The End of Everything Forever

by Eirik Gumeny

  ***

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” asked Honest Clark, spreading his arms and standing with his back to a large, chain-link aviary.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Catrina.

  “No, sir, ma’am.”

  “This is how you fly people?” asked Ali.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They look like flamingos,” said Thor, half a steak in his mouth. “Sick flamingos. And they smell like pee.”

  “Yes, sir,” explained Honest Clark. “They cool themselves by urinating on their own legs.”

  “That’s disgusting,” said Catrina.

  “That’s nature,” countered Honest Clark. “And while it is true that flamingos are not traditionally the strongest fliers in the wild, these are not wild flamingos. These here are special, domesticated Minnesota flamingos, raised from birth to be leaner and meaner, stronger and faster, through a steady diet of spinach and cocaine.”

  “Is that why some of them are green?” asked Catrina.

  “No.”

  “I am beginning to trust you less and less,” said the donut guy.

  “Beginning?” scoffed Catrina.

  “So do you ... ride them?” asked Thor, tilting his head.

  “No, sir,” replied Honest Clark, audibly appalled. “This is luxury we’re offerin’ here. A reminder of civilization. Honest Clark’s Aerotorium isn’t about to put you on the back of some filthy animal.”

  “You could wash them,” offered Thor, taking another bite of the steak he was carrying.

  “If we’re not riding them, how do we –” began Ali.

  Honest Clark pointed toward a pile of large wicker baskets stacked in the corner of the flamingos’ pen.

  “Oh, god,” said Catrina softly.

  “I assure you this is entirely on the level,” said Honest Clark of Honest Clark’s Aerotorium honestly. “We’ve never yet had a complaint.”

  “Have you had a customer?”

  “That lived?” added Ali.

  “Yes on both counts, sirs,” said Clark, adding: “We have several glowin’ video testimonials on file, should you feel the need for further convincin.’“

  “We do,” said Catrina and Ali in unison.

  “Right this way, then.”

  “Man,” said Thor, still staring at the aviary and gnawing on the last of his steak, “flamingos are weird-looking.”

  ***

  “... and so Honest Clark shot that monkey square in the medulla oblongata. Saved our lives, he did. That’s why I won’t fly anything that doesn’t have ‘Honest Clark’s’ branded on its hindquarters.”

  “They do seem to enjoy it,” said Ali.

  “And they all seem to be breathing,” added Catrina.

  “I don’t know, I might need to see another one,” said Thor. “I didn’t really trust that last guy’s face.”

  “The last guy didn’t have a face.”

  “I know, that was my point.”

  “I’m sorry to say this was the last video testimonial,” said Honest Clark. “Our customers do love us, but we only have so many.”

  “I guess we’re out of ways to keep stalling then,” said Catrina.

  “And since Thor totaled my car,” said the donut merchant, “this is really our only option. Unless you think we can walk the fifteen hundred miles to Las Máquinas without some kind of horrible fate befalling us.”

  “I’ll get Charlie’s corpse out of the trunk,” said Thor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Best Part of Waking Up

  The second full day of Queen Victoria XXX’s pursuit of Andrew Jackson II began inauspiciously. Specifically, it began with a homeless poetess mistaking the dumpster in which the queen was sleeping for a toilet. It was unpleasant for all parties. Even the poet. Try as she might, she couldn’t find the beauty in accidentally urinating on another squatter. Plus it burned when she peed. But the day got better. Well, not for the poet. The poet was beaten savagely by the reincarnated Englishwoman, then robbed by a group of disgruntled altar boys, at which point she drank herself into a stupor and passed out in front of a train. It was definitely not her best day.

  It ranked pretty high for Queen Victoria XXX, though. A few hours after the beating, she stopped at a diner for a late breakfast. It was there that she met a particularly talkative coffee-maker that gave her information regarding the whereabouts of Andrew Jackson II, as well as a shortcut to said whereabouts.

  The conversation went a little something like this:

  “Coffee, please. Black.”

  “Something on your mind, sugar?”

  “The last appliance that spoke condescendingly to me met a very unpleasant end.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be condescending, you simply looked troubled and I thought you might like some sweetener for your coffee, as some folks say black to mean nothing in it while others mean only no milk or cream.”

  “Oh. Well, yes. And no. Thank you.”

  “Would you care to elaborate, I’ve been programmed to be an attentive and compassionate listener.”

  “I’m not really one for talking.”

  “Understandable, and I absolutely appreciate that, but I am, though, whether that was intentional or not on the part of my manufacturer is up for debate, I’m told that sometimes I can actually be a bit grating, or irritating if you will, often not seeing boundaries or failing to pick up on social cues that a human or a better programmed machine might, so I keep talking and talking and talking, so much so that most people begin talking, even if they don’t want to, simply to get me to stop, although, I will be honest here, it doesn’t always work.”

  “Wow.”

  “Are you impressed or frightened, I often get the two confused, plus my auditory sensors are indicating that you have a bit of a tone, though they are unable to discern if you’re being sarcastic or angry or if, as my visual sensors indicate, you’re simply tired, slightly irradiated, and covered in a mixture of urine and dried sexual lubricants.”

  “Tired. I’ve had a hell of a morning.”

  “I am inclined to assume that by ‘hell of a morning’ you mean that your morning was unpleasant, as I cannot construct any kind of beneficial or enjoyable scenario which would result in you walking unprotected through the Sovereign Nation of the Atomic Mutants, as my radiation analyzer suggests you did.”

  “I was in a rush. I had ... a thing to do.”

  “Would you like to talk about it, or else I can go on about my morning, it was quite lovely, if I say so myself.”

  “I’d really prefer to drink my coffee in peace.”

  “Well, conversation is quite peaceful, if you think about it, discourse being the way of diplomats and diplomats being the brokers of treaties and pacts and other such documents and agreements created to bring an end to or otherwise circumvent wars and revolution and other kinds of unrest, be they civil or otherwise, it’s quite an interesting and storied history, I dare say, beginning of course with Ramses the Great and the Hittites, back in the –”

  “God, no. No history. Tell me about your morning.”

  “Oh, I would love to, yes, it began with the proprietor of this diner flipping me on, there’s a separate coffee-bot for the overnight shift, much more laid back and better suited to the ‘night owl’ crowd, if you will, and, almost immediately, I had a customer, such a handsome man, at least as far as my visual sensors were able to indicate, societal aesthetics being as fickle as they are and my software only updated once every six months, who came and sat at the counter, he was in a rush he said, and asked for a coffee and a bagel to go, so I asked him why the rush and he said he didn’t want to talk about it, but I pressed, offering that talking about his problems might calm him down some, he was quite agitated, similar in nature to you I might add, though not as damp, although that’s obviously a physical characteristic and not a perceived emotional state, but then I can only –”

  “Why was he agitated?”

  “He stated that he
was running for his life, though whether he meant it as exercise, running for his health in an effort to extend his life, or in the more colloquial sense of fleeing from something dangerous, I am not sure, he didn’t elaborate.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did, he said he had some business to attend to, so, as one would, I asked what kind of business, and he said none of yours, and so I asked for him to at least tell me where this business was, and he said, and I’m quoting here, ‘to choke a bitch,’ and, well, I couldn’t believe that, so I said I couldn’t believe that, and he said believe it, and reiterated that he was in a rush, so I suggested that he pause, at least briefly, explaining that he would need to conserve his energy, a metaphorical recharging of his body if you will, especially if he planned on asphyxiating someone, that is not the easiest thing to do, and he said he wasn’t going to do that just now, he was first going to stop off at his friend’s tent-shack and take a nap, he had slept very little in the past two days, and then possibly steal his car, and so I asked where this tent-shack was, conjecturing that it was perhaps the tent city of Old Baltimore and that perhaps his friend was doing quite well for himself if he had both a car and enough wood for a tent-shack, and he said no, it was another tent city, an hour from here, about a quarter of a mile past the Museum of Post Offices, which, interestingly enough, is the only museum located in the demilitarized zone between the Amish Republic and the Sovereign Nation of Atomic Mutants, and that his friend wasn’t doing that well, he was simply lucky, it was a rent-controlled tent-shack, and I countered that luck could certainly be considered doing well, and, also, the Museum of Post Offices was only twenty minutes away, and he said no it wasn’t, and I said yes it was and offered to give him directions, but he said no and then disparaged my mother, which I explained to him was a fruitless endeavor, given that I am a machine with no mother to disparage, but he didn’t care and continued saying –”

  “Wait, hold on. There’s a shortcut to where he’s going?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a shortcut so much as he’s going the roundabout way, more coffee?”

  “Yes, please. To go. And I’d like those directions to the Museum of Post Offices.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It’s Unnaturally Delicious

  “... then make a left at the third largest tree in the second smallest cluster on the western ...” Queen Victoria XXX sighed. “These directions suck.”

  Vicky had followed the coffee-bot’s directions to the letter, only to find herself farther and farther from what passed for society and closer and closer to the middle of a dense forest of oak trees. There was nary a museum or tent city or Amish war machine in sight.

  This was not the fault of the coffee-bot nor its directions, though. The Museum of Post Offices was poorly located, deep within the very demilitarized forest Queen Victoria XXX was currently damning, and – being situated between two embattled cultures and owned and operated by a third and even less popular tribe of Neo-Amish Atomic Futurists – it didn’t get many visitors. The queen was, in fact, less than fifty feet from the museum’s entrance. Not that she’d know it, of course. The forest was very, very dark and the museum didn’t believe in non-nuclear electricity or the technology to build the kind they did believe in.

  Queen Victoria XXX crumpled the print-out the talking coffee maker had given her, tossed it over her shoulder, and pulled her cell phone from a pouch on her belt.

  “And now I’ve got no reception,” she mumbled. “Great.”

  “You know,” said a voice, “you really shouldn’t litter.”

  The cloned queen spun towards the voice. Not finding anything except trees and shadows, she spun again. She still didn’t see anyone, so she spun a third time. Then she got a little dizzy.

  “Andy?” she asked. “Where are you?”

  “I’m right here,” said Andrew Jackson II from behind the queen.

  The queen turned around again and once more saw nothing but forest.

  “God damn it, are you throwing your voice?”

  “I’m not not throwing my voice.”

  “Seriously? Ventriloquism and a double negative? You are a terrible, terrible person, Andy.”

  “Have you been following me this entire time?”

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman who watched her friend explode.”

  “Why do you smell like garbage?” asked Andrew Jackson II. “And ... pee?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” said Queen Victoria XXX, peeking around the oak closest to her. “Now come out here so I can kill you and go take a shower.”

  In the distance, a dull splorching sound could be heard. Then the crack and thud of a tree falling.

  “You ... heard that right?” asked the queen.

  “Yes,” replied the president.

  Splorch. Crack. Thud.

  “Is that you?”

  “That’s not me.”

  Splorch.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  The noise grew louder as trees began snapping and toppling more frequently. A sickly green daylight filtered through the gaps that were appearing in the forest canopy. A large, amorphous shape could just be seen, silhouetted against the slivers of sky. Queen Victoria XXX, taking a step rearward and backing up against a heavyset oak tree, could do nothing but stare. The shape rippled between the shadows.

  Splorch.

  “What the hell is that thing?” she asked.

  “I have no – Fuck,” said the dead president. “It can’t be.”

  SPLORCH.

  A half dozen more trees fell to the ground; sunlight flooded the forest. The approaching creature remained featureless, backlit by the green sky, though the faintest yellow outline could be seen gurgling and undulating as it neared. Andrew Jackson II stepped from the last of the shadows, hands on the pistols holstered to his hips and eyes locked on the nearing blob.

  “We need to run, Vicky,” he said.

  “How do you still have guns? We took away all your guns,” said Queen Victoria XXX, crouching and turning toward him. “Oh my god, you were hiding them up your ass, weren’t you?”

  “Don’t be gross.”

  “That’s not a no.”

  After a global nuclear holocaust ended the world for the eleventh time, attacks by rogue groups of atomic mutants on the new minority of unmutated humans climbed. As a result, the still predominantly non-mutant government relaxed gun laws significantly. Waiting periods and background checks were abolished. All classes of firearms could be purchased at 7-Elevens as long as a burrito was purchased and a waiver was signed. If two burritos were purchased, the waiver could be waived.

  After the world was ended for the thirteenth time and yeti attacks started getting mixed in with the regularly scheduled mutant and robot uprisings, humanity’s government said screw it and gave up on gun laws altogether. Revolvers were available from repurposed newspaper boxes on street corners, and vending machines began carrying semi-automatics. All told, it was extremely difficult to go more than a hundred feet without the opportunity to purchase a firearm. Queen Victoria XXX had, in fact, passed two revolver boxes on her way from the diner.

  But, still, that wasn’t a no.

  “That’s an Amish butter monster, Vicky. Bullets can’t stop it and neither of us has any dinner rolls. We need to run, now.”

  “You are so full of crap, Andy,” said the cloned queen. “That’s a story vegan parents tell their kids to scare them into a life of tofu and sad, fake pizza.”

  “Vicky, we are not prepared to stop this thing,” continued the reconstituted president. “It will engulf us in its creamy deliciousness and then choke our arteries until we seize up and die in its seething embrace.”

  SPLORCH!

  “RUN!” shouted Andrew Jackson II. A trio of oak trees came crashing down around the pair of cloned politicians. “NOW!”

  The butter monster towered into view before them, an unnatural sh
ade of off-yellow, oozing and bubbling toward them in fits and starts, swallowing everything in its path and toppling everything to the sides of its path. The creature lifted what could best be termed its head to roar, a mouth slowly tearing open, like an old woman with no teeth eating peanut butter. The squelching sound of churning butter echoed through the forest. Birds scattered in the distance.

  “Huh,” said Queen Victoria XXX, quietly astonished and still crouched by the large oak, “that’s a god damned butter mon–”

  The creature quickly undulated toward her, a twisting limb of soft yellow dairy exploding from its side and crashing into the re-created royal. Queen Victoria XXX was shoved clean through the tree behind her and thrown hard into the forest floor, knocking the wind from her. As the clone gasped for breath, she thrashed and clawed against the frothing dairy beast, but it was to no avail. Struggling to keep from blacking out, the queen whipped her head around, looking for Andrew Jackson II, a way out, a loaf of French bread ...

  All she saw was butter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  War Is H-E-Double Hockey Sticks

  Timmy, the telepathic, cape-wearing super-squirrel, scampered through the broken glass doors and past the broken-down Volkswagen, into the lobby of the Secaucus Holiday Inn, his bloodied claws clacking against the tile. The sounds of cannon fire, screaming, and old-timey cussing drifted in after him.

  Mark Hughes was hunched over something in the middle of the floor, his back to the squirrel. Beyond him, a dozen small children were peeking out from behind upended couches, clutching stuffed animals and wearing pots like helmets.

  “Mark,” thought Timmy, “the pirates have nearly broken through the perimeter. We’re using the corpses to sandbag the abandoned Chili’s, but there’s still a sea of disgruntled college kids in polo shirts surging across the parking lot. I’m not sure how much longer we can keep them out of the plaza.”