by Eirik Gumeny
The problem, of course, was that Consolidated Phukital used numbers relating to the tolerance of the average human in their calculations. They did not take into account the effects of heroin- and nicotine-laced peanut butter on a squirrel that stood less than a foot high, even in the gaudiest platform shoes he owned.
Further complicating things, a week after the earthquake the entire world’s peanut crop died in an unrelated spontaneous extinction.
The end result was that Timmy the telepathic squirrel was addicted to a product that no longer existed. In no small part because he had eaten a significant percentage of it.
This is how Mark Hughes, Ali Şahin, and Timmy the super-squirrel found themselves in an empty, darkened Piggly Wiggly in the southernest part of what was once Virginia, looking for jars of nut spread.
“Come on, man,” thought Timmy, scampering through the surprisingly well-stocked shelves. “Don’t hold out on me.”
“Timmy, you have to give this up,” said Mark, cyborg owner of the Secaucus Holiday Inn and current chauffeur and regretful enabler to a junkie super-squirrel. “This isn’t healthy.”
“Fuck you!” replied Timmy. “There’s got to be some peanut butter here somewhere!” The tiny rodent shoved a half dozen boxes of instant oatmeal to the ground and ran farther down the shelf.
“Timmy! Come on!”
The sounds of a fire door creaking open and slamming shut echoed through the supermarket, a cold breeze carrying the noises down the aisles.
“Can we get out of here?” asked Ali, mechanically-enhanced boyfriend to Catrina Dalisay and owner of the Dunkin Donuts that neighbored Mark’s hotel.
“Why, you scared of the dark?” replied Mark. “This blackout must be making things difficult for you.”
“It’s not the dark.” The brown-skinned young man pointed his good hand toward the ceiling, specifically toward the flag of the Confederated Hillpersons of Whitesylvania flapping from the rafters.
“Oh,” said the hotel proprietor. “Shit. I didn’t think we were that far south.”
“Well, we are and I would like to leave.”
“I would like to now as well.”
“You fellers ain’t goin’ nowhere,” came a voice from behind the men.
“Damn it,” said Mark with no small amount of exasperation. He and Ali turned, finding themselves face-to-face with a particularly inbred-looking hillperson, dressed in bleached denim overalls and a poorly-woven straw hat.
“Y’all need to leave,” said the hillperson.
“That was what we were planning on doing,” said Ali.
“Y’all ain’t doing nothin’!”
“Hold on, I’m confused,” said Mark. “Do you want us to leave or not? You’re contradicting yourself pretty thoroughly.”
“Oh, I bet tha’s what y’all’d like me t’ do.”
“Contradict yourself?” said Ali.
“You shut yer filthy mouth, boy.”
“We’ll be out of here in a second,” said Mark, half-assedly waving his hand and turning his back to the hillperson.
“Tha’s one second long’r than I’d care t’ keep lookin’ at you and yer ... friend.”
Mark rolled his non-mechanical eye and turned back around. “If you’re going to say something horrible and racist, just fucking say it. All this dancing around the fact that you’re an intrinsically awful person is tiring.”
“Oh, well, OK, fine,” said the hillperson, somewhat taken aback. He cleared his throat. Then, as menacingly as he could, he said, “We don’t wan’ none o’ yer kind in here.”
Mark and Ali stood silently for a second.
“That’s it?” inquired the donut shop owner.
“I expected worse,” said the hotel owner.
“Oh, I can do worse,” said the hillperson, “you godless, sonuvabitch ni—”
The next sound out of the hillperson’s throat was a loud, sickening snap. Mark let go of the inbred racist’s head and the man’s body slumped to the ground.
“Jesus, Mark,” said Ali.
“You’re not actually upset about that, are you?”
“Not for the reasons you’re thinking, no. You know about the Whitesylvanian hive mind, right?”
“The ...? Oh, shit.”
After the world was ended for the sixteenth time, The Ultrapimp was elected President of the United States of America and promptly rounded up all the white supremacists and other assorted bigots and walled them up in the plague colony of Old Maryland. This effectively ended racism forever.
Except, of course, for within Old Maryland.
Between the flesh-eating diseases and the dinosaurs[v], not many of the intolerant assholes survived for long. The few that did, however, eventually figured out a way to escape and made their way back to their ancestral homeland of the South. Thankfully – for everyone else anyway – this was no longer the South they remembered and the racist sacks of shit were chased away from city after city in a flurry of hurled rocks and cannon fire. They eventually settled in a craggy, isolated section of Virginia, where they were free to hate to their hearts’ content.
Shortly after incorporating, the settlement of Whitesylvania seceded from the country’s government with little to no opposition. The populace knew secession was a terrible idea and that it would leave the racist dickheads vulnerable and desperate, but allowed it all the same, because, as per the official ballot, “Fuck Whitesylvania.”
Sadly, though, the colony of prejudiced douchebags thrived – although, in this case, “thrived” meant “thanks to the inbreeding and diseases they still carried from Old Maryland, degenerated into a shambling collective of drooling, subhuman shitheads that literally shared one mind.”
An incoherent hollering could be heard outside the Piggly Wiggly, as dozens of shuffling, spitting hillpersons converged on the supermarket, shouting racial epithets and pounding on the windows with their tattered shoes and sharpened pig bones.
“Damn it, Mark, you woke up the racists,” said Ali, turning his head quickly. There were halting movements in the shadows.
“All right, let’s get Timmy and get out of here,” replied Mark.
The two entrepreneurs began slinking through the aisles of the grocery store, hoping to find their furry friend, or at least some cans of soup that weren’t minestrone. Eventually they found the squirrel, covered in peanut butter and weeping into an empty plastic jar. Similarly empty jars surrounded the rodent.
“Timmy?”
“These ... these were the last jars of peanut butter in the world,” thought the super-squirrel. “And I ate them. I ate them all.”
“They might not be the last,” began Ali. “There might be –” He was interrupted by a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Right, sorry. Ow.”
“I didn’t even think twice. I just ... I just went for it. I tore them open and shoved my entire head in there. I nearly suffocated,” said Timmy, looking up and holding out his tiny, peanut butter-covered paws. “But I didn’t care.
“I think I might have a problem, guys.”
“It’s OK, buddy,” said Mark, lifting the squirrel gently into the crook of his arm. “We’re here for you.”
“Speaking of here for us,” said Ali, “shouldn’t we be fighting off hordes of illiterate, backwoods hatemongers?”
“Yeah, actually,” said the hotel owner, scanning the supermarket with his good eye. “We probably should.”
Listening carefully, the men realized that the shouting and banging had now turned into screaming and pleading. Before the Whitesylvanians had been able to enter the Piggly Wiggly, they were beset by marauding cannibals. Ali, Mark, and Timmy could see the carnage through the blood-streaked windows.
“Well, that was lucky,” said the donut maker.
Luck had very little to do with it. As it turns out, racists taste delicious.
“Can we go home now?” Timmy asked weakly.
“Absolutely, buddy,” said Mark, gently stroking the rodent’s back.
; CHAPTER FOUR
Very Sensual Lemonade
In the absence of electricity, the Savoy Bistro, a small French restaurant on the outskirts of the floating city of New New Orleans, had laid out dozens and dozens of candles of various shapes, sizes, and scents. On the tables, on the dividers, on the chandeliers. The cozy, romantic bistro had become even cozier and more romantic than the owners had ever thought possible. They had turned lemons into some very sensual lemonade. Business was booming.
“Was” being the operative word there.
In the middle of the Savoy Bistro were a Siberian tiger and a polar bear, standing on their hind legs and delicately wiping blood from their fur. The animals were surrounded by the restaurant patrons, all of whom were now deceased. Most of them were in very small pieces.
“Oh, that was simply barrels of fun,” said the polar bear.
“Quite,” replied the Siberian tiger.
The bear and the tiger were also, in point of fact, deceased. So were “Typhoid” Mary Mallon and Lizbeth “Lizzie” Borden, the two elderly ghosts possessing the predators’ corpses.
“Fancy some tea?” asked Mary.
“Oh, yes, that sounds lovely,” answered Lizbeth.
“Shall I go ahead and put the kettle on here, or did you want to clear out that Starbucks farther down the boulevard, maybe have ourselves a scone?”
“Let us have it here. I rather like the ambience,” replied the polar bear, clearing the lower half of a man from a nearby booth. “We can pay our visit to the coffee shop tomorrow morning, during the morning rush.”
“I do so love the way you think, Lizzie,” cooed the tiger.
CHAPTER FIVE
Clinically Insane Like a Fox
There was a host of safe, ethical, economically viable alternative energy sources available – wind, solar, nuclear, coked-up hamsters – as well as any number of dangerous, unethical, completely unfeasible ones. The fact nevertheless remained that most North Americans were as lazy and unthinking as a career congressman and chose the power supply of least resistance, attaching their homes and businesses to one of the many high-voltage distribution lines crisscrossing the continent. The electricity was convenient and, without a governing body to regulate the dispersion, it was free[vi].
When the North American electrical grid was kneecapped by the geomagnetic solar storm and went offline, however, people slowly realized that their heretofore beloved lack of governmental oversight also meant that no one was coming to fix what was increasingly becoming a catastrophic problem. The credit-based economy was nonexistent[vii], hospitals were jamming patients full of morphine and hoping they didn’t notice none of their life-support machines were working, and those little coffee makers in hotel rooms didn’t do shit anymore.
So, with civilization on the brink of collapse, folks finally decided to get creative.
Sometimes this meant running a refrigerator off an outboard motor. Sometimes this meant flagging down the crazy old neighbor with a shed full of Leyden jars and hoping he didn’t ask for anything too creepy or sordid in return. And sometimes this meant laying out some uncharged makeshift batteries, sending a carrier pigeon to the city of Secaucus (in what was formerly New Jersey), and hoping that the fallen deity residing there was able to decipher what “BOSTON NEED LIGHTNING MAN” meant.
Thor Odinson, former Norse God of Thunder, and Boudica IX, the genetically re-created and titanium-reinforced Celtic queen, trudged south along the abandoned interstate. With desolate, brown chaparral flanking both sides of the road, Thor’s unkempt beard and hair were easily the most lush growth for miles, save for maybe his girlfriend’s wild red mane. The beard, incidentally, was a direct result of his slide back toward true godhood. The more of his former power that Thor reclaimed – which, paradoxically, matched how accustomed he was to humanity – the fuller and more magnificent he and his facial hair got.
Thor adjusted the duffel bag slung across his shoulder, rattling the bottles of beer he had accepted as payment from various Bostonian breweries. His new flannel shirt itched against the patches of raw skin checkered across his hefty body, the cuffs of his cargo pants dragged on the ground, and his sneakers were one size too small to actually be referred to as comfortable. Beside him, the sprite-like Boudica IX fidgeted and danced her way along the highway in Chuck Taylors and a t-shirt held together with safety pins, trying to keep the bare legs beneath her miniskirt from being assaulted by the stray reinforcing bars and vegetation poking through the cracked asphalt.
“Boston and Secaucus seem a lot farther apart than I remember,” said Thor. “It didn’t take this long going up there, did it?”
“I think we took a different road last time,” replied the redhead. “That one had more thorny things and less itchy things.”
“Are you sure? Why don’t I remember that?”
“Because you didn’t fall into the thorny things wearing a skirt.”
Thor stared down the never-ending expanse of broken road before him, towards the rapidly setting sun, the reaching brambles and weeds and derelict road signs and disconnected telephone poles all silhouetted against the deepening pink horizon.
“This is bullshit.”
“Can’t you fly?” asked Boudica IX, yanking her very white leg free of a particularly grabby patch of poison ivy. “Shouldn’t that be a thing you can do?”
“No dice, pumpkincans,” replied Thor. “Flying is not in my preparatory.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“Reparations?”
“No, I meant the flying thing.”
“Oh, that. Yeah, no. I can’t do that.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I actually tried it once. I ended up falling four stories, right off the hotel roof and onto some dude’s RV. Now I’m not allowed to go back up there.”
“I think you might have gotten shafted there.”
“I know. The roof’s awesome.”
“The flying, babycakes.”
“Oh, yeah.” Thor shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never been able to fly. No one in my family could, actually. We did have flying goats, though; Tanny and Tanny Jr.”
“Your goats could fly but you couldn’t? What the heck kind of cut-rate religion were you part of?”
“Loki could turn into birds and bugs and stuff, but he mostly only used it to bother you in the bathhouses.”
“That seems like a waste.”
“He was kind of an asshole.”
“Do you know what happened to him? After you guys fell?”
“I’m not sure,” said Thor, walking around a massive hill of massive fire ants. “We didn’t exactly get along. Dad said he got a job as a senator, but no one’s heard from him since the government was blown up. I’d have to assume he was murdered during the ensuing riots.”
“That’s kind of a terrible thing to just assume.”
“I don’t think you understand how much of an asshole he was.”
“Hey, you can throw things really far, right?” Boudica IX inquired abruptly.
“Yeah ...”
“If you threw something, but held onto it afterwards, do you think you could throw yourself along with it? You know, fake-fly?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” The thunder god started looking around. “Do you have anything to throw?”
“What about your bag?”
“That’s got the beer in it. I don’t want to break the beer.”
“Then let’s drink the beer.”
“Yes,” said Thor, his eyes wide, “let’s do that.”
***
Several dozen empty bottles of Ipswich Ale and Wahlberg Bros. IPA littered the ground surrounding Thor and Boudica IX. A few feet in front of them lay the duffel bag, unzipped and sprawled on the asphalt.
“Now it’s too light to throw,” grumbled the thunder god.
“But did you try really throwing it?” the redhead questioned, swaying slightly.
“You are insultingly lightweight for
an Irish person.”
“I’m not Irish, you horsebutt!”
There was a rustling off to the side of the couple.
“Was that you?” asked the cloned warrior-queen.
“No.”
“OK. Hang on a sec.” Boudica IX rushed off into the undergrowth bordering the road, returning a moment later with a fox and a pretty wicked rash on her bare calves.
“Here,” she said, trying to hold the squirming animal, “you can throw him.”
Thor furrowed his brow.
“It’s OK, go for it. Animals can’t feel pain.”
“Timmy’s told me otherwise,” said Thor.
“Yes, but Timmy also talks with his brain. I don’t think he counts.”
“He’s gonna yell at me if he finds out and he can get really mean.”
“You’re afraid of a squirrel? What’re you, a man or a ... acorn, I guess.”
“Now you’re getting mean.”
“OK, look.” The redhead sighed. “Here’s the truth,” said Boudica IX, still hugging the wriggling fox, “I am running out of things to talk to you about. All I’ve got left are a couple really gross stories that even I don’t want to know I know. Sacrificing this fox seems worth it to save my dignity.”
“Sugarsnatch, I don’t think a couple stories –”
“This one time, while I was working with Andy, he walked in on me while I was taking a dump and I ended up letting him –”
Thor grabbed the squirming canine from Boudica IX with his right hand, holding the fox like a football. With his free arm he grabbed Boudica IX around the waist.
“OK, hang on. And please don’t ever finish that story.”