End Times, Inc. (A Great & Continuous Malignity)

by David S. Wellhauser

  “We need to transition. You may not realise it, but many here have not only been looking to you for leadership, but many consider you the de facto heart of the organisation.”

  “That hardly seems possible—I’ve never even spoken at City Council meetings. Nor have I attended many.”

  “Nonetheless, your search for your family, the fact that your Botrous’ son, that you rejected your father and the transformation, that you have tried to kill him, that his magic does not work on you—how that got about I don’t know but it has, now that you’ve killed a couple of the Separatists, and that business up in Cardston have all put you in a position of authority without you looking for it.”

  “I’m not certain of that, but how long were you thinking of?”

  “Just until we can come up with an adequate cover—so it does not seem you are abandoning them.”

  “I can’t promise you long—now that I’ve decided I’d like to get going as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, well I’ll get on it right away. Shouldn’t take long.” Matt nodded; though he didn’t like the delay it wasn’t unreasonable after all Salt had done for him and with him since they’d fled Dilmun.

  Fled? That was the first time he’d used that word to describe their departure. Did they flee? Perhaps on some level it could have been read that way. Some here saw it that way. One more reason to get moving—when he started thinking as others that suggested to him he was losing focus and needed to return to the search. Needed to return even if this meant, as it did now, hitting the road, and hoping something turned up. It usually did if he was focused enough and did not take no for an answer.

  “You may,” Salt continued, “have more explaining to do than you might like to think.”

  “What do you mean?” Jonah nodded to a Sentra pulling into The Cody. He recognised the car—Shasta. “Can’t be helped—besides, nothing is going on there.”

  “Maybe.” Finally pumping the younger’s hand. As Shasta entered, she passed Jonah on the way out and smiled.

  “What’s up?” She smiled, but appeared nervous.

  “Just sorting out some details with Jonah. Seems I’m not to be prosecuted for murder.”

  “Too dangerous to prosecute anyone for killing a couple of Separatists—especially you.” There it was again—you. He did not like the way any of this was going. Smelled a lot like how the Transhumanists behaved about Zak and he wanted no part of that.

  “Perhaps, but it’s time I moved on.” Her face fell. “I know many want me to stay, but I have to find Leonor and her mother.”

  “But we can help you.”

  “No, I’ve been asking for weeks and no one here knows anything. I’ll,” he continued quickly, “be staying a little longer but I need to head out.” The conversation continued back and forth for awhile but eventually the woman gave up.

  That night, after dinner with Shasta and deflecting a clumsy seduction Matt went straight to bed. But it wasn’t a restful evening. Feargal tossed for about three hours before finally drifting into a fitful dream which never fully revealed itself as dream, but seemed more than fantasy. There were no images, no figures, no real narrative—it was a series of cubist abstractions of ideas all flattened out so they seemed to be coming from all directions with all perspectives filling one mind and all at once.

  Somewhere near, or just before, dawn he woke with a sharp, startling eruption of consciousness. Sitting bolt upright in bed he knew, before fully aware of the knowledge that this dream had been a call from China. What she’d said or wanted he was not certain of, but that it was a call from her was enough. He had to find them, had to get going as soon as he could. The why of it wasn’t going to help in the answering, so he let that go.

  Matt waited until he had the early breakfast at The Cody before calling Jonah. Not willing to wait, after the call he packed his bags and headed over to The Holiday Inn on Sheridan. Salt was waiting in the lobby and he looked about as anxious as Feargal felt, but there was no way he could put off what had to be done and done right away. After a thorough discussion of the non-dream and all the crude Jungian deconstruction he could master Salt gave it up. Perhaps he saw that no amount of reason would sway Feargal; perhaps it was simple frustration. Matt cared which it was, but neither would prevent him from going. And so they parted, but there appeared to be no animosity or even a grudge at work. Yet Salt managed to extract the promise to leave the next morning so it didn’t end up looking as though he were skulking—unannounced—from town.

  Sitting on the side of the bed Matt stared blankly at his feet; then out the window as the sun was breaching the horizon. It may have been poetic to suggest mauve or a complexity of purples—all fresh, lush, and compelling. Yet, what Matt saw hanging against the distant horizon was blood. If he’d been superstitious this would have weighed on his mind, but there had followed—at least since Milwaukee—a casual, brutalising twist to the man. The Separatists were just the most obvious example of this, in that he was still waiting for some emotional blowback on the encounter.

  Pushing from the bed he was in the shower and dressed in less than twenty minutes. Once done he turned back to the sunrise. The blood was gone, but there remained the lingering tinctures of a purple-pink against the slashed dark grey clouds. Opening the window the air was sharp, not quite hinting at the coming summer. Coughing low and in the back of his throat against the cool air he looked over the prairie and smiled. He was on the move again. In the last four years he’d come to favour the life. When the change had taken place he wasn’t certain, but there was no doubt this had taken him. Matt was worried by this because of what it would mean once taking possession of his family. What kind of husband or father would he be now that he was more gypsy than family man? What kind of man to anyone could he be after Cardston, Milwaukee, East Troy, and Cody? Coming out in to the lobby, the worry was acid etched in to his mind.

  Turning right he slung his back pack over his shoulder and headed for the breakfast buffet. Entering the restaurant he stopped as he looked up from the floor. Shasta, another Meta, and three Archaics sat about a table halfway into their meal. They were in the middle of an animate—but friendly—argument when he came in, but that fell to silence at the whoosh of the swinging door. With a broad, uncertain, smile she waved him over. “I was wondering if you were ever getting up.”

  “What’s up?” Though suspected why Jonah wanted to give it a day.

  “Sit down and Bart, here,” motioning to a young, full albino, Meta with an uneven seam running over a flat, frequently broken nose, “will pull you some scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee together.” Sighing he nodded. “But make it tea.” Bart did a double take.

  “He’s Canadian.” Shasta answered, still smiling. This seemed enough and he was off.

  “I’ve little choice in this?” Sitting down.

  “Do you really want to head out there alone?”

  “Hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Do you not want us along?”

  “It isn’t that, but what I may find out there could be—I’m not certain what it could be.”

  “With Transhumanists, Dragoste, Ajutor, and Separatists on the rise do you really want to be on your own?”

  “If I’m not interested you’ll just follow along?”

  “Pretty much.” Matt shrugged. He didn’t feel like a fight and probably had lost this one. Whether or not he could trust them or not had occurred, but was there anyone anywhere whom he could entirely trust?

  Shasta handed him a burner. “So we may anonymously stay in contact. I’ve already put in all relevant numbers. Don’t use your smartphone any longer.” She paused to consider. “Have you backed up your contacts online?” Feargal nodded. “Then you should either destroy or dump the phone. If you dump it, make certain you reset it first.”

  “I’ve already tossed it. But this,” motioning with the small burner, “will be useful.”

  “In the cars we have a couple duffels of small arms.”


  “You’ve been thinking this through for some time.”

  “Director Salt thought you may want to head out on your own some time; so he had us put a plan together.” Matt grinned to himself. The Meta had always been some steps ahead of him from the beginning—why should now be any different?

  “What we weren’t told is where you want to go?”

  “I don’t have a specific location in mind, but I have decided west, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the North Cascades National Park.” Shasta nodded. As Matt finished his meal the Meta introduced the other members of the team.

  There was, of course, Bart that had got the meal. There was also Kathy—a Meta of a type Feargal had not seen much of. She was not representative of any human/animal hybrid but was more suggestive of a literary type that had been rumoured, but little seen. Something along the lines, Kathy argued, of the goddess Rati—a favourite of hers. Then there was Niran, he was an Archaic from Thailand that had been in the US studying when it all went to hell and international flights were suspended in order to check what was still seen as a pandemic. Along with Niran was Stephen, from the Mid-West—where precisely was uncertain. He’d been moving around since he was 16, though appeared to be in his mid-20s. Finally, there was Lien, a woman from Vietnam, who’d been an exchange student.

  Once Matt had turned in his key the team headed out. There were two SUVs waiting beside each other—both black with tinted windows. “Thought we’d go for the SUV because they’re better in bad weather and rough terrain.” Matt smiled as he took the keys from Shasta and climbed into the nearest one. “We shouldn’t cut through Yellowstone or any of the national parks.”

  “So,” Matt asked, “you believe the rumours to be true?”

  “I believe,” Lien said from the back seat, beside Stephen, “that the disappearances and the attacks are real.”

  “So how do we get to Washington?”

  “Uh,” Stephen began, “I80 to Utah, I84 to Oregon, then, I5 into Washington—could take it straight in to Seattle. That will take us to the western side of the North Cascades.” Matt looked into the rear-view. “I’ve knocked about a lot.”

  About half an hour south of Cody, Matt was having trouble with the silence. Lien and Stephen were both on their tablets. Lien was reading and Stephen blowing zombies to hell. Shasta had slipped off her runners and had her bare feet braced against the dashboard while she scrolled down the playlists on her mp3. After lunch he was intending to let one of the others do the driving, but on leaving Cody he wasn’t sure who was who, but now he was—perhaps foolishly—feeling more comfortable with the group. What use any of them would be once they ran into Federals, Transhumanists, Separatists, DPs, or flesh-eating cockroaches he wasn’t certain. For the moment Feargal was going to assume not much. But, like he, they would either learn quickly or their numbers would be whittled down.

  “So...,” Matt could see Shasta couldn’t hear him, he touched her shoulder. “So, what’s your story?” Removing the buds she looked forward; then back at Feargal.

  “Nothing special. I was born and raised in Cody—pretty normal life until the Change. After that things got a little strange for a while, then hostile, then the world reorganised itself pretty quickly. I was going to get married, but he left me after this.” Pointing at her face.

  “I’ve heard that a lot.” She nodded.

  “After I learned of you, I wanted to meet some guy that not only didn’t care what’d happened to his girlfriend but was willing to kill to get her back.”

  “You may not like how I go about that.”

  “Don’t really care. You want Metas and Humans together?” He nodded. “That’s all I care about.” A moderate—if she was being honest he could work with her. But he needed to know about the others.

  “You’re a long way from home Lien.”

  “Told you—I was an exchange student.” She looked young but he learned with China it was difficult to determine the age of East Asians, this was probably true of Southeast Asians as well.

  “There has to be more to it than that—you’re still human so you should be able to go home.”

  “There is a lot of paperwork, and Vietnam is not good now. My parents wanted me to stay here.” She didn’t turn back to her book, but he sensed there was not much more going to come from her. The woman was probably just sick of telling her story, but the occlusions would bear watching.

  “Stephen?” Sighing, he looked up. His dirty blonde hair overly long and unkempt fell into his eyes. He was a cliché Midwesterner, but there was, also, something edgy and off about him.

  “Pretty much what I’ve said—been kicking about the country for near on 10 years.”

  “Doing what?”

  “What I could—bussing, bar tending, construction, unskilled labour, retail, and whatever else.”

  “Drifting?”

  “I suppose.” Voice defensive and suspicious. Matt knew he’d slipped over into judgement, but it hadn’t been meant that way. What Stephen had been doing is what he’d have liked to have done—before he ran into China Bob at The Bistro.

  After this, everyone retreated into themselves. In a few more hours they pulled into Riverton, Wyoming and he was hungry. At breakfast the surprise had taken much of his appetite, but now this had returned. Shasta had recommended The Bull & Bistro—she’d eaten here a few times with her boyfriend. With that they pulled up, followed by Bart and Kathy in their SUV.

  Over lunch Matt did manage to pull the essentials of their stories from Kathy and Bart. Kathy had been biracial, her words, when the change took her. Part South-western Asian from what he could tell. Her favourite goddess had been Rati and when the change took her it followed from this—she ended up with the extra arms. This had confused her because, though she had four, the woman had seen the goddess with two, four, six, and ten arms. Why four? There was something arbitrary in this. As well, her skin would randomly change colour from a blue-black to a light tan. On top of it all was her sexual appetite, which she could barely keep in check.

  Bart was less eccentric and considerably milder. He was an albino Meta with the same penchant for primary colours, but he had been a boxer before the change. At the time he’d been on his way out—age and injury taking their toll. But he was only in his early 30s. The change had returned his strength and more, but he was no longer eligible for competition because the change had given him an unfair advantage. With that he wandered west from Boston, until he had ended up in Cody. There was nothing particular in any of the stories, if there was in Kathy’s mutation. Still he wanted to know more, but that would have to wait.

  ***

  Giving Yellowstone a wide pass took the group a lot longer than just cutting across the national park, but about one day later—taking shifts at the wheel—they were on I84 just south of Baker City, Oregon. Matt had never had a great love of the country and the trip south, west, and then north had been long and tedious. He brought his tablet as well, and like Lien he preferred books but the steady sound, vibrations, and gentle rock of the vehicle made it difficult to concentrate and a simple matter to fall asleep. So, when not driving, he’d spent much of Wyoming and Idaho either unconscious or locked in his latest book. For the last several months he’d been reading up on diversity and how to make it work. Still, none of the works had really faced the concept of interspecies diversity. There were eBooks being produced concerning this, but they tended toward the polemic.

  Given these weren’t filled with sound advice as to how to make the Meta/Archaic dialectic work he tended to avoid them—or skim. He was skimming, again, several miles south of Baker City, when he felt the SUV rapidly decelerate. Looking up he braced a hand on the dashboard and groaned. “Oh, shit.” There was a long column of people—both Archaics and Metas. Not just a column—these were DPs (displaced persons). The old term had been resurrected in the English speaking world by a series of articles in the New York Times as the reporter had struggled to put language to the enormous displacement of popu
lations occurring globally. The feeling was refugees was too cold and inexpressive, as well there had been attempts to reach back into the West’s last cataclysm and the language of that era was bubbling to the surface.

  For the most part DPs had not been seen in the US, but here they were. A huge column heading south along I84, the Old Oregon Trail Highway, as it cut through a hill south of Baker City. They were what Matt had assumed would have been seen all over the continent from ’39–’45, though that didn’t make it any easier to take in the 21st. This was not supposed to happen, at least not beyond the confines of Eurasia. Yet, there it was. From the back seat Lien woke, Stephen had transferred back with the others in the following car. Looking past Shasta and Matt the woman moaned something in what Matt took to Vietnamese and put a hand on Shasta’s shoulder. “Don’t stop.”

  “We have to find out what is going on. Break out the AR-15s.” Shasta answered. Lien fumbled about behind Feargal as he powered his window down. They were still several hundred yards south of the column when they pulled over. Shasta did so in the middle of the road close to the guardrail separating the lanes. Matt looked back through the rear window, as Lien handed him two AR-15s. No cars were behind him. All that morning there had been no traffic heading south and next to none heading north, which in itself was odd, but not completely beyond experience—after all, I84 was an artery. Passing one of the ARs to Shasta he opened his door. Lien remained unconvinced.

  “This is not a good idea.”

  “We have to find out what is going on.” Matt answered slipping the tablet onto the dash.

  Cradling the weapon, Matt hopped the guardrail divider and approached the column. Behind him, Lien and Shasta climbed out with their ARs and followed at a distance. As they followed, the second SUV pulled up along theirs and very quickly Feargal could hear the others piling out to offer support.

  These were an impossibly ragged collection of adults, teenagers, geriatrics, and infants. Approaching the column, this shied from Matt and the weapons. Like the body of a long, ponderous serpent the column of tattered bodies veered toward the shoulder of the road and then out into the prairie. “Whoa, it’s okay, I’m not here to hurt anyone. Waiting a moment, hoping he was being covered by Lien and Shasta, Matt slung the AR and approached the head of the column—hoping whoever was leading the body was there.