by Eirik Gumeny
Not great, they assumed.
They closed their eyes, scrunched up their faces, their shoulders. They breathed deep, held that breath like it was their last.
Then a horse neighed, louder than the rushing air, than the destruction around them. Cautiously, the three opened their eyes.
A massive woman on a winged, white mare was standing in front of them.
“What the actual fuck,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Brünnhilde?” asked the thunder god.
“‘tis time to come home, Thor,” said the Valkyrie.
“Like, home home?” he asked. “Valhalla’s back? Asgard? All of it?”
“Verily,” answered the shieldmaiden. “When thou reached thine true potential here on Midgard, thou didst prove all of the mortal science wrong. Thou reinstated all of the religions, and all of the heavens.” She pulled an enormous, gleaming sword from her back. “But, come, time is fleeting.”
The Valkyrie slashed her blade through the air, a couple times, each cut severing reality itself. A rectangular patch of existence fell away, dissipating into nothing. In its place, a brightly glowing portal, and on the other side ...
“What are we looking at?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“That’s Valhalla,” said Thor, staggering to his feet, “the hall in which the souls of heroes slain in battle are received by Odin.”
“Thou didst put up a good fight,” said Brünnhilde.
Two figures stepped into the light. As their eyes adjusted, the earthbound trio could see Catrina Dalisay and Ali Şahin standing on the other side of the gateway.
“Hey, buddy,” said Catrina, a smile taking up most of her face. The small woman looked less gossamer than the last time Thor had seen her, though still not quite real. She seemed to be glowing with an indissoluble joy. And, judging by her flowing gown, it looked like she’d finally been allowed to change out of her laundry day sweatpants.
“Catrina ...” said the thunder god.
Behind him, the color began draining from the Rainbow House, flecks of paint and loose bricks and a couple of the weaker columns sailing through the air.
“Might wanna get a move on there,” said the dead woman.
“Oh, right,” he said, rushing toward the portal.
One foot in the gateway, Thor stopped and turned around. Queen Victoria XXX and Chester A. Arthur XVII were still sitting on the ground. The thunder god furrowed his brow, then extended his hand.
“You coming?” he asked.
The Valkyrie lowered her sword in front of the Norseman.
“They cannot pass,” she said.
“Are you fucking serious, Hildy?” roared the burly god. The sky – or what was left of it – began crackling with lightning. “You know I outrank you, right?”
“Thor,” said Queen Victoria XXX, standing now, her hands around his. “It’s OK.”
“We’re homunculi, remember?” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, shrugging slightly from where he remained sitting. “No souls.”
“Oh. Oh, right,” said the crestfallen blonde man. “Well, that’s a fucking bummer.”
“You’re telling me,” said the queen.
“So ... what are you gonna do?”
Queen Victoria XXX shrugged, looked around. “Watch it all come tumbling down, I guess.”
And then – as Thor and Brünnhilde disappeared into Valhalla, as reality repaired itself just in time to get torn apart again – they did.
EPILOGUE
Deus Ex Space Invader
The queen and the president stood, hand-in-hand, as everything around them ended.
But they weren’t worried.
They didn’t cry.
They were together.
Which is precisely why what happened next, happened next.
With a horrendous crashing sound, barely perceptible over the cacophony of reality being sucked away, a flying saucer materialized above them. The door opened and a tiny green man with a head like a ballsack appeared in the entryway.
“Hey,” he shouted, “you guys Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX? We’re here to rescue you.”
THE END
(of everything)
(forever)
(*sniffle*)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks for reading the Exponential Apocalypse books. They’re done now. That’s well over a thousand pages you can’t unread.
In memoriam, here’s a comprehensive list of everyone and everything that is responsible, in some fashion, for those pages, whether it was because they helped me or inspired me or because I shamelessly ripped them off at some point, be it simply for a subtitle or an actual plot point, consciously or otherwise.
Please note that this list also, conveniently, doubles as a list of things I wholeheartedly endorse and/or recommend, assuming you were looking for that information. (Unless, of course, you’re reading this in the future and it turned out that they were a pile of assholes or Nazis or Louis C.K.s or some-such, in which case I preemptively and retroactively dissavow myself of them and offer my apologies.)
Now, without further ado, my heartfeltiest of thank yous to: adverbs; Ally Malinenko, ancient religions of all kinds, but only for the lore, not the wars and the hate; Army of Darkness (and the Evil Dead franchise generally, even if parts of it don’t hold up so well now that I’m not eighteen); assorted classic rock bands not mentioned by name below; Batman (but, like, the idea of him, not any particular iteration, except for maybe The Animated Series version); Benedict Cumberbatch; Blake’s green chile cheeseburgers; Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson; Bob’s Burgers; Broad City; Bruce Springsteen; Chris Cornell and Soundgarden; Clone High almost certainly, in hindsight; Cracked (who I write for now? what a weird world); Community; Danger Slater; Dolores O’Riordan and the Cranberries; dinosaurs; Douglas Adams; Dragonball Z; Dunkin’ Donuts; Futurama; Hamilton; history, broadly; Jamaican ginger ale; Jurassic Park (but only the book and the first movie); Kurt Vonnegut; Mike, Sam, and Laura at Jersey Devil Press; my former jobs; my former professors; old Marvel comics (and the new ones, and the movies, obviously, even after they got all the credit for Lebowski Thor despite him being, y’know, my Thor); old movies; People of Earth and/or This Island Earth and/or Mystery Science Theater 3000; Pinky and the Brain; pretzels; Prince; Pringles’ salt and vinegar chips; REO Speedwagon; Stanford Hospital and everyone who works there; Star Wars, except for Rise of Skywalker, that was bad; Steve and Sarita; The Simpsons, probably; tea; Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; Uncle Paul; werewolves and the requisite lore; Warren Zevon; William Shakespeare; and, of course, everyone that’s ever purchased an Exponential Apocalypse book in the past, that’s reviewed or recommended one, and everyone else who wants to be thanked.
Also, coffee. I’m pretty sure you’re, like, fifty-percent of my blood content at this point and I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.
Also also, a special – and long overdue – shout out to my Uncle Mike, the man who gave me the first three books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series during my first hospitalization when I was fifteen. As cheesy and cliché as it may sound, those books changed my life, and are directly responsible for the Exponential Apocalypse books, as well as, like, everything else I’ve ever written. So, thank you.
And laster, but certainly not leaster, my wife Monica. Thank you for being everything to me, and for me, and for putting up with my shit, both metaphorically and literally. (Cystic fibrosis is not kind to the digestive system, guys.) You’ve saved my life a dozen times over and I would not be who I am today without you. I love you.
And, finally, a quick note to our dogs, Brock and Harvey: It’s adorable when you sit on my lap and put your paws on the keyboard, or your head on my hand, but, honestly, that makes it impossible to type and you failed to contribute anything of value to this or any book.
Thanks for absolutely nothing, puppies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eirik Gumeny is the author of the Exponential Apocalypse serie
s, all of which you’ve (probably? hopefully?) just read. Congratulations! His short fiction can be found all over the internet and in various anthologies, and he has contributed to Cracked, SYFY Wire, and The New York Times. He is an avid fan of both Shakespeare and fart jokes.
Eirik was born with cystic fibrosis and was kind of disgusting to be around for a while. In 2014, he received a double lung transplant and may have briefly died. He got better.
Born in the suburban sprawl of northeastern New Jersey, he currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he regularly has to fight giant atomic ants with a flamethrower.
Website: www.egumeny.com
Twitter: @egumeny
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
QUINTOLOGY OF QUALMS
WE’RE GOING TO DIE HERE, AREN’T WE?
DEVIL WENT DOWN TO JERSEY
SCREW THE UNIVERSE (with Stephen Schwegler)
THE END OF EVERYTHING FOREVER
an Exponential Apocalypse omnibus
Jersey Devil Press
Red Bank, New Jersey, or thereabouts
www.jerseydevilpress.com
1st Edition
Copyright © 2020 by Eirik Gumeny
Foreword by Danger Slater
Cover Art by April Guadiana
A version of “By Any Other Clock” was first published in Untoward Magazine.
“Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Waffles of War” was published by three minute plastic.
“Free-Range and Grass-Fed” was originally published by Bizarro Pulp Press.
“Bed, Bath, and Oh, God, Run” can also be found in the pages of Andromeda Spaceways, Issue 60.
“Night of the Living,” “Almost Every November,” and “Chinese Take-Out” first appeared in Jersey Devil Press.
This collection is a work of fiction. Any mention of business establishments and locations is done in whatever legally protected manner it is that doesn’t get the author sued. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or otherwise, is entirely coincidental. Any resemblance to potential futures is ... actually kind of disheartening, given the number of corpses it would take to accomplish that, but still, y’know, pretty cool, if you think about it. We’d have robots.
ENDNOTES
* * *
[i] Both Switzerland and Canada had declared themselves "the friendliest nation on Earth." They held a summit to decide things once and for all. It ended badly.
[ii] Sometime between the First Robot War ending the world for the ninth time and the Second Robot War ending the world for the tenth time, the region of New England – under the assumption that robots couldn't climb trees – burned itself to the ground wholesale, planted a majestic, fast-acting Qwik-Wood™ redwood forest in the ashes, and moved their civilization high into the treetops. The important parts, anyway: highways, police stations, Catholic churches, liquor stores. All of it, up there balancing on planks and ropes and spanning the thickest branches, like the jury-rigged treehouse of a twelve-year-old who laughed in, and then peed on, the face of death.
[iii] Shortly after sort of saving the world from Andrew Jackson II and Nikola Tesla's doomsday machine, Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX – fuck buddies and best friends for several years – had an adult conversation about their relationship and tried to give it an honest go. The conversation, and the ensuing relationship, involved a lot of hemming, hawing, and dancing around words like "love," but eventually they figured it out.
[iv] A few months earlier, Ali spend time with Dr. Arahami, recuperating from a broken ankle. While resting at his volcano lair, the mad scientist was able to talk Ali into converting over to a pneumatic penis. A kind of harnessed enhancement, comprised of compressed air and physical sensors, the dong survived the solar storm without a problem.
[v] Shortly after the world was ended for the eleventh time, the first dinosaurs were cloned in what was then the archeological stronghold of Montana. Almost immediately, those first dinosaurs ate their creators. Eventually, the escaped no-longer-extinct reptiles made their way east and settled into Old Maryland, being huge fans of both Baltimore Harbor and meat that couldn't fight back or run away.
[vi] The grid was originally consolidated and run by the Amalgamated Provinces and States of Canada, America, and Mexico, a government that had since exploded. In its absence, the grid just kind of ... kept running, and the people just kept using it.
[vii] Cash money had been thoroughly and completely destroyed several apocalypses earlier.
[viii] She was adorably and innocently describing a gender-swapped blumpkin, three things which have never once been said about a blumpkin. For the love of all that is holy, do not Google it.
[ix] The wendigo was a hulking creature vaguely in the shape of a human, but mostly claws and teeth and ragged white fur – picture an abominable snowman on meth. According to Native American lore, a human would turn into one after eating the flesh of another human. This would certainly explain why so many wendigo began popping up after the Cannibal Season began.
[x] Even if anyone had known an electrician, it would have been for naught. Most of the world's electricians died twenty months prior, when Quetzalcoatl attacked Las Vegas and turned a construction workers convention into a flaming hell of dismembered foremen and blue-collar unionists. Those that survived only milked an extra year from the grim reaper's teat, as the cruise they chartered for the one year anniversary of the Las Vegas massacre lost power within days of leaving port and the workers were forced to eat one another for sustenance. The last man made it to his own waist before he bled to death.
[xi] Shortly after the world ended for the twenty-fourth time and the citizens of the United Provinces and States of America, Canada, and Mexico voted in a democratically-elected anarchy as their government, states and provinces as they were once known slowly dissolved. After a while, the only constituently administrated organizations left were a handful of corporate-owned city-states and some globally-acknowledged independent territories.
[xii] Formerly New Mexico, Arizona, and small chunks of Nevada and southern California, Las Máquinas was ceded to the robots in appeasement following the Third Robot War. The territory was also home to a large number of scientists, stranded amidst the vengeful automatons thanks to a failed political reign and a spiteful populace.
[xiii] In Norse mythology, the realm of the frost giants.
[xiv] Known variously as wood nymphs, dryads, or sprites, the woodfolk were a previously mythic race of sexy green people who lived in the forest, alternately seducing, assisting, or causing problems for humans, and generally acting exactly like one would expect a race of sexy green people who lived in the forest to act.
[xv] For a brief period following the world ending for the fourth time, there was no internet. This made some people very sad and confused, and others very angry. In Sweden, particularly, many online citizens took the loss of the world wide web as a personal attack and started to attack everyone and everything they could find personally. After blighting all opposing viewpoints in their own country – even the ones whose opposition consisted solely of "Please don't hurt me" – the Swedish Torrenters, as they called themselves, set their sights on Norway, much to the chagrin of the burgeoning Neo-Viking movement there. It did not take long for this to devolve into a full-scale ideological war, ultimately resulting in both countries being set on fire. They stayed that way for many, many years, as Scandinavia was apparently an excellent source of fuel.
[xvi] The extinct animal sanctuary built over what used to be Oklahoma.
[xvii] Mark’s ocular implant ran off a small atomic battery and was not affected by the geomagnetic superstorm at all. The mechanical eye was, however, affected by his sobriety, or, more specifically, his lack thereof. The implant had earlier been knocked offline due to Mark’s spending most of the early days of the blackout blind stinking drunk.
[xviii] The manticore was a creature previously thought to be found only in ancient Persian mythology. The beast had the body of the lion
, the head of a man, and the tail of a scorpion. When a manticore mauled – or poisoned – someone it got rid of all the evidence: the skin, the bones, anything the victim was carrying. It was the Walter White of mythological monsters.
[xix] The Jersey Devil is a fearsome beast said to have been birthed by Deborah Leeds in the 1700s. Born human, it immediately changed into some kind of demon-looking thing and flew out into the night where it has terrorized New Jersey and the surrounding areas for centuries. By most accounts, the creature walks upright on thick legs and cloven hooves, has the head of a horse, the wings of a bat, and the tail of a cartoon devil.
[xx] The Mexican goatsucker. A cross between a feral dog and a lizard, chupacabra travel in packs, prey mainly on livestock, and don't take kindly to being disturbed.
[xxi] The Hawaiian volcano goddess.
[xxii] Like a tyrannosaurus rex, only bigger and meaner.
[xxiii] After being decimated during the fourth end of the world, Atlanta rebuilt and was now one of the largest city-states on the continent, expanding its metropolis to include all of what used to be Georgia, most of what was once South Carolina, and the parts of the former state of Florida that hadn't sunk into the ocean.