2013: The Aftermath

by Shane McKenzie

  The old man gave a kooky, childlike grin…and shrugged his shoulders.

  The crowd went berserk, and he was forced to thump his stick to regain order. When they had settled down, he summoned another man carrying a ladder. The ladder was set up in front of the Black Door.

  “Come,” he said. “Who will be first to peer into the depths of human suffering?”

  A number of hands shot up. A woman was selected and escorted to the front. Slowly, she started up the ladder.

  “No,” Elaine said. “She can’t be allowed to open it.”

  Diana reached down the front of her jeans to draw the gun, but Ron stayed her hand. “No. None of that.”

  She gazed at him fiercely. “Why do they want to go through there, anyway? It’s suicide.”

  “I do not think they’ll go through. They only want to have a look because they’re curious. Anyhow, it’s time for us to move along. We’ve seen enough.”

  They turned as a unit, heading away from the crowd. Out of the forest and through the tall grass, they got back onto the highway and kept moving.

  ***

  They stopped in some small town to load up on supplies. They scored additional inhalers from a ratty young woman. All she wanted in return was for Ron to read to her from his book of English poems and hold her in his arms for a while. She missed her father, she said, and Ron was his spitting image.

  They crossed the Canadian border and continued to head north. Diana soon became a near-perfect shot with the pistol. Almost every day, some psycho or nightmarish beast would come running out of the trees. Diana spotted them a mile away, and she could usually lay one flat with a single shot. Her precision helped conserve bullets.

  Everywhere they went, people were talking about the Golden Doors. All claimed to have seen one, however none could disclose a location. Ron, Elaine, and Diana spent hours interrogating, interviewing, and listening to these folks, but they always came up empty-handed.

  Then one day they met a man of Arabic descent who spoke English and who looked quite out of place in a yellow cape, white fluffy pants, blue vest, and black turban. He was armed with a razor-sharp scimitar, which, sheathed in leather, lay flat against his thigh.

  When they came upon him, he was lying off the side of the highway beside a fast food restaurant. He was dying. It was against their normal behavior, but Diana, who sympathized with ethnic peoples, persuaded them to give the man a dose from the inhaler. The medicine fixed him right up and in no time he was breathing normally.

  He thanked them, introducing himself as Ahmed. He had once been an exchange student from Saudi Arabia, attending the university in Montreal, but now he wandered the dying forests like a nomad. He often had trouble breathing.

  When they told him about the Golden Doors, his eyes widened with…something. Fear, excitement, dread—it was hard to tell. At once he began recounting an experience he’d had in which he came across a Golden Door in the woods.

  They had heard similar tales enough times to know they were usually fabricated. However, when Ahmed claimed to recall the exact location of the door, and even offered to lead them to it, they exchanged hopeful glances.

  They traveled north up the highway for the next several weeks, braving the hardships of the wild, talking to each other, getting to know Ahmed. They told him everything they knew about the Golden Doors, and he listened closely.

  One day, as the sun pierced the network of noxious clouds, he turned from his spot at the forefront and pointed to the tees. He said simply, “There.”

  Elaine felt nervous leaving the highway. She had grown to like Ahmed, in spite of all her religious prejudices. She even trusted him. Still, her father’s voice ran through her head. He’s just a lousy sandnigger, Elaine. A terrorist. His God is murderous and vicious. He will betray you in the end.

  She ignored the voice, slowing to walk alongside Diana; taking the young woman’s hand, she smiled.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Elaine nodded. “Just nervous. And scared.”

  “Me too.”

  The highway had been cut into the side of a mountain, and the incline leading away from the asphalt was treacherous and ungainly. The higher they climbed, the more they struggled over bulging roots and loose terrain.

  Ron remarked, “What in God’s name possessed you to come up here in the first place?”

  Ahmed, still in the lead, looked back. Bits of foliage and grass covered his turban, and his long yellow cape was nearly in shreds. “To be honest, I was going to kill myself. I was looking for a very steep cliff to hurl myself over. I’d have done it, too, if not for that Golden Door. For some reason, when I came across it I saw everything in a different light. I felt I could go on if I kept my faith in Allah and remained strong. So instead of throwing myself off a cliff, I had a vision, and I decided to continue down the highway.”

  “Surely you’d heard of the Golden Doors,” Ron said. “So why didn’t you go through?”

  Ahmed chuckled. “Go through? My friend, that would require more strength than I alone possess.”

  ***

  The trek up the mountain lasted thirty minutes. Every step was a hazard and each new level of elevation was more distressing than the former. The ground was like a bed of serpents. The trees were stony, petrified things, more mineral than organism.

  Elaine looked to the sky, to the vile green clouds hanging closer than ever, and wondered at their chances for survival. She wished they’d left their packs by the base of the mountain. Her shoulders were killing her.

  At last they reached the top, which was rocky and craggy and covered in ash. Ahmed said, “We are here.” Elaine stopped and collapsed on the ground. Diana fell down beside her, and they held each other a moment, breathing heavily, trying to recover.

  The Arab took a seat, while Ron remained standing. The philosopher had directed his gaze toward a clustering of ash-gray trees sprouting up from the cliffs. “I see it,” he said, then started walking.

  “Yes,” Ahmed agreed, “it is over there. By the trees.”

  Elaine watched him go. Her excitement was building, but she needed a second to relax. So she lay on her back and watched the sky. Orb-shaped amoebas the size of zeppelins moved through the dark-green clouds. It was like looking through a microscope.

  Ahmed rose next, followed by Diana. Elaine was the last to join them by the row of ash-colored trees. Bolts of silent lightning cut the dark-green horizon in the distance. Standing in the center of the trees, upright and attached to nothing, was the Golden Door.

  Ahmed approached it, hand resting on the hilt of his scimitar. His reflection materialized in the metallic surface of the door. He stood admiring his own image, tracing the contours of his face with his free hand.

  “That day,” he said, “I was thinking about my wife and son, whom I missed greatly. I had hoped that killing myself would reunite us. But then I saw this. I saw my face staring back at me forged in gold…and I knew I could not do it.”

  The others gathered behind him, their faces also reflected in the Golden Door.

  “Do you think it’s true?” Diana asked. “Do you think it leads to…a Golden Age?”

  Ron began to answer, when suddenly a noise—a fiercely insistent scraping—caused them to turn. They were surrounded, blocked from every direction.

  “I knew this wouldn’t be easy,” Ron said.

  Ahmed drew his scimitar, its metal clang ringing down the mountain. “Demons,” he said.

  In the next instant Diana had raised her handgun, leveling it at the silent creatures. Elaine, gripped by fear, quickly patted down her pockets in search of a weapon but found nothing. “Jesus Christ, what are they?”

  But no one answered. Because no one knew. No one knows anything, anymore, she suddenly realized. That’s what makes this all so scary—the lack of certainty.

  The creatures, like the ones in the sky, reminded Elaine of the microscopic organisms she had studied in college biology. They were round, yet lumpy, purple bl
otches housed in a warbling cellular wall, like amoebas, with lights and orbs zinging about inside them.

  “These are the demons mentioned in the Koran,” Ahmed said. “They are the enemies of mankind, of Allah. They wish to stop people from going through the Golden Doors. But they won’t stop me.” He swung around, grasped the sparkling gold doorknob, and began turning it.

  The creatures released a keening moan, an irritating, animalistic howl. Their strange, amoebic bodies began to open, revealing cavities lined with teeth. The next instant, they were gliding forward on a current of air.

  “Shit!” Diana screamed. She began to fire. She caught the first three effortlessly, slicing off big watery chunks, which flopped on the ground and wriggled there like dying fish. The holes she opened in their bodies were quickly covered over by the warbling cellular wall.

  Ahmed shouted something in Arabic as two bounced over the boulders to nearly land on top of him. They hopped back and forth, squishing off the ground like animated water balloons. Ahmed swung at them with his scimitar, its lightning-shaped blade arcing above his head. Their teeth gnashed, caught on his blade, producing sparks and a tinny, clanging sound.

  He spun around behind them, slicing and chopping at their liquid backs, sending pieces of them raining upon the ground. He came around front, still swinging his blade and taking off more until he’d reduced them to tiny portions, which were beginning to evaporate. He shouted again in Arabic, raising the sword triumphantly.

  Diana, meanwhile, was firing and reloading as fast as she could. Each time a bullet struck one of the creatures, it sent a piece flying and the thing was thrown back several feet. Stunned, it then sat there a moment, as if confused, before advancing again. Because of this, she’d been able to keep them at bay. But dozens more were approaching.

  Elaine suddenly feared for her lover’s safety. “Diana!” she shouted.

  The young woman glanced over her shoulder, still firing. “Go—go now! Get through the door, I’ll bring up the rear!”

  Ron’s hand dropped onto Elaine’s shoulder. She looked at him, and he was nodding. “Come,” he said. “We must let her do the killing and escape while we can. There is no time.”

  “But what about...” She choked back a sob, and Ron began leading her away.

  Ahmed was already standing before the Golden Door, with half a dozen amebic creatures bouncing toward him.

  Why the hell did he sheath his weapon? Elaine thought. Why isn’t he helping Diana?

  Outrage flooded her. Her blood boiled as she witnessed him open the door, slip through, and close it without so much as a glance in their direction. For a split second while the door had been open, a silver of brilliant white light had poured through.

  The creatures went crazy, bouncing up and down, coming out of the crags and the trees, issuing their awful keening wails. Elaine realized it was their battle cry.

  Told you that sandnigger would betray you, her father began to whisper in her head. She stopped, let go of Ron’s hand. If only you would listen to me, your father, the one who loves you, the one who introduced you to Christ’s love. But you don’t listen. No, instead you push your face into the crotch of some devilish woman and carry on as if this were Sodom and Gomorrah. But don’t you worry, my dear. I’ll be praying for you.

  Ron glanced at her. “What’s the matter? We have to keep moving.”

  “Did you see him?” she snarled. “That dirty Arab just went through without us. He left us here to die!”

  Ron looked around and registered Ahmed’s absence. “He was our guide,” he said. “That’s it. We can expect nothing more. Our main concern is getting through the door—now come on.”

  He took her wrist, pulling her behind. When they reached the door, he drew her close and said, “I’ll go first, but I want you right after me.”

  “What about Diana?”

  “She’ll be along. She can handle herself.”

  He swung around, placing his hand on the doorknob. His tall, regal reflection stared back. When he opened the door, there was a feeling like an earthquake passing through the ground. The lightning flashed and the thunder boomed. Ron’s silhouette, framed by the door, was engulfed in brilliant white light.

  “Make sure you follow!” he cried, stepping forward. Then he was gone.

  Light continued to spill through the opening, bathing the area, rejuvenating the dead trees and the parched earth. At once, everything began growing back green again.

  The creatures shrieked and recoiled from the door. They swarmed Diana, gathering about her, gnashing their teeth, and lunging at her. She fired in endless succession, making cheesecloth of their watery bodies, reloading with the speed of Annie Oakley. Elaine felt so proud of her.

  “Go on, girl, get going!” Diana yelled. “I can’t hold them off forever!”

  “I love you,” Elaine whispered. Then she turned toward the Golden Door. Her heartbeat was like the hooves of wild horses. The light fell over her and it was soft, warm, and comforting. Yes, she belonged to that light. She felt safe in it.

  Stepping forward, she squinted her eyes, eventually having to close them completely. She continued blindly, the warm light spreading through her, filling her, healing her. I’ve made it, she thought. I’m heading toward The Golden Age, and it feels like Heaven; it feels like home.

  Some uncontrollable impulse made her look back just before she passed through. She opened her eyes and saw Diana fighting off dozens of the amoebic creatures. She saw the gun knocked from Diana’s hand, saw the rest of the creatures pounce on her, saw them tear into her flesh and fill the air with blood.

  And yet she couldn’t feel sad about it. Couldn’t feel pain, sorrow, or regret. She felt only oneness, inner connectivity, and a union with Heaven.

  A moment later...

  ...she experienced unadulterated light.

  About the author:

  A. J. French has appeared in Abandoned Towers, The Absent Willow Review, Short Story.Me!, Black Lantern Publishing, This Mutant Life, theDF_underground, Fantastic Horror, Sex and Murder, Black Ink Horror, and Golden Visions Magazine. He also has stories in the following anthologies: Ruthless: An Extreme Horror Collection by Pill Hill Press with introduction by Bentley Little, Deep Space Terror, By Mind or Metal, Novus Creatura, and Pellucid Lunacy edited by Michael Bailey.

  Everybody, Do the Apocalypse

  by John C. Caruso

  “That’s it,” Kat said. “That’s the last of them.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said around a mouthful of nails and moved to the next window.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” she asked. “You can quit with the boarding up business. They’re gone.”

  I tried to say, “Sure, for now,” but it came out as an incoherent mumble. I don’t know what she heard. Holding up a board with the heel of my hand and pinching a nail between thumb and forefinger, I took careful aim and started pounding with the hammer. The nail sang as I drove it through the wood, its pitch slowly deepening as its exposed head shortened.

  When I finished pounding, Kat was yelling at me. “I said, you can stop.” My ears were still ringing from the hammer blows, but her voice seemed impossibly loud in the sudden silence of the room. She adjusted her tone and said in a more normal voice, “Can’t you spit those things out and keep them in your shirt pocket or something so we can at least talk like civilized human beings?”

  Around the nails, I tried to say, “Is that what we are?” This time, even to my own ears the words sounded as garbled as the rest of what I’d been saying. I like to be stubborn, but I like even more to be understood when I’m making smart-ass remarks, so I pulled the nails from between my lips and deposited them in the back pocket of my dirty jeans. “Good idea,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “If you’re not going to help me nail up boards, you probably ought to at least reload that thing.”

  Kat looked at the rifle in her hands. “I guess I could.” Sitting down at the dining room table, she shoved ou
r unwashed lunch dishes out of the way to make room for the long gun. We’d had tuna salad again. The bread was long gone, so no sandwiches for us, but the cans of tuna and the mayonnaise were still holding out. Gotta love Costco. She grabbed a small cardboard container from the far end of the table and started feeding rounds into the rifle like an old pro. I was so proud. “We’re running low on ammo,” she said.

  “That’s why we’ve got Annie Oakley on the Remington and me doing the best I can with an axe.” Truth be told, I’m not a bad shot—maybe better than she is—but it just didn’t make any kind of sense to have the woman wielding the melee weapon—upper body strength and all that. Obviously, I didn’t bring up again that we might actually have more than one gun in the house if she hadn’t been so opposed to firearms back in the good old days when they were cheap and readily available. But we’d been educated liberals—a dying breed. Literally. Sure, all of humanity—what could still be called humanity—was dying out, but I hypothesized that liberals were dying out faster than most. Not the type of folks known for keeping themselves well armed, you know? Such anti-gun sentiments are all fine and good when things are stable and secure, but when the whole world goes to crap, Jesu Christo, it’s nice to have a big gun handy. We had one at least, and my mind was working overtime trying to churn out a way to secure us more and better weapons. The waves of freaks were getting smaller and farther apart, but our ability to defend ourselves diminished with each passing day.