Underworld Earth

by Nicholas Gagnier

  I scrunched up my nose at the idea of wasting my entire weekend in a hospital.

  Think I’ll stay here.

  Pretty sure Google did not account for lack of law enforcement or other drivers on the road. Driving eighty miles an hour will make for a much faster trip. Unfortunately, Derek did not fill the tank past half, and I soon need to stop for gas. The cell towers are still operational, but with nowhere to charge my phone, I must conserve its battery. Mom wasn’t answering on the few occasions I tried hers; she has no way of knowing Dad is dead, or that I’m trying to get to her.

  And teachers tell her I’m not well-adapted.

  I can’t exactly blame them. The care-free existence they once mistook for deep-seated psychological issues was at the forefront of every teacher-parent conference I’ve ever been dragged to. Mom tried to work with the teacher insulted with my terrible grades for the school year. None of them were willing to meet her halfway with any kind of reasonable solution, and nothing ever changed.

  Turns out, it only took the world ending to spur me into action.

  Just after the Pennsylvania border—realizing I should have taken the eighty, rather than continuing down the 95—I pull off at a ramp marked Havertown. It looks like any other small city. There’s a McDonald’s on every alternating corner, with a Starbucks on the other. Fast food joints and high-rise buildings dominate the commercial strip’s horizon. The Lexus’s gas gauge needle slowly slipped south of the empty line, and I have to pull over to appease its thirst for fuel. There are few souls to greet me—lights in a Burger King restaurant are on, but nobody mans their drive thrus or visits to eat. Entire strip malls are dead, and traffic is non-existent.

  I find a gas bar and veer into its lot, haphazardly stopping between two pumps. Nobody appears through the full-service station—the kind I used to visit with Dad on his weekends home. Mom insisted we took the time to bond, and we spent most of those days ignoring each other as Derek fulfilled errands and I was his bag boy.

  It builds character, he used to tell me.

  I may be eleven, but I’ve watched my father do this enough to perfectly emulate it. Unscrewing the cap beneath the gas flap, I remove its plastic cork, placing it on the car’s roof. Droplets of gasoline drip from its edges, and Dad would have killed me for such carelessness. Inserting the nozzle into the tank, I am surprised to learn it simply dispenses gas. Numbers on the yellow service screen climb as I steal another glance at the service station window. Hanging up the nozzle, I climb back in the car, turning a keyless ignition when a fist raps on my window, nearly sending me jumping out the closed sunroof.

  A sneering older gentleman glares suspiciously through tinted windows dividing us. He wasn’t here a second ago, and dressed in a safety vest, with a nest of curly grey hair, he motions to roll down my window.

  “Plan on paying for that gasoline, sonny?”

  Why didn’t he come out earlier? His sunken jowls and dead eyes peer through the crack of the power window into my soul as I kick myself for failing to notice he was still employed, let alone alive.

  “Sorry, sir,” I say, “I didn’t know there would be anyone here to pay for it, and I didn’t think to bring money with me.”

  “Bit young to be driving, ain’t you?”

  I nod as his eyes glaze over me.

  “Didn’t have much choice, sir. My dad dropped dead from this sickness like everyone else, and my mom is on the other side of the country. But I promise, I didn’t mean to steal anything. Sure she would be happy to come back and pay you when this is over.”

  The elder studies me; for a moment, I think he may let me go, considering the circumstances. But just like all those teachers who engage in stare downs before sentencing me to endless rounds of detention, he does not buy it.

  “Gonna have to hold you here until I can track down some authorities to find your parents.”

  “What?”

  “As you know,” the attendant says, “Theft is a serious crime. It drives up the cost of living, you know?”

  “Seriously?”

  He points behind him to a two-storey structure. In the sun’s dying glare, the run-down motel appears to be a death trap of bed bug infestations and graffiti-covered walls.

  “Been staying over there. Got a room if you wanna sit somewhere comfortable while we wait?”

  I can’t believe this.

  “Sir,” I say, “I am obviously a kid who should not be driving a car under any circumstances apart from my dad teaching me how to on some back-country road. But as you’ve seen, things are bad, mister.

  “Look, I promise you, my mother has the money to pay for gas. She’ll send you a cheque in the mail. Forty-seven, sixty-nine, right?”

  The attendant shakes his head, squinting. The White Pages slide under me and my foot hovers over the gas, ready to knock down the pumps themselves if it means escaping him.

  On the other hand, that is exactly the kind of story my mother would not want to hear.

  “Sorry, sonny. Come to the motel, and I’m sure your mom and I will be able to sort this out when she arrives.” He lowers his fingers to the handle. Fighting instinct, I don’t lunge for the lock button, exhaling defeat as he hoists the driver door open. “Don’t make me ask twice.”

  I don’t know if Mom is alive. My new predicament is enough to divert focus from Derek’s open eyes on the master suite bathroom floor.

  All I know, of the few things about the world I am certain, is that my siphoning gas from an abandoned gas bar, only to be busted by a lone man in his early seventies- the kind you see at the supermarket with his sour wife, or handing out Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets on a weekend- is just my damn luck.

  The man says his name is Elmer, that he has lived in the motel since his wife passed. He couldn’t afford the mortgage after retiring and bartered for the room using earnings from the sale of his home. He took out a part-time job at the gas station to make ends meet.

  The room itself is a far cry from any motel I’ve ever stayed in. Its two-story facade is awash in peeling paint and split wood. Creaky metal stairs leading to the second level don’t look like they could support a suitcase, let alone a person. Elmer lives on the bottom level, so those stairs are little consideration. The door closes behind me; a musty scent pours up my nose and down my throat, making me nauseous.

  “We’ll wait here,” he says, switching on a bedside lamp. He gestures to a metal chair in the corner. “Can sit there.”

  “Is there a phone I could use?”

  The old man shakes his head.

  “Phone lines are down, kid. Sorry.”

  “Then,” I ask, “how am I supposed to get ahold of my parents to pay you, sir?”

  Elmer ignores the question. Removing his yellow safety vest, the jacket beneath is heavy for the weather and I am beginning to question whether he works at the gas station next door at all.

  “Drink?” he asks, limping to a bedside dresser. The wood is cracked, defaced of its finish. On it, crystal glassware holds a thin brown liquid which sloshes against the sides as he plucks it off the surface.

  “I’m eleven.”

  “If you can drive, you can drink,” he says, pouring between two glasses.

  “No thanks. You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “All the telecom equipment in this city ain’t working. Gotta wait for the crews to get out here, start conducting clean-up on the lines.”

  “That could take months!”

  “Well then,” Elmer says, sitting on the bed across from where I stand, patting the spot beside him. “Looks like we’ll have some privacy until then.”

  This stranger has no interest in being paid by my mother for a tank’s worth of gas he never owned to begin with. He just happened to be in the right place when I pulled up. All it would have taken was grabbing a safety vest from inside the station to play the part.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, “I don’t know what impression I gave you, sir. I’m just trying to get to my mo
m in Washington, okay?”

  The old man stands, downing the rest of his drink, placing it down on the dresser. I step back as he walks towards me. For every movement forward, I drift back—both vaguely and completely aware what happens if I let my guard down.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that, kid,” he growls.

  Elmer lunges; my hands reach for something, anything I can use to protect myself. Sidestepping him, he slams into the wall separating the bed from a dingy bathroom on the other side. I grab the lamp on the bedside table; as Elmer bounces back to grab me, the ceramic base comes down on his head. Eyes roll upward as he collapses over me, sending us both to the floor over the lamp’s jagged remains. Scrambling from beneath him, my feet find solid ground, and I press on and up against the wall.

  Bolting for the door, lungs burning and head pounding, I don’t look back. Reaching the gas station next door, I fumble the car keys, almost dropping them. Upon its recognition of the fob’s proximity, the Lexus springs to life, speeding away from the gas station, burning rubber pouring in lowering windows.

  Fifteen minutes of trauma for a free tank of gas. Not bad. The world spins around the fact I wanted to deny until now as I barrel down the ramp, exiting Havertown.

  We are officially in Hell.

  Peter

  It only takes one moment.

  In the vast, cruel expanse of choice and consequence, there might be some solace to these things so far outside my control. I’ll admit, the silver linings were initially hard to see. Anywhere I could do good was littered with bodies and depravity, forced to wade into moral grey to protect my child.

  Where I could be good, I did my best.

  Now, on the back of my idea and Rex Shapiro’s murder, all of Haven grovels at Victor Quinn’s feet. The man is an enigma who rose from nothing. Something about an unloved son brandishing a revolver like a maniac just draws people in.

  Days have passed, and the news has spread. Trucks not wholly owned by those driving them flock across state lines. Folks of all stripes—biker gangs, farmers, survivalists and gun nuts, to name a few—have come to see the man who dared to take control of Washington State’s most notorious township. Haven’s city buildings and police precinct, schools and industrial parks may be devoid of life, but there is a future here for them. Or so they heard.

  Victor anticipated this. Last night, his boys constructed a crass stage. They broke into the high school, ripped out the auditorium’s lights, hooking it up to generators they robbed out in suburbia.

  Where the road in front of Haven’s town square only welcomed tumbleweeds, RVs and family vehicles are pulled up. One tries to double park his Winnebego along the sidewalk to have a front seat; other RVs blare their horns at his pushiness. Those unwilling to sleep in their backseats, or who number too many to fit inside confined spaces for long, roll out sleeping bags on the ground. Cooking stations are set up with folding tables to serve their brethren. Like a magnet, Victor attracted them here; like positive ions to his negative, they are every bit deluded as he is. It could be starvation, sleeplessness and general lack of hope wrought by the last week.

  But at the square root, these people have always believed in what men like Victor stand for. The plague only wiped away all the layers of bullshit.

  Leaving Fiona with Margaery and Mara—who are jointly willing to keep Haven’s children out of Victor’s warpath—I seek Victor, knowing hard questions would be asked if I didn’t attend. I don’t want to confirm if Sydney is still sour with me for rejecting her the other night, but my absence would set off alarms, endangering Fiona.

  I have no intention of storming Fairchild. Whether Victor Quinn accepts that remains to be seen. Arriving at the Square, parked vehicles obstruct powerful flood lights. Men in trucker hats chug beer looted from stores in their respective towns or stockpiled long before. Many smoke cigarettes and marijuana; I’m not sure where they acquired the latter, mixing with a pungent cloud of exhaust from idling tailpipes.

  There is no carpeting on the stage; cheap lumber stolen from Mick Whitby’s yard off Main and Coven are held together by stripped screws and poor drilling jobs. There is no PA system, because power is limited, and it would have required more forethought than Victor’s cronies ever give anything.

  Watching Victor’s men make final preparations, I realize I am one of them now, even if constantly scanning them for weaknesses. Of the ten people who directly work for Victor Quinn, Frank Lancaster is the most dangerous. Reggie may be biggest, with large hands that could crack my spine in half. In terms of size, he is followed by Andre and Ronald. Giant as they might be next to guys like Walter or even Victor himself, all seem reasonably-minded.

  Next to a man like Frank, who pulls the trigger first and maybe remembers later, the absence of red flags is all I require to fly below their radar.

  That only leaves Sydney. My rejection did not go well, and there is no telling what she may do next. The woman is deranged, spewing proletarian drivel one moment and trying to fall in love with me the next.

  The crowd huddles together in the late May air as Victor’s men complete their final preparations. Were bodies still in the streets, as with the bigger cities, the smell would be unfathomable.

  Victor climbs the crude stage to welcome his posse of beer-guzzling, chain-smoking hillbillies. His aviators are gone, along with his shirt, and in the harsh glow of battery-powered high beams, the baby blues of his manic facade are on full display.

  “Gentle people of Haven!” he screams, lifting both arms from his sides, his voice echoing into the unmoved skyline. “Today, you are a part of history! We have survived the motherfucking plague, while all the other rats were quashed! No houses in the Hollywood Hills could protect them! No protective detail could take a bullet for them! In the end, those cunts were at the mercy of human physiology, just like you and me!

  “But for once, unlike all the vile plans the plutocracy—because we are a motherfucking plutocracy, ain’t that right, Shelly?” he asks, pointing to a woman at his feet. She is middle-aged and thinner than any woman in her late forties has a right to be. Cheerful rasps come out of the exhaust pipe that is her throat, ruined from the lit cigarette constantly between her lips.

  “Yes, Shelly, we are the children of a failed republic. But the lie of it all? It was never really a republic at all, Shelly! And standing in the very state named for our nation’s founder, we can forge a new future! For ourselves and America!”

  “Fuck yeah!” one of the men at Victor’s feet yells.

  My eyes catch on a small woman to the crowd’s far left, greeting a white pick-up arriving from a street to the north. I can’t see its driver, but make out Sydney receiving it, clutching a rifle in her hands. Glad I left Fiona with the women at the Row, our near-intimate encounter is washed from my thoughts. Sydney circles to the passenger side, climbing in the door before the truck eases forward in our direction.

  On the stage, Victor Quinn paces from one end to the other, addressing his convoy of backwoods visitors.

  “Those motherfuckers took everything that red-blooded Americans and their families spent generations building. From the top, they promised us trickle-down and they promised us prosperity, but where the fuck was it, huh? Where the fuck was it, Richard? Leon? Did the swamp you’re from even teach you these things?”

  An uncomfortable silence befalls his spectators. They share awkward glances, wondering if they should continue cheering, taking uncomfortable sips of beer in between.

  “Bit rude, Quinn,” one of the men says.

  “And I mean, Shelly!” Victor continues. “Were you the only woman to survive, and now these boys pass you around like leftover ham? Or are you their mother?”

  The man beside Shelly falls quiet in comparison to his earlier demeanor, and I finally realize Victor didn’t put all of this together to welcome them. They arrived on their own, because he was presumably a magnet for their survival. The one Victor referred to as Leon hands his beer can to Richard and steps fo
rward.

  “You shut your mouth, you little fucking punk!”

  “Oh, struck a nerve, did I?”

  Hoisting himself on the platform, Leon doesn’t make it to his feet before Victor’s boot swings into the man’s face. The force subjects him to a short drop before landing on his back below. Victor’s unholstered pistol points down toward Leon’s bloody nose. When sure he has submitted, Victor lifts the barrel, swinging it wildly between the crowd. Placing a crumpled cigarette between his lips and lighting it, he ignores their cries and fear. His eyes lift upward, nodding at the truck containing Sydney. A metal contraption has been affixed inside the flatbed and requires a fair amount of squinting to identify it.

  Full realization clicks, and I turn my head back to Victor, whose smile has transitioned from lopsided confidence to a malicious grin.

  “Now,” he says, “I thank you for your patronage, your vehicles and your guns. They will benefit our revolution quite nicely.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “This place is supposed to be a refuge!”

  “It means,” Victor replies, pausing a moment to give his final words maximum effect, “you all made a big mistake coming here.”

  The crowd whose backs are turned to me watch him climb down the stage. Their heads revolve as eyes follow their host, caught in their own headlights like deer.

  He’s going to murder them.

  The giant mounted gun in the truck’s flatbed begins to whir. The hailstorm of bullets begins, never deviating since Victor’s audience mostly occupies the same area. Blood vaulted out their backs and heads stain the cheap stage, tarnishing the surrounding grass and trees with dark red streaks. Silhouettes against the night sky collapse one by one as the mounted gun continues firing in darkness-piercing bursts. It is careful never to hit their worldly possessions—those trucks and cars will be needed later.

  When the gunfire ceases, and Haven is quiet once more, the corpses have fallen over each other, pounds of flesh neatly piled for transport. Smoke rises along the path bullets formerly traversed, and my ears ring where I ducked behind a concrete slab with snapped iron rods poking out the top. Peeking out to assure myself this is not a dream, but indeed the world’s end, all its signs become apparent. Frank Lancaster’s vile giggling as he imitates something sexual over one of the dead turns my rage to Victor, who lights another cigarette after pitching the previous one onto Shelly’s corpse.