by Eirik Gumeny
The thunder god threw the fox mightily, letting go of the animal just long enough to move his grip from its ribcage to its tail. The fox went sailing through the sky, miles down the road, into the hot pink dusk. The tail remained in Thor’s hand.
“See, now I feel bad,” he said, looking at the furry appendage still in his grip.
“No, it’s cool, it wasn’t very smart,” said Boudica IX. “I saw it eating its own poops. I don’t think it was going to last very long on its own. Hey, kind of like Andy.”
“Damn it, Bo.”
“Well, that’s not really fair, Andy didn’t eat his own poo.”
“Please stop talking.”
“And it’s not like he ate it on purpose, either, it just happened while he was –”
Thor clamped his hands over his ears with tremendous vigor and hastiness, the ensuing percussion inadvertently rupturing his own eardrums. Wincing slightly from the pain, he watched as Boudica IX continued to mime obscenely. Eventually he smiled, realizing that he no longer had any idea what she was saying[viii].
***
Mark Hughes and Ali Şahin, meanwhile, were flying back from the Confederated Hillpersons of Whitesylvania on the wings of atomic-powered jetpacks, scavenged groceries in hand and twitching rodent in satchel, making excellent time and each blissfully unaware of what the other was saying.
CHAPTER SIX
Someone Call Betty Ford
Mark entered his hotel’s lobby through the half-boarded front doors, cradling Timmy the detoxing super-squirrel in his arms. Ali was still in the plaza, a few steps behind them, laden with their non-perishable canned good bounty and fighting to disentangle himself from his jetpack, all despite the fact that one of his arms was a cybernetic implant and, due to complications from the geomagnetic superstorm, currently didn’t work.
“Timmy!” cried Catrina, rushing across the lobby to her manager’s side.
“He’s almost through the worst of it,” explained Mark.
“What happened?”
“He quit the peanut butter, cold turkey.”
“By the scruffy beard of Odin,” said Catrina softly.
Mark looked at her with an upturned eyebrow.
“Thor explained to me a while ago that every time I said ‘Oh, god,’ there was no way to prove I wasn’t talking about him. So I had to get more specific.”
Mark nodded in agreement. “That’s actually a good idea.”
“Is he going to be OK?” asked Catrina, taking Timmy into her arms.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine. At this point he just needs rest.”
Timmy scratched violently at his furry arms, twisting and turning in the crook of Catrina’s forearm.
“Probably a lot of rest,” continued Mark. “Might not hurt to lock his door, too.”
Catrina turned and began walking toward the stairwell on the far side of the lobby. Over her shoulder, Mark could see Queen Victoria XXX curled in the fetal position at the feet of Chester A. Arthur XVII, singing weakly to herself. The president, for his part, was staring vacantly across the hotel with glassy eyes.
“What’s their problem?” asked Mark.
“They can’t have sex,” answered Catrina.
“Those poor bastards.”
Outside the hotel doors there was a thud and a clatter. A half dozen cans of corn rolled through the doorway.
“Little help, guys?” called Ali.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Underpants Just Slow Him Down
“OK, I tied my belt to this cinder block,” said Thor, his hearing mostly restored. He and Boudica IX, once again completely sober, were still lost somewhere in the scrub-strewn wasteland between Boston and Secaucus. “Let’s see if this works.”
Boudica IX was wrapped around the thunder god – her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, her nose in his ear.
“OK, I’m ready,” she said.
Thor wrapped one end of the belt tightly around his knuckles, the steel-reinforced pleather going taut between his hand and the concrete on the ground just behind his feet.
“I hope my pants stay up,” he said.
“Maybe next time you should buy the ones that I pick out for you,” replied Thor’s girlfriend. “You know, the ones that fit.”
“Never.”
Swinging his arm forward, the fallen thunder god hurled the cinder block into the light brown sky, the belt straightening and stretching, digging into his palm, and then yanking Thor from the ground. He and Boudica IX followed the arc of the concrete, effectively flying over the nature-ravaged highway.
“Holy shit,” cried Thor, wind whipping past his face, “it’s working.”
“Woo!” cried Boudica IX, leaning her head backward into the rushing air.
The duo sailed over the old interstate for a few more minutes, marveling at the scenery and only occasionally screaming that plausible physics could suck it. The cinder block reached the apex of its parabolic flight and began its return trip to the earth. This was not something the god nor the Celtic queen was prepared for.
“So, uh, we’re just falling now, aren’t we?” asked Boudica IX.
“Yeah, I don’t really know how to land this thing,” replied Thor.
“At least it’s open space, right? It’s not like there’s a –”
“Bridge!”
Thor let go of his belt and wrapped his arms around Boudica IX, twisting in midair and turning his back toward the approaching overpass. The cinder block shattered against the abandoned bridge, while Thor tumbled through the overpass like a brick through a sheet cake.
After a few moments of uncontrollable rolling, the thunder god and the clone came to a stop and lay on their backs in the rubble, staring into the darkening chocolate sky. They sat up as one, shaking their heads and brushing dirt and debris from their persons. It was then that they realized Thor’s cargo pants did not make the trip with them.
“Don’t say anything,” grumbled the thunder god.
“I won’t,” said Boudica IX, unweaving a tiny chunk of asphalt from deep within the depths of her red hair. “But why didn’t you buy underpants?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rib Ticklin’
The security officer thudded against the sidewalk in a rain of broken glass. His intestines followed soon after.
“Typhoid” Mary Mallon, now possessing the remarkably well-preserved body of professional wrestler James “The Ultimate Warrior” Hellwig, stood inside the disheveled Dickey’s Barbeque Pit, glowering through the shattered window at the man who had been foolish enough to try to get between her and her unceasing thirst for bloodshed.
Mary paused to think about that for a moment. While it was certainly true that the security officer was trying to stop her, he ultimately ended up very dead and had little to no impact on her marauding. If anything, she realized, the man had, in point of fact, helped, adding yet another bloody statistic to her already impressive body count.
Mary stopped glowering and instead curtsied to the man, the body of The Ultimate Warrior daintily bobbing, his massive wrists lightly upturned.
“Thank you, sir,” she said to the corpse. “I do appreciate your support.”
Mary then turned around and snapped the neck of another security officer who had been frantically hitting her with a nightstick for the last few minutes.
Looking up from the twitching cadaver at her feet, Mary saw Lizbeth “Lizzie” Borden, now possessing a blood-soaked wendigo[ix], slump down at one of the picnic tables lined across the barbecue restaurant and slide a large plate of ribs before herself. Whether the ribs were animal or human was unclear.
“My goodness, I am famished,” said Lizbeth in a guttural growl, before immediately biting into a rack of barbecued meat, bone and all.
Mary delicately sat down opposite her. She flicked some viscera from her bulging bicep.
“This did seem a particularly grueling endeavor, did it not?”
“Perhaps for you,” explained Lizbeth before patting
her furry chest. “This beast certainly made short work of all challenges.”
Mary looked down at her oily pecs and tree trunk legs. She could see very little else. She couldn’t help but feel as though she was suffocating within her own muscles.
“You may be right,” said Mary eventually. “The aesthetics of this body may be more impressive than their actual capacity for savagery. The arm of that one woman barely came off at all.”
“One cannot beat Mother Nature for cruelty.”
Mary laughed lightly. “I am not sure a wendigo constitutes natural, dear Lizzie.”
Lizbeth chortled through a mouthful of ribs.
“Oh, dear me,” she said, quickly raising a terrifying clawed hand to her mouth. “Please pardon my manners.”
***
A throat was cleared gruffly and deliberately. Lizbeth and Mary, faces covered in barbecue sauce, turned to find a man standing at the end of their table, less than three feet from their elbows. He looked to be about sixty years of age, with shaggy salt-and-pepper hair and dark, sunken eyes, dressed in the most expensive-looking cheap suit either of them had seen in the twenty apocalypses since ghosts had begun walking the earth.
“Ladies,” said the grizzled man, bowing slightly, his face as creased as a rotting pumpkin. “I do hope you’ll pardon the interruption, but I have a favor to ask of you.”
CHAPTER NINE
Of Mice and Cybernetic Hotel Owners
A few days and several far-flung sacks of highway debris later, Thor and Boudica IX finally returned to the Secaucus Holiday Inn, bedraggled, bruised, and bleeding slightly from various outlying areas.
They never did figure out how to land.
The nights likewise proved to be more difficult, and much colder, than the couple had anticipated. After his attempt at a campfire accidentally burned down several acres of dried-out scrubland, Thor was instead forced to belt a length of moss across his waist to protect his boys from the near-freezing temperatures. Boudica IX, for her part, had created a terrifying, yet incredibly comfy, overcoat, sewn together with twigs and hair and made from the skins of animals too stupid to escape the raging wildfire.
On the plus side, the god and the queen ate extremely well.
Limping through the boarded-up front doors and into the dim, candlelit lobby, Thor was immediately accosted by a sunken-eyed Queen Victoria XXX.
“Hey, Vicky,” he said, “how’s –”
“No talking,” rasped Queen Victoria XXX, shoving Thor back outside with one hand and wheeling a comatose Chester A. Arthur XVII behind her with the other. “You hit this asshole with lightning. Right the fuck now.”
“I really have to pee.”
The re-created English royal grabbed the thunder god by his filthy beard and pulled his face directly opposite hers. She said nothing.
She only stared.
Thor had not known real fear in his life until that moment, looking into the icy black void of Vicky’s soul. His spirit shrank, retreated to his bowels, and stayed there for several days.
“OK,” he whimpered, and shuffled to a clear area of the plaza.
“I’m coming too!” shouted the be-animaled Boudica IX, skipping after them.
***
The next afternoon, the entire Holiday Inn gang – Thor Odinson, Boudica IX, Catrina Dalisay, Ali Şahin, Mark Hughes, Timmy the detoxed super-squirrel, Chester A. Arthur XVII, and Queen Victoria XXX – convened in the lobby of the hotel, situating themselves in armchairs and sofas around a single, smallish coffee table in the middle of the room. Thor had recharged the generators and everyone was freshly showered, wearing clean clothes, and sane. The exception to the last two, of course, being Boudica IX, who was still wearing a hollowed-out wolf for a hat.
Charlie and Vicky had appeared last to the gathering – exhausted, glowing, and wearing rumpled gym clothes, despite the washers, dryers, and irons all working again. The cloned president was limping slightly, as parts of him were already starting to shut down.
“Were you guys boning this entire time?” asked Thor.
“Yes,” Catrina answered sternly. “They’re very loud.”
“Did you guys break a lamp or something this morning?” asked Ali.
“It was the television,” replied Queen Victoria XXX.
“You guys know those things cost money, right?” Mark inquired.
“It’s not like they work.”
“That’s the worst part of this stupid blackout,” grumbled the fallen god.
“Really, Thor? No TV’s the worst part of this?” said Catrina.
“I guess the lack of cars thing is pretty bad too.”
“What lack of cars thing?” Chester A. Arthur XVII raised an eyebrow.
“You know, how they don’t work. And we have to walk everywhere.”
“Is that why you guys took so long?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“We also got lost,” added Boudica IX.
Chester A. Arthur XVII sighed. “Any kind of electromagnetic interference, like an EMP or the solar mass ejection that caused this current planetwide clusterfuck, only affects genuine, contained electrical systems. Like the continental grid, or me and my self-inducting closed circuit transformers, since Lee ironically enough didn’t want me to have to worry about charging. Automobiles, on the other hand, run on galvanic cell batteries and internal combustion engines. Electromagnetics have zero effect on either of those systems.”
“But ...” began Thor, “but the TV said cars don’t work in a blackout. Everyone’s always walking. And stabbing people for magical amulets and gasoline.”
“We’ve been off gasoline for years,” said Ali.
“What’s gasoline?” asked Catrina.
“Even if we did still have cars that ran on petroleum derivations, it’s completely possible to retrieve gasoline from your standard roadside service station with no electricity. Difficult, yes, but not impossible,” continued Chester A. Arthur XVII. “And, more importantly, none of that is in any way the car’s fault. Any person or television program that tells you otherwise is a terrible, filthy, ignorant, horrible, stupid liar.”
“Unless someone’s car is one hundred percent electric,” said Ali.
“Well, yeah, unless that,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“So ... TV lied?!” said Thor, alarmed.
“I’m afraid so, buddy,” said Mark.
“Besides, you could’ve just used the nuclear-powered jetpacks,” added Queen Victoria XXX.
“We still have those?” asked Thor.
“We have four,” Ali answered.
“Wait, hang on ...” Thor furrowed his brow and bit his lip. He began staring absently at the arm of the sofa he was sitting on.
The thunder god stared for a while, broken only by bouts of acute blinking. Chester A. Arthur XVII scratched his shoulder. Catrina scratched the back of her neck.
“Is he OK?” Timmy wondered.
“He’s just thinking,” explained Catrina.
“Oh, god,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “Should we help him?”
“Give him a second. I think he can do it.”
Boudica IX began furiously scratching her chest.
“Something’s really itching me,” she said.
“That wolf probably had fleas,” added Queen Victoria XXX, suppressing the urge to scratch her own chest.
“Animals can’t get fleas in the wild,” said Timmy.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” replied the squirrel. “Although there are a hundred other things wrong with wearing the carcass of another animal for fun.”
“I really like the way it looks,” said Boudica IX softly.
Thor began moving his head slightly and haphazardly, like a slowed-down tic.
“That’s probably not good,” offered Ali.
“Honeyballs? Are you OK?” inquired Boudica IX, leaning over and putting her arm around the thunder god. “We all know the answer already. We can help you.”
A moment passed. The
n Thor blurted out, “You mean we didn’t have to walk all the way to Boston?!”
Everyone in the room applauded.
“Son of a bitch,” continued the former Norse god. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so annoyed. I mean, that trip was so boring.”
“Dude, your girlfriend is right there,” said Catrina, pointing toward Boudica IX.
“No, he’s right, it devolved pretty quickly,” corrected the Celtic queen. “I don’t have a lot to talk about and all his Asgard stuff is tedious and confusing.”
“Plus her vagina was locked up for most of it so we couldn’t even fuck,” added Thor.
Boudica IX nodded in agreement, the wolf head bobbling atop her own.
“Why ...” began Catrina, only to stop herself. If two people were too dumb to realize they shouldn’t be together, should they be told? Or was their ignorance compatibility enough? The questions hung in the air like smoke from a broken toaster oven. The clones, cyborgs, and squirrel all looked at one another and the lobby descended into the most awkward awkward silence in the history of societal discomfort.
Thankfully for everyone, the generators chose that moment to crap out again, throwing a blanket of near total darkness over the group. Faint wisps of orange sunlight snuck through the partially boarded-up front doors.
“Why did you get electricity-powered electrical generators again?” asked Thor.
“They were on sale and I wasn’t thinking,” Mark explained.
“I’ll get the matches,” said Catrina, walking behind the front desk.
“I got it,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, utilizing the flamethrower built into his arm and lighting all the nearby candles, as well as scorching most of the wall and causing everyone else in the room to duck. The clone’s arm immediately shut down and fell to his side.
“Damn it.”
“Why would you even do that?” scolded Queen Victoria XXX. “You knew that would happen.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”