Underworld Earth

by Nicholas Gagnier

  Andre, a large burly fellow with thick eyebrows and a blond head of hair, shrugs.

  “In between at the moment, but I was getting back to it, soon enough!”

  “The point is, Peter, the politicians wanted us to care about race and gender and all this shit we can’t control. They asked us to judge people based on color and where they came from. But if I was chasing a dream from the middle of bumfuck Africa or wherever it is they all hail from… I wouldn’t blame them, because America would sound like a pretty sweet spot to go.

  “In the end, people,” Sydney continues, looking between all of us, “self-preservation is all that matters. My momma once told me, don’t listen to what the other rats are saying. Look what the owls are doing. The fucking predators, you know? You’re stuck in the garbage with all the other rats, thinking you only have to worry about who’s going for that piece of hot trash you want. So busy fighting each other, the birds pick us off one by one.”

  Before I can open my mouth to respond, my frowning offspring, calmly guiding my un-tempered hand, does it for me.

  “Maybe everybody getting sick will make the more fortunate people want to help,” Fiona suggests, and I know it will not land at all the way she means to. Sydney scoffs, squinting at me.

  “The fuck are you teaching this kid?”

  “Common decency. You should try it,” I suggest.

  “Might have enticed me, once upon a time. Lollipops and fucking rainbows, all that jazz. But like this one is about to learn, life ain’t roses. It’s a fucking plague, kid. Least now Mother Nature is being honest, isn’t she?”

  Fiona must know, or have a reasonable suspicion, her mother is dead. I won’t be the one to admit it if she finds out this second. Sydney’s face finds its way into my personal space as I draw back from her. Her eyes canvass my expression, waiting for a reaction.

  “What?” she says. “Want to put your fist through my face? Would be a wonderful example for your darling daughter, wouldn’t it, Peter? Go ahead. Do it!”

  The last two syllables are a bark, violent and hoarse from her throat, accompanied by a terrible grin.

  Free hand clenched at my side, I want to ignore the woman’s unpleasant attitude, unprocessed trauma over my wife’s death and corpses lying casually in the street. One man nearby has become a watering hole for flies. The smell infects sinuses, tickling my gag reflex, and there is no escape from it.

  “You’re sweating, Peter.”

  Looking down at the child I’m sworn to protect, I concede with a simple apology. Chuckling, Sydney mutters, calling us pathetic. She strolls past Ron and Andre in the direction we are heading. Her two henchmen share a glance before ultimately tailing her.

  I am left alone with Fiona, expecting me to hold the answers to a world that, overnight, became one I don’t understand any better than she does.

  Samantha

  Wastelands are a bleak affair.

  One memory that stands out, trudging along an endless stretch of Interstate somewhere east of Spokane, is a trip Derek and I took to Vimy Ridge in France during college. It was my first time leaving America, let alone Washington State. Derek is a history fanatic, deeply invested in wars fought before our time. I wouldn’t call him a student, since he majored in Business and has little interest in school otherwise, but his compulsion to see the old battlefield inspired that memorable trip.

  And there, he said as we held hands, strolling over a piece of history, is where the European troops weathered months of assault by German forces.

  Though not as fascinated as my husband, who wore a beige cardigan over his shirt and walked slower to keep pace with me, I granted it was a sight to behold. I couldn’t imagine the conditions those soldiers lived through; firing from trenches in rain that soaked their boots with mud, allowing gangrenous conditions to fester. Every day was a fight for survival in a brutal wasteland of flying bullets and bodies piling up.

  It was something I could never possibly relate to, until now.

  My companion’s feet drag along the road shoulder behind me. Mark hangs his head, somewhere between anger and despair. He has been quiet since Frank’s crew stole his car, speeding back the way we came. At first, I tried to console him, but he shrugged me off. Trying not to think about the many miles between here and the next town, I resorted to daydreaming instead.

  “I’m sorry about your car,” I say. The dragging heels on his boots agitate my thoughts.

  “Yeah,” he murmurs, “Had my book in it.”

  The ragged copy of McCarthy’s The Road, that he had been holding onto since we met, mystifies me. I barely saw him read more than a couple pages, but he was never without it.

  “I take it you like that book?”

  He shrugs.

  “Was my favorite book.”

  “Well,” I say, “we’re almost at the Idaho border. Can break into a bookstore in Post Falls, find another copy? Pretty sure fiction titles aren’t too high on the list for looters, especially concerning apocalypse.”

  Mark shakes his head.

  “Not like that. My brother gave it to me years ago. We stopped talking about a year later. I remember how much he loved it. I’ll be honest, it sat on my shelf for about six years. Then I got a phone call one day, saying he had died. Lung cancer. Didn’t even call to tell me. Nobody did.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He never looks at me. His words are pointed at the horizon in front of him, confessing his sins to empty vistas. Our feet move in tandem to the next destination, but our eyes do not meet.

  “I was never much of a reader,” he explains. “Jared loved to, but until I got that phone call... I thought it was so stupid. Reading for fun, right?”

  Shuffling in single file down a road that never seems to properly end, the mountain chains form a smile in the distance. Every so often, we see a vehicle that had spun off the road as its driver died, rolling to a stop on farmland identical to all the rest—many littered in bovine carcasses fallen sideways in their fields.

  Against the gravel roadside, Mark’s boots continue scraping along in the most infuriating way possible, and only the darkest thoughts remain to keep me company.

  As I’ve just about given up wondering what happened to the plethora of motor vehicles that tear down this section of Interstate daily, having never experienced it so devoid of travelers, we come upon a small gas station. It sits on a bend, explaining why the scene beyond the little country gas bar was hard to spot before. Road signs tell us only 35 miles remain to Post Falls, Idaho, and our pace quickens toward a massive pile-up blocking Interstate 90 from movement on either side.

  Tractor trailers, family vehicles and mid-size cars have all created a logjam down the road. Altogether, there are over a hundred husks of metal. Not all are upright, and many have flown off the road into fields under larger vehicles’ dominance.

  “Sam!”

  Mark, assuming I haven’t seen the collection of idle machinery in the distance, points down the road. Nodding, I tell him we should check the station first.

  “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? I mean, we might actually find survivors down there!”

  “Yes,” I reply, “but we might find supplies in there.”

  Unwilling to argue with him, I turn toward the store’s entrance. Best case scenario, there’s a working phone I can use to get in touch with Derek. Peering down at the dying cell in my palm, I won’t risk the battery trying to dial out.

  Why haven’t they tried calling me?

  I am immediately overcome by a rancid smell inside the dark station. It penetrates my senses in a way they have never been challenged. I stifle a gag and press a hand over my nose and mouth, stepping past the open frame. Mark has apparently chosen not to follow. I have no problem with that; the man’s poor demeanor outweighs the value of his company.

  In the confectionary aisle, my free hand absently grabs three bags of plain chips. Tucking them loosely beneath my arm, I set them down by the cash register. Nothing else on t
he counter itself leads me to deduce a phone is stationed beneath the wooden enclave. Rounding the far end, I push the swinging gate open, but the sight behind it sends me scrambling back.

  The man’s eyes have sunken into a purple pit; skin around the lids is a sickly grey. Transparent veins running beneath his flesh pump nothing through them, and the rest of him decomposes in the spot he tried to make a shit living.

  Stepping over the corpse, I try to make peace with the fact these sights will only become more regular. At the counter’s far end is a cubby shelf carved from its depths. A variety of items are stashed in there, well behind the only thing in this forsaken place that matters to me.

  The black cordless phone works, to my great surprise. Hearing a dial tone upon activating it, I input the ten digits of my husband’s cell phone number. Excitement builds in my voice as I try to restrain myself at the relief of hearing Derek’s. He will tell me everything is fine; he and Nathan are safe.

  Everything is going to be fine, Sammy, he will say, right before I can speak with my son. You’ll see, everything will be okay.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Derek Wallace.” The voicemail topples any sense of optimism I had dialing his number. “Please leave a message after the tone.”

  Why isn’t he picking up? Redialing, I assure myself he must be busy with work. Maybe he’s throwing up in the fucking bathroom and I’ll have to clean up the spots he missed, bless his heart.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Derek Wallace.”

  This place, he once told me, standing where a war had been fought a hundred years earlier, spellbound at implications I couldn’t even grasp. To think how different the world could have been, if we had stopped fighting for our vision.

  Please leave a message after the tone.

  Yeah, I said at the time, unable to match his amazement. At nineteen, I felt stupid, having lived near two decades yet knowing so little of the world. My future husband, so full of his trivia and niche facts about the Great War, only made me feel more inadequate.

  Everything is going to be fine, Sammy.

  I wish he was here.

  You’ll see, everything will be okay.

  Beep.

  Peter

  Haven’s center consists of a commercial zone called the Strip, which is exactly how it sounds—a row of brick-and-mortar shops, ranging from butcher to maternity store and the nearby toy shop we used to beg our stingy mother for new gadgets as kids. My sister Kate and I pulled at one arm under a fur coat as she lifted a cigarette to her mouth with the other. People walking on the sidewalk from the other direction scrunched their noses at the blue stream of smoke blown about her, but all we cared about were the fucking toys inside that shop.

  Fiona looks on that store with none of the wonder I recognize. Death wafts from inside the butcher shop; I’m not sure if the smell is rotting meat or a person decomposing in the spring warmth. The sun is higher in the sky now, which will only intensify the scent pouring out its door.

  On the street, several men drag the dead away. Each wears a facemask taken from a pesticide service next to the bike shop. Some are armed with rifles hanging off their backs, while others bear no weapons. It makes no difference as they all struggle to move old Mrs. Harmsworth, who weighed three hundred pounds and fell dead in the center of Main Street. Two men handling her try to shift the body by its arms and legs.

  “Jesus!” one of the handlers cries.

  “Man the fuck up, Walter!”

  “Shut up, Frank! Should’ve stayed out there collecting tolls, motherfucker!”

  The man named Frank wears a better-quality mask than Walter. The second man is thin, with a raspier voice. He reminds me of the less popular kids in high school, who went on to leave this hole in the ground, unlike the popular ones. Some might have gone on to Harvard and become world-famous in their professions.

  One thing remains true: most of those less popular kids would have jumped on the chance to be better liked. Some might have fallen for pranks that lured them using promise of popularity.

  Pulling old Mrs. Harmsworth down the road, Walter sure seems like one of them.

  “Yeah,” Frank says, “but then, who would make sure your punk ass didn’t pussy out, right? Come on, let’s get this old wench out of the road before the boss slaps us silly.”

  I remind my fascinated daughter, whose years of uncensored YouTube usage have rendered her the most desensitized being on her side of four feet tall, not to look. Disregarding the warning, Fiona watches them try one method after another to move the woman.

  “Come on,” Sydney instructs us, “we should move on.”

  At the center of town is a park where Haven’s citizens routinely gathered. It is not large, and free of any amenities children would enjoy. Its grass has withered where it should bloom. At the center where a monument is dedicated to the city council who wasted the money to build such a useless place, the soil is dead, having soaked up escaping bodily fluids of corpses since dragged away.

  Where families would have once visited to enjoy a Saturday afternoon in nice weather, and students would have sat cross-legged under the thick tree trunks, blossoming colorful umbrellas to provide natural shade as they studied, several people have assembled. There are no officials among them; no cops or councilors, no doctors or leaders.

  They are regular citizens, scared and in many cases, the only survivors of entire families. Most are disheveled, with soiled skin and unkempt hair. Clothes are often covered in the essence of loved ones. There are more men than women, and almost no children. Visibly armed guards mind the otherwise complacent crowd, who glance at each other in fear of what comes next. The faint smell of rotting flesh has permeated the world around us. It is in the sky, earth and air; somewhere between a fart and full-on sewer, never quite going away. These men could drag every dead person out of Haven, and the stench would still linger.

  A bearded man in aviator shades tries to calm the people assembled before him. He is instantly familiar, dressed in a blue polo shirt tarnished by a dark stain in the center abdomen.

  “People!” the man calls, and my brain struggles to place him. “If everyone would calm down, we are going to get to the bottom of this!”

  “Why are you covered in blood?” a raspy voice asks to his left. “And why should we believe you suddenly have all the answers?”

  The confident stranger smirks, eyes partially hidden by rounded shades sliding down his nose. The grin on his lips is unsettling, like a manic patient off their meds. It doesn’t take long for identity to shift into focus. Just as with Sydney, I don’t know how I initially didn’t make the connection.

  The man from outside her convenience store.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he replies to his accuser, “what is your name?”

  “Daddy,” Fiona whispers at waist level, “I can’t see. What’s going on?”

  But I am spellbound by the scene in front of me; flabbergasted these...nobodies I keep crossing seem to hold the balance of power in this situation.

  Amazing how many things they make you reconsider, isn’t it?

  It only takes a moment to change the world, right? I told him, clutching my daughter’s hand for dear life. Even as the doting parent of a beautiful seven-year- old, I took time out of our day to share a cigarette with him—this unkempt, world-weary pot dealer, hucking dimebags outside a gas station on the corner of Byron and Flagg.

  I like that, he scoffed. What’s your name, kid?

  “Rex Shapiro! I know your father, Victor Quinn!” the elder confronting him exclaims. “You know, Harry never thought you’d amount to much, but... killing someone?”

  I’m Victor, the man said, pointing at himself.

  “My father,” Victor says to the man in his face, “used to talk about what made this country great. This on my shirt? Deer’s blood. Don’t believe me, head up to Memorial. Wade through all the dead bodies for a testing kit, and we can settle this debate right now.

  “Harry is dead now, Rex. Died in the nigh
t, gagging on his own saliva. But... I want to thank you for the generational superiority I personally find to be atrocious in most boomers. By insinuating that your acquaintance with a man who is currently rotting in his own house has... any sway over me... I find, in fact, morally repugnant.”

  Rex Shapiro, as I make him out, is an old coot in golf whites who happened to survive the deadliest illness in modern history. His accent is more Winston-Salem than Washington State, and he balks at Victor’s challenge.

  “How dare you—” Rex begins.

  In that one moment, I am unaware how precious relative silence is. The banter between them and quiet disgust drawn across Victor’s face should all telegraph exactly where this is headed.

  The pistol produced from the back of his jeans sends three shots tearing across the space dividing him from Rex. People duck and scream; Fiona wraps her arms around me, pressing her head to my hip. And when we all look up, Rex Shapiro’s head has disappeared under rows of shoulders impeding us from a front-row seat to Victor’s smoking pistol—the one used to murder a man for nothing more than bragging about an association with his father.

  “Now!” Victor yells at the stunned crowd, “Let that be an example to you all! Got human blood on me now, in addition to the fucking deer I shot earlier! Your dinner, by the way! You can all thank me later. As for Rex here, well, nobody’s gonna mistake him for a human being!

  Fiona’s arms relax. The crowd shuffles uncomfortably. Their sharp breaths and wide eyes are a reminder we are in Hell, and Victor is the self-appointed Devil.

  “What do you think?” a voice asks over my shoulder. Sydney—the woman who broke into our house looking for shit to steal, inadvertently told my daughter Meghan is dead, and led us here—has snuck up behind me. Between a grinning Victor standing over his victim, and the armed men who surround us, I am beginning to understand the true scope of our predicament.

  “What do I think?” I repeat blankly.

  This is the moment that changes the world, in all its horrible, untamed glory.