord can damn us to an eternity of this, but as long as we’re taking care of someone like you, I think we’ll be okay.”

  She nodded, slowly. “Thank you, Paul. I think you might be a man of the cloth after all.”

  “Was that too corny?”

  “It was a little corny.”

  “I’m out of practice,” he said.

  She stood. “I’m going to find you something to eat. We have Noot bars and water. Will that do?”

  “What in the heck is a Noot bar?”

  “It’s what those of us who didn’t think to bring guns and knives to the apocalypse feed ourselves with.”

  “Well, I’ll try it, then. I’m not
in any shape to hunt, and I ran out of meat two days ago.”

  She stopped at the door.

  “You haven’t told me why yet,” she said. “You came so far, and said God wanted you to go on foot for some reason. Why didn’t you stop? Find a home in which to outlast the weather and stay there?”

  “I had a good reason,” he said. “Her name’s Ananda, and until last night I thought she was the only other person left.”

  Carol looked torn between asking if Ananda was, strictly speaking, real, and encouraging him to elaborate.

  “And where is she?” Carol asked.

  “Depends on how far we are from MIT.”

  Bethany

  Bethany tromped downstairs, and was out of the house by sunrise.

  Robbie was also awake by then and already packing up to head back to the dorm for what would likely be the first of many visits. They would need more Noot bars, especially with a fourth person now in the house, and . . . well, who knew what else the day might bring? Cambridge had tornadoes now.

  He asked where she was headed. She lied and said she wanted to see if any of the library was salvageable. She did want to see if the stacks were still there, but that wasn’t what was really on her mind.

  “Well, be careful” was all he said in response. She was expecting a lecture about how they had to stick together, but maybe he’d gotten tired of saying it over and over.

  She did start at the library. It was burned to the ground, and still smoking. The old brick castle wing looked like it had weathered the inferno surprisingly well, though.

  What she was there to do was reconstruct the path she had taken the night before. The spot where the preacher fell was marked by blood from the man’s shoulder, so she started retracing her steps by standing there and turning in the approximate direction of her departure.

  I ran down THAT street, she decided. It was on the other side of Broadway, which was the road fronting the library.

  She headed up the street. About halfway, she found the shed with the lock she’d picked the night before, confirming that she had this right.

  Up and over the hill, she looked for a house on the left side of the street, with a driveway on the right and a tree out front.