2013: The Aftermath

by Shane McKenzie

“Wrong answer,” the voice replied, and he felt the weight smash across his face. He felt himself being dragged to the middle of the room. “But, for your information, I’m Detective Jason Pine of the CSPD. You really screwed yourself by putting a rocket launcher in the Agia Sophia. If it hadn’t been for that, those gangers and their little pick up would have killed Kruger before he told us who you were.” There was a pause as Pine grabbed Sokolov by the hair and pulled his head back to look up. “A friend of mine asked me to show you this.” Pine held a drawing of a young, dark haired man with glasses and a goatee. “He’s too weak to come here himself, being shot and all, but I told him I owed him at least that much. Marc is doing a lot better than you, actually, with that Chicana he met taking care of him. He told me to mention that Yelena was the one who gave you up because of what you did to her parents.”

  Sokolov tried to say something, but Pine stood and shot him in the head before any words came out. “This isn’t Russia, Yugo prick. You should have stayed there.”

  “I don’t think he was Yugoslavian,” Kruger said from the closet where he’d been watching.

  “Whatever,” Pine answered. He carefully tucked the drawing back into his jacket. “Let’s go help the boys clean this place up.”

  “Quicker the better,” Kruger said. “Janet invited me over for dinner, and the food over there has been great ever since Marc’s been laid up. Besides, I need to be there so Janet won’t try to kill Estrella for stealing her motorcycle.”

  “I bet,” Pine said, laughing. “How long before he’s back on the streets?”

  “Maybe a few weeks. Maybe never,” Kruger said philosophically. There was a moment of silence before both men broke into gales of laughter at the idea of Marcus “Slasher” Daniels never returning to beat the dust off the streets.

  About the author:

  Scott Wermuth is always looking for a good story…always asking other people “what if” until they get the look in their eye that says “I have no idea but I really want to know.” When that happens, he makes the answer up and writes it down so everyone can know, and hopefully, they like his answer.

  Great Days

  by Gregory Miller

  (Blue Man Compendium, Vol. II -pp 351-372)

  [...Excerpt from James Clarke’s record, sketched down in blue ink on his own shirt: denim, worn and faded. Recovered along with James Clarke sixty-four days after the Great Procession marched into the sea and did not return. Dated October 7 (?) 2013. Formally entered into the Compendium for study as of now, November 3, 2013.]

  A great many minutes ago that probably add up to several days past, I was disemboweled on my front lawn; my legs broken, my spine slit, and my jugular slashed and ripped partially away from the side of my neck.

  The morning they attacked was warm, but not too warm. It was a windy, airy fall day, September 30th, and the kids were out in the pumpkin patch down at the end of the street, checking out sizes for carving quality, and the smell of musty leaves was heavy on the biting breeze. I love this time of year...it always brings back memories of better times in a more innocent period of my life. Ha. My life.

  I sat on my porch drinking some hot cider with a cinnamon stick and thinking about how I really should have raked my leaves the day before, before the heavy gusts of wind during the night had blown them into the yard next door. Mrs. Hawkin would be furious when she saw, and I wasn’t in the mood for a yelling match so early in the morning. Our arguments had given the neighborhood something to watch far too many times in the past, and I wasn’t going to stand another. So I sat there, quietly, serenely, hoping she would be in as good a mood as I when she noticed the condition of her yard. I would rake both later, I decided. But I never did.

  Well, by the time nine o’ clock was about over I witnessed and took part in a funny incident. I stepped on a fly, one of those big old mothers that come around during fall. I never would have caught it but it was so bloated that it couldn’t move fast at all, and my sneaker took it down to the pavement just as it was starting its rise. I stepped on it, stepped on it good, and ground it under my heel. I was proud of my kill, because that nasty critter had been pestering me for a solid fifteen or so minutes.

  But the thing that got me so confused and started me wondering was that when I lifted my shoe, inspecting the damage, well I’ll be damned if the thing wasn’t still alive! Screwed up, sure; its wings were gone and its guts were all over my shoe and its face was where its behind should have been, but it was trying its best to walk, to get away from me.

  I stepped on it again, and this time I pulled it in half with my fingers when I was done. The little cuss couldn’t have survived that. Nothing could have. Nothing. But it started wiggling, and wouldn’t stop. Not nervous twitches, folks. Wiggles. Voluntary-like.

  I wondered if I was coming down with something. I kicked the fly off the porch into one of the piles of leaves on the lawn, where I couldn’t see him anymore. Then I turned my mind to other things that didn’t involve insects. The parade!

  The parade was going to be a good one this year; the kids had been rehearsing down at Mallard Hall for weeks. People from all over Pennsylvania and beyond (relatives of the kids and the like) were expected to show for the show, and I hadn’t missed it once in fifty-three years. I remember when I was part of it, all those years ago when the world seems so bright and new to a bright-and-new person. I played the drum. Almost passed out from the weight of it and the weight of the woolen uniform and the heat. But I liked it. A good time...

  [space, then illegible scratchings and smudges before the account continues.]

  The parade came at noon, right on schedule. I joined the crowd on the streets, two or three people deep in some areas. I could hear the band in the distance around the bend growing closer and clearer. The music was pretty. We, me and every other neighbor, parent, relative and friend, noticed something was wrong when the first two in the front of the parade came into view from around the curve of the road, the girls in their pretty uniforms twirling their batons. They were covered in red stuff that I thought at first was some kind of decoration. It wasn’t, of course. It was blood. And bits of bone stuck in with it.

  I was sure there was a problem, even after the blood (which I had a problem believing was real at the start), when I saw their faces. The girl on the right, a nice little thing named Julie Watkin, was missing her right ear. The blood on her uniform had come partially from that wound, partially from the girl on the left’s wound. Her throat was cut, and was drenching the both of them in a red mist.

  The crowd was shocked, of course. I had seen some bad things in the course of my life; Vietnam was one. The fire in the old Walker Street apartment complex was another, when I had been part of the rescue team sent in to help free the people trapped inside that were burning alive. I can still see their faces...screaming and all cramped in contortions of pain. One little girl we pulled out had bones exposed, she was so badly burned...

  But this was worse.

  The crowd, most of it, ran out to “help,” whatever that might have meant. As the rest of the parade came into view, however—all the band, the floats, the beauty queen dressed in a white dress stained red due to a curious absence of scalp—the “wounded” participants fell away from their ranks, like. Broke away in separate directions and started their attack.

  Some people managed to get away.

  Many, like the parents whose children were members of the parade, kept trying to get to them, frantic, trying to run up and embrace them and tell them everything would be okay, and that they’d call an ambulance. They weren’t so lucky.

  And neither was I, because I’ll be damned if I didn’t just have an asthma attack right there on the spot before I could take two steps, probably due to shock or fright or both. And it was a bad one, and I’d left my inhaler, my medicine, back on the porch not a hundred feet away and I couldn’t find enough air to walk or run and get it. And in all the confusion I fell, among all them screaming people and their fucked
up kids. I saw one little chubby boy yank out a woman’s tongue, and then the woman started yelling, “Thelp me, thelp me.” And then I passed out.

  ***

  I woke up with whispers in my ear.

  “That medicine down by the river truly worked,” the chipper little voice breathed. “The old man said it would and it did and now we can’t die. Yippee. And then he cut us all up to prove it.”

  I opened my eyes and the world returned. The voice was issuing from the mouth of a little girl with golden hair that whipped around her head as the wind blew cold.

  “Why did you take it...?” I asked her but I don’t know why. My nerves hadn’t come totally to consciousness yet but were in the process of doing so.

  “Because of his eyes...his blue eyes. The last wizard in the world. He’s just woken up, he said. Thought he’d give us a little gift.”

  “And the violence to sustain it,” a little boy in his green uniform added as he picked up his trumpet from the street.

  Then the little girl left, and my nerves woke up, and my body screamed. All my blood is gone now from my body, gone to the ground. I’ve had seventy-five asthma attacks out here since then as well, but somehow, some way, I live.

  And I hurt so bad...and can’t get out of the wind. It’s so cold and I’m so hungry but I can’t get out of the wind...

  Note: James Clarke was taken to Underground Unit Three for study and observation. In accordance with his wishes, he was cast into Furnace #2 when studies were complete. His ashes are kept in a transparent box of lead-tinted glass, where their movement is under constant observation. (Note: Twice in four days the ashes blew up in a small-scale cyclonic storm with no apparent method of being able to do so. Is it too far beyond the realm of possibility to believe he lives still?) A more detailed account of his experience was related while under observation, but is available only to those of Clearance Five ranking or higher. Unauthorized duplication of the above document is punishable by imprisonment and/or death and/or a fining not in excess of $650,000 silver sterling.

  ***

  The next account is classified. Above rules apply to this and all accounts that follow.

  Taken from road account of Mrs. Betha Rollins of Hurston, Pennsylvania, recorded shortly before her arrival in that local on September 31st. (Record made via personal tape recorder September 30th.) Formally entered into the Compendium for study as of now, November 5th, 1998.

  No sign of that blue guy again but you never know...he might be followin’ behind in that contraption of his. I hit a deer a few miles or so back, but it just upped and staggered off. Stopped the rig to finish it off with the shotgun because I hate to see a beast suffer, but the damn thing was off to the woods by the time I got out. A royal shame it is, but the world goes on and deadlines still gotta be met. Should be home tomorrow some time ‘bout noon, more or less, give or take.

  What’s this now? [sound of truck breaking] That old man again, all in blue. I don’t like this. He’s comin’ toward the truck, walking smack dab in the middle o’ the highway. No other vehicles. This area’s deserted and dark as storm season with the woods overhead. I’m alone with him now.

  [pause]

  I was hopin’ to get to Hallowston before the old coot showed up again. Damn, I really am freaked...can’t stop shaking. This whole shindig just ain’t natural.

  Doesn’t look like I’ll be meeting my deadline now. So what else is new?

  [Sound of truck door opening, Bertha Rollins screaming. A voice then, perhaps, or maybe only the wind. (A report on the “voice” should be forthcoming.) Then a gunshot. Tape ends.

  Bertha Rollins reached Hallowston that night, then went on to Hurston and made it there by daybreak, September 31st, with a hole eight inches in circumference in and through her chest and back. Townspeople took her to Pittsburgh medical facilities, where one doctor said (quote), “Damndest thing I ever saw.” The doctor, a Mr. Joesph Hingsley, is reportedly not “partial” to swearing.]

  ***

  The audio recording transcribed below was taped in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, October 25, 2013. Lifeguards Richard Bowens and James Spager, talking. Who says what in the conversation is marked on the printout. Same laws and restrictions apply. Formally entered into the Compendium for study as of now, November 10, 2013.

  Bowens: You picking me up, Jim? Got a victim out here.

  Spager: Picking you up. Drowning victim? Have you radioed in an

  ambulance?

  Bowens: Yes and no. Told them to send a coroner. This girl’s way

  gone. I’d say she’s been in the water ten days, easy. Only

  reason I know she’s a girl is because she doesn’t have a

  penis.

  Spager: It might have gone for fish bait, you know. Maybe “she”

  really is a “he,” just without his happy pal.

  Bowens: (Laughing) Yeah. Maybe. Hardly matters. Dead is dead. I

  got you on portable communication, Richard. I’m going

  back to the body now. Help’ll be coming by your station

  any time now, and I need you by the road to direct them

  to the body. I’m up the beach about a quarter-mile from

  Station 5. You tell them where to go.

  Spager: Gotcha. I’ll get them there.

  Bowens: Over and out, then.

  Spager: Over and out.

  [Five minutes of silence]

  Bowens: Oh Jesus, Spager. Spager! It’s moving, it’s fucking

  moving! Where are you? Come in, Spager. Spager?

  [Note: A miss Julia Femmings was recovered from the scene. Alive but rotting; let the record show that she was one of the oboe players in the marching band where James Clarke received his wounds. She had an interesting story to tell.

  Miss Femmings was not one of the attackers in the band... Conjecture at this point has it that only those who personally encounter and are injured by the Man In Blue are subject to violent acts after the encounter. Some, not even then. It is not known yet why this is so. Be that as it is, Miss Femmings herself did not see the Man In Blue. Her fellow band members that had, and that had become violent therefore, took her, tied her, and threw her into the waters of the Atlantic.]

  “They said it was His way of letting others know of His gift of immortality. Through violent acts, the injured will serve as proof to the masses,” [she said in her interview.] “So they threw me in, knowing that eventually I would wash up on shore, but not before the fish had had their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The best possible proof. A rotting body that lives, thinks, but doesn’t breathe.”

  [The oral interview had to be concluded early because Miss Femmings’ larynx failed. Writing is an impossibility for her, as is typing due to her advanced state of decay. Methods of communication between the interviewers and Miss Femmings are now being tried, but until then her interview is considered incomplete.]

  ***

  Radio communication from Henry Wallace, helicopter pilot for the Philadelphia Police Dept., to Philadelphia Police headquarters (received by Capt. John Ryan, who could not respond to Wallace due to technical difficulties and static in the connection). Dated November 3, 2013. Formally entered into the Compendium for study as of now, November 12, 2013.

  The whole city’s ablaze, people burning in the streets, blackened bodies walking around and the uninjured running. The time is 7:56 am, and I’m not afraid to admit that I’m scared shitless. Someone down there started firing off a weapon at the chopper a few minutes ago. Didn’t do too much damage, probably nicked the paint is all. I was lucky. Buildings are collapsing in the west side and to the north, and the fire’s moving steadily south and east. There are no firefighters. I’ve seen some abandoned trucks and such but no water’s being pumped and order is gone from the streets.

  The worst of all is the Man in Blue, though. Twenty feet tall and laughing, standing on top of a burning building, but not burning. Wearing a funky hat. Picking people up and yelling at them, then dropping them thirty
stories to the pavement. Something about a gift. He hasn’t paid me any mind, thank Jesus. My shift ends in five minutes, and I’ll be coming down again, but if I had any sense I’d more than likely take this baby off out of the city before the fuel gets too low and land her somewhere where this problem isn’t. Which is nowhere, probably, so what the hell am I going on about? I’m hungry. [Laughs] I really do need to shit.

  You reading me?

  Well, either way I need to talk to someone, so this little bit of transmitting metal will work just fine until I land. What I’m seeing is the stuff out of those worse-case-scenario horror movies but even nastier. I won’t go into graphic detail because it won’t do either of us any good to be thinking about that. I find myself thinking about death a fair bit, and I wonder why? My home was burned down last week and I’ve been living at the station, along with my family, since then. The station (as you know, whoever you are), is surrounded with motion-sensors that trigger machine gun bursts when anyone gets near who doesn’t have that little surgical implant. Since the Man In Blue has been in Philly for over 24 hours, the station won’t last long, and then what? The random panic has died down since he arrived, to be replaced by an orderly sort of slaughter as the victims became the aggressors, or just lost their ability to speak due to body damage. Well, eventually we who remain’ll either get a “talking to” from the man himself, and lose our marbles and become aggressors, or we get attacked by the people who’ve already had their little conversations with the man and we get hurt so bad we wish we were dead, but that would be a futile wish, wouldn’t it?